September Boston SEO Meetup Recap

After a month-long hiatus, the Boston SEO Meetup met last night at the Microsoft New England Research and Development (NERD) center. A group of around fifty attendees, including local Boston SEO professionals, marketing professionals and local business owners, met to mingle over refreshments provided by Brick Marketing before joining guest speaker, Tim Carter of AskTheBuilder.com in the conference room.

Carter started his address with “February 24^th, 2011, a day that will live in internet infamy.” We learned that he started professional career in the remodeling/building business as a licensed contractor and plumber. In the early 90’s Carter decided to shift his focus and started writing a syndicated newspaper column on home improvement which led to the launch of his website, AskTheBuilder.com in 1995. The site was extremely successful, and Carter was receiving thousands of visitors every day.

Then in 2011, his site took a turn for the worse. Google launched their “Panda” algorithm update, and Carter lost 50% of his web traffic overnight. In January, 2012, he lost another 20% of his traffic so he decided a different approach. Carter looked at his site, which had over a decade of unique and original content, and decided to put this to use. He began self-publishing eBooks and video tutorials based on his original content, and made them available for purchase on his website.

At the close of the talk, Carter left us with this advice; “If you’re building a business and you are basing it on the whims of a search engine, you are building your business on sand.” Questions were brief as we were running over our time in the conference room. When asked what we can do to avoid getting hit by a Google algorithm update, Carter explained “Content is king.” Building a business that offers a quality service or product along with providing original and resourceful content will lead to long term success.

The next Boston SEO Meetup will take place at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center in Cambridge, MA. It will feature a business card buffet networking event and a guest speaker presentation by Dave Evanson, Senior Sales & Brokerage Consultant for Sedo.com.