I just read a blog post from Search Engine People about how companies can manage negative results from appearing in search engines. This relates to the famous Google bomb incident when searching for “miserable failure” used to return the bio of George Bush. (They’ve removed that one, but if you google “french military victories“, you still get this.)

I have a couple of alerts set up for key search phrases related to Avenue Z, but I expect I’ll stay pretty benign throughout the life of my company.  But what is interesting these days when it comes to SEO and my websites is the way people find Life on Avenue Z and meeting their expectations once they get here.

I get a lot of searches for “PR versus journalism,” which leads people to The Differences Between a Copywriter and a Journalist. I also seem to be very popular for searches about Victoria’s Secret customer service. But the biggest, strangest trend here on Avenue Z started when someone called me “the sexiest woman on the planet.”

I get “sexiest” hits every day, with everything from “the sexiest PowerPoint” to “the sexiest ass on the planet” and “sexiest marketing words.” While I’m flattered beyond belief, I’m dismayed that most of the people who come here for those phrases spend less than one second here on the site. This means that my content disappoints, that they’re actually not finding the sexiest PowerPoint. They’re finding a quirky copywriter who shares too much. And that’s definitely not what they’re looking for.

PS — if you can read the tiny type in the screenshot, you’ll see that 51 people searched for the original term with quotation marks and tended to stay for several minutes. These were my friends — I sent the search phrase to everyone I knew and told them to check it out before it disappeared forever.

In celebration of Friday, I offer a little English language horror — I mean humor.

From Cake Wrecks: You Too Can Prevent Random Quotation Marking

From The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: “girl scouts”

From Larsen Idealog: Yikes! “Exhibiting Paintings” Exhibits Typos

From Typo Hunt Across America: Ladie’s Night

From Flickr’s Typo Pool: State Motol

“Jules” has been very, very busy. He (she?) works at a company that specializes in SEO. He just stopped by my blog and posted this note:

Hi,

I’m Jules and I work at [company name].com, a company interested in blog
advertizing. I found your blog engaging and I’m contacting you to ask if
you are interested in blog post sponsorship.

If you are interested, kindly mail back for confirmation [email].Please include your blog’s URL.
Looking forward to doing business with you.

Sincerely,

Jules Viernes

I Googled the phrase “blog post sponsorship” and discovered that it means opportunities for advertisers to pay for ads at the bottom of my posts.

Somehow I don’t think Jules is sincere. Here is a Google search with 9 other blogs that Jules has found engaging. In addition, looks like Elmer is also interested in “blog advertizing.”

Hi,

I’m Elmer and I work at [DIFFERENT company name].com, a company interested in blog advertizing. I found your blog onceuponadiet.blogspot.com engaging and I’m contacting you to ask if you are interested in blog post sponsorship.

If you are interested, kindly mail back [Elmer's email] and I’ll send you pricing details, guidelines and processes. Looking forward to doing business with you.

Sincerely,

Elmer

Skylar is also interested in blog post sponsorship.

Hello,

My name is Skylar. I just spent some time digging through your great blog and I found it very engaging. I’m contacting you to ask if you are interested in blog post sponsorship.

If you are, please e-mail me back and I will send you pricing details, guidelines and processes. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Skylar Sinclaire

While I don’t think Jules really finds my site engaging, some days it sure would be helpful if my time on this blog paid off. What are your thoughts on advertising?

Read sponsorship is a good thing from Mashable.

Read a blog sponsorship justification from Mouse Clone.

People ask me all the time where to find someone to do a website or a new graphic or where to get help finding leads. My answer is almost always the same…. Elance.

Elance is a tremendous directory of freelance everything. I’ve hired people to migrate my blog ($150), create my main website ($180 — definitely an insanely good deal!), draw a cartoon picture (at right) for my marketing ($140 total for two types) and increase my SEO (this one I canceled because I felt oogie about paying for blog love).

On Elance, you describe your project and set your budget. Then you open your project up for bid, and freelancers around the globe give you proposals. I generally get 4-8 proposals from companies, and I can review their portfolios and their ratings from other projects. You can correspond with vendors during the proposal process, and when you choose someone, your correspondence stays in your project. Your money stays in escrow, and you release it when you and your provider reach the milestones you’ve agreed on.

Recent upgrades to Elance make communication easier — you can now arrange calls and IMs through the service. I haven’t tried it yet.

I’ve had the best of luck with the service, and I think it’s a small business owner’s best friend. Side note — if you’re freelancing yourself, I would say Elance is a tough market. It’s kind of like craigslist — highly competitive with clients like me out there looking for an amazing bargain. But you may be able to use it to help pay bills and to kick off your new business.