Text Link Brokering Advice from the Best in the Business
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Live Search Webmaster Center Update
3 months, 3 weeks ago
Do you worry about search engines not being able to crawl your site properly ? Does your site have a penalty ? Who’s linking to your site and are there any patterns in linkage occurring to the competitors website?
Well, the answer could be here:
Webmaster Tools
Much excitement has come from the Live Search Webmaster team […] -
KISS SEO
3 months, 3 weeks ago
The following is a Guest Post from Michael Martin.
When performing SEO its best to first implement the KISS strategy, Keep It Simple S…..
Forget about the old school keyword density equations, being completely W3C compliant, creating X amount of content, pages or acquiring X amount of links.
KISS SEO would include, but not limited to:Unique TITLE tag for […]
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How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool with Tweet Pro
3 months, 3 weeks ago
So my friend Cesar Serna launched his new site this week and is making his first tool Tweet Pro available. If you don’t know Cesar he used to work for Greg Boser aka Webgeurilla. I was in on the beta program and had a chance to put the tool thru it’s paces this weekend.
In a […] -
$100 of FREE Text Links
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The friendly folks at Tet Link Ads are offering all new customers
Text Link Ads
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Robots.txt vs Rel=Nofollow vs Meta Robots Nofollow
3 months, 3 weeks ago
I was just fixing up our Robots.txt tutorial today, and figured that I should blog this as well. From Eric Enge’s interview of Matt Cutts I created the following chart. Please note that Matt did not say they are more likely to ban you for using rel=nofollow, but they have on multiple occasions stated that they treat issues differently if they think it was an accident done by an ignorant person or a malicious attempt to spam their search engine by a known SEO (in language that is more rosy than what I just wrote).
Crawled by Googlebot?Appears in Index?Consumes PageRankRisks? Waste?robots.txt no If document is linked to, it may appear URL only, or with data from links or trusted third party data sources like the ODP yes People can look at your robots.txt file to see what content you do not want indexed. Many new launches are discovered by people watching for changes in a robots.txt file.
Using wildcards incorrectly can be expensive!
robots meta noindex tag yes no yes, but can pass on much of its PageRank by linking to other pages Links on a noindex page are still crawled by search spiders even if the page does not appear in the search results (unless they are used in conjunction with nofollow on that page).
Page using robots meta nofollow (1 row below) in conjunction with noindex do accumulate PageRank, but do not pass it on to other pages.
robots meta nofollow tag destination page only crawled if linked to from other documents destination page only appears if linked to from other documents no, PageRank not passed to destination If you are pushing significant PageRank into a page and do not allow PageRank to flow out from that page you may waste significant link equity. link rel=nofollow destination page only crawled if linked to from other documents destination page only appears if linked to from other documents no, PageRank not passed to destination If you are doing something borderline spammy and are using nofollow on internal links to sculpt PageRank then you look more like an SEO and are more likely to be penalized by a Google engineer for "search spam" If you want to download the chart as an image here you go http://www.seobook.com/images/robotstxtgrid.png
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Thirty Day Challenge: Why Must Traditional Email List Internet Marketers be so Sleazy?
3 months, 3 weeks ago
I recently saw Ed Dale teaching thousands of Internet marketing newbies how to use Market Samurai, a paid tool promoted through their free course. Which, it turns out, is another good example of why many free information sources are worth less than they cost.
As their B case video (showing the free alternative that justifies the month-long sales pitch for various products pitched as free help) they used a poorly configured version of SEO for Firefox to make it look worse than what they were trying to sell. The video reviewing SEO for Firefox was given the title of SEO Competition The Old Way, and concluded that for SEO for Firefox
I am sorta hoping that you never have to use this, but if you do, it is there, and it is available.
Thanks for the faux recommendation. Pretty sleazy stuff there Ed Dale. Thumbs down for you.
For anyone who wants to see how SEO for Firefox actually works with all its features enabled, please check out the following video…and compare what you see to what you saw in that other video (while noting that I took half the time to show a much more comprehensive picture of the actual features).
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Google Insights for Search
3 months, 3 weeks ago
It’s fair to say Google have been blighted by issues of privacy over the last few month’s. What could be a better time then to release even more information about its users search requests ? Meet “insights for search” a free service aimed at marketers which will be an extension of Google Trends. We will […]
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Google Privacy is better than NLPC.org’s
3 months, 4 weeks ago
Hat tip to Andy Beal
On reporting about how the NLPC used Google street view to show how a Google executives Privacy could be invade well he is the Google Maps address that they are talking about, OMG… how did Dave find that..
well open the pdf and press control-c and paste it back into word
if you […] -
Populism to Kill the US Economy?
3 months, 4 weeks ago
Yesterday I finished a monologue by Manuel F. Ayau titled Not a Zero-Sum Game in which he explains the basis of economics with common sense passages like:
Understanding that in a market economy a person can only get rich by enriching others torpedoes claims to the moral high ground of those who propose that government redistribution of wealth is a means to alleviate poverty.
and
[In a market economy], one cannot “make a fortune” at the expense of others, but only by offering others a better deal and, thereby, making them richer.
On some levels some type of wealth is built through fraud (see the mortgage industry over the past 5 years), cronyism (see Iraq), and other nefarious means, but on average most entrepreneurs create wealth through efficiency improvements. Google makes so much money because they make advertising more targeted and automated. I do well because I help people get more exposure on Google at a rate much cheaper than what it costs to buy that traffic directly from Google.
You can take wealth creation and distribution as a concept and move it away from our own industries to everyday trade and consumption. For example, I had an eye appointment and just got my prescription today. Rather than paying retail in the store I decided to hunt online to save money. And that worked out well because
- I found a discounter
- that offered free shipping on a bulk purchase
- there was no sales tax
- I ordered enough that I got a $60 rebate coupon from the manufacturer
- I found an affiliate link for a coupon that got me another 15% off my order (before the $60 rebate)
The net result is that I saved hundreds of dollars today due to the efforts of the above people. But if the government takes away their incentive to take risks in the hopes of profit (through higher taxes), then those cost savings to me as a consumer disappear. Thus I pay more to get less. Worse yet, as government spending increases it drives up the costs in most marketplaces it touches because it is not as efficient as individuals are.
Brian Provost highlighted a WSJ article about Obama’s tax plan.
As ugly as that chart is, the situation is even uglier than that. If I am only taking home ~ 37% of my earnings and many of my customers are only getting 37% I get hit both directly and indirectly…I get a smaller piece of a smaller piece.The WSJ article also highlights 2 more frighting issues
While Mr. Obama also proposes an alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, he could instead wind up with the permanent abolition plan for the AMT proposed by the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.) — a 4.6% additional hike in the marginal rate with no deductibility of state income taxes. Marginal tax rates would then approach 70%, levels not seen since the 1970s and among the highest in the world.
And the article also states that Obama is a protectionist who dislikes free international trade.
Mr. Obama has also opposed other important free-trade agreements, including those with Colombia, South Korea and Central America. He has spoken eloquently about America’s responsibility to help alleviate global poverty — even to the point of saying it would help defeat terrorism — but he has yet to endorse, let alone forcefully advocate, the single most potent policy for doing so: a successful completion of the Doha round of global trade liberalization. Worse yet, he wants to put restrictions into trade treaties that would damage the ability of poor countries to compete.
All trade is from individual to individual. When intermediaries exist it is typically because they lower cost and/or make trade more efficient (like the use of cash does). If we block foreign trade we increase the cost of goods and services to our poor because they will not be able to benefit from the division of labor driven by lower overseas labor costs. Read Underdeveloping Indiana to see how absurd blocking free trade is as an international economic strategy.
The true reasons the US economy is so screwed up right now is because the government is already too big, we use our military in an attempt to force our view of the world onto other countries (economically inefficient and ineffective), and the average American feels entitled to consume more than they can afford while suffering from uncompromising intellectual sloth.
- I can’t vote for McCain because I would feel like I was promoting the spread of unjust wars, torture, and murder.
- But I can’t really vote for Obama if he wants to kill both my incentive to work and the economy.
- I wish Ron Paul would have been nominated.
If you live in the United States, at what point would a tax hike be high enough to make you work less or move overseas? A 65% to 70% tax rate would probably do it for me!
[Update: a reader pointed out a couple other tax charts that did not look as scary as the above charts. You would think you could trust the WSJ, but I probably should have done more research before posting this…too often I let emotions get the best of me.]
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Blogher, Pro-Woman or Anti-Man?
3 months, 4 weeks ago
The following is a Guest Post from Brandy Eddings.
Last school year while at recess my daughter approached a group of boys playing kickball. She asked if she could join, the boy holding the ball told her “only boys can play”. My daughter’s response was “then why are they letting you play” she grabbed the ball […] -
Two Wordpress Plugins That Need to be Developed
3 months, 4 weeks ago
After my SEO plugins for wordpress and backend plugins for wordpress most people would think that should cover most of the things anyone would need. However I can think of two that are needed right off the bat.
Search Link Plugin
When you are working/writing in wordpress or editing posts of other authors, sometimes you want to […] -
Hey Disney World You Had me at Hello …
3 months, 4 weeks ago
Somedays there are jobs which were absolutely made for you … sadly I’m just in NY … hey Terry *cough* *cough* telecommunting *cough* *cough* I heard working from home is great for the environment
Related PostsLinkbait if it’s Good Enough for Forbes it’s Good Enough for MeI’ve made no secret of my Disney fan status, […] -
Digg and Malware
4 months ago
This the the second time this week Digg has lead me to malware,
http://digg.com/comedy/Google_Trend_1_what_to_do_if_inside_of_girl_gets_wet_SFWThe links in the posts are trojans, so maybe just maybe the Digg moderators could stop burying sites and star clean up the Malware on their site .. btw the Digg this was all I needed to get you put on the malware […]
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Chitika - the 5th Search Engine?
4 months ago
I recently had an email chat with Alden DoRosario from Chitika about the recent rapid growth of their ad network. They have been aggressively signing up bloggers and other independent publishers, and are now getting over 2 billion monthly impressions, with their behaviorally targeted Premium ads getting hundreds of millions of monthly search driven impressions, putting their search distribution network on par with Ask.com.
How their premium ad network works is they target the ads to be relevant to search query that sent traffic to the publisher’s site, thus even if the ads are not shown on a search page they still are seen by searchers right after they search and click through to the site.
Alden gave me a link for a $75 bonus code for any publisher that makes $75 in commissions before the end of October. Publishers are paid 60% of the ad click value, with the house getting 40%. I just added their ads to my mom’s weight loss blog. It looks like their ad network is not quite as deep as Google’s but they do well for higher volume search queries.
Most search engines are a backbone for an ad network, but it is hard to build query volume for a new search engine. Just look at how few people have used Wikia Search in spite of endless hype. Wikia Search got a couple million lifetime searches whereas Chitika gets billions of monthly ad impressions.
Most people do not feel they have a search problem, but many publishers feel their content could be monetized better. If you didn’t have huge search distribution how would you create a search ad network? If an ad network grows big enough do you think they could do it the other way around, using their ad network distribution as a backbone to start a search engine?
Disclaimer: The free $75 bonus is an affiliate link, but when I chatted with Chitika I pushed hard to get publishers the best payout bonus and longest payout bonus period possible rather than focusing on trying to maximize my commissions.
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Chitika - the 5th Search Engine?
4 months ago
I recently had an email chat with Alden DoRosario from Chitika about the recent rapid growth of their ad network. They have been aggressively signing up bloggers and other independent publishers, and are now getting over 2 billion monthly impressions, with their behaviorally targeted Premium ads getting hundreds of millions of monthly search driven impressions, putting their search distribution network on par with Ask.com.
How their premium ad network works is they target the ads to be relevant to search query that sent traffic to the publisher’s site, thus even if the ads are not shown on a search page they still are seen by searchers right after they search and click through to the site.
Alden gave me a link for a $75 bonus code for any publisher that makes $75 in commissions before the end of October. Publishers are paid 60% of the ad click value, with the house getting 40%. I just added their ads to my mom’s weight loss blog. It looks like their ad network is not quite as deep as Google’s but they do well for higher volume search queries.
Most search engines are a backbone for an ad network, but it is hard to build query volume for a new search engine. Just look at how few people have used Wikia Search in spite of endless hype. Wikia Search got a couple million lifetime searches whereas Chitika gets billions of monthly ad impressions.
Most people do not feel they have a search problem, but many publishers feel their content could be monetized better. If you didn’t have huge search distribution how would you create a search ad network? If an ad network grows big enough do you think they could do it the other way around, using their ad network distribution as a backbone to start a search engine?
Disclaimer: The free $75 bonus is an affiliate link, but when I chatted with Chitika I pushed hard to get publishers the best payout bonus and longest payout bonus period possible rather than focusing on trying to maximize my commissions.
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Google Beta Testing Showing Related Phrases Near Documents in Search Results
4 months ago
While using Opera I noticed the following Google test which places related phrases near some documents in the search results
When I entered our above link building page into the Google AdWords Keyword Tool they showed mostly phrases related to the broader category of SEO and did not list the niche link related phrases, which indicates Google is still holding back quite a bit of data from advertisers that they are willing to share with searchers for free.
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Mel Carson Blog Design Just Giving For Charity
4 months ago
I’ve known Dave now for quite some time. Over this time I have observed he never misses an opportunity to support a worthwhile cause, his generosity demonstrated at charitable events I think speaks volumes about his ethos. Those who know him well I am certain will concur that charity is very much close to his […]
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Getting Paid to Edit Search Results
4 months ago
In the past I have mentioned that I am not a fan of doing lots of traditional SEO consulting for a number of reasons (mostly economic), but I still work on a few large projects from time to time. One of the great parts about working with large corporate clients is when you uncover holes in their strategy, finding areas and opportunities that they can own just by deciding to. To some degree it feels like editing the search results, just like a search engineer, seeing you will pushed upon them.
Unlike playing with Wikia Search (which only has a couple millions lifetime searches and nearly a million edits!!!) some of the changes you suggest for enterprise level sites can bring millions of high value visitors to their business free of charge.
When taking on new consulting projects you have to price with the confidence that you will be able to find something that really helps them build their business (and if you are not there is no point taking the project). At first sometimes it can seem like you set the bar too high, but when you do strong research and have a strong partner to bounce ideas off back and forth good things just happen.
Those easy big wins are rare finds, but seem to happen on every project, just in different areas - site structure, duplicate content issues, keyword coverage, internal linking strategy, etc. Digging into a large site with fresh eyes allows you to see things that people who have been close to a project for a long time can not see. Why is that link there? Can this page rank for a couple more related queries? You end up stumbling into something that catches your eye and keep digging in until you have a good solution that earns far in excess of the consulting investment.
With affiliate and AdSense oriented sites the wins are typically much slower, smaller, and harder - sometimes requiring 6 months of effort just to get to break even, and requiring you to fight for every additional link and every additional rank. But the slow and steady path is a stronger business model for SEOs than giving clients millions of dollars of advice for a small fraction of the price. If only I knew how to talk Fortune 500 companies into giving a % of the upside, as that would make consulting so much more profitable than the slow and steady model.
Google hires remote quality raters part time for $15 an hour. SEOs working in client based business models usually top out somewhere in the mid 6 figure range. CEOs and some leading web publishers make deep into 7 or 8 figures a year. And some of the early Google engineers might have 9 figures worth of stock. And every one of them is getting paid in part to edit the search results. Does your business model match your ambitions?
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1 million Users Browser stats
4 months ago
I have a snapshot of data of 1 million users and here is the browser data.
You can see that Internet Explorer is by far the most dominate browser out there no surprises :
and I honestly expected more Firefox 3 users out of 1 Million only 7,908 Firefox 3 users!
Internet Explorer 7.0 and Internet Explorer 6.0 […]
