Anthony G Adams - Blog

Fact: It's HARD to get listed in Wikipedia. So after a year-long battle with their evil content police, this finally exists, and I'm very proud it does:

THC-The Hangover Cure in Wikipedia

Which leads me to another point. I've run into countless Gen-Y social media gurus/ninjas/rockstars/whatever the hip buzzword is these days making vague claims about their success online. When pressed to explain exactly how they make money, they can't point to anything verifiable like this. They revert back to being "Rockstars at Tweeting" or "The Young Successful 20-something World Traveling Cubicle Escaping Ninja." 


Great.

If this is true, if you are making money online, show us. It shouldn't be hard. Show us third party listing from VERIFIABLE sites like Wikipedia. I'm not saying I'm rich, far from it, but people buy my product. My company has cash flow. And it has nothing to do with the quality of my tweets. Or my tweet-to-follower ratio. So if you are 21 and you've made six figures online, that's INCREDIBLE. Now prove it. 


It just doesn't help when your video blogs are being filmed from what appears to be the guest bedroom at your parent's house....

I use Elance.com to find and help companies in need of search engine optimization. If you have any sort of computer skill, it's worth checking out, whether it's graphic design, copy-writing, Excel creation, iPhone App creation, local business seo, whatever. In theory, you can work from anywhere in the world with nothing more than a laptop and internet connection. Incredible.


What I don't get is the following request, which I see way too often, from potential clients:

"We are a (fill in the blank) company in Cleveland looking to place naturally in Google for (highly competitive and thus highly profitable search term, like "Cleveland lawyer"). We expect results in ten business days. Our budget is $300."

The ability to rank well for the term central to you business, in this case, lawyer, is only worth $300? If I had a local business, like a plumber, my first order of business would be to get my site showing up naturally for key terms. If you want it done right, I can tell you from experience, it's going to cost more than $300 and take more than ten days to see results. No legit local business SEO firm would take on such a project.

Or you can go the cheap route, hire some faceless company in India and let them work their black-hat SEO magic and maybe get you some quick results. At least until Google, who is much smarter than they, or you, or I, figures out this erosion in quality search results, which is pretty central to Google's ridiculous success last I checked, and banishes your site for being shady. 


Back to the drawing board.


Invest some money in SEO. It's literally the best investment any local business can make. But you get what you pay for and it's too important to half-ass it on the cheap.

And as a side note, anyone who guarantees you results in under a month is being dishonest. That's not to say it won't happen, but allot a month before you plan on seeing changes, just to be safe.

Recent interview I did with Idea Mensch:


http://ideamensch.com/anthony-adams/