Ooops - It Happens

I did a recent post that caused an uproar with an automotive vendor about Dealer Search Engine Marketing and had an interaction that was less than professional on both ends.  Since then there has been a meeting of the minds of sorts.

Well after the first interaction with them I blocked their IP address from my content and thought I had removed it.  I did on one property and forgot to do it on another so they were still getting a custom error message.  Well I have now fixed this error but it may have done irreparable damage to any future relationship.

Now what is kinda funny is they are stalking all of my content in an effort I guess to figure out how I was able to out rank them for dealer.com search engine marketing

dealer.com search engine marketing < LINK TO FLICKR

It is child's play to win these non competitive keywords it is even even easier to get them to stick if I really want them to.  They are spending an exorbitant amount of time stalking my content and trying to figure it out.  What is even better is they are taking time to correct my spelling my mistakes on a very obscure blog that really is more an exercise in search engine reputation management than it is anything else.

I appreciate the traffic and they really do not understand what that does for search engine optimization of a property.  As much time as they are wasting trying to figure out how I did it they would be a head of the game just to contact me and help them really learn SEO.

Trying to Acheive "Giant Squid" Status

Squidoo.com has a club so to speak, called "Giant Squids".  I am trying to enter the club.  I have over 60 lenses made at there but some are probably as not as good as they should be so I am working on improving them and moving some of my other out of "works in progress".

The subjects I know most about are Paul Rushing, car buying and selling, and search engine reputation management.  So I will be concentrating my efforts there on achieving Giant Squid status.  I am going to try my best to attend their campfire meeting on Tuesday if my schedule allows me to.

If you do not have an account at Squidoo.com you can join here.  There are a lot of good uses of the platform there.  From marketing your business to helping your favorite charity.  The best thing to do is if you are not sure is to jump in and create an account.

Nothing to fear - Blow hards just blow

Not long ago I did a blog post on my automotive marketing blog about how a company chose to advertise a training program called "The Masters of eMarketing". I am not going to get into the details of the post here. If you want to know more just click the title of the training program.


The response I received from Jim Ziegler and his attorneys would of scared the heck out of most people. To me I found it comical. One of the attorneys who signed this letter, Richard N. Sox, and Mr Ziegler write for the same publication, Dealer Magazine. I guess they were trying to flex their power by sending me that letter as "Recognized Automotive Authorities" and assumed I would buckle.


When it came to light that Jim Ziegler threated to sue me I got a tremendous amount of support from the Automotive Community and had people reach out to me that would surprise most. What is funny it appeared that sock puppets were employed to try to denigrate me at every possible step. One called me and apologized, a friendship may have even developed, and another can't seem to move on and a friendship ended.


At the end of the day I think the threats they sent me were hollow and unfounded, the interference that people are still trying to cause is backfiring and damaging their reputation, and I have dealers coming out of the wood work to throw me business. As my good friend at Suzuki of Wichita says, these people just don't get it!

Search Engine Reputation Management - Important to Understand

You are probably wondering what in the world Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) is. If you are no worries I am going to give you a simple primer.

There is a lot of information about you online whether you like it or not. I did an article about it after becoming a victim of Identity Theft. While that does not have to do much with SERM it is important for you to understand in today's online world, people are talking about you and putting information out there for the world to see regardless of your input.

The best way to keep your online reputation in tact is for you to control the content that is published about you online. While there is not much you can do about what others are saying there is a ton that you can do to own your name online.

When you google my name, Paul Rushing, the top listing is Who is Paul Rushing, my other personal blog and then there are several pieces of content about other people named Paul Rushing. Which is all good.

However there are other bloggers who are intent on trying to trash me because I have been vocal about the launch of the PayPerPlay Network and the NetAudioAds advertising platform being an aberration and have taken a vendetta march against my Search Engine Reputation. It will be in vain because no matter how much they try to destroy my reputation in the Search Engines it will be in vain because I will control what others find about me online.

While I will not respond to personal attacks, because it pushes their content above mine because of the recently updated content and to be quite frank it really does not matter what they think about me it is their opinion and they are entitled to it.

However I need to control what is easily found online about me. Here are some tools I am using that will eventually control the front page of google and other search engines when people search for Paul Rushing.

• My Personal Blog - Who is Paul Rushing
• Ziki - Promoting Paul Rushing on Ziki
• Blogger - This blog is a Good Example
• Squidoo - Paul Rushing on Squidwho
• Linkedin - Paul Rushing's Resume on Linkedin

Of course these are not the only mediums to use but they are a good start. Eventually I will own the first 10 pages of the Search Engine Results Pages for people looking for information on Paul Rushing, then I can control the conversation about me..