What's it like to appear live on the news for a full three minutes in front of an estimated 1.2 million viewers? My daughter Chloe could tell you!

On February 25th she presented a science experiment live on 9News, Denver's local NBC affiliate KUSA, with science guy Steve Spangler.

I shot this behind-the-scenes footage at the 9News studio and newsroom, which Chloe then edited and remixed. Here's the video:

And here's the "Experiment of the Week" news segment as it appeared on air:

It was such a blast! I learned a lot about how the local news is produced. Everything was so fast-paced. Late-breaking items were being woven in in near real-time, and the news anchors never missed a beat. I'm still amazed my 16-year-old kid was able to appear so comfortable and confident on camera. I would have totally choked at her age. Nowadays, I can handle TV, thanks in part to the media training I had.

WebProNews did a bunch of great interviews at SMX West. I wanted to highlight three in particular (granted I'm a bit biased!)...

First is this interview of me is on how to optimize the flow of PageRank through your site and the tactic of "PageRank sculpting":

Second is this one of my brilliant Netconcepts' colleague Chris Smith, on the topic of optimizing your presence in Google's local search in order to boost your presence in Google's main web results via "Universal Search" (Google's blended results):

Third, this one is of my 16-year-old daughter Chloe Spencer (yeah, here I go again, proud papa bragging about my wunderkind! ), who spoke on the Generation Google panel, goes into how a kid can start a blog on a hot topic (in her case, a blog on Neopets), do a bit of SEO on it, and turn it into a cash machine with the help of Google AdSense:

No, I'm not talking about me. I've never written for the Huffington Post. I'm talking about my 16-year-old daughter, Chloe Spencer.

Some of you may remember (and are perhaps also sick of! ) me bragging about Chloe's Neopets SEO blogging success and the resulting media attention and her past speaking engagement at BlogHer '07. Well...

First, I'm proud to announce that Chloe's back on the speaking circuit! Later this month she will be speaking at SMX West, on the "Google Generation" panel. (I'm speaking too, on a different session: "Unraveling URLs and Demystifying Domains.") Look for us if you're going to SMX too!

Secondly, Chloe stretched her talents in a different way, by writing a guest blog post on The Huffington Post, published earlier this month. I'm so proud! I'm excited to watch her grow as a writer -- beyond Neopets game cheats and girly quizzes to something more meaningful to her. The opportunity was generously provided to her by Huffington Post columnist Erin Kotecki Vest. Erin also blogs on BlogHer.org. Erin knew of Chloe from BlogHer '07 -- she caught the buzz about "the teen blogger" speaking at the conference. In the post, titled "Who Me, Save the World?" and re-titled by Erin as "COUP! 16-year old Takes Over Huffington Post, Chloe's 800-word piece is about how she wants to make a difference in the world through her dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker, how she is inspired by the likes of Michael Moore, Mark Achbar and Al Gore, etc. Here's a small excerpt...

My main goal is to make our society wake up to reality; what's happening to the world, and what each individual needs to do to help stop it. I'm not perfect though...no one is. But I do recycle, think about what I eat, and buy organic products when I can; the little things that would make a huge impact on our environment if everyone did them.

I confess to not being a regular reader of Huffington Post until very recently. I actually didn't know much about its founder either, Arianna Huffington, until I had the pleasure of hearing her give one of the keynotes at IIR's"THE Conference on Marketing" last week. Arianna was a great speaker and an inspiring lady. Here are a few points Arianna made during her presentation that I jotted down:

• On polling in politics: The dominance of polling is a weakness of our system. Polling is not a good predictive science. Only 25% of people asked actually respond to polls; it's a small minority of bored and lonely Americans who want to talk to strangers. Polling undermines leadership. It's like astrology; not to be taken too seriously: "Pollstrology."
• On creativity: Holding grudges blocks creativity. Also there is certain creativity that we miss if we are sleep deprived. For men, sleep deprivation has stupidly been tied to virility. It's a badge of honor for men to boast that they get only a few hours of sleep per night.
• On "disconnecting": We're paying a heavy price for being always-on, always connected. Practice "Email-free Fridays".

• On double-standards that women face: Here's a gem of a quote:

  "For a man to be called ruthless, he has to be Joe McCarthy. For a woman to be called ruthless, she just has to put someone 'on hold'."

How true that last quote is, unfortunately!
I was surprised to hear that the Huffington Post gets 250,000 comments per month and that they employ comment moderators to work around-the-clock. Wow, quite an operation!

I am very honored and humbled to see that two of my articles were nominated for a SEMMY (The Year's Best Posts in Search Engine Marketing).

In the category of SEO category for the 2008 SEMMY Awards, my article on Search Engine Land was nominated, "Sculpting Your PageRank for Maximum SEO Impact."

Vote here for the year's best in SEO articles.

Also, in the category of Web Analytics, my June article from Practical eCommerce, "SEO Metrics that Matter" was also nominated.

Vote here for the year's best in Web Analytics articles.

My colleague, Chris Smith, was nominated for local search from his recent article in Search Engine Land entitled, "Anatomy and Optimization of a Local Business Profile."

Vote here for the year's best in Local Search.

Good luck to everyone who was nominated! Voting ends on January 30th, so be sure to cast your vote for your favorites today!

Just wanted to share some cool news. The latest post I published yesterday on the CNET Blog Network, "PE is good for SEO" has made it onto page 1 in Google for "seo"! As evidenced in the screnshot below. I imagine it won't stay up there too long because of the ephemeral nature of news results appearing in Google's universal search, but it is noteworthy that the post is the only Google News result that is featured. Pretty neat! It's every search marketer's dream to rank in the top 10 for "seo" or "search engine optimization". The #5 spot for "seo" is highly coveted real estate.

My daughter Chloe is featured today on the BlogTalkRadio home page! :-)

Listen in at 6:30pm Eastern / 5:30pm Central this evening. Diva marketer Toby Bloomberg will be interviewing Chloe and me. We will be talking about SEO, blogging and monetizing your blog.

UPDATE: The half hour interview has been archived for your on-demand listening pleasure here.

As you know, title tags are the most important on-page factor. They are given the most weight out of anything on the page as far as the search engines are concerned. So it is a huge weakness in WordPress (and most other blog platforms for that matter) that the post title is used as the title tag, usually with some other extraneous bits added on like the name of the blog. That is far from optimal SEO! Instead, you should be able to handcraft your own title tags independently of the post title -- interject synonyms, rearrange the word order, and so forth.

My SEO Title Tag plugin, which has been out since middle of last year, allows you to do just that. But wait, there's more...!

I am happy to tell you that I, along with some of my talented programmers here at Netconcepts, have made a major update to the plugin. Indeed, we have really made some magic, as you shall soon see!

I'm pleased to announce the SEO Title Tag WordPress plugin... Version 2.0 beta!

The plugin now allows you to mass edit title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages, archive by month pages, indeed any URL, all in one go.

It also now has a title tag input box on the Edit and Write forms for pages and posts, so no more having to use the custom field box.

It allows you to set a title tag for your 404 error pages and for internal search results pages too.

Not only can you now view all your title tags across all of your posts/pages at once. You can also revise your titles right there within that report! This mass editing functionality is available under the Manage > Title Tags tab in the WordPress admin.

Here's what the mass editing admin looks like:

Maybe I am tooting my own horn a bit too much here, but I think this plugin is the best thing to have ever happened to WordPress -- as far as SEO is concerned! :-D

The plugin also plays nicely with the plethora of meta tag plugins out there, such as Add Meta Tags and Another WordPress Meta Plugin. You can choose to use category descriptions as title tags on category pages, or you can choose not to. The latter is the preferred option if you are using a meta tag plugin, because most of those use the category's description field for the meta description tag on the category page. Don't worry though! You can still set custom titles for your category pages -- even if you are using the description field for your meta descriptions.

The plugin is WordPress 2.1 compatible. If upgrading from the previous version of SEO Title Tag, be sure to deactivate the old version before installing the new version. When you activate the new version, it will create some new database tables.

I welcome any and all feedback to that plugin and I hope it is of value to all you bloggers using WordPress.

I'd love to hear of any success stories using this plugin and the rankings and traffic benefits that ensue. Please report back and regale me with your stories of hockey stick graphs! :-)

Now go get the plugin! Enjoy!

I'll be at the Search Engine Room conference in Sydney on March 20 and 21. I will be presenting two different sessions; one on monetization strategies, e.g. Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, affiliate links, etc., and the other is "Not Quite Search Marketing 101."

It should be a great conference with hundreds of delegates and some great speakers. For example, Lee Odden will be speaking about SEO PR, blog optimization, and social media -- he'll be coming all the way from Minneapolis. The conference will also have the first live demo in Australia of Yahoo's new Panama platform. Google will be speaking as well, specifically Google engineer Aaron D'Souza and Google business exec Richard Kimber (Managing Director of Sales and Operations - SE Asia).

It's worth noting that Google really is the 800 lb gorilla in Australia, even more so than in the U.S. Google commands 89% of the Australian paid search marketplace, leaving only 5% to Yahoo. And 76% of Australians use Google. (source: BRW Magazine). You'll find similar ratios in New Zealand as well.

There is also a Sydney Webloggers Meetup at 7.00pm on March 20, scheduled that date in order to coincide with Search Engine Room. I will be there, as well as at the conference of course. So if you're going to be attending either, please come and introduce yourself to me. I'd love to meet up with some of my readers... the drinks are on me!

For those who are into search engine marketing, you should definitely be reading Search Engine Land if you don't already. I am happy to announce that I am now one of five columnists writing their brand new 100% Organic column. I just had an article come out last week called "Good Cloaking, Evil Cloaking & Detection.

The other columnists for the 100% Organic column are: Greg Boser, Todd Friesen, Shari Thurow, and Jill Whalen... so I will be in great company. The column will appear every Thursday and my articles will appear every fifth week.

This Thursday I am presenting a webinar, "Search Marketing Essentials for Online Retailers," along with George Michie of Rimm-Kaufman Group, for MarketingProfs.com. It starts at noon Eastern.

It is free for MarketingProfs Premium Plus members and $99 for others (although it is a better deal if you just sign up for Premium Plus membership for $299 then you can gain access to a whole library of past virtual seminars and can attend upcoming ones for a year).

We will be talking about...

• strategies for optimizing for your head terms,
• strategies for optimizing for the Long Tail,
• strategies for competing with larger better funded competitors,
• ...and much more.

Sign up now or become a Premium Plus member.