Scott Krager

Rand isn't competing as an SEO...but a deep knowledge of SEO kinda helps when you're running a SEO software company. And when your main customers are SEOs....why in the world would you not take an opportunity to interact with them?

It happens. Just makes you more diligent with backups going foward.

But yeah, you should probably revoke your DB privileges : ) I'm sure your time could be spent better elsewhere, though I know how temping the command line can be...

We do branded KW reports at serps.com, also accurate (as possible) local zip/city rankings.

I agree with the tools > static content for marketing, you don't have to look further than Hubspot/Moz to see that free tools work. I've built a few that have been good for us as at SERPs as well (global rank tracker, Google volatility index, keyword suggestion tool, etc).

But the idea that 2% of people who input a URL there will convert to a paying subscriber is pie-in-the-sky thinking. I'd love to be proven wrong, but no-way that number holds up.

I really hope Neil didn't pay too much to get that developed. It's a mashup of shared count and Google pagespeed API....nothing new here.

That is not in good taste, nor funny. 

Their 9/11 issue a few weeks after however was brilliant...I still remember reading it when it came out and being just blown away at how perfect it captured the mood of the nation:

http://media.zenfs.com/152/2011/08/23/USVowsToDefeatWhoever-911_185153.jpg

This is great....another 'hack' ...visit the website a few time after searching for 'SEO' boom #1 ranking! Just make sure personalization is on!

This is a really nice little tool. Simple, easy to use. Nicely done.

Umm...maybe I'm off base but isn't WebMeUp owned by Link-Assistant? They have the same CEOs...

IP location is a major factor.

I love the case study on crazyegg....but looking at the crazyegg site now, it seems that it's a traditional sign up process. Did they revert or what happened? 

This is a fantastic post, nice find David. The example about Harvest is spot on. That guide to pricing is absolutely beautiful, well written, a real pillar piece of content (http://www.getharvest.com/field-guides/pricing/)....and yet it's not really gotten much traction at all. Unless you have a large following already, or get lucky, getting even great content traction takes quite a bit of grunt work.

My two tips on hiring lower-end contract devs:

1. Know exactly, down to the pixel, what needs to be built

2. Pay them quickly

We use contractors sparingly at SERPs, mostly for non-core work, but we've gone out and recruiting exactly the skill that we needed. 

This is a great article for *small* budget advertisers. It's written for startups that are growing. In the example the Adwords budget is $6K/mo, so we aren't talking peanuts here. It's about where do you spend your time optimizing? I struggle with this all the time.

"Above all, this: never, ever get in the way."

This. My most important job is making sure I'm not in the way of the team, and that no one or nothing else is. I'm religiously protective of our developers especially, making sure that they are free from meetings/distractions/bs. It took me a while to learn that once you have the right people in place, you just need to let them do their thing.

Tools make smart brains work better. But without a brain, tools are pretty much worthless. SEO, especially in 2013 is a combination of art and science.

"How are you different from SEOmoz?"  -- Building software in the SEO space is a blast, but trying to compete in a space with such a company like SEOmoz is not easy. Especially when you really like and respect Moz! Would be much easier if they were all jerks!

Awesome. That's a good filter for self-submission. If someone writes something front-page worthy...but no one ever sees it here because they don't want to self-submit, that would be sad. I would want to see that regardless of who submits.

Looks interesting. There is also the new Discourse.org project by the founder of Stack Exchange. I've been playing with that forum/discussion software, and even in it's alpha form, it's very impressive.

I think rankings are one of the first metrics SEOs report because those are often the first ones to move. Rankings are a leading indicator, thus many firms start with reporting those since they show progress early. Sadly, that's where many stop too : (

Rankings are valuable when combined with other data sources or when used to spot trends, penalties, and updates. By themselves, a single rank data point is pretty worthless.