How long is it before I can buy my Google self-driving car with my Google Wallet and check my Gmail while the car drives me to work?  

Then how long before Google becomes the #1 car manufacturer, kinda like they did with phone operating systems?

5 years?  10 years?

It's only a matter of time because they're sure as hell not inventing a self driving car just for shits and giggles.  

Or maybe they'll just create a car OS so they can stay out of the unprofitable business of manufacturing hardware.

Either way … it's coming … sooner than you think.

Eventually they're going to step on the wrong toes.  They already got a $500,000,000 slap in the face for taking profits away from Big Pharma, and I'm sure Big Oil would have something to say if Google started pumping out electric cars en masse.

Will definitely be interesting to watch.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Dude was brilliant on so many levels.

I never thought I'd be really moved by the death of somebody I'd never met or had almost no connection to. 

But I'm pretty sad about this, and I'm really not sure why.  Can't put a finger on it.  

Either way, RIP Steve, I never knew you but I already miss you.

I very wise man once told me … 'Track everything that moves.  Trust your data.  Find trends.'

This works for everything.  That way you don't have to trust what 'analysts' say and can see for yourself what's working and what's not.  

Tracking rankings and links for SEO.   Use Mint.com to track finances, FitDay to track what you're putting into your body (I currently use a daily food log on a spreadsheet, but am considering FitDay).

That way when you gain 5 pounds in a week or are short/up a few hundred bucks you can see why.

Gives you much more knowledge and also forces you to hold yourself accountable.

I was watching 60 minutes yesterday and they had this story about a small community in Japan that was decimated by the Earthquake/Tsunami.

This dude lost his entire family and still seemed to be doing ok (granted what we saw in the 15 minute segment may not be how he really feels).  Found pleasure in the simple things.

Got me thinking … how do you think, for example, people that were clinically depressed living in that community feel now that it's all gone.  Are they happy to be alive?  Did this event make them focus more on what they have or didn't lose, or are they even more depressed because of the state of their city … or are they exactly the same as they were before?  I'm pretty curious about this.

I had an experience in which I was in a serious car accident and woke up in the hospital, and just being alive was enough to make me smile.  Still does make me smile.  And it made (and still makes) other stuff seem a lot less important.     

I wonder if there have been any studies on this.

Every day it becomes more apparent that things are never black or white.  There are only shades of gray.  

Think about it.  

To say something is definitely, always, certainly, right or wrong eliminates context, which is CRUCIAL.

I mean it's illegal to kill … but not if somebody is trying to kill you.

It's illegal to speed … but not if you're driving a pregnant woman to the hospital

It's illegal to steal … unless you're a banker.

It's illegal to … unless …. you see?

There's no such thing as absolutes, and people that think in them or guide their lives by them are missing a lot.

Those are the ones that are always quick to label … We're X so we do/don't believe in Y, and anybody who isn't X is a Z and Z's are WRONG!

Gimme a break.  

Labels are subjective, damaging, and cause infinitely more harm than benefit.  But from an etymological perspective I think they're kinda necessary (we gotta classify people some how), so not sure what to do about that.  Maybe it's the stigma attached to them that stinks.  Not sure ….

Not sure where I was going with this … I just remember that when I started to write I was thinking that nobody is really 100% anything, and no rule will be right 100% of the time.  

And labels suck.

Knowledge represents opportunity.

Literally.

Like the more stuff you know, the greater your options are.

For example, if you ONLY know how to bake bread, you can only do one thing.  

And that's be a baker.

But if you know how to bake bread and drive a car, you can be a baker OR a taxi driver.

If you know how to bake bread, drive a car, and fix windshields, you can be a baker OR a taxi driver OR a windshield repair guy.

And so on …..

These days the  jobs that require less knowledge are being outsourced to foreign countries.  Slowly the bar is being raised as to what you need to know … or at least what you need to know to be in demand by potential employers.  SEO (since I know it well) may cease to exist in 5-10 years … at least in the form it's known now.  In five years if I don't learn new skills and keep up with demand I'll be looking for work while everything I used to know is being done by a guy in a third world country for a fraction of what I was getting paid to do it previously.

Kinda scary if you stop and think about it.

Never stop learning.  Pick up new skills and evolve with the times.  Always push. Always grow.  Otherwise your days are numbered.

So you may (or may not) have noticed that the site is a bit different.  Gone is the blog format, and it's been replaced by three pages that are essentially offering services.  

I wanted to convert this from a traditional blog about SEO to a site that offers services with a blog bolted on.

In a lot of ways … this blog represents a lot of WORST practices when it comes to SEO, mainly cause there aren't too many internal links floating around as much anymore (I pretty much killed off all internal links on the home page and made it much more sale-sy). 

I'm also going to be using this as more of a testbed to see what works and doesn't work, so if you see some weird stuff going on, that's why.

Regarding the blog itself, I'm going to take it in a different direction.  I'm gonna make it a bit more personal.  So if you're just coming here to soak up some of my juicy SEO knowledge, then you might be pissed.  But sorry … you can go read one of the other 9.803,0984,0990923,32093930293320 SEO blogs out there.  Not to say that I won't have any more blog posts about SEO, just saying it won't be the focus.

Word.

As you can tell, this blog has been idle for a very long time.  During that time I’ve been working on some independent side projects, blogging over at our company blog and working a ton.  I recently ported this blog over to Thesis as I’m trying to become proficient so I can use it for my other sites.  Will let you know how this goes

You can read some recent posts by me:

Designing for Visibility
Google’s Newish Keyword Tool
Be Prepared for When Yahoo Becomes Bing

I’m in the process of starting my first legitimate PPC campaign.  Twice before I’ve set up fly-by-night PPC campaigns and didn’t really take the time to learn the system or become proficient.  I was in ‘set it and forget it’ mode and just let it run.  Not surprisingly my first campaign hemorrhaged money and was one of the main reasons I had to shut down my first ever ecommerce site.  It’s not all bad though considering it was through that site that I learned about SEO and am now making a decent living from it.  Anyway, my second PPC campaign I set up was for an affiliate site I set up and although I received a few clicks on my ads that converted into sales, I still was taking a net loss.  I haven’t touched that site in a long time and recently decided to pick it back up this weekend.

With a copy of Andrew Goodman’s Winning Results with Google Adwords in hand I’m in the process of setting up my campaign.  I’m starting small and hopefully can start turning a profit.  Something was working before, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to it to notice what it was.  Not sure if the paid ads were driving the sales, or the offer was what was working, but these are all things I’m going to find out now.

This leads me to the point of my post, which is that I think it’s becoming increasingly important for internet marketers to expand their skill sets.  In a time of declining budgets, fewer businesses have the budget to hire a PPC specialist, SEO specialist, email marketing guru, etc.  I’m currently helping out a friend of mine on her site and I feel insufficient that all I can offer is advice on SEO, when I know there is so much else that can help her that I can’t provide at this time.  I want to get to the point where I can provide more wholisitic strategy recommendations if called upon, and I think with my current skillset I’m not there yet, but will be eventually.

My biggest weakness as an SEO is handling complex technical issues, an area I’m improving upon right now with an enormously complex site migration I’m currently working on at work.  But Ideally I’d like to learn more about email marketing as relationship building becomes an important part of internet marketing, and conversion rate optimization to improve ROI on traffic generated from SEO efforts.  Hopefully this will all come with time.

Do you think it’s a good idea to become above average at multiple disciplines or an expert in one?