1. Needed Related Affiliate Offers Plugin

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    So you’ve seen the Aizatto’s Related Posts plugin that I use here and other people use as well. Which got me thinking we need one for affiliate offers too. In addition to scanning the text it would be great if it could look at tags and categories. So let’s say you run a fashion blog […]

    Michael Gray

  2. SMX Wrap Up and After Thoughts

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    Last week I was at the SMX West Search Marketing Conference, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts about the conference.
    Rule #1 always choose the closer airport. I’m a spoiled baby, and when I fly for more than 3 hours I need to be entertained, the only way I can guarantee that is on […]

    Michael Gray

  3. 302 in Google looks Bad again.

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    I have been testing a new Banner - PPC tracking system it’s closed beta at the moment. but the system allows Html Banner ad’s which we split test the text you can see an example here www.davidnaylor.co.uk/v10-html-banner.html the system uses either a straight link text or 301 which of course would influence search […]

    Dave Naylor, Google

  4. $100 of FREE Text Links

    Recently

    The friendly folks at Tet Link Ads are offering all new customers

    Text Link Ads

  5. Why Google Guidelines Sometimes Depart From Reality

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    The Federal Reserve is somewhat like a market maker, or at the very least a market influence, on the value of currency. Google acts in a similar value, placing value on and evaluating the value of information and collections of information.

    Reading this blog post about Ben Bernanke and replace words like credit and inflation with paid links and search spam and you can see (and perhaps even respect) how Google manipulates the press, why Google’s guidelines are often forced to be removed from reality, and search engineer editorial action is often harsh beyond reason.

    Here is an excerpt from the blog post about Ben Bernanke:

    The last time a slowing economy failed to moderate prices was the 1970s. Even as the economy slid into recession, we had major spikes in the prices of energy, food, clothing.

    What is particularly worrisome to me is that as we have slashed interest rates 225 basis points, consumer loans — mortgages and revolving credit — have actually moved higher.

    Gentleman, this is a major problem. And our internal, non-public projections forecast it is only going to get worse for the next 4 quarters . . .

    Paying a PR firm is not much different than buying PageRank, other than it perceived by Google as being cleaner.

    And if you are big into economic stuff here is some more good stuff…

    First, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report [PDF] offers a lot of great business strategies and insights. If you have never read any of his letters, make sure to read from the heading on page 5 or 6 about Business - The Great, the Good and the Gruesome right on through to the end of that section a couple pages later. You can also read Warren’s older reports here.

    Nouriel Roubini on The Current U.S. Recession & the Risk of Systemic Financial Crisis [PDF] offers a bearish outlook on housing:

    This is the worst housing recession in US history, and there is no sign it will bottom out any time soon. At this point it is clear that US home prices will fall between 20% and 30% from their bubbly peak, that would wipe out between $4 trillion and $6 trillion of household wealth. While the subprime meltdown is likely to cause about 2.2 million foreclosures, a 30% fall in home values would imply that over 10 million households would have negative equity in their homes and would have a big incentive to use “jingle mail” (i.e. default, put the home keys in an envelope and send it to their mortgage bank).

    Some of the early lending institution losses are being socialized by inflation and other sources

    Countrywide - an institution that was more likely insolvent than illiquid - has been bailed out with public money via a $55 billion loan from the FHLB system, a semi-public system of funding of mortgage lenders.

    And this is altering the online economy heavily.

    A few years ago credit card companies rewrote the bankruptcy laws, but mortgages have not yet been re-written to favor corporate interests. Nouriel Roubini highlights further risks associated with house price depreciation:

    What is happening is just the consequences of rational economic behavior. In most US states mortgages are non-recourse loans; thus, if a home owner defaults on its mortgage then banks take over the collateral - the home - via foreclosure but once that happens it cannot go after the borrower for any difference between the value of the original mortgage and the current value of the property.

    Aaron Wall, business

  6. Weekend Reading

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    Here are some interesting articles I recently came across.

    • Tapping into unconventional link attributes - tips to evaluate the value of a link, including the fresh boost and the actual lasting value of the link.
    • Beet.tv NYT report - Google traffic to NYT has doubled since unlocking their archives
    • Microsoft Tracking Search and Browsing Behavior to Find Authoritative Pages - even without PageRank you can easily discover authoritative pages largely through tracking usage data.
    • Yahoo! Buzz - a proof of concept of the Microsoft research…they look at search queries, emails, and votes to find what is really popular.
    • Portfolio.com interview of Michael Arrington - rather in depth interview explaining how Mike got into TechCrunch and how it took off to become a high paying full time job. With blogs being such an important part of the current structure of the web, reading the strategy of the leading technology blogger is a no brainer good idea.
    • 19.20.21. - project to research how population growth and urban living may alter the world and our ecological footprint.

    Aaron Wall

  7. The Future of Business Process Outsourcing

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    The Disadvantages of Low End Outsourcing

    My History of Outsourcing

    Last year I lost thousands of dollars multiple times outsourcing projects to people who could “do them no problem” until time for showing the results came in, and that capital was simply wasted. At the lower end, where people will take your money and do nothing for you or offer services not worth paying for, there will always be a market where people are glad to take your money.

    That piece of the market creates a market for lemons effect, be it SEO, web design, programming, eBay listings, whatever.

    The Cost Advantage of Outsourcing is Quickly Eroding

    Not only is there a market for lemons effect, but the cost savings advantage is quickly eroding:

    The reality is that wages are rising in India. The cost advantage for offshoring to India used to be at least 1:6. Today, it is at best 1:3. Attrition is scary.

    Jobs that are low value-added and easily automatable should and will disappear over the next decade.

    That means that if you provide a high value service, there is a greater presumed risk to hiring you, unless you have great brand strength and/or enjoy valuable personal recommendations. Worse yet, if the job is easy to automate eventually a computer will do it.

    The Problem With Most Outsourcing Projects

    Many people who look to outsource have a marginal business model and are outsourcing rather than improving their business model, in a last ditch attempt to try to keep it surviving after the business model is already in decay, without changing their business model to fit the current marketplace.

    High End Business Process Outsourcing

    You Can’t Outsource Loyalty

    At the other end of the market, some of the most talented people are also so ambitious that loyalty or output is limited. When I decided to change the SEO Book business model about 6 months ago I started working with one of the best programmers I have ever met. He did great work and started off faster than lightning, but he wanted to grow his revenues so fast and was so overwhelmed with work that he had a hard time making time for my project. In spite of me sometimes paying him 250% of his original rate, he and I both decided that it would be best if I finished the project with someone else. So then I ended up spending thousands more to have some re-learn some of the stuff he did, and then create custom coding to

    • verify the affiliate program would work and give the proper affiliate credit while changing the tracking method
    • cross reference account status and permissions across 3 databases
    • integrate it all with Paypal subscription data

    There are still a couple things with the site that I really need to improve (Drupal FlashVideo conversion and some stuff with the Autoresponder module), and that does not even include additional features I want to add. The second programmer is helping with some of it, I am doing some of it, and a third programmer is helping with some of it.

    Freelancing to Pro: Training Your Workforce for Better Jobs

    I outsourced the writing of one of my sites to a person who was passionate about the field. I let them be associated with the brand and put their name on it so they would be more passionate about building it up.

    I have marketed the site quite aggressively and gave them my ideas for how to create featured content and what topics to write about. That has lead to them getting so much exposure that other people are offering them higher paying jobs.

    There is an aspect of outsourcing where if you teach them enough and give them enough exposure they end up being worth more than you can pay them unless you already have a market leading channel.

    When Outsourcing Works Great

    Pre-made & Self Serve Software Packages & Services

    All the above models work so well because they

    • allow a single piece of work to be sold many times
    • use the feedback of many customers to improve the product

    Word of Mouth Recommendations

    • All my hosting providers that I recommend were recommended to me by other online friends.
    • I have a guy who makes banners for me who is fast and does great work. He was recommended by a fellow SEO.
    • My designer for this site and other sites came as a recommendation from other friends.
    • Most of my other custom service providers are people who read this site, learned to trust me, and built a relationship from there.

    My wife and I have only bought outsourced services via word of mouth recommendation that I ended up regretting on 2 occasions. In both cases, the person giving the word of mouth marketing was recommending themselves. Other than that, I have rarely had a bad experience with word of mouth marketing. And I think this is true for two reasons

    • you first learn to trust the source, and they earn that trust over months and years
    • then you trust what they recommend

    Spreading that risk out over stages lowers the chances of making a bad choice.

    How to Continue to Profit as an Outsourced Service Provider

    Seth mentioned this Gavin Potter quote a couple days ago

    The 20th century was about sorting out supply, the 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.

    As the cost advantage of outsourcing disappears, the web gets polluted with scams, the web gets saturated with competitors, and more offline conversations influence online transactions, it seems the best ways to make money outsourcing are:

    • work to build some of your own projects so you are not reliant on clients
    • specialize on a niche and own the idea
    • build a brand that demands market leading rates
    • give away a lot of value free to do your marketing for you and qualify your prospects
    • inspire customers and ensure you offer a remarkable valuable service worthy of word of mouth marketing
    • turn your service into a product that is sold as a service, and include customer interaction touch-points where it makes sense to add value

    Aaron Wall, business

  8. Expandable Google Map Local Listing UI Test

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    Here’s a new google UI test I’ve never seen before an expandable Google map result

    Sponsor:: Need help with your blog? Check out my SEO Services for information about site optimization, and content production.
    Related PostsUniversal Local Search and Direct NavigationSo here’s an interesting little discovery, type the following into your FF address bar
    Museum of Mod…Local Search […]

    Google, Michael Gray

  9. Linked in Goes Facebook

    5 months, 2 weeks ago

    Looks like Linkedin is going facebook offering status updates

    Some of the options are:
    Is working on
    will be traveling to
    is looking for advice on
    is looking for a job
    is reading
    I think it’s kinda cool but don’t come to linkedin often enough update it regularly
    Sponsor:: Interested in seeing your message here, contact me to find out how.
    Related PostsFacebook and […]

    Michael Gray, Social Media

  10. Google Bombs Defused … Not

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    So coming back from SMX (more on that later) I see a trackback from SEL about GWB ranking for [who is a failure].
    GWB also ranks for [who is a miserable]. While Scientology no longer ranks for [dangerous cult] they do rank for [cult dangerous] and [dangerous is cult]

    Now of course you can’t really expect Google […]

    Google, Michael Gray

  11. Why Does Yahoo! Search Lag Google & Microsoft in Ranking Newer Websites?

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Yahoo! has guys like Jeremy Zawodny marketing their fresh new search platform, and yet they remain behind the competition. Microsoft jumped into the search field way later than Yahoo! did, so why is it that Microsoft rankings for well promoted sites often roughly track Google rankings, while Yahoo! still has yet to give many of these sites an opportunity to rank?

    Here are some examples of what I am talking about (with URLs expunged to protect the guilty)…

    A couple year old site that was lingering about with a few inbound links and was promoted last November. Notice how quickly both Google and Microsoft took to the marketing, whereas Yahoo is still nowhere to be found

    Here is a site that was promoted from brand new. Notice how Google and Microsoft are trending toward trusting it more and more, while Yahoo! Search occasionally picks it up and then spits it back out again

    Here is yet another newish site that Microsoft loves and Google is starting to like more and more. Yahoo! is still nowhere to be found

    If you had to pick the 1,000 most competitive keywords on the web I think all 3 of the above would fall in that group. I could list numerous other example sites as well. All the above sites have been in the Yahoo! Directory for at least 4 months. Even with new sites and a moderate amount of targeted promotion it is not that hard to work your way up into Google and Microsoft’s rankings, but Yahoo usually ignores it.

    I have highlighted that Yahoo! Search has their domain authority score overemphasized in their relevancy algorithms, which causes a lot of parasitic SEO to dominate their search results, but do they even care?

    Can you rank a new site in Yahoo! for terms like insurance without getting it nuked in Google? What makes Yahoo! so much slower at ranking new sites than the other major search engines?

    Aaron Wall, Yahoo

  12. Content and SEO

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    There are many types of content some which you should be able to do yourself and some you just need professionals for :
    Your Intro Content : First off this really need to be done be an inhouse person that really understands your business and an external keyword researcher may come in handy here as they […]

    Dave Naylor

  13. Starting From Scratch in a Fair Market vs Building an Honest Sustainable Competitive Advantage

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Naive Excitement

    When you are new to the field of SEO there is a certain excitement in starting a site from scratch and growing it out into a flourishing enterprise. You ask someone to link to you and when they do you get excited. When you get cited without asking for it you get excited. And when the rankings start to show up you get excited. At some point you may even develop an irrational emotional attachment to some of your websites. I know I have.

    Fair is Fair

    Search engines teach you that there are equitable rules to follow. The rules keep shifting in accordance with the search engine’s business models, but somehow they are always fair. You see other people doing things that are “spammy,” but refuse to. When you submit your site to 100 directories, donate money for links, attend every conference that will link at you, or when you syndicate your content to dozens of websites it is not spam. Your content is quality, you follow the rules, and one day you will be rewarded for it. One day…

    Who Starts From Scratch?

    But do you have to start from scratch to be doing SEO?

    In Cosmos Carl Sagan said that “to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.” I tend to think the same way about SEO.

    • Some people who jumped on the web and were immediately successful started when the marketplace was much less competitive.
    • Some companies like Amazon.com lost millions or billions of dollars building their brands.
    • Others carried offline success and relationships online.
    • Some people have jobs or schools that offer them the opportunity to publish content on a trusted domain.
    • Some companies can do whatever they want because they have a big brand and/or a large ad budget.
    • Some people who are better salesmen than you may borrow your ideas, re-package them, and then talk trash about how ignorant you are.
    • And yet another group of people have a large following because they are highly biased and/or lie (ie: Fox News).

    What is Fair?

    Are any of the above categories unfair? Or is the concept of fair nothing more than bogus self-posturing by profit hungry corporations? Many companies who helped fund the large networks (affiliates, for example) later saw their sites classified as spam or priced out of the same markets they built by quality scores which said their sites are no good as the network got more competitive. Mind you many of these changes were not algorithm related, but were driven by direct human intervention.

    The rules keep driving value (and profit) to the networks. They appear fair so long as your interests are aligned with those of the network. But behind the public rules, they fund theft of copyright work hoping it leads to the original publisher giving in and partnering with them to wrap their ads around the content. In other cases, if you get too successful human intervention within the network votes against you while leaving your competition unscathed. Why did Text Link Ads get penalized while Text Link Brokers still ranks?

    Leverage Your Assets

    Not every strategy works for every person, but if you are starting from scratch thinking that you are following the rules, you are missing out on some fundamental truths of the marketplace. If you are not leveraging and building upon your knowledge, passions, curiosity, and social relationships every day you are losing money (likely to an inferior and/or less honest competitor).

    Take the Red Pill

    Some of the most effective SEOs buy and sell links, buy and sell websites, buy and sell companies, rent personalities to promote their sites, openly engage is link schemes, use successful positions to promote other similar positions, expand out to other high profit market positions, and do whatever they see fit to profit. It is not our job to create the algorithms, we just satisfy the criteria to rank.

    Take the Blue Pill

    Others start every project from scratch, hoping that one day the market will be fair and shine a light on them. One day…

    Aaron Wall, business

  14. Yahoo! Open Search

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    One of the biggest things holding back Yahoo! Search is their preference for Yahoo! content. As a shift in strategy, Yahoo! announced they are opening up their search results to third party data integration. Instead of a typical search result, some of the results with third party data may look like this

    Google has largely been pulling in third party data and doing their best to keep that traffic on the Google network. To appreciate how aggressive this has been, you only need to look at the increased size of Google local listings or the sharp decline in stock prices of traditional Yellow Pages companies, as highlighted in this WSJ article.

    A couple questions that remain are how interactive will the paid inclusion results get, and will the paid search ads get more interactive as well?

    Google has a similar program to what Yahoo! offers, with a couple major differences

    • Yahoo! will turn on third party data for some leading sites by default
    • Google requires you to learn their proprietary confusing language AND promote Google, Google Search, Google Subscribed Links, AND get your users to subscribe for you to get any additional exposure (and yet they wonder why it hasn’t taken off yet)

    Through different strategies both of the top 2 engines are turning their search results into destinations. Worth watching as it progresses. More information available at Search Engine Land.

    Aaron Wall, Yahoo

  15. Is Your Content Solving Symptoms or Fixing Problems?

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    A normal business practice is to treat symptoms as problems and come up with a wide array of bogus solutions, but content that asks why actually solves problems and creates real value.

    Once you look at content creation from that perspective, there are a lot of great content ideas that you will not find on many competing sites simply due to limitations tied to their business interests, or their lack of interest in providing real value to the market.

    Aaron Wall

  16. V10 Html Banner

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    this is a Closed Beta at the moment
    Get £500 free spins at JackpotCity and play the hitman video slot

    Dave Naylor

  17. Sponsored Links

    Recently

    Google

  18. Inclusionary Statements - Are You Willing to be One of the Best?

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    One of the things that a lot of thought leaders do is inspire people. It is easy to believe when they give you something to believe in.

    I recently stumbled across this page. Although it is just text, to me it seems just as powerful as listening to Barack Obama speak. It is not even the words that matter…it is the underlying tone and enthusiasm.

    Sometimes I am a bit too cynical for my own good. Far too often I place principal ahead of growth strategies. But most of that stuff does not matter. The future of sustainable marketing practices is more about creating inspiring stories than about knowing more or blending ads in content better. Which, I suppose, is a good reason to go to the gym every day. The better you maintain yourself the easier it is to be inspiring. Now that’s a holistic marketing strategy. :)

    Aaron Wall, marketing

  19. Asda Travel with Greenlight

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Companies with additional brands are always seeking SEO. This brings us to ASDA the well known brand who opt for Greenlight to do their seo who make a promise of “marketing success to its vertical brands”
    Let’s hope they do a bit better job of the descriptions in future…WTF is SASDA  ? Purposeful misspelling? me thinks […]

    Dave Naylor

  20. Free Stuff

    5 months, 3 weeks ago

    Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, announced his next book Free, in a featured Wired article.

    Speaking of free stuff, Patrick Altoft created a free Wordpress plugin to track which pages on your blog get crawled most frequently. Joost De Valk has a free newsletter dedicated to Wordpress plugins.

    Aaron Wall


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