Search Engine Marketing Journal launches at San Jose at the forthcoming Search Engine Strategies Conference early next week.
I have given a helping hand in the very early stages of the journal and now it’s ready for launch !
SEMJ is new and unique in many ways, so I thought I’d give Sean the opportunity to describe the publication.
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Sean Golliher is the Founder of SEMJ.org and Managing Editor. An established Search Marketing Consultant, Sean has a B.S. in physics from the University of Washington in Seattle, a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University, holds four engineering patents. Sean began studying search engines in 1999, his main research interests being search engine ranking algorithms and Search Engine Optimization. |
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SEMJ will feature a wide range of Search Marketing topics – click on the image of the journal to browse the journal that will be distributed at San Jose next week. I liked Sean’s approach right from the start – we had numerous discussions about which materials should be presented and how to present them. SEMJ will offer articles for both the SEO Savvy and the less advanced marketer seeking reliable information: There is a lot of "noise" on the web. SEMJ will focus on providing accurate, reliable, and timeless information, things you need to know today and tomorrow, making it a publication you’ll want to keep handy for ever day use … |
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So here’s my Interview with Sean …
Sante: Search Engine Marketing Journal (published by SEMJ.org) is a new periodical dedicated to the advancement of Search Marketing through peer reviewed articles. Would you like to tell us a bit more about Search Engine Marketing Journal and what made you decide to invest in this kind of publication ?
Sean: When I first started getting into SEO people were mostly reading and posting on forums and following threads. I learned quite a bit from reading forums online and meeting people at conferences. However, I came from a physics and engineering background and I became used to a completely different writing style than what is going on in the blogs right now. I wanted to bring the concept of a peer-reviewed research journal to the search marketing industry and the response has been geat so far. Giving a thumbs up or a “great post” comment is a neat but it is not a good, or trusted way to validate an idea or a search marketing concept. Especially if you are going to be applying the ideas to a client website.
With SEMJ I wanted to create a journal where there was a certain amount of research and integrity in the writing. By integrity I mean that we require the authors to quote references for any ideas or data they are quoting and our editors search for plagiarism in the submitted papers. We also require the papers to be original. By research I mean that we are not a news source. We do not patrol the internet for news and then write papers on what we read. We want to publish papers that educate people on aspects of search marketing and SEO. So a lot of the papers are instructional in nature as well.
SEMJ.org is going in a completely different direction than the blogs so it is an interesting concept. What we hope to accomplish is that SEMJ.org becomes a trusted publisher of material for search marketers in the industry. Having people like Bruce Clay and other experts in the search marketing industry as editors will help us keep the quality high.
There was an article published in the Atlantic last month entitled is “Google making us Stoopid?” I found it interesting because I saw it the day we sent out the first issue of SEMJ for publishing. The author is talking about how people do not read on the internet. They read about 1-2 paragraphs and move on. I think our papers need to be printed because they are much longer than blog posts and hopefully they are papers that people sit down and read and think about. I know if I have to dig in and read something I usually print it out. I think a lot of people are the same way.
Sante: Would you like to elaborate a bit more on the concept of "peer -reviewed articles" ?
Sean: Sure. We have editors in their specialty areas that review papers for quality, accuracy, plagiarism, and uniqueness. By subjecting papers to the scrutiny of other experts the accuracy and quality of the information should be much higher. The editors send back their comments and recommendations to us and we send them to the author. The editors do not communicate with the authors directly. We have more than one editor review each paper and they all find something different they want changed about the paper. After most of the core ideas and concepts have been worked out the papers are edited for grammar and writing style. Our regular editors do not edit for grammar. We provide the authors with a template, or style sheet, so that they can focus on the writing and still have the papers delivered to us in the correct format for the journal.
Sante: Who should consider contributing to Search Engine Marketing Journal ?
Sean: I would say any person or company in the search marketing industry that has a good idea and wants to gain recognition as an expert. We don’t have advertising in the journal. The authors name and company is on the front page of the journal and their biographies are posted at the end of the paper. We allow co-authoring of papers as well. So if a company has 5 people contribute to a paper then all their biographies will be featured in the journal.
Sante: How is Search Engine Marketing Journal planning to expand reach?
Sean: We are starting in the U.S. at major conferences and hope to start attending conferences in Europe next year. Our Editors are from all over the world. So that is helping us get exposure in other countries. For example, Will Crithlow from Distilled is out of England. He will definitely be a great source of promotion for us over there. We do ship our journal to other countries so we have readers from all over the world.
Sante: Do you foresee the presence of multilingual contributions to Search Engine Marketing Journal ?
Sean: I sure hope so. This will require a lot more resources in the future but I have thought about this. If the growth continues I can see us offering multilingual versions of the journal.
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Interesting conversation. SEMJ has great features IMO. Thanks for the detail info.
Thanks for pointing out SEMJ, what a great resource. Also, nice to see the blog posts for your native English speaking followers.
Thanks for the helpful advice and SEMJ. Already added it to my bookmarks
Thanks for post !!
Very nice/