It’s obviously been way too long since I posted here. So, here’s a quick run down of what’s been keeping me so busy lately:

My Job

Everyone’s asking about my job, so here’s the short story: The SEM company I worked for for 5 years got themselves in deep financial doo doo and there was a big shift in personnel. About a third to half of the marketing staff was lost in the upheaval, including me.

My wonderful new job: Director of Search Marketing at seOverflow. We specialize in doing outsourced SEO and linkbuilding for designers, developers and other marketing agencies.  It’s a lot of work, but after 3 months, I’m getting things under control and forging ahead. Check out my new Denver SEO company here.

I also continue to work with Liz Hamilton at Maia Internet Consulting in Colorado, doing search engine optimization for her local small business and non-profit clients. Liz specializes in helping the little guys get online with reasonably priced websites designed to grow with their businesses.

Speaking Gigs

I spoke at the SEMpdx Searchfest in February on my favorite topic, Local Search. The panel, organized by Portland SEO David Mihm and including small business marketer Matt McGee and Greg Hartnett, founder of Best of the Web, was a big hit with the audience. This local one day conference by Portland’s homegrown Search Marketing group was awesome- definitely as good as any national conference I have attended and better than many of them. There were great speakers, timely topics and a group of friendly and happy professionals who have a real passion for their work. No one wanted it to end. This is an annual event, so keep an eye out for it next winter.

I also spoke at May’s Online Marketing Summit in Denver on Local  Search, sharing the podium with Denverites Cindy Krum, an expert on mobile marketing, and Rob McNealy who does social media marketing. The OMS series of one day events are the brain child of Aaron Kralow and produced in partnership with ClickZ. They are a good value and attract a nice mix of marketers. I’d like to thank Matt McGowan of ClickZ for getting us Colorado locals involved in the event.

Other Stuff

In May, the President of seOverflow, Mike Belasco, and I were again invited to participate in the Local Search Ranking Survey, where experts weigh in on the algorithms for Google Maps and Yahoo Local. seOverflow was honored to be the only company with two people involved.

With the recent prominence of the Google 10 Pack in the Search Results, many small business owners and their marketers are frantically scrambling around trying to improve their rankings in this sweet spot. At seOverflow, I developed a Local Search Audit Report that we’re pretty excited about that analyzes a businesses’s optimization for local search and makes specifc recommendations on how to improve it.

Upcoming

Mike and I will be presenting a webinar for SEMpdx on Tuesday June 30th. The topic is “Local Search Sizzle-What’s Hot in Local Search?“. We’ll be talking about how to rank better in the Google 10 Pack, the new Google Maps Dashboard, analytics for Local Search and anything else that pops up in the world of Local Search between now and the. Please join us.