Michael Roebuck's Blog

I've been blog tagged by Karl Ribas. Apparently, a new game has come out for people in the SEO business. If you are "tagged," you have to tell 5 things about yourself that people may not know. You can visit the official blog tree site for details and a master tree. Some of the people have some very interesting backgrounds. Hopefully I can be as entertaining as the others.

So without further waste, Here are 5 things you may not know about me:

1) I once blew up the electrical system of my new car when installing a CB radio. My buddy Don loves this story. While in college, CB Radios were hot in cars and I was installing one in my brand new Dodge Shadow. Apparently I crossed the wrong wires and POW, I blew the electrical system. No lights, blinkers, brake lights, anything. The dealer was cool about it though. They replaced whatever I blew under warranty.

2) My wife used to chase after me, knock me down and try to kiss me.... In Kindergarten!
3) My wife and I joined a dating club together, before we were dating each other
This is worth two items of information. First, Yes, my wife and I played together since kindergarten. She would run after me, knock me down and try to kiss me. Of course I was petrified so I would run away. As I got older, I'd slow down though. My older sister and her older sister were friends and when we were in the 5th grade, they would get us out of class so we could hang out in the halls. To make a long love story short; I eventually moved away to Virginia, she came to visit me for a week when she graduated high school. We had a great time but went our separate ways. She eventually got married to someone else while I went to college. I eventually moved back to Illinois and she ended up getting divorced.

We were both friends and both single so we placed ads in the local singles section of the newspaper. She would check out my dates and I'd check out hers. We even went to a singles dance together. Since we never approved of each others dates and we knew everything about each other (more information than I care to admit) We came to the conclusion that we were in fact dating each other. The rest is history!

4) I worked as a Private Investigator in college Actually, I've had several jobs. The most interesting ranged from fry guy at McDonalds, working on a purebred cattle farm, volunteer firefighter, selling pagers out of a briefcase, doorman at a nightclub and of course a licensed Private Investigator (This explains my dark side). All of this experience gave me the knowledge needed to run a SEO company! Actually, this is the longest I've ever held a job. Usually I worked somewhere for a few years and then moved across the country to try something else. Moving across the country is much easier when everything you own fits in the trunk and a small U-Haul!

5) I collect bobbing head dolls I find them at yard sales and auctions. They must be pre-1970 and cannot be bought from eBay. I'm a huge eBay fan and Gold Powerseller but sometimes eBay ruins it for those that collect things. I collect because it's fun to find something every now and then. I can buy bobbing head dolls (bobbleheads) all day on eBay but really have to hunt for them at auctions.

There you go. 5 tidbits about myself that I'm sure you wanted to know.

Now it's my turn to tag the bloggers. I going to flake out and only tag three people. These people focus on Yahoo Stores as well and it should be good reading. Besides, everyone else I know has already been tagged. I tag Rob Snell, David and/or Sally Burke and Michael Whitaker

At the recent Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, Li Evans from Search Marketing Gurus took pictures of many different people wearing silly hats and posted the pictures on hatbait.com. It then turned into basically a popularity contest to see who could get the most votes.

I'm proud to say, that after a few threatening emails to clients, friends, family and fellow employees, My friend and co-worker Karl Ribas came away with the most votes.

Congratulations Karl!!

Below are both Karls' and mine Hatbait picture. Visit hatbait.com for many more pictures.

Today is my first day back after attending Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. It's been a busy day, as usual after being away for several days. The show was a success and I came back with several new tips and tricks to try with Yahoo! Stores in order to increase both Search Engine Placement as well as Conversions. I was accompanied by Karl Ribas and on Tuesday we were graced with the presence of Kelly and Jessica. Kelly is one of our Yahoo! Store RTML designers and Jessica performs SEO and PPC duties.

Other Yahoo Developer friends Rob Snell as well as Dave and Sally Burke were both present and we swapped a few stories. Rob was a speaker at a conversion seminar and we all cheered him on. In fact he reviewed one of my sites during the session and offered some good tips. Rob did state a couple times about how a site increased sales by 20% by including a spokesmodel to endorse and give tips. If you don't have a spokemodel, time to get one! I'm available for anyone needing one.






Above, Rob is talking with Lori Blackwell whose brother sells decks. Very interesting lady, story and web site.

Some of you have already noticed I didn't cover the show every day like I did in August. I apologize for that. This week was busy and I didn't have the time to sit and transcribe notes. A good blog to check out for daily notes is my good friend and co-worker Karl Ribas. He gives a great day by day summary of his show activities.

Due to all the snow we received here on Friday and the inability to come to work, it set me back a few days and I was actually a day late at going to the show. But that didn't stop me from getting some good data. I primarily wanted to meet with various vendors and see what they could offer us. I had discussions with several tracking vendors as well as a few publishing vendors. I feel we are closer to a great tracking solution and I even met with a usability expert and long time friend of mine with the goal of working closely with him to allow me the ability to offer great usability advice for Yahoo! Store clients. Keep watch for that service to appear. If anyone has immediate needs for usability analysis, let me know.

I sat with Yahoo Search and had a great presentation on there new PPC model coming out. Code named, "Panama," this will enable Yahoo to be more like Google in the PPC market. No longer will you bid strictly for position, but various other factors will determine your position. Such as landing page quality, ad popularity and of course money.

Lori Weiman from Keyword Max talked a little about Click Fraud. She was included with Jessie Stricchiola from Alchemist Media and Shuman Ghosemajunder from Google who was pummeled with a direct hit from Jessie about why Google changed click charge policy almost immediately after a lawsuit. As you can see from the below picture, Jessie can barely keep from laughing as Shuman defends Google.

Another big story was WebmasterRadio. They read, "WebmasterRadio.FM investigative journalist Jim Hedger hosts an exclusive WebmasterRadio.FM series on the implications of click fraud on the industry and on national and global security." The story further reads, "Mr. Briggs noted the use of click fraud by criminal and terrorist organizations. Our investigation has found several incidents of this type of activity. We have also found evidence of bot-nets used to facilitate click fraud, primarily against Google advertisers." In short, they claim that terrorists are using Google Adsense Fraud to fund themselves. I highly recommend you listen. The link is: http://www.webmasterradio.fm/breakingstory.php Below are some pictures from an announcement.

Well, that's about it for now. Again, be sure to check out Karl Ribas' blog for daily attributes.

Anyone interested in more pictures from the show, I have uploaded several pictures to my new work Flickr account. I've been using a Flickr account for personal pictures and decided to start using it for work as well. You can view the pictures by clicking this link:

Until Next Time....

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