1. Protecting your Backlinks

    2 weeks, 3 days ago

    How many time have you found a website started up a conversation with the owner and convinced him that his users reading about his “1967 VW campervan restoration” would fit perfect with your Client that sells “classic car insurance” , 2 months later you have 5 other people listed on there and you look like […]

    Dave Naylor

  2. Yahoo Free Money lol

    2 weeks, 3 days ago

    I got an email a few days back about a flaw in the Yahoo £50 deal… this one I’m actually running
    Start with £50 credit in your new Yahoo! Search Marketing account for a limited period only.

    It turns out they have flawed logic, and that you didn’t have to deposit any money ! I also read […]

    Dave Naylor

  3. Firefox 3 Bullshit 101

    2 weeks, 3 days ago

    I love firefox and i use it every day but this sort of thing makes me mad !

    OK,, Home truth time …
    IE never had the massive memory issues that Firefox has
    IE never got my IP address Banned in Google ( a Firefox plugin did ! )
    IE never gave my Adword/Gmail Password ( a […]

    Dave Naylor

  4. $100 of FREE Text Links

    Recently

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

    Text Link Ads

  5. an SEO, where did it all go wrong

    2 weeks, 4 days ago

    Some things in life you just can’t change ! fun loving hippy or corparate monkey boy
    I wanted a 1967 VW Camper - I have Bmw 5 series sports tourer
    I wanted a Apple MacBookAir like the cool kids - I have a IBM / Lenovo x300 ( awesome thou it is )
    I wanted a Beachhouse […]

    Dave Naylor

  6. Peter Norvig - Google Does Not Directly Use Search Usage Data in Relevancy Algorithms

    2 weeks, 4 days ago

    Anand Rajaraman recently spoke with Peter Norvig, who revealed that:

    • their best machine learning algorithms is already as good as, and sometimes better than their current hand roled relevancy algorithms
    • but they still prefer to use their hand roled algorithms because of hubris, and they feel that machine learning algorithms may be more inclined to have catastrophic errors on searches that do not look much like those in the training set

    I think a third piece (that you will never hear Google employees admit to) is that as the web’s structure changes Google feels they have use FUD to police the web and help ensure Google has revenue entry points into important markets. In their 2007 Google search quality rater guidelines they used a typical Commission Junction link as an example of a sneaky redirect. It is doubtful that Google would ever do that with AdSense code or a Performics link (since they own those).

    In the follow up post about his chat with Peter Norvig, Anand highlighted how Google measures relevancy. In the post he stated why Google prefers internal review data relative to using direct usage data:

    Peter confirmed that Google does collect such [usage] data, and has scads of it stashed away on their clusters. However — and here’s the shocker — these metrics are not very sensitive to new ranking models! When Google tries new ranking models, these metrics sometimes move, sometimes not, and never by much. In fact Google does not use such real usage data to tune their search ranking algorithm.

    Exposure from top rankings already creates a self-reinforcing effect because of the power of defaults. Further tying in search usage data directly into relevancy might not add much benefit to searchers, especially as more people click on the first search result. Anand further explained why direct usage data is not used to refine Google’s relevancy algorithms:

    The first is that we have all been trained to trust Google and click on the first result no matter what. So ranking models that make slight changes in ranking may not produce significant swings in the measured usage data. The second, more interesting, factor is that users don’t know what they’re missing.

    Aaron Wall

  7. Yahoo Google and Microsoft

    2 weeks, 5 days ago

    I really want to see the plus side of this as an advertiser but I can’t, other than that I can have the clients cancel their Yahoo accounts and just let Google serve the ads at a greater cost of course, well that’s how  Yahoo is going to make more money isn’t it ?
    The way […]

    Dave Naylor

  8. By 2009 Will PPC = AdWords? As Keywords & Industries Evolve…

    2 weeks, 5 days ago

    I created a new training module talking about how language in new industries changes over time, how you can track change, and how you can take advantage of structural changes. I made the first 1/3 of it freely available, but the action items are for subscribers only.

    I am still trying to figure out how to balance creating premium members only content and publish many posts to the blog. Which of the following ideas do you like best?

    • make one out of every few freely available forever
    • make a portion freely available forever
    • make new content freely available in its entirety and then make it exclusive after a week or some other period of time

    Aaron Wall

  9. Create more value than you capture

    2 weeks, 6 days ago

    Tim O’Reilly thinks the web is much bigger than search, and actually likes the Yahoo! deal. I think it is easy to overlook how Google is quietly winning marketshare in many non-search markets - and how they can easily build such positions using their brand recognition & distributed ad system. A throw away quote from Tim’s post is the title of this post:

    At O’Reilly, we always say “Create more value than you capture.” All successful companies do this. Once they start capturing more value than they create, their market position erodes, and someone displaces them. It may take a while but it happens eventually.

    Two of the easiest ways to ensure short term growth are to

    1. undermonetize to ensure you have a better user experience worth talking about
      • create some content that is easy to monetize aggressively, and leave most content clean and pure while only monetizing the most profitable content
      • use ad units that do not look or feel like ads, and/or ads that add value to the experience
    2. reinvest profits into building content & social relationships that get network effects on your site
      • feature your best content so it is easy to find
      • interact in the community
      • ensure your domain name and design add credibility to your content
      • create interactive or viral components that raise brand awareness even if they do not create direct revenue streams

    Aaron Wall

  10. Google AdWords Price Fixing

    3 weeks, 1 day ago

    In Google’s commentary about their ad deal with Yahoo! they wrote:

    This does not let Google raise prices for advertisers. Google does not set the prices manually for ads; rather, advertisers themselves determine prices through an ongoing competitive auction. We have found over years of research that an auction is by far the most efficient way to price search advertising and have no intention of changing that.

    Aspects of that statement are categorically untrue, perhaps even lies. In many competitive markets with lots of participants the ad market may set ad price minimums, but Google…

    1. publicly talks about how they tweak the number of ads they display to maximize revenues
    2. uses quality scores that allow them to give friendly businesses
    3. Google not only favors its own ads, but also creates custom ad units that only it can buy

    Abitrary Pricing Floors

    Google has articles in the media talking about how they tweak dials to optimize revenues. While many competitors have increased the number of ads they show, Google has been showing ads across a smaller portion of their search queries, as shown via this comScore data.

    If you do not pay Google enough they simply will not show your ads, even if there are no competitors. I have ads where I am the only bidder and I get a 17% clickthrough rate - and yet there is a 17 cent price on those clicks, rather than a true market floor. Bid too low and your ads simply do not show up - even if you are bidding against nobody.

    Preferential Pricing

    Getting your account Google slapped is a well known phrase amongst many affiliate marketers. One day your ads are going great, and then the next day every keyword has a minimum bid of $5 or $10 per click.

    On the flip side of that, many click arbitrage based business models are only profitable *because* a publisher gained access to a high authority trusted Google partner which allowed cheaper ad prices for the same keywords & ad units.

    Google has went as far as publishing information about the types of business models that they do not like. Unlike acceptable business models like reverse billing fraud and infidelity, selling ebooks on sites with ads might merit a low landing page quality score.

    Google Only Ad Units

    Google products are advertised aggressively across Google’s content network. Given that internal Google product benefit from brand awareness, bidding with funny money, and cheaper ad prices (since they don’t have to give Google a cut) others with similar business models can not compete.

    When Google recently entered the mortgage lead market they gave themselves an ad title of 49 characters, and a dropdown that is not available to other advertisers.

    Aaron Wall

  11. Yahoo! Inks Ad Syndication Deal With Google

    3 weeks, 1 day ago

    The WSJ reported that Google and Yahoo! have inked a non-exclusive ad deal

    Yahoo said it will display some ads sold by Google in an agreement estimated to generate $800 million in annual revenue. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo expects the deal to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

    Both companies have agreed to “delay implementing the deal for up to three and a half months while regulators review it.” The deal can be terminated at any point in time, but if it is terminated within 24 months Yahoo! will owe Google $250 million.

    The partnership is only for the US and Canadian markets, but expands beyond Yahoo!’s search results into Yahoo! content ads and even the syndicated Yahoo! Publisher Network. Given Yahoo!’s poor ad relevancy and that they are reselling Google ads, how will the Yahoo! Publisher Network ever gain marketshare from AdSense?

    Beyond the incremental revenue stream, this also gives Google another opportunity to spy on web users who use their largest competitor - allowing Google to get a better view of the average web user and making it easier for Google to clone and beat Yahoo! in any market where Yahoo! leads.

    Here is Google’s take, and the full Yahoo! press release is below

    Yahoo! to Strengthen Competitive Position in Online Advertising Through Non-Exclusive Agreement With Google
    Thursday June 12, 6:16 pm ET

    Agreement Advances Yahoo!’s Open Strategy; Enhances Ability to Compete in Converging Search and Display Marketplace

    SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, announced today that it has reached an agreement with Google Inc. that will enhance its ability to compete in the converging search and display marketplace, advancing the company’s open strategy. The agreement enables Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo!’s search results and on some of its web properties in the United States and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, giving Yahoo! the ability to display paid search results from Google, other third parties, and Yahoo!’s own Panama marketplace.

    Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which – and the pages on which – Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results. Yahoo! will define its users’ experience and will determine the number and placement of the results provided by Google and the mix of paid results provided by Panama, Google or other providers. The agreement applies to paid search and content match and does not apply to algorithmic search. The agreement also applies to current partners in Yahoo’s publisher network.

    Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang said, “We believe that the convergence of search and display is the next major development in the evolution of the rapidly changing online advertising industry. Our strategies are specifically designed to capitalize on this convergence — and this agreement helps us move them forward in a significant way. It also represents an important next step in our open strategy, building on the progress we have already made in advancing a more open marketplace.”

    “This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting point objectives with users,” said Yahoo! President Sue Decker. “It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well positioned: in the convergence of search and display.”

    Agreement Provides Attractive Economics and Enhances Search Monetization

    Yahoo! believes that this agreement will enable the Company to better monetize Yahoo!’s search inventory in the United States and Canada. At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

    The agreement will enhance Yahoo!’s ability to achieve its goal to grow operating cash flow significantly, while at the same time providing flexibility to continue to invest in ongoing initiatives such as algorithmic search innovation and search and display advertising platforms. It gives Yahoo! complete flexibility to continue to use its Panama paid search results.

    Significant Benefits Will Flow to Users, Advertisers, Publishers and Employees

    Users will also benefit from Yahoo!’s ability to invest incremental operating cash flow in ongoing improvements to its search services, building upon recent major innovations such as Search Assist and SearchMonkey. Advertisers will continue to benefit from multiple marketplace alternatives including Panama, Google and others. Publishers will benefit from a winning combination of distribution, monetization and services to help them grow their businesses. The financial benefits will enable Yahoo! to broaden the scope of its investments and initiatives, enhancing Yahoo!’s ability to offer attractive career opportunities to its employees.

    Terms of the Agreement

    The agreement will enable Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense™ for Search and AdSense™ for Content services next to Yahoo!’s internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results. Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network. The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a four-year initial term and two, three-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. It applies to Yahoo!’s operations in the U.S. and Canada only. Advertisers will continue to pay Yahoo! directly for clicks served by Yahoo! from Yahoo!’s Panama and Content Match marketplaces. Advertisers will pay Google directly for each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo! owned and operated network or certain affiliate sites. Google will share a percentage of such revenue with Yahoo!.

    In addition, Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.

    The agreement allows either party to terminate the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party. The agreement also requires Yahoo! to pay a termination fee if the agreement is terminated as a result of a change in control that occurs within 24 months. The termination fee is $250 million, subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google under the agreement.

    Although Google and Yahoo! are not required to receive regulatory approval of the deal before implementing it, the companies have voluntarily agreed to delay implementation for up to three and a half months while the U.S. Department of Justice reviews the arrangement.

    Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and Moelis & Company are acting as financial advisors to Yahoo!. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is acting as legal advisor to Yahoo!, and Munger Tolles & Olson LLP is acting as counsel to the outside directors of Yahoo!.

    Yahoo! will host a conference call to discuss the agreement with Google at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time today. To listen to the call live, please dial 877-391-6847 (reservation number 70308474#). A live audiocast of the conference call can be accessed through the Company’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/index.cfm. In addition, an archive of the audiocast can be accessed through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available following the conference call by calling 888-286-8010 (reservation number 84138579).

    Aaron Wall

  12. HisRoom & HerRoom European Venture

    3 weeks, 2 days ago

    Yet another perk of my job is to conduct interviews with clients and people that approach Bronco for advice. Tomima Edmark is a leading lingerie and underwear expert who I got to interview ( Yipeee) A subject so close to my heart ( no, I don’t wear women’s underwear) needed little coaxing from Dave for […]

    Dave Naylor

  13. Matt Cutts Hacked .. again

    3 weeks, 2 days ago

    Update : looks like MATT WASN’T HACKED.. he just likes Studs or something like that
    cmon Matt another linkbait, april the first joke ..
    my bloglines reader show this post :

    Now call me cynical but with all this false stories and linkbait, can we trust you Matt :O
    at the moment it’s just a holding page […]

    Dave Naylor

  14. Google Analytics, can you trust Google

    3 weeks, 3 days ago

    I’m not knocking GA at all by the way, but I was asked a question today that really made me think and think again, I hate when I have to do that .. Bronson a good friend over in South Africa works for a Online Casino, btw, I asked if I could blog his question […]

    Dave Naylor

  15. Smart Speaking, Deep Writing About Shallow Reading, & Great SEO Content

    3 weeks, 3 days ago

    J.K. Rowling gave the Commencement Address at Harvard this year. Two killer quotes:

    So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged.

    and

    Those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

    Nick Carr, who I was lucky enough to interview a few months back, wrote the cover article for this month’s The Atlantic. His story, about how the web is reshaping our minds, is important to consider from both a sanity perspective and a marketing perspective:

    The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and pop-up ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March of this year, The New York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the “shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.

    You can learn a lot about how ideas spread by playing on the web 16 hours a day, but many of the best ideas are either recycled from other markets and/or sparked by deep thinking from reading about other markets and determining how those markets & ideas intersect with your own. When I play online too much I start to feel stagnant and like I am not learning anymore. Reading a good book cures that.

    And, more SEO related, Joost de Valk wrote a 12 page Guide to Wordpress SEO, which goes nicely with our Blogger’s Guide to SEO.

    Aaron Wall

  16. Google Trends Adds Cool New Statistical Weighting Features

    3 weeks, 3 days ago

    Google Trends announced a cool new feature for determining the relative search volume between keywords:

    Suppose you own an ice cream shop and don’t know which flavors to serve, or suppose you’re responsible for stocking supermarkets across the country; Trends can help you explore the popularity and seasonality of your products. To conduct your own, more detailed analyses, you can now easily export Trends data to a .csv file.

    How can you use this data to build your business?

    • Predict seasonal trends, as mentioned above.
    • Better understand the relative volume of keywords to help guide SEO campaigns - especially useful for looking at longtail keyword modifiers given that this keyword data is broad matched.
    • Find what areas where different keyword versions are most popular.
    • View the brand lift of past marketing campaigns done by competitors (by cross referencing blog citations & Google news mentions with search trend data).
    • Better time marketing campaigns based on the performance of past campaigns.
    • Monitor how popular keywords come into being, and when derivatives become popular. SEO Book is far more popular than seobook (over 3X as popular - but only 50% more popular this year), and was picked up by Google Trends almost exactly 1 year prior to the less popular version.
    • Compare the growth of your brand to competing brands to understand general market growth trends.

    It would be nice if Google shared this data for lower volume search terms as well, but they typically only show it for more popular search terms. The one big warning with this trend data is that it is broad matched, as easily seen when comparing credit to credit card & credit cards

    Aaron Wall

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  18. Michael Gray for President

    3 weeks, 3 days ago

    Since Ron Paul failed to galvanize the interwebs I’m going to have to step up to the plate

    Sponsor:: Need help with your blog? Check out my SEO Services for information about site optimization, and content production.
    Related PostsMichael GrayWell some search engines seem to be having a hard time with the whole date/trust thing so let’s […]

    Michael Gray

  19. 4 Hidden Benefits to Monetizing via Google AdSense

    3 weeks, 3 days ago

    In the past I have been a bit hard on AdSense, stating how it cannibalizes publishing, but there are some up sides to Google’s AdSense too. Many people talk about the ease of implementation, scalability, and lack of maintenance cost, but 4 more rarely talked about benefits are…

    • Safety From Google Editors: Since AdSense is a Google product you never have to worry about internal Google quality rating guidelines calling an AdSense link a sneaky redirect (like they do with CJ links).
    • Profit From Spam: If you have a pharmacy affiliate or payday loan site then many people will consider the site spam by default. But if you tastefully write an article about such topics and then just happen to have AdSense on the page you are not viewed as a spammer by the general web public - Google (and AdSense) are a ubiquitous part of the web.
    • People Under-estimate Your Earnings: Many web publishers have published AdSense sites and made nothing. Thus if they see you publishing an AdSense site they may assume that your site earns nothing, and be less likely to clone your site and more willing to link at your site than they would be if your site appeared more commercially oriented.
    • The Informational Bias of Organic Links:Information is generally considered more citation-worthy than pages that sell stuff. Thus if you monetize via AdSense you can get inbound links to the money making pages without having to buy links. With most commercial offers you are stuck building links to other related pages and hope that internal anchor text & domain authority lift the page’s rankings.

    Longterm from a business sustainability standpoint it is nice to have direct ad revenues not controlled by Google, but AdSense can make for some nice short-term cash flow.

    Aaron Wall

  20. SEO Trust Matters

    3 weeks, 4 days ago

    Do you really know who you work with  ? Well, I’d like to think so.  DaveN and I were just having a discussion  on the matter of trust. One of the reasons for example that Bronco is successful is that the staff not only work as a team but play as one too, everyone shares […]

    Dave Naylor


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