Two weeks ago, Andy brought you the B2B Lead Generation handbook. Without further ado, we now bring you B2C.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Email marketing are the two best bets for your marketing dollar, according to a new report from UK Based eConsultancy in conjunction with Clash-Media. “Viral marketing” landed on the other end of the spectrum based on the feedback of 600 companies.

Some of the highlights from company respondents:

• A greater proportion of lead generation budget is being spent on online (on average, 53%) than offline (44%).
• Compared to 2007, PPC is getting a bigger proportion of online lead generation budgets even though natural search is perceived to be better value for the money.
• PPC now gets a third of this budget (33%) compared to 28% in 2007. Meanwhile, SEO now only gets 15% of the budget compared to 18% last year.
• Companies are now investing more in their in-house email marketing. The average proportion of budget devoted to this has increased from 10% to 15%.
• The biggest fallers since 2007 are affiliate marketing (from 50% to 43%),email marketing - rented lists (from 33% to 28%) and viral marketing (from 35% to 22%).

Luke Pursey, UK Managing Director, Clash-Media, stated:

The most encouraging difference from last year’s report is that now marketers are finally beginning to recognise proactive online lead generation as its own area of online marketing and not as a sub-division of affiliate marketing. The disconnect now is… helping them to make the most of it and maximising its potential as an extremely effective online marketing tool.”

No doubt there are a plethora of competing online lead generation activities. However, the results of the survey beg the question:

If marketers view SEO as a better value than PPC, why have the budget dollars slated for SEO decreased by 3% year over year? Is it the age old “snake oil” perception problem of SEO’s? Are SEO’s just lousy salespeople?

Any thoughts SEO’s?

The in-depth 44page report is chock full of charts, graphs and insightful tidbits on the various methods of online lead generation - a valuable resource for online marketers.

Pilgrim’s Update: Learn online reputation management skills directly from Andy Beal. Attend the Online Reputation Management Workshop and save $400 when you register today!

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By Gyutae Park

If you’re a baseball junkie, you know that a triple play is nearly impossible to turn in a game. It requires perfect conditions (at least two runners already on base and no outs), super quick reflexes from the fielders, and a little bit of luck. In fact, the unassisted triple play has only been executed 14 times in the history of Major League Baseball (from 1876-2007).

Now before you hit the back button, confused that Marketing Pilgrim has somehow transformed into ESPN, let me explain how this is relevant to search engine marketing.

Internet marketing, and more specifically search marketing, can be broken down into 3 major components: search engine optimization (SEO), paid search (PPC), and social media optimization (SMO). The problem that I see in the search industry is that many of the most influential players focus on only one of these components and shut themselves off from the others. Why dabble in PPC when I can be the best at SEO right? Wrong! The truth is that as the Internet matures, it will become increasingly important to integrate all three components into a marketing campaign in order to see success online. Rather than going for the single outs and double plays, it’s time we stretch ourselves and make triple plays common practice.

In this article, I’ll go over an entire search marketing campaign from beginning to end and show you how, why, and where each of the 3 components can be used to increase effectiveness.

Site concept - the very beginning

What value will your site offer users? Is there a strong demand? What’s your target market and why will they prefer your site over competitors’? How will you make money? All of these questions are important to ask before starting any online business. SEO, PPC, and SMO are great tools to test the waters and assess the potential of a site.

• SEO Keyword research is extremely important in this stage and will set the foundation for the search marketing campaign. It will enable you to discover the language that your potential customers are using and to optimize your site accordingly. This is also a good opportunity to perform competitive analysis. Who’s ranking for your targeted keywords and how many inbound links do they have? SEO is a long term strategy but doing it right the first time around will accelerate rankings and reduce headache later on.
• PPC Paid search is by far the best way to perform keyword research especially in the top search engine Google. Simply pop in your keyword variations into Adwords (obviously it’s more complicated than that), let the campaign run for a couple weeks, and then pick the best performing keywords in terms of traffic and conversions for your SEO efforts.
• SMO Believe it or not, social media isn’t just about useless MySpace pages and Facebook super pokes. Rather, social media sites provide the ultimate testing ground for your content, products, and services. For example, taking a look at the front page of Yahoo Buzz or Digg will give you a good understanding of what’s hot and what people want and are interested in. There are social media sites specific to thousands of individual niches and they are great tools for market research.

Site architecture & design

The structure and design of a site are undoubtedly important for every type of site - content, ecommerce, affiliate, etc. You may not realize this now, but site architecture and design impacts your success in SEO, PPC, and SMO.

• SEO SEO is probably the most obvious in this category. Not only does site structure need to be sound in order to maximize organic search traffic (with search-friendly URL’s, no duplicate content, good linking structure, easily crawlable pages, etc.) but a site with an attractive design is more likely to be linked to by others around the web. As we all know, the more links the better.
• PPC Google recently began incorporating load time into its Adwords paid search algorithm. Sites with superior structure are more likely to have better quality scores and thus lower minimum bids. Not only that, but you want to be sure that your site’s usability is top notch so that paid traffic and advertising budget are not wasted.
• SMO Similarly, what’s the point of a front page Digg if everyone who visits immediately hits the back button (due to your butt ugly design or excessive ads)? You want to build your site with social aspects in mind. Incorporate sections for user generated content and buttons for social media submissions. An optimized site structure can go a long way for SMO.

Content creation

As they say, content is king and without it, a website is worthless. The focus of content changes depending on what it is used for. For instance, SEO, PPC, and SMO all require their own unique content strategy in order to be successful.

• SEO Content for SEO purposes is usually keyword-rich and informative in nature. The main purpose for this content is to garner links and provide value to readers.
• PPC Content for PPC purposes is usually keyword-rich and focused on sales/conversions. The main purpose for this content is to utilize a call to action and get the visitor to perform a certain action.
• SMO Content for SMO purposes is usually catchy and focused on viral distribution. The main purpose for this content is to encourage sharing through social media sites and through word of mouth. Much of SMO content is linkbait for SEO purposes as well.

Initial launch and promotion

Of course every site is different but in most cases, SEO, PPC, and SMO can be used to promote a site’s launch. In fact, they should ALL be used to maximize results.

• SEO It usually takes a couple months before a site gains enough authority and trust in the search engines to rank for keywords. However, that doesn’t mean you should slack off with on-page keyword optimization and link building. An active SEO effort early on will cement your site’s rankings in the search engines later on. Delayed gratification, my friends.
• PPC If you have the budget, PPC is probably the best way to promote a site early on. Experiment with different keywords, ad copy, and landing pages and determine what brings you the greatest ROI. Search is an extremely targeted form of advertising because users are looking for YOU and not the other way around.
• SMO Social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon can potentially bring huge amounts of traffic to a site. If you don’t have the organic rankings nor the budget for PPC, SMO is an absolute godsend as long as your content is remarkable or grabs the attention of users. At this point you should be active in the social community and engaging in the conversations related to your niche.

Optimization

Ok, so by now you’ve launched your site and are looking to tweak it, optimize it and grow traffic. What can you do? No surprise - SEO, PPC, SMO!

• SEO In this phase, you should be seeing some rankings for the keywords that you’ve been targeting in the campaign. When all is said and done, SEO comes down to developing content and links. Keep building while ensuring that your on-page optimization is top notch.
• PPC Once you’ve identified the top keywords, ad copy, and landing pages, you want to constantly monitor the campaign and tweak it to improve click through rates and conversion rates. Testing in PPC never ends.
• SMO Develop active profiles on all relevant social media sites and offer insightful comments and questions to the community. Your goal in SMO in this stage is to build your authority and develop relationships with the top influencers in the industry and to experiment with effective link bait headlines and stories.

Domination

After constant optimization, there should come a point in time when you begin to see some serious results. Optimization never stops, but domination comes after diligent optimization. Enjoy the victory and keep going strong.

• SEO I recently wrote an article on Search Engine Journal which describes 12 Steps to Complete Search Engine Domination - From Zero to Hero in Just 6 Months. A #1 ranking for your top keyword is the holy grail of search marketing and you will reap the benefits once you get there.
• PPC A perfect way to enhance your #1 ranking in SEO is to complement it with a top listing in paid search. Some may say that it’s unnecessary to invest in PPC if you already have the organic rankings but I would have to disagree. A top organic listing and a top paid listing seem to have a 1+1=3 effect. Test it out for yourself and see what your analytics tell you.
• SMO Once you plug yourself into the community, make hundreds of friends, and are perceived as an authority, you should have no trouble having your social media submissions “go popular”. Armed with effective headlines and link bait experience, front page Diggs and Stumbles are much more likely to occur. Maki of DoshDosh and Tamar Weinberg are great examples of this.

As you just saw, SEO, PPC, and SMO are all integral components of each step in a search marketing campaign. The industry likes to segment them into different categories, but in the end integration is the key to success. Turn that triple play, people!

This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

Pilgrim’s Update: Save 34% off Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online

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How to Turn the Coveted SEM Triple Play - The Little Known Integrated Approach to Success

By Ben Fremer

This is my third marketing pilgrim search marketing scholarship entry. Previous small-business related Marketing Pilgrim Search Marketing Scholarship articles we have submitted in the prior two competitions include Dominating the long tail of local search with databases & The Ultimate Internet Marketing Article (overview of search marketing for small businesses. We have done dozens of SEO and link building campaigns for small businesses, and that is where these insights come from ( this isn’t just theorizing or speculation ).

Introduction to typical small business Link Building needs, and how they differ from other businesses

95% of businesses are small businesses and they usually have a few search terms they will need a small amount of link building ( 50 - 1,000 links ) to rank for. This contrasts with large businesses like Geico or Dell whose search terms are better attained through different link building tactics ( link bait, social media, great content or great service ) to amass tens of thousands of links. While content can be useful for consulting-type expertise driven sectors, most small businesses owners are very busy and are not publishers, and the mantra of “Generate good content” is not the most time or cost-effective method for most of them to rank on their search terms for what we have found, though content can pick up long-tail search terms and can help to establish expertise and credibility to convert customers better. Rather, more monotonous methods of link building have been more successful in our experience, and the amount of required to rank for a particular search term can actually be quantified, as we will proceed to demonstrate.

We have found that websites do not increase traffic by content alone. For instance, we helped with link building for a site with extremely good content and resources ( www.change-leaders.com ). Just putting up the site did not suddenly turn a trickle of traffic into a booming phenomenon nor generate any noticed linking from visitors, though it did make it about 3x easier to complete the monotonous part of the link soliciting link building as people were more willing to link to it.
Additionally, our data shows 1 PR 6 link = to about 10 PR 3 links = 30 PR 0-1 links from different sites ( though these 0-1 PR links alone will leave you sandboxed / trustboxed). For most small businesses, about 80% of links are in the 0 – 2 PR range. What this means is that for small businesses, quantity of decent links required to rank for a search term links is roughly estimatable to within about 30% of the links needed, presuming the site is not in google’s sandbox / trustbox (Later, we will demonstrate proven methods we have found for getting a site out of the sandbox / trustbox )

Introduction to SEO toolbar for firefox

The hands-down best tool for quantifying how much link building work that will be needed to rank for a particular search term ( particularly for small businesses ) is the SEO toolbar for Firefox . This tool will allow you to see how many links your competitors have for a particular search term, and in a manner where you quickly estimate how many links you will need to rank for that search term. After installing the tool and doing a google search for a term, and setting the Yahoo backlink count to show up immediately (that will save you a lot of time), you will see the backlink count for each site. There are some other fields that show, but since Yahoo gives you the best backlink count, we have found that it suffices to focus on that field. Here is an example for car insurance:

As you can quickly see, all of the sites on the first page have tens of thousands of links, and you will also need somewhere in that range to rank for that search term. You will probably need to go with linkbaiting or other bigger-scale tactics to rank for those search terms. Conversely, you will need only a few hundred links to rank for “New Jersey Plumber”:

Nuances in assessing the amount of links needed to rank a small business for a search term

For competitive terms where you need link building, you just need to get more similar quality links than your competitors, and you will outrank them ( for noncompetitive terms, on-page optimization is enough to rank), though there are some nuances which explain why some sites with fewer links show up higher than sites with more link.

1) You can’t count sub-pages from mega-highly-linked-to sites very easily into your estimate. In the plumber example, ServiceMagic shows 696,000 links, yet sites with a few hundred often outrank them. This is like comparing apples to oranges, so we are only able to look at top-level-domains that show up to use for our estimating.

2) Impact of a good domain name — A domain with your keywords in it is the equivalent of about 100-200 links. Often a site with a good domain name will rank highly even though it has few links. This is why. Some people consider a dual domain name option with one for SEO and one for branding due to how helpful the domain name bonus can be for a small business. Sometimes even renaming the company you are about to launch can be worthwhile if all of your leads are expected to come through SEO.

3) There are diminishing returns on site-wide links. If you click on the word “Yahoo” in the SEO Toolbar, you can easily assess the link-count not including site-wide links. We have found that a site wide link on hundred or thousands of pages is only equivalent to about 5-20 comparable links from different sites.

4) Sometimes sites have lots of links but without good anchor text in those links (these are fairly worthless links for SEO purposes). For this reason, it is safest to use the lower link counts for assessing how many links are needed to rank for a particular search term.

5) Non-Optimized pages — Like a domain name, having a title tag with your keywords is also about the equivalent of 50 links.

Guaranteeably selling the link building project: Explaining it to a client.

Using this tool and these insights can be very helpful when pitching a link building project to a potential customer. The customer is quickly able to understand and believe why you are recommending what you are recommending, and how you are able to estimate the results when they understand how quantitatively outlinking their competitors will cause the client to rank higher than their competitors.

If that doesn’t convince them, you can even guarantee the results, though we don’t recommend that you it on a all-or nothing basis. I am confident that some readers are thing “Guaranteeable search engine rankings!?–that’s not possible”, and while it is slightly risky, the real factors outside of your control (algorithm changes, customer does something crazy to get banned) are rare enough that a guarantee is possible. It’s a pain to track guaranteed results, and you should charge more than if you were just doing the work of optimizing their site as best as you can. We have found that setting up a weighted guarantee using gradual system of perhaps 4-5 levels of payout depending on the rankings is best, and that weighting the keywords by search-volume to a points sytem of ranking the site for those search terms is a very fair and very safe way of making such SEO guarantees that many clients will insist upon.

Execution

For small businesses, you have the following primary link building options to generate links: Directory submissions, link soliciting / begging / trading, Article directory submissions, PR, linkbait, and others. We have found the most cost-effective methods to be directory submissions, followed by link soliciting to gain trust and un-sandbox/trustbox the site if that is needed.

1)Directory submissions alone are the easiest route if your site is already trusted ( has a PR of 3 or higher, with aged links of 6 months or more balanced from about 50 or more different sites). If your site fits that criteria, directory submissionis probably won’t leave you sandboxed/trustboxed. Presuming you are not sandboxed/trustboxed, we have found that you can submit to most any directory including those of moderate to low quality and will see very potent results. A good comprehensive list of such directories can be found at web-directories.ws or directorycritic.com. You can submit them on your own or have a link building services company do it for you.

If you plan to do it on your own, there are some very important pointers that you should follow:

1) Get it right the first time – you only have about 2,000 directories to submit to, and once you run out, you can’t easily re-do your submissions, and you will then have to move on to more difficult methods of link building.

2) Balance your anchor text wisely — Combo up your keywords for best results in your anchor text, and be careful to combine in ways such that you don’t overuse any combination so that you are only increasing your top ranking for that term. We have found that 10(links) x (keyword1 + keyword2 + keyword3) = 7 (keyword1+keyword2) + 7 (keyword1+keyword3) + 7 (keyword2+keyword3) + 4 (keyword1) + 4 (keyword2) + 4 (keyword3) — the point is that if you have keywords that combine together, you will get better results if you combine them in your anchor text!

3) The reciprocal option on directory submissions works best, and will get you a better acceptance rate. We recommend making a directories we are listed in page. This is extremely important.

After directory submissions, if you still need more links or need to get site un-sandboxed/trustboxed, we have found that the next most cost-effective method is link soliciting/begging/trading. For doing this, we also have some pointers:

1) Start by contacting those who already rank well for your keyword, as links from them are particular important in Google’s ranking algorithm ( reference patent ).— doing this can also bypass the sandbox / trustbox sometimes even after just one or two links from sites that already rank well for your search term.

2) You can often trade links with people in complimentary industries, like a local photographer with a local wedding planner, for instance, and these are the types of link partners the search engines prefer you to make.

3) Software can help out significantly – we recommend using the Link Assistant, though there are other options as well.

4) If you are doing reciprocal links, don’t go crazy with it — anything over 200 total or with extremely unrelated links ( casinos, porn, etc) will probably start to raise suspicion and possibly cause a penalty– we have seen it happen once.

Summary

Well there are a lot of good tips for how to guaranteeably assess, sell and execute a small business link building campaign without getting sandboxed / trustboxed using the SEO Toolbar for Firefox. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks.

This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

Pilgrim’s Update: Save 34% off Andy’s new book - Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online

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By Kurt Krejny

SEO firms are hired to make their client’s sites more visible in search engines and other online channels. Keyword and market research, content optimization, and link building are a few of the crucial elements of a successful SEO campaign. Many of these same SEO elements can be used to help clients achieve solid online reputation management (ORM). With the knowledge of how to optimize websites, social profiles and strategic linking to help influence search results, the task of helping a client with ORM is a natural fit for an SEO firm.

Why Your SEO Client May Need ORM

An SEO client’s need for online reputation management is typically indicated by their desire of the following:

• Push down negative or reputation damaging results from a search for their company name or product/service
• Monitor negative blog comments and forum threads
• Rectify false information
• Post a response to a damaging article
• Create brand evangelists that will positively back up the efforts listed above

The need to have these negative results pushed down often times is a mandate from the top of the organization. Executives at the top of the company chain simply want these results out of the picture immediately. However, this can be an unrealistic expectation and a major undertaking for an SEO firm to accomplish in a short time frame. By accepting the role to help clients with ORM, the SEO firm must educate the client on the process of what to realistically expect over the course of the ORM campaign. As patience is a virtue with seeing the fruition of SEO efforts, it is as equally important in ORM. Some early successes are possible, but ORM efforts can take anywhere from 4-8 months to see results.

Set & Manage Client Expectations

There is no easy or quick-fix solution to push down negative search engine results. It takes time and effort, and the client must understand the process and potential outcomes. It is unrealistic for a client to believe it is the SEO firm’s role to dethrone any and all giants in the search result listings. This expectation can be easily set with solid numbers for these giants in terms of inbound links, domain age, number of site users, cache frequency, etc. One of the main ideas to convey to clients is that overall efforts to help a client with ORM will result in enhanced overall online visibility, which can be achieved by strategies of social media and video optimization.

Establishing responsibility and accountability for the ORM campaign is also a crucial factor. An SEO firm can be expected to get involved in legal issues, but that thinking can distract an SEO consultant from actually influencing the search results. It’s what we do best.

The SEO firm should accept the responsibility for identifying instances where ORM is needed, determining the best strategy to get the desired outcome and how to implement that strategy. The client should be responsible for drafting the responses based on the strategy the SEO firm provides them. The SEO firm then posts the response and monitors it.

Strategize for the Client’s ORM

When strategizing for an ORM campaign, the SEO firm needs to know what approach needs to be taken on the client’s behalf. Does the campaign need to focus on searches for the company, product/service name, or industry keywords? Perhaps a combination of all three may apply to some clients.

To monitor blogs and forums that allow commenting, that process is best handled on a post by post basis. Options include whether to respond, call out the author on false statements, leave it alone, or send them an offline email asking them to provide more information to support their claim.

Don’t Go Into a War without Ammo

Unless you have a good opportunity to use a wide array of your content and leverage it through various online channels, your ORM campaign may not be fully successful. There is only so much responding to blog comments and forums you can do before your message gets stale. Compelling content and video from your own website is an essential element to promote through social media, video and press release distribution sites. Sites that pick up your distributed content can help achieve positive search results indexed by the search engines.

Tracking Client Reputation

• Check your client’s search engine referring traffic to determine the top engine (typically Google)
• Create search engine alerts depending on what your ORM strategy is (i.e. Google Alerts)
• Create a Rollyo custom search roll to monitor sites you know are getting negative comments
• Create a document with all the negative and positive instances found on various websites
  • Identify the Type of Site, Nature of Instance, Response Strategy, Urgency, and Status of whether a response is needed
• Monitor the Paid results to see if there are any ads for a search on your company name
  • This could be a good indication of other companies bidding on your name and their efforts to damage your reputation
• Subscribe to a custom RSS feed on Technorati

Reporting Success

Create a Google Top 100 Report every 3 months

• Identify the nature below each search engine result and tally them up
• Color coding helps the client with a visual (positive=blue, negative=red, neutral=green, influenced by SEO firm=pink, non relevant=orange)

General Tips

• Register early and often (social profiles take time to get indexed and build PageRank)
• Establish a cross-link between relationship social profiles and your client’s website
• Become active in groups on social media websites
• Leave positive comments on blogs that favorably mention your company
• Add hyperlinks in blog comments and embed video when appropriate
• Video ratings and comments can help influence rankings on video sites and in search engines
• Create a “Media Coverage” section on your site and link to positive write-ups about your company
• A well planned and positioned comment or email can also be effective to help change the author’s mind about a negative blog post or article with little to no supporting facts to back up their claim

Sites to Target

• Social media (Squidoo, HubPages, Facebook Business Page)
• Video (YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Revver, Metacafe, AOL)
• Local search (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live, Merchant Circle)
• Employee profiles (LinkedIn, Yahoo Kickstart, Naymz)
• Involvement in Q&A based sites (Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers)
• Photo sharing (Flickr)
• Wikis (AboutUs, WetPaint)
• Promote your own blog (FeedBurner, Technorati, MyBlogLog, BlogFlux)
• Job and career websites (CareerBuilder, Monster, Indeed)
• Post timely events on Craigslist

Conclusion

In my experience with ORM for clients, I have seen these strategies above work surprisingly well at times. As the search engine algo’s are constantly changing, it is imperative to stay on top of changes in rankings and do what you can to help influence them. The key is to be persistent. When you feel you have exhausted all your strategies, think again. Many strategies can work hand-in-hand to support each other. If you are not helping your clients with ORM at the moment, be prepared with these simple strategies and you’ll help them achieve the outcome they desire.

This is an entry to Marketing Pilgrim’s 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship contest.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

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Sure-fire Strategies to Pounce On Negative Search Engine Results

Just when you thought it was over: May 19 was the deadline for the man who would be SEO trademark holder to respond to notices of opposition to his trademark application (which were filed by SEOmoz, Arteworks, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, SEO.com, Jonathan Hochman, and Rhea Drysdale). Sarah Bird, Esq., of SEOmoz filed for default judgment in the case on Tuesday.

Ho ho! Gambert thinks he has them there (as was evidenced by a since-removed blog post on JasonGambert.com: entitled “Hardball Seomoz,” it was a picture of a pitcher and a baseball scoreboard showing Guests: 3, Strike: 2, Ball: 3. Sadly, you’ll just have to believe me here.).

In a 41-page filing, Gamber claims that SEOmoz’s opposition should be struck down because (among other reasons), they made a mistake and called him “James Gambert,” and SEOmoz is self-interested. Oh, and they’re a blog.

Setting aside SEOmoz’s self-interested blog (or my own post on the subject the following day), I’ll humor Gambert and take this first argument to task (as Sarah has done an excellent job of refuting several of his other arguments). Here’s what he says, listed as number 1 under “Applicants [sic] Highly Confidential Detailed Defense to Opposer’s General Allegations”:

Opposer [SEOmoz] goes on to describe “James Gambert” in reference to paragraph 1; spanning many classes, then describes the initial applications [sic] details. Opposer goes on to indicate Applicant’s [Gambert’s] first use is February 14th 2007. Please note application of Applicant explains dates of use “At least as early as February 14th 2007.” Please also note Opposer refers to Applicant as “James Gambert” and not “Jason Gambert.” Therefore Applicant motions Opposer’s claims to be barred by the doctrine of mistake and other applicable equitable principles.

Oooh, boy. The doctrine of mistake, eh? Well, there is, apparently, a legal doctrine of mistake . . . in contract law. And it doesn’t actually say that anyone who has ever made a mistake in a legal document should be automatically barred from making any argument whatsoever.

But, hey, if he wants it to mean that, I’ll even humor him that far. But, unfortunately, he’s made a couple mistakes himself. No one’s perfect, of course, but if making a mistake means that you can’t file a legal motion, well, pretty much the entire application should be thrown out. But to highlight only the most recent mistakes:

Missing the deadline is a big deal. Gambert says he prepared the filing on 19 May 2008. The obviously self-prepared filing (which, frankly, looks like a law dictionary vomited—believe me, Sarah, I watch a worrisome amount of Law & Order, and Gambert’s filings are NOT indicative the kind of legal thinking it produces!) was due on the 19th.

As it wasn’t received until the 27th, it’s too late to actually count as a response to the notice of opposition. The Trademark Office officially classifies this document as a “Paper received at TTAB” (Trademark Trial and Appeal Board). While they might be so kind (and well stocked with migraine medication) as to read it in its entirety, the court has no obligation to do so, nor to take any of his arguments under advisement.

Proofread everything. I’ll ignore the irksome spelling, punctuation and sundry grammar errors, fine. But if SEOmoz accidentally referring to him as James instead of Jason and using the only date that he had provided in his application should disqualify their notice, it would have been a good idea to be extra, extra careful in everything he wrote in the filing. Page eight of the PDF of his filing basically did it for me:

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

I herby [sic] certify that a true copy of the Confidential Motion to Strike for the Notice of Opposition91183449 was deposited as First class mail with the United States Postal Service on May 19th, 2007, to Counsel for Opposer at the following address: [Sarah Bird c/o SEOmoz]

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. We have just come across something way more important than SEO here. Never mind the fact that Sarah has only worked at SEOmoz since November 2007—Gambert has the secret to time travel! How else could he have mailed a response to the NOO a year before SEOmoz actually filed it? (At the end, he repeats the above statement, only this time he only traveled back to November to send it to SEOmoz.)

By his definition of the doctrine of mistakes, I move that his “paper” to the TTAB be burned.

Know the law. The legal doctrines he refers to (and some, I’m convinced, which he creates out of whole cloth) don’t apply to these cases. And in fact, every Gambert filing which I’ve read or read about demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of trademark law and the law in general. Ignoratiam neminem excusat est. That’s a real legal doctrine; look it up.

Tell the truth. Ignoring, once again, Gambert’s apparent sock puppetry as well as Gambert’s harassment of one opposer’s clients, the fact of the matter is that he has filed the notice telling the government one thing and telling the SEO industry another. Attempting to defraud the trademark office is supposed to result in an automatic rejection of the application.

The best part of the filing may be the part where Gambert claims that because of the doctrine of unclean hands (thus alleging that SEOmoz has engaged in unethical and deceptive practices; which, BTW, must be proven to be accepted by the court), SEOmoz should be disqualified from filing opposition. But apparently it’s not unethical and deceptive to tell the government one thing and the industry another.

Further mistakes: he repeatedly instructs the trademark office to turn to Google to verify his claims (including, for some reason, an instruction to “Google ‘Internet’” to verify the reality of the Internet…), but refutes Sarah’s similar usage. He is apparently operating under the belief that Google.com having been registered Sept 15, 1997, Google is incapable of indexing any document created prior to that date. He also claims that if consumers are able to read a dictionary (yes, really), they won’t be confused by the SEO is a service/process debate (which he declares decided by Wikipedia).

Believe me, though, his arguments do get better. In entertainment value, anyway. My favorite is his claim that he received a spam email offering SEO services the day after the term was coined in 1997, thus showing his use of the mark in commerce.

Apparently, the other NOOs weren’t worth his time, but I for one and highly reassured that even if his “paper” is granted (and if it is, it’s because there wasn’t sufficient migraine/motion sickness medication available in the trademark office that day), there are good legal arguments against his application.

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