There’s always “take home” value that you can immediately apply after attending Elite Retreat. I, Giovanna have signed an NDA so I can’t go into deep details. Last year, I learned the various monetization models from Jeremy Shoemaker’s presentation and Lee Dodd introduced the idea of buying and selling website “real estate.” This year, Andy Liu’s presentation was very interesting because it had a different approach and it focused on team building, applying business formulas, metrics and attracting investors. A memorable quote by Andy about his way of investing was “Buy Based on Current Revenue and Sell for Strategic Value.” Although I have no intention to sell any of my sites, I now know what investors look for and the path to take for increased profitability. Had a short yet highly productive chat with Brian Clark about copywriting and conversion. There will be more posts on conversion because it’s my new homework and there really is no secret forumula —> Just hard work.

I was bummed out for missing Shoemoney’s presentation this year because you always learn something new and cool from that guy…especially in exclusive and highly private groups like Elite Retreat. It was my loss. Aaron sat next to Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress during the lunch and I guess they had fun exchanging SEO stories. I actually use his platform on at least three of my sites. Aaron is so addicted to the web that his knowledge goes beyond SEO. He’s now tying SEO and marketing to the social networking theory. That’s not white hat, it’s more like clear hat.

The Elite Retreat attendees are all pretty darn razor SHARP. Just being around incredibly smart people was worth the investment but being able to “pick” the brains of the industry’s top thought leaders is priceless. Ugh, that last sentence sounded too Mastercard-ish but it’s true. People who have attended in the past come for the 2nd or 3rd time.

BOTTOM LINE: Knowledge is can be expensive but truly life changing once it’s IMPLEMENTED. If you really want to make it, you need to go out there and take immediate action. If the results are not what you expected, LEARN. If they are positive, RE-APPLY!

I just had a client send me a password, which I have told them they need to change, what made me laugh was Becky my wife said “it’s better than the old password” which was password .. lol, then that reminded me of the top 10 passwords ..
darkreading had these top 10 passwords :
1. (username)
2. […]

In my early days I played a bit more in the darker side of the game. I fully admit that I built and ran more than 1 or 2 scrapers, aggregators, and MFA style sites, but as a business model those type of sites are really on the decline, and not something I’d ever recommend […]

From their press release:

Yahoo! Inc. a leading global Internet company, announced today that it will begin a limited test of Google Inc.’s AdSense for Search service, which will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!’s own search results. The test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s extended network of affiliate or premium publisher partners. The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.

Anyone who syndicates Yahoo! ads or operates a business that relies on selling clicks has to be concerned with this news.

Yahoo is said to be in the final stages to carry search ads from Google. it’s report that the 2 week test which be limited to around 3% of the US traffic will be part of a test that could lead to a much bigger partnership.
this test is designed for the 2 sides to evaluate […]

So my buddy Loren Feldman over at 1938 media has been having grand old time giving a parody of Shel Israel lately. While it’s all been pretty funny I think there are a few points to learn from this.
Let’s take a look at one of Loren’s videos:

Now lets look at one of Shel’s videos …
viewNode(”b915bbb2c79a3″, […]

Dear Seth Godin,
I read your blog and I buy your books I like your stuff so much I gave them as Christmas presents to my clients, but when you write this kind of stuff it pisses me off
A quick glimpse at just about any profession shows you that the vast majority of people who succeed […]

NO NO NO I was reading soloseo and this quote I disagree with and agree with !
One aspect of doing International SEO is having your content available in other languages. Hiring a translator to translate your blog is cost prohibitive for most bloggers, running $50-$250 for each language per post
yes the cost can be prohibitive, […]

While I was off doing some work Jill and Lisa engaged in a debate over whether or not we need SEO standards. Even though I’m a day late and a dollar short I’m still going to throw my 2 cents in.
The biggest problem with SEO standards is we’ll get some half baked, half assed, implementation […]

Googles part in driving up the spectrum price auction
What would have happened if Google had won, they had already said they didn’t want to build any wireless infrastructures , but the killer thing for me is Google Adwords is an auction system and they hated it when people messed with it so why do they […]

This was a question that was asked last week while I was speaking in Dublin, Btw it’s a service that we have offered in the past to clients so I have to say yes, but it’s truly depending on your industry and how you want to structure your blog.
a) If your blog is like mine […]

As a young American boy growing up in the 70’s Evel Knievel was one of my role models. Aside from being a daredevil Evel possessed a strong understanding of marketing and engaged in a level of shameless self promotion that would have made PT Barnum proud.
When Evel was just getting started he got the crazy […]

The Rank Checker developer told me he just completed our first major update on the extension. From his email…

• added international character support
• fixed query time saving error in options window
• added status icon (right click on the icon to see the whole menu)
• fixed linux issues
• changed doubleclick behavior (if you want to go to SE results on windows, hold CTRL key and click on the url; on mac hold META key and click on the url), because double click causes some errors on mac os.
• fixed export to CSV
• fixed result scraping when domain has sitelinks
• added dragable columns
• fixed domain.net vs domain.net.au issue

What else do we still need to fix/do?

I’ve never seen this before a code snippet as part of a Google Universal Search Result

Sponsor:: Interested in seeing your message here, contact me to find out how.
Related PostsUniversal Local Search and Direct NavigationSo here’s an interesting little discovery, type the following into your FF address bar
Museum of Mod…Searching for Argentina is Not Safe for […]

If you have a site with a large traffic stream you can use your site search data to come up with ideas on what content to create, what products to add to your store, and what keywords to bid on. Acting early on keyword data is important no matter what site you publish.

• PPC margins In many affiliate markets the large profits happen early when the market is still inefficient, and margins are drastically lowered as more affiliates compete. Automatically adding your internal search keywords to your PPC ad accounts allows you to arbitrage the keywords while they have a fat profit margin.
• Organic rankings if you rank early and pick up a couple self-reinforcing links it gets much harder for people entering the field later to compete with you.

If you have a strong brand you may be able to use internal search data to automatically create related searches, which creates relevant content on those pages.

Ken Robinson spoke at TED about creativity and mentioned Epiphany, the name of a new book name that he was working on.

That book has yet to come out, but enough people searched for it at Amazon.com that they added the keywords to related searches.

And since they are first to market they are already ranking in Google. When the book comes out they will already control that traffic stream.

This related searches tip can be used in a way that looks spammy or a way that looks legitimate. It is up to the user to decide how far they want to go with it.

How many of your clients watch their keyword rankings on a daily basis ? Do you get emails saying “I’ve noticed we dropped two positions on Wed, now we have dropped another today” It’s not always easy to get across the message that continuously watching the search engine results pages will eventually drive you insane.  […]

 Hat tips to Rand- get more tips here..
who has the best link building techniques
Dan Horton SEO

Happened to take a look at Calacanis.com today, nice USTREAM TV idea I thought. There infront of me was Jason, Sporting a rather unique green base ball cap. Broadcasting to at least 300 web participants, what an ingenious idea ! Then…. wait Jason needs to take a call?? What? Where has he gone?
Jason are you […]

With the recent job cuts at Doubleclick I’m wondering what a “transitional role” is at Google ? There must be a high number of experienced DoubleClick staff now on the search for new roles, is it a case of Google cutting expenses for shareholders or indeed loading its financial strong arm to leverage yet more […]

With all this talk of link buying and how it can effectively cause your much valued website to drop out of the serps altogether, maybe it’s time to review your methods of acquiring links and for us to discuss the steps to take in find good websites to link to that add value to your […]