Byline, citation, coverage: three different things
Three claims routinely get merged into one line on a professional biography, and they are not the same. Writing an article for a publication is a byline. Being quoted by a journalist in someone else's article is a citation. Being the subject of a news story is coverage. All three are worth something. Only one of them means an editor accepted your work.
This page keeps them apart. The first sections are outlets where I am the author of record and the author archive is public. After that comes a separate section for articles other people wrote in which I am quoted, and then podcasts and interviews.
The distinction matters most in the places my name shows up in search results. I have no byline at Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Domain Name Wire or DomainInvesting.com. I have been quoted in Search Engine Land, and Domain Name Wire has written about me as a subject of its reporting. Those are real, and they are not the same as writing for those publications, so this site does not list them under bylines and neither should anyone summarizing my background. If you are checking my credentials for a retention, a booking or a citation, this is the section where a careless biography would have cost you an hour.
Search Engine Journal
Six articles, published under my own author archive at Search Engine Journal. The subjects track what I was working on at the time, which is mostly local SEO, seasonal ecommerce preparation, and the arrival of the new gTLDs.
- 50+ Business-Building Local SEO Tactics For SMBs — April 21, 2022
- 18 Safe Ways to Prepare and Optimize Your Website for the Holidays — October 26, 2020
- Selling SEO Services: 72 Things You Need to Know — July 24, 2017
- How Buying a Blog Can Boost Your Local Business — June 8, 2017
- How to Be a Local Content Machine and Build a Successful Business — May 11, 2017
- New gTLD's Impact to Your Site's Ranking — May 12, 2016
One caution about that archive. The author biography attached to it describes twenty years of direct SEO experience, which is undated boilerplate written once and never revised. I have practiced SEO since 1996, and I publish the start date rather than a year count for exactly this reason.
Practical Ecommerce
Nine articles at Practical Ecommerce, spanning two distinct periods: a pair of foundational SEO pieces in 2010 and a run of local and seasonal ecommerce columns in 2016.
- 4 Things to Check for Holiday Ecommerce Traffic — November 16, 2016
- How to Perform a Local, Competitive SEO Analysis — October 19, 2016
- Google Penguin Now Part of Core Search Algorithm — September 24, 2016
- 3 Phases to Engaging (and Retaining) Local Prospects — September 14, 2016
- Managing a Local Web Presence from an iPhone — August 24, 2016
- How to Encourage Reviews of Your Local Business — August 11, 2016
- Using Pokémon Go to Entice Shoppers to Local Businesses — July 19, 2016
- SEO: 5 Ecommerce Link-Building Ideas — September 24, 2010
- SEO: Keyword Research and Analysis — June 22, 2010
The 2010 pieces are period documents now and I leave them listed rather than quietly pruning them. Keyword research in 2010 meant something narrower than it does today, and the honest thing to do with older work is to date it clearly rather than to remove the evidence that the field moved.
CircleID
I have been a CircleID member since August 5, 2015, and my byline there is:
- Top-Level Domain Bias in Search Engine Indexing and Rankings — June 18, 2020
That article is the closest thing I have written to a thesis statement on where search and the domain name system meet: whether a search engine treats a name differently because of the extension it sits on, and what a domain buyer should conclude from that. It is also the piece most often cited back at me, usually by people who want a straight answer about whether a new gTLD will hurt them.
One correction worth making here, because it circulates. Two other CircleID articles about new gTLDs and search come up in searches for my name and I did not write either of them. From Toad to Princess, published August 4, 2015, is by Hans Seeuws and David Hallam; I appear on it only as a commenter. Early Data Suggests New gTLDs Perform Well in Search Environment, published December 10, 2014, is by Paul Stahura of Donuts; I am quoted in it. Being quoted in a piece and writing it are different, and I am not going to claim the second when the record shows the first.
The Vizion Interactive blog
During my years as SEO Manager and then Senior SEO at Vizion Interactive I wrote for the company's blog, and my author archive there is still published. That work is employer-era writing, which carries its own caveat: it was written for an agency's audience, on subjects the agency chose, at a point when the technical landscape was different in ways that matter. Some of the tactical advice in it has aged out.
I list it because it is a real byline and because the record should be complete rather than curated down to the pieces that still flatter me. An author archive that only contains work you would write identically today has been edited, and the editing tells you something.
Cited, not bylined: third-party citations
These are articles written by other people in which I am quoted or named. They are a stronger signal than a byline in one respect, since a journalist chose to call me, and a weaker one in another, since I did not write them.
- Search Engine Land — quoted in Do exact match domains have value in 2025? by Carolyn Shelby, April 3, 2025, on the mechanism by which an exact match domain earns anchor text: if you build a brand around your exact match domain and use it as your business name, you naturally start earning links where the anchor text matches the domain. You can read the article at Search Engine Land. I do not have an author archive there and do not claim one.
- CircleID — quoted as an SEO expert from Globerunner in Paul Stahura's Early Data Suggests New gTLDs Perform Well in Search Environment, December 10, 2014. That citation is also the third-party marker for when I was at Globe Runner.
- Domain Name Wire — the domain industry trade publication has covered me as a subject of its reporting. That is coverage of me, not writing by me, and it belongs in this section rather than in the byline sections above.
Podcasts and interviews
Long-form interviews are where the reasoning gets room, and they are the format I would point a prospective client or a retaining attorney to if they want to hear how I actually think through a problem rather than read the compressed version.
- Marketing Speak — SEO Audits Done Right with Bill Hartzer
- EDGE of the Web Radio — guest appearances, with a guest profile on the show's site
- Clarity Digital — SEO and the Modern Value of Domain Names: Strategies and Challenges, available as audio and video
- IMG Courses — instructor and speaker profile covering SEO and domain names
What you will not find on this page
There is no logo wall here, and that is a decision rather than an oversight. I have not been quoted in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC or the Associated Press, and no such quote turned up when the record for this site was compiled. My confirmed press footprint is industry trade press plus podcasts, which is an accurate description of a career spent in a specialist field.
You will also not find a total article count. There are automated aggregator profiles that attribute roughly ninety articles to me by pooling editorial bylines with press-release wire distributions. Wire distribution is paid placement, not journalism, and adding the two together produces a number that is technically derived and practically meaningless. The lists on this page are the ones I will stand behind, item by item, with a date attached to each.