I love Twit Cleaner!

Some of my work recently has involved creating a follow policy as well as helping manage a Twitter account for a software protection company called Wibu, through my job with illuminea (they’re illuminea’s client, not my own).

Anyways, I was going through the people Wibu were following and realized loads of them were irrelevant – based on their bios/descriptions – but that checking for dead accounts, bots etc isn’t easy based on Twitter’s web interface alone.

The problem is that the web interface will only show you a person’s 3 most recent tweets, and that you often need to click through to see each account, one at a time, after seeing the initial three.

(The reason you need to see more is that you’d have to check if this is someone who is self-centered, only tweets based on RSS feeds or otherwise uses Twitter in a way that won’t allow you to build a relationship with them.)

Also, you have to remember to open the user profiles in new tabs. Otherwise, when you click back, you start at the top of your followers list, and may need to wait for the AJAX to load more followers when you scroll down (the “view more followers” function that loads their profiles when you get to the end but without loading a new page) .

So there’s lots of points where the web interface slows you down when trying to prune who you’re following.

Enter TwitCleaner which is a Twitter app that will check all these profiles for common patterns of anti-social behaviour and generate a report for you. From there you can just click user profiles to unfollow.

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Read this brilliant comic by XKCD, parodying a popular field of internet marketing…

It’s funny because it’s an observation about reality which is absurd… and yet, I wonder if this is worth testing as an internet marketer…

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This is a guest post by Brian Patterson, a partner at SEO consulting firm MangoCo.

The Google Panda Update hit many webmasters like a freight train, leaving a long line of quality websites as collateral damage.  While the Panda update did have the noble cause of weakening the grip that content farms had on the SERPs, many high-quality, content-rich websites were cleaned from Google in one fail swoop.  To address the outrage found across the blogosphere, Google has provided a list of questions to ask yourself if you want your rankings to return.

From the list of questions Google provided, I’d like to propose 3 cheap solutions that could help get you back in Google’s favor.

1.  Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

I think it is a little ridiculous of Google to even consider this as something to base rankings on, but I won’t get very far arguing with them (I’ll leave that to Aaron Wall).

The question is, what could we possibly do to have Google think the answer for this is ‘yes’ for our website?   Remember, they are doing this via algorithm, so it’d be pretty hard for them to analyze our design or look for other superficial indicators of trust.

However, there are ‘tangible’ items that they can check for to indicate trust, and  what makes the most sense to me is for Google to check for the ‘Verisign Verified’ seal.  It’d be pretty easy for Google to look for this, and if it is there, the website gets the box checked on this question.  At ~$19/month, its a minimal investment if your website was previously making a great deal of money but took a big Panda hit.

2.  Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?

This question does have merit, but I really doubt Google’s sophistication to check for deep stylistic and grammar errors. While the built-in Microsoft Word grammar check is ok and probably on par with what Google would be able to do (my speculation), Apple’s built in grammar check is atrocious.

Rather than rely on these built-in tools, my preference of late has become a very comprehensive ‘cloud’ grammar check tool called Grammarly.  This tool grades the grammar of an article, performs comprehensive content reviews, and offers rich suggestions for improving the quality of an article.  At around $10/month, it is well worth the investment and I’m pretty confident it’s much more comprehensive in reviewing content than Google could ever be (because grammar isn’t the space Google operates in full-time).

3.  Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?

The recent ranking correlation data gathered and analyzed by SEOmoz is nothing short of shocking. Of all of the metrics they track, Facebook Shares (not ‘Likes’) have the highest correlation to rankings.  Google’s question on ‘sharing’ here, plus this corellation data, leads me to believe that Facebook and other social shares could be a critical signal in the Panda algorithm.  There are hundreds of tools to help in this space, but I’d like to point out a few of my favorites… and the best part is, these are free!

• ShareThis – Put this button at the end of your article.  It’ll give people an opportunity to easily share your content across a number of social and bookmarking sites.
• fbShare.me –  Facebook is making it more difficult to do ‘sharing’ and instead favors their ‘Like’ button.  Sharing on Facebook means that it can show up in another users ‘Top News’, whereas just ‘Liking’ a piece of content will not show up in one of your friend’s ‘Top News’. This handy little widget does all of the work for you to get ‘Share’ on your site.

In addition to these two tools, increasing your overall engagement in social media will ensure that your content constantly stays in people’s various social streams.

So there you have it, 3 tools that can help you beat the Panda update.  Matt Cutts has indicated that the Panda algorithm is not run daily, so it could take some time to bounce back after implementing all of the various changes being suggested.

This is one of the most sweeping updates Google has performed, and sites caught in the cross-fire can expect numerous tweaks and adjustments by Google as time goes by. By focusing on what Google is saying publicly about the update, we can attempt to make educated guesses on how to satisfy the various pieces of the algorithm.

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If so, I’d love to get a testimonial to that effect that I can use for my advanced SEO book.

Anything you can share about the following points in particular might be helpful:

• Case study
• Challenges finding time such as working 2 jobs etc
• Having a negligible budget to start with
• Before / after you started reading my blog

I’ll be happy to share the testimonial here on the blog and give you a dofollow link (with your chosen anchor text) for the time, so long as you’re being honest. Just type it into the comment box below along with your name, email and desired link/anchor text!

Thanks a bunch!

Gab

Update: Dan Hinckley of Exhibit Edge trade show exhibits is first in the comments. Thanks Dan!

Brian Patterson of Mangoco.com, a Virginia SEO company, emailed me the following.

“As a partner at a web firm increasingly focused on SEO, The SEO ROI
blog continually helps me keep in perspective that SEO isn’t just about
links or traffic or other basic metrics, its all about delivering a
positive ROI for our clients. Gab’s creative ideas help me continually
increase ROI, and our clients are loving us for it.  Thanks!”

Christina’s added a comment below. She runs a sleep help site .

“Mac help” by Mike. (See comments.)

—

Guys, if you want a link – I’d really appreciate specifics – stuff you’ve done based on this site or other details.

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Brett Tabke n the gang at Pubcon just added me to a panel entitled, Post Click Marketing: Landing Page Optimization. Here’s what I plan to speak on, per my application:

SEO experts regularly say that pages need more content to rank. While this is often true, it sometimes leads to silly design decisions, such as having a paragraph of text above rows of merchandise on an ecommerce site.

Surprisingly, problems like that one or common. In the tunnel vision of driving traffic, the light at the end of the tunnel (or funnel?) gets forgotten. Will a local and toll-free number mess up Google local listings? Will content available via AJAX or Flash (for better user experience) be hard for search engines to index?

I’m hoping to discuss that and share a case study on the work I’ve been doing for my dad’s dental continuing education site, as well as my own. For my own site, you may have noticed I added some plain internal links to the “active window” area … while the data isn’t conclusive yet, I believe I’ve already identified one new customer, based in NY, whom that helped.

Anyways, you definitely should get a free chapter from my upcoming book if you’re the type who’d attend Pubcon, and especially this panel. Why? Because the usability-SEO intersect is a key theme in my book. Oh, and you might want to get my latest posts, too.

Lastly, will you be going to Pubcon? I definitely encourage it (I wouldn’t have pitched if the show sucked), and would love to see you there!

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

“One way to fight this sort of strategy [Google's strategy of playing in every market] is Yahoo!’s sell or outsource everything but the logo strategy.” (-Google As A Publisher)

Amongst other moves listed there are the closing/selling of the Yahoo Publisher Network, Yahoo’s answer to AdSense, and the outsourcing of Yahoo shopping to PriceGrabber. If you take that along with Yahoo’s failure to ever take the analytics company it acquired out of beta, you see a pattern emerging:

Yahoo doesn’t stick by its products.

It launches divisions only to let them die later. It buys companies and does squat with them.

It’s well known in sales that large companies like dealing with large companies because they’re associated with greater stability. Stability is code for reliability / trustworthiness.

If you see the above pattern, and Yahoo offers to buy your company or partner with you… what’s your response going to be like?

Liked this post? Get a free chapter from my upcoming advanced SEO book.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

While working on some ecommerce affiliate sites, I tried to find the ecommerce merchant’s shipping prices. Unfortunately, it’s a remarkable pain in the neck to find shipping info at most mom-n-pop ecommerce stores.

I think it’s because they place a blind reliance in their ecommerce store’s shopping cart. The problem is that the cart was usually created by a programmer – not a customer service rep. So the priorities in design were easy coding, not easy buying. As a result, lots of shopping carts cause SMBs to lose sales.

Photo credit: Dan Chace, aka Lacrymosa

Here are some examples of what not to do, and why they’re bad ideas. If the ecommerce cart you want acts this way, switch!

1) Worst idea EVER: Ask for my credit card info before telling me the shipping price.

I don’t care about/believe your reassurance the card isn’t going to be charged until I click confirm.

I don’t know you. And your site looks like a 4 year old made it.

Quality graphics build trust – this is a well-known finding in survey after survey and usability test after test, as to what consumers use to gauge a site’s trustworthiness.

Asking for card information before telling me what shipping is going to cost would never even occur to someone offline. Imagine you go into a used car dealership and the salesman says, “give me your credit card info, then I’ll tell you the price!” – No thanks!

2) Aggravating, close second: Delay presenting shipping rate information until I get to the page where I type my shipping info.

While this may be logical, it assumes two things, incorrectly:

a) First, that I’m going to add to cart and go through a step or two in the process without knowing the total price. That’s almost the same as above.
b) Second, that you can’t just include a simple shipping calculator on product detail pages. It just needs to ask the Zip code and return a price. Simple database job that doesn’t cost more than $100 to program.

3) Third worst idea: Making money off shipping.

Yes, lots of people do it online. No, most consumers won’t find out. Buuuuuuuut…

What happens when you get caught cheating customers on shipping?

I’m not the first affiliate to create a price comparison site. Heaven knows there’s lots of them around.
It doesn’t cost much to have a virtual assistant browse the web and do the legwork to find product prices and shipping rates.
And affiliates, including myself, are increasingly SEO savvy, as well as usability savvy.

What happens is that you end up with a reputation management problem that costs you sales of that product. How?
People click on the price comparison result in Google and find you’re more expensive.
Guess who gets the sale?

If it happens frequently enough or blatantly enough, you develop a bad reputation and word gets around. Then you don’t just lose sales on that one product, but across the board. Ouch.

So think long term, rather than trying to take in a few extra bucks at [what turns out to be] your own expense.

A) Excellent approach: For low-ticket items (e.g. below ~$200), offer flat rate shipping countrywide, or statewide/provincewide. Present shipping rates in a chart. If you need to adjust a few dimes/dollars upwards for states further away, you can do so.

This isn’t ‘making money on shipping’ – it’s increasing convenience to customers. You can explain it, and people will understand. Consumers aren’t against profit, they’re against abuse.

Takeaway tips on ecommerce shopping carts and shipping rate information:

1) Offer shipping information on the detail page.
2) If possible, offer flat-rate shipping nationwide. Otherwise, you can present state-by-state (or province-by-province, in Canada) shipping rates in a table. Figure out your average price to ship to that state and use it.
3) If the order is large enough and you can afford it, upgrade the shipping so it gets to customers faster than expected. Amazon is famous for this practice – which they preferred over TV ads – and look how well it’s helped them do.

If you liked this post on ecommerce usability and conversion optimization, add my rss feed to your reader! Also, check out this post on ranking splash pages.

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• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
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In response to Google’s efforts to block access to Latma’s We Con The World parody, which is another proof of Google’s political bias and unreliability, I am going to go a month without Google search. I look forward to seeing how this works, and will report back. If you want to make a widget to this effect, or do the same, please feel free, and do let me know.

Again, this censuring of Latma shows the problem we have with Google’s dominance in search. If you rely on the information highway for access to information, and people put roadblocks up on certain branches of the highway, the highway’s very essence is undermined.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I’ve written some posts on A/B testing and split testing that have seen spam from people purporting to be from P*able. Personally, I find it surprising that a VC backed company would bother with poor quality blackhat tactics like such obvious comment spam, so I’m wondering if it’s not someone with an axe to grind against them. They’re not even in public beta yet though, so perhaps some marketing director there just purchased a really crummy SEO package trying to save some bucks.

Anyways, I hope someone responsible there sees this and adapts accordingly.

Update: I’ve had email followup from P’s founder and VP of Customer Development, Craig Bloem. After initially asking to speak over the phone or in person (impossible given my location overseas), he writes:

“I am not going to beat around the bush.  We had a community development manager who should have been writing more constructive thought provoking posts and engaging with the community in a positive manner. A mistake on our part that he was writing comments that could
be considered spam.  I take responsibility for that.  I appreciate you brining it to our attention and it is being fixed.”

Impressive, professional and responsible. I like it. I’ve removed the company’s name from the title of the post and from the body content so it won’t show up in search engines (or at least show up lower) and won’t cause them further reputation management issues.

For the record, I’m preserving one of the spam comments I got:

On a related note, I’m very impressed by the feature set of the shopping cart known as Pinnacle Cart. Anyone know if you can edit the shopping cart and/or split test it or MVT test the cart and other parts of their ecommerce site building system? E.g. Can I split test product or category page designs, for example? Can I MVT test the billing info page in the checkout? Etc…

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

And I’m lucky to have been nominated in two categories!

1. My post, “The 4.5 Personas of My SEO Site,” is nominated in the SEO category! If I get into the Finalists round, I’d love for you to vote for me to win!

The post has also made it as a reference for Full Sail’s Internet Marketing Master’s Degree.

2. My article on 101 advanced tips to buy text links also got nominated in the Link Building category.

Here’s hoping the judges will consider my writing good enough to go through and win!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Then you’re way ahead of the curve and understand what Matt Cutts is talking about, late in this video, on getting crawled and indexed more rapidly and deeply. If not, it’s time to understand search like Matt Cutts and read up on submarine crawling. This also goes back to what I was writing about thinking like search engineers and what Google wants. These are not merely abstract ideas, despite appearances. Grasping these notions puts you a step higher on the ladder, closer to “SEO Director” and further from “SEO data entry monkey,” because you can solve problems rather than merely execute other people’s solutions.

On a related note, my Tuesday class in Statutory Interpretation with Prof Klinck lead to an interesting observation on critical thinking. My prof pointed out the assumption underlying a provision of some labour law. I asked how he’d gone about identifying the assumption, because I would not have been able to.

His answer was as follows. To identify an argument’s assumption, try asking what is the stereotypical situation it has in mind. What is the paradigmatic example?

Then, alter one fact at a time. Will the situation still fit the paradigmatic situation? In marketing terms, a/b test each variable in the situation and see if you still get a paradigmatic situation or arrive at the same conclusions. By taking a concrete example, you can deconstruct what is necessary for it to fit the paradigm.

There are infinite ways to apply critical thinking like this, and search marketing in particular is rife with examples. Commenting on a blog post, improving existing techniques or practices, assessing whether or not to use a promotional method for a given client…

The possibilities are endless. I’d love to hear what situations this critical thinking could help you with!

(P.s. If you liked this post, you may find interest in link buying even Matt Cutts could love, and link buying’s evolution in 2009. You might even add my feed to your rss reader .)

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Stephen Shankland blogs for CNet on Digital Media, and he’s a reporter who learns fast and understands search marketing pretty well, especially for someone who’s not immersed in it 24/7 like many of us search geeks. Yesterday, he wrote a post highlighting some of the recent controversies about Google’s guideliness, featuring quotations from yours truly and Matt Inman, amongst others.

Check it out: Want top search results? Tread Carefully.

For me, this is a nice feather in the cap and certainly something to highlight on my credibility and recognition page.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I recently got this email:

Dear SEO ROI Services author,

Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.2 score out of (10) in the Technology category of Blogged.com.

This is quite an achievement! [If you say so, then it must be!]

http://www.blogged.com/directory/technology

We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style. [So quality wasn't a criteria? I guess I'm finally getting through to people how little quality content matters!]

After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.2 score.

We’ve also created Blogged.com score badges with your score prominently displayed. Simply visit your website’s summary page on Blogged.com:

[Badge picture was here.]

Click on the “Show this rating on your blog!” link underneath the score and follow the instructions provided.

Please accept my congratulations on a blog well-done!!

Sincerely,

Amy Liu

Marketing

amy@blogged.com

www.blogged.com

Matt Inman’s widgetbait for his new dating site got pre-emptively wrecked recently, in what most SEOs (see the comments on that post) thought was unfair punishment for someone starting out fresh in a legitimate, whitehat way. If we’re going to talk about widgetbait as spam [because it's unsolicited and obviously worthless here], this here is the prototype example, not Matt’s fun quizzes and such.
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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
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Things have been absolutely incredible here lately, as I’ve achieved a variety of milestones.

1. Matt Cutts complimented me and SEOROI.com by recognizing that I was one of the first two people (with Mike VanDeMar of the Smackdown blog) to notice Google indexing site searches.

Besides the lovely link that came along with that recognition, the compliment for SEOROI.com is to be called “high quality” by Google’s chief search engineer, and then again on the Google Webmaster Central official announcement. That is, Google is now performing site searches on those sites it considers to be of “high quality,” in order to try and discover “deep” web content. And SEOROI.com is getting that “deep indexing” treatment! (My friend Brian Chappell’s SEO blog is also getting this treatment.)

2. I’ve recently crossed the threshold of 550 subscribers. It’s kind of shocking to me personally, as I just recently told Susan Gunelius that my goal for the end of May was to cross the 600 subscriber threshold. It now looks like that could be attained within a week!

3. Alain McKenna wrote an article for Montreal’s main French newspaper, La Presse, on young tech entrepreneurs profiling yours truly! Emile Girard, who founded the Fanatique.ca Sports site is the other young tech entrepreneur featured. It also mentions Danny Sullivan (for giving me my shot at SMX West) and Rand Fishkin too (for teaching me so much about search!). You can click the reduced size picture below to see a full-size version.

I’d like to highlight that Alain is blogging at Quebec Tech (and Technomade), which he describes as a Francophone version of Montreal Tech Watch. For you mobile afficionados, Alain shares that Montreal’s hockey team is coming to a cellphone near you. Unfortunately, it seems I missed the first ontreal Mobile Monday, but I’m sure more will be forthcoming.

And of particular concern to all of us techies, is this post and video highlighting how Rogers, Bell and Videotron are already making the Net less neutral! Scary stuff, and Alain highlights the interesting tie-in with P2P sharing networks. In effect, access to BitTorrent is being slowed/blocked by the big guys. CBC released their who have a double interest in avoiding the distribution of CBC’s footage on the topic ! First because of their ties to the music industry, and second because they own competing properties. You’d think that internet access providers would have the brains to join the conversation rather than try to stifle it…

4. In the same sense, I’ve had the delightful pleasure to get linked to from SEO-News.de, which is apparently a huge search marketing news site in Germany. Similarly the German Internet Marketing News. And Suchmaschinen Tricks followed in kind as well.

While I’m linking out to friendly sources of traffic, I’d like to highlight Noonan’s post about Youtube. There’s also this fascinating story about Agoraphobia from Todd Mintz. And naturally I’m grateful to both Todd and Mike for highlighting our interview . Incidentally, I highly recommend Todd’s “Don’t”s and “Do”s for attending conferences – they were definitely in my mind at SMX.

5. Susan and I are doing a series of interviews at About.com, and my friend Gyutae of Winning the Web has asked me to do one for his site soon too. Incidentally, if you’re one of the people who got a link in the first interview, or get one in one of the follow-ups, why don’t you link back and send Susan some traffic? Besides the fact that promoting your publicity is always a great idea (as 10e20 shows), you’re strengthening your own backlinks by doing that.

6. I keep on meeting awesome people at Yulbiz and around different networking and business get-togethers, and even in the street, to the point where I can’t just organize my contacts’ business cards in a box anymore! At the most recent Yulbiz, I got to meet Eric Baillargeon of Pole Position Web Marketing (who ironically doesn’t have his domain on his business card … emphasis on the web marketing I guess hehe) . He’s got some interesting Facebook stats up.

I also met Renee Wathelet of En Direct Des Iles, Yannick Manuri of Espresso Interactif Consulting, Emmanuel Cesario (no site yet), and the very fine, friendly folks of Acquisio (PPC Software). Namely Marc, whose video with Rand I interrupted by accident, and Naoise.

7. I’ve been accepted to speak at SEM Canada. You can hear me on the link building panel. More importantly, there’s going to be a gaggle of brilliant people speaking there, not least of which will be Richard Zwicky of Enquisite Search Analytics, Bill Slawski of Key Relevance and SEO by the Sea, Jane Copland of SEOmoz, fellow Youmozzers Pat “Feed the Bot” Sexton and Melanie “Crash” Nathan (of SEOish and STATUSfirm respectively), and of course Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim!

8. My friend Hjortur twittered Guy Kawasaki and suggested he add me to Guy’s top blog aggregator site, All Top. Guy’s response? “Done. Great suggestion. Thanks!” (Speaking of which, Guy, you’re missing Slightly Shady SEO, SEO Smarty and many others.)

The fact of being on All Top itself isn’t really a big deal – if you care about an industry, you’re probably already reading all the blogs listed there already, so that mentions there will just expose you to people outside the industry if at all (current referrer stats from AllTop: a whopping 3 visitors!) – but compliments from a famous entrepreneur like Guy Kawasaki always feel good !

Ironically, he wrote me a pretty angry email the time I tried asking for his business advice, because I said that I was concerned he’d share it with others and then someone else would execute before me. I’m reading Guy’s the Art of the Start now (pretty good!) and finally understood why – Guy’s got a pet peeve about people asking for NDAs and such like. Guess he forgot about it since then!

So with all these great folks vouching for me and SEO ROI, perhaps you might care to subscribe to my RSS feed?

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

First, I present to you this amusing little email:

from seo expert <seseoexperts@gmail.com> to seseoexperts@gmail.com, date Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 8:04 AM subject Obligation signed-by gmail.com

hide details 8:04 AM (4 hours ago)

Reply

Hi there,

Thank you for taking time to read this email.

We provide high quality graphic design service like Web design, banner design, logo design and web development at a very low cost.

If you are interested, we are willing to Exchange link with you for our mutual benefit.

Please do not hesitate to contact fastlinkmaster@gmail.com for further inquiries.

Thanks and Best Regards
Link Department

We are not spammers and are against spamming of any kind. We are sending this mail with sole intention of link exchange for mutual benefit. If you are not interested in Link Exchange then you can reply simply “NO”, we will never contact you again.

Second, I’d like to share some genuine link love with people who’ve produced good content or have some points that deserve your attention.

1) Uber Aff has made some great posts, some of which are unfortunately buried in archives. Today’s post on how much to spend is a good place to start, then here’s something for those who are interested in blackhat PPC, how to contact human support at AdWords is another great one, and then this video Q&A just made me burst out laughing.

2) Daniel, a bright and friendly Sitepointer, has this very nice blog on building trust and credibility.

3) Quadszilla has an explanation on how to daisy chain your Diggs and gain more social success.

4) This is a year old, but imho, still very true and still very fresh: Crowd Clout aka collective purchasing power.

5) Besides trolls, there’s a much darker face to Web 2.0 and social media. Read antisemitism in web 2.0 and social media to find out more. On a related note, please do link to Jew Tube and to this Jew. If you’re wondering why I’m doing that, read this: Google’s explanation of why the antisemitic Jew Watch ranks for “Jew”.

6) For those of you interested in outsourcing tech overseas, Israel has some of the best IT labour in the world. Thus have a look at Launchpad Israel’s relaunch. On the more strictly search marketing side of things, that link right there takes you to my friend Omer Shoval’s Israeli search marketing company. If you’re in the job market, you can check out these Israeli SEO Jobs (in Hebrew).

7) This one is new to me, but not new generally: How Google Emulates the Las Vegas Casinos in Trying to Control The Web’s Rules. John Andrews is a bright guy, and that’s a cutting indictment!

I’d like to point out to you that from now on, you can find all my blog posts at SEOROI.com/blog, while the best ones will be reserved for the front page. That was the original intention, but my original developer never got around to doing that (although the other stuff he programmed works pretty well).

p.s. Coming soon: My interview with Barbara Ling, a veteran webmaster, as well as some affiliate marketing posts that compare networks by an objective criteria and help you decide who to sign up with.

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• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
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• If knowledge is power;
• If information is knowledge;
• And if Google is organizing – and, more importantly, distributing – the world’s information;

Then isn’t Google the single most powerful organization in the world?

If you like this post, get my RSS feed. When Google went through update Florida, hundreds and thousands of webmasters lost rankings. They saw their earnings cut overnight. The sad reality of competitive webmastering today is that many webmasters depend on Google – and on search engines generally – for traffic.

Independence Day in New York City courtesy of Insky at 23HQ.

Being the best SEO in the world is not a substitute for a business plan.

It is time for webmasters to become independent from search engines. Google has far too much power over the internet’s economy. If the internet is the information superhighway, then Google is its expensive tollbooth.

Here are the 5 actions that webmasters can take to regain their independence and return balance to the web’s power equation [insert Star Wars joke here].

1. Use alternative search engines for your own searching.

2. Find alternative sources of traffic.

3. Develop alternative sources of revenue.

4. Create sites you’re passionate about.

5. Look at offline tie-ins and monetization opportunities.

6. Bonus (always underpromise and overdeliver): Block Google’s robot.

1. Use Other Search Engines.

Webmasters made Google. It’s important to remember that. When I say made, I mean spread the word and built its share of search. Case in point: My best friend in high school, a webmaster, introduced me to Google and was like yeah, this search engine finds you what you want (big improvement over Altavista!). I made it my homepage and got others using it. (While it’s true that I rank for Google sucks, I used to love that SE.)

So to begin with, webmasters can also ‘make’ other search engines. Become a brand evangelist for Yahoo (whose very cool Brian Gil I got to meet at SMX!), MSN (likewise Kevin Hagwell and Kemp P) or Ask . Actually, I’ve been using Ask increasingly lately; my spammer buddy here has the hardest time with their algo, so you know that their results are likely to be the best. And additionally, Ask can be very good for doing SEO research and footprinting. (On a related note, you may care for the 5 growth opportunities for MSN’s share of search.)

Moving beyond these guys, the local space has plenty of players, whom Greg Sterling does a great job of covering. An important one that doesn’t get its fair props is MapQuest, which Google Maps largely ripped off (driving directions? wonder where that idea is from).

Update: Apparently Ask is being killed. Well, Yahoo’s still pretty good. Besides, when Google’s spamming Google, who’s left?

2. Find alternative sources of traffic.

Social

Social media news sites can deliver a ton of visitors – my own primary traffic sources are StumbleUpon and Sphinn, in that order. Both deliver multiples of the traffic Google sends and more targeted traffic too! You should see some of the comments and/or bright people that visit here from Sphinn!

Likewise social bookmarking can deliver floods of traffic, though I personally have less experience with that. Another very interesting option is social video hosting sites. If you can search for Blendtec video, you’ll see the commercial potential, but sticking strictly to traffic, ReadWriteWeb also had an excellent piece on a coordinated campaign that took over the whole most popular section at Youtube for a period of time, resulting in millions of views and corresponding traffic.

Blogs, though they seem less buzzy than social media lately, are also huge. While we can’t all give away branded Ice scrapers , there are dozens of ways to drive traffic using blogs. A favourite thing I read was this case study on Marketing Sherpa where a new, unknown author built relationships with bloggers in her niche and then got links, traffic and sales by pitching them free copies of her book in exchange for reviews.

Blogs apparently need marketing too courtesy of Mygdal at 23hq.

Similarly, Marketing Sherpa cited me (the citation came before I read their case study) in their Wisdom 2007 PDF on the importance of networking for linkbuilding. That is, linkbuilding for the traffic. Remember 1998? When you would find new sites through links on other people’s sites? Well believe it or not, but people still do that. And the sites giving those links aren’t doing halfbad…

Another thing you want to be mindful of is to be generous with your links. Ann gets it, and she’s alluded to it in a post on linking out at Dave’s. The more you give, the more you’ll get.

Directly Paid For Traffic

No, I’m not referring to PPC. I’m talking about buying domains for the traffic. Try Namepros for a great starting location, then branch into the specialized blogs and forums to learn more and do more research. A growing trend is IDNs, or domains that use non-latin characters (think accents, etc.).

I’m talking about distributing press releases in the places where influential people read them and come by to followup. Do this when you have fresh, noteworthy ideas. And then, of course, network with the relevant journalists.

I’m talking about buying banner ads. Those miserable web 1.0 inventions don’t work? Actually, at least if you’re buying them for retargeting/remessaging, they do. This, per a $30,000 adspend (admittedly larger than most indie webmasters, but then it depends on your goal, niche and ROI) that boosted branded search 20%, all according to Kelly Gillease, of Viator. She gave one of the best presentations at SMX West (yes I realize I keep saying that but there were so many outstanding ones that I can’t help myself), which is where I have this info from. And what’s more, you get bonus marks for building brand awareness and making your property defensible.

3. Develop alternative sources of revenue.

I’m not an expert on monetization by any means (though I do pull my weight at selling SEO services), but then identifying the options available to you doesn’t necessarily take the most advanced online money maker to lay out. First point: CPM and even CPC advertising is largely a business model that works if you’re big. Until then, find something else.

Affiliate Marketing with CPA – Cost Per Action - You can be the salesman on commission of the web. Find a product and promote it for less than your commission. Then boost your conversion rate and/or send more traffic through. Note: You can do affiliate marketing selling clicks, not just actions. And CPA can also stand for cost per acquisition, which is the advertiser’s point of view on the thing; it can also be used as a PPC success metric (“Our adCenter CPA was under our yellow pages CPA”).

Site Flipping - I used to run a site flipping blog until I realized that writing several blogs means writing nothing. The bottom line is that you shop through Sitepoint’s forums for decent sites that are lacking tender loving care, nurse them to health, and sell out once the revenues have grown. Peter Davis knows his way around this market rather well. This is a service-as-a-product business model, bundling services (your design, coding, seo, monetization or other webmaster skill) into a product (the site).

Become a Microlender – Long story short, you form a syndicate with other people and lend $50 – $200 per person, which in aggregate works out to a loan of a few K. You make a lot of loans, spread the risk and take the interest. Netbanker does a great job blogging this space, and Jim’s generous answering emails. (And as a domainer, I picked up Microbanking.ca and have plans for its development .) This one isn’t strictly webmaster stuff, but so much of it s happening online that I had to include this.

Domaining – Buy and … hold! Or buy and develop. Buy and sell is for the short term folks; domain values are increasing annually (though Google stock’s recent dip should make for interesting effects on the domain aftermarket). Domains with natural type-in traffic, as alluded to above, can earn you good money with either CPC advertising on them or through CPA offers. My favourite community, and a place I still go when I’m in the market for the good stuff, is Namepros (Namepros screen capture by GRhawkins). Friendly, helpful, smart and with some really awesome sticky threads, the community there is one of the best.

Sell Services Freelance - If you’re reading this, do I really need to explain to you how this works? Blog, network, and you’ll get gigs. You can also start with the eLance, guru, scriptlance, craisglist, odesk and other classified sites of this world.

Advertising - This is the last resort. The others will give you a better ROI, provided you’re active and work hard. Advertising can have you be active and work hard and still pay crap. Believe me – I did AdSense for 9 months on my first (fairly popular) blog and made like $33. And apparently my account is dead as none of my gmail addresses let me login, so Google even took away the $33. But anyways, there’s direct ad sales, there’s CPM ad networks, CPC and many more. No need to put more money into the Goog.

Hat tip to Shady (again!) for laying out your options to monetize with CPC and CPA.

Many of you reading this will be better versed in monetization than I am, I’m sure, so please share your suggestions in the comments. Self-promotion is fine if it’s relevant.

4. Create sites you’re passionate about.

This is something that’s been said several times, and which Todd Malicoat (now at Clientside SEM)and Mike Gray repeated to me at SMX West, during our interview (coming soon!). Incidentally, they’re also largely inspirational to this post (I was also a little starstruck, but we won’t tell anyone lol). Todd Malicoat, Michael Gray and Gab Goldenberg

Let me share a story. My friend Jon Villiard has a humour and jokes site. Besides networking with yours truly offline (hence me knowing about him and linking), he has followed up repeatedly by email and kept in touch (another reason for the link). But what’s really key here is that his site is succesful because he’s passionate about it and puts consistent effort into it. He’s got 600 subscribers, a good chunk of traffic (largely return visitors as I understand it, and thus fairly defensible) and makes fair money off of it. It’s ugly as sin (he says so himself), but it’s also a labour of love and that’s why he’s been succesful.

You can succeed without being passionate, it’s true. But it’ll be a lot more expensive as you hire out writing and networking functions and be less fun, as you turn into a glorified project manager (unless that’s what you enjoy, and in truth that can be fun too). And yes, I did mention networking because that’s a crucial part of linkbuilding.

5. Look at offline tie-ins and monetization opportunities.

Despite all the hype about Google buying billboards or selling newspaper and radio ads, they still aren’t the far-reaching conglomerate that a GE represents, for instance. If you convert offline, it’s much harder for your business model to be copied or destroyed by aggregators.

Suppose you have a credit community site. You develop a credit program called “Rich and Famous Credit” and make it by invitation only. Initially, you give invitations to some of the best community members who represent the safest bets for repayment. Then they invite friends.

Also, to make it exclusive in a way that can’t be automated, reject 1/1000 applications. In most people’s minds, that’s approximately the threshold between winning the lottery and popular acceptance programs.

The result of all this is that your business ends up largely revolving around offline conversion. Additionally, you have a brand/coolness asset built up from being exclusive (making it harder to ban you if you do shady stuff a la BMW), and even cooler, there’s a circle of trust. Members will only want to invite people who represent good credit risks, lest it reflect badly upon them and get their acceptance in the group questioned. All of which brings us back to motivation.

Here are some other offline oriented ideas to avoid easy replication by intelligent coders.

- Google cannot, short of abandoning its whole business model, sell you a cup of coffee. “Cup of Coffee” AdWords ads as yet do not pop out a fresh-brewed cup of mocha from your PC, last I checked.

- Don’t build on others’ platforms. It’s unclear whether the lawsuit against Scrabulous will have any effect, but if it turns into a lawsuit against Facebook, you can bet that the settlement will kill off the popular app in favour of an ‘official scrabble game’ app. Building on others’ platforms is not a long-term business model.

- To the extent possible, brand yourself. Engines can’t ban you lest their results become ridiculously poor for branded search terms. That said, if you brand yourself as someone breaking Webmaster Guidelines (think TLA), you’re between a rock and a hard place.

- Get patents and preclude the engines/aggregators/smartypants programmer-entrepreneurs of the world from copying your stuff. You can also look to use intellectual property (IP) to the extent possible. For instance, computer programs are protected as literary works, here in Canada (at least, that’s what I understood from my IP class; no that’s not legal advice). Some further resources to check out on that score are Sarah Bird, SEOmoz general counsel consigliere; Dozier Internet Law (nice meeting you at SMX West, Lew er, Ted, and likewise Darlene);

6. Bonus: Write a robots.txt that blocks Google’s robot.

The less relevant its search results, the more you redistribute power as people choose alternative engines to power their searches. I’d like to claim this idea as my own, but I learned it from none other than the grandmaster of search himself, Danny Sullivan. I can’t find either Sphinn comment (he said it twice on separate occasions), but if someone has it and links to it in the comments, I’ll update this post and link to the industrious commenter as well.

For yourself, blocking Google might lose traffic in the short run, but if you’re building defensible sites, that traffic should be a minor percentage of what you get. To be fair, this is a tough tactic to recommend, especially as an SEO. I recognize it isn’t for everyone. While I can’t block Goooglebot here on SEO ROI because it would be a credibility bomb (there’s another domain I own: Credible.ca), I am planning to do just that with other sites that are in development.

7. Extra Extra Bonus: Here are further resources to help you on your way to independence.

A. The inspiration for this post largely comes from Andy Hagans, aka Tropical SEO, whose ten point defensibility quiz is a must. Also, you could do worse than read his post: How to build a site that you can sell for $1M. See also his: “Are Your Sites Defensible?”

B. Another inspiration is the indefatigable Aaron Wall, who has been generous with his time more often than he should. While widely regarded as a genius for his SEO knowledge, the man’s business acumen is also very strong, and between his sharing his time and business acumen, he also gets acknowledged for inspiring this.

This post on search engines becoming aggregators shares a case study and encapsulates much of his recent thinking on business models. Bottom line: Don’t build something that the SEs/platform you’re on can knock off easily. See also Google Isn’t Indexing the Web, they’re Creating their Own, by Shady. About Facebook, Aaron wrote similar stuff to his opinions on Google, though I can’t find the post, and returned to the idea recently, in discussing destinations. For a related read on the future of directories, see my article The New Directory.

C. For all my bashing of reliance on search traffic, if we’re talking about the bigger webmaster picture here, then why not look at these 3 SEO Strategies (Not Tactics) To Make You Think? And while we’re talking about doing what we feel like, rather than what the engines attempt to dictate, consider this on link buying with the best anchor text idea EVER (see also the great comment by 5ubliminal).

D. Somehow, I forgot to mention Rae’s affiliate evolution in all this. She’s an independent webmaster that can teach all of us a lesson or two. (Like how affiliate recruiters should respect their affiliates’ privacy, and PPC marketers should make the local relevance clear, especially with regards to shipping.

E. Extra Kudos to Jim Hedger of Markland Media, Webmaster Radio and Metamend for bringing clarity to all of this by stating [during our interview for Webmaster Radio] succinctly and very pithily:

“We [webmasters] make the environment we live in.”

If you as a webmaster only take away one thing from all this, ask yourself the following. “What is my business model and how can I eliminate any dependence on search engines, and Google in particular?”

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Actually, I didn’t. And that’s why this post matters.

Money shot by Tracy O.

If you’ve been around the internet marketing sphere for any extended period of time you’ve seen one of these hypey, outrageous headlines. They suck you in by telling you half the story, but when you read the content, you find out one of two things:

• You’re at a Getrichquickbank-run one page sales letter landing page. Some guru will unveil the “the secrets” of how he/she/they made $3000 each and every week, while sitting in their pyjamas reading the newspaper and eating croissants. Or drinking their coffee, rather, as these people aren’t usually sophisticated enough to appreciate French pastry. When I was at Andy Beard’s (who is a truly bright guy), I saw a badge for Rich Schefren’s crap, featuring something about a $580,000 video. Puh-leaze.
• You’re reading a post by some legitimate author, in which case, they’re disguising the fact that they actually worked long, hard hours building up to the point where they can make $3k+ a week. Skellie (for whom I have a lot of respect for, just to be clear) wrote a post like this, albeit relating to subscribers: How To Get 1100 Subscribers in 5 Days. Here’s an excerpt:

“I had decided to be optimistic and hope for 100 subscribers in the first week. Clearly, I had underestimated the value of three factors:

1. A loyal audience.
2. A profile in your new niche.
3. Connections with other bloggers.”

So if it took you a while to build up the audience, profile and connections, why did you say that it can be done in 5 days? Because sensationalism sells, and when so many people are suffering from information overload, titles like that obviously help break through the clutter.

But sensationalism is also really annoying, and a time-waster. Frequently, it can hurt your brand too, as with a certain goofball’s repeated exclamations that SEOs suck. Likewise with the search conference that, as per their website magazine ad, is inviting him to speak again (I’m pleased to say that it’s not the search conference I’ll be at). Does Jason Calacanis have anything to say that could be worth an SEO’s time?

Personally, I’m extremely turned off by these titles because I know that they’re misleading. The only reason Skellie’s got a link is because there’s some decent content there. But as part of my frustration with this tactic, the link is nofollowed. (@ Skellie: Since you regularly write quality content, let it stand on its own two feet. Your readers will appreciate it more.)

I’m speaking about my own frustration with sensationalism and similar tactics. But I’m sure many other people are sick of seeing flamewars and ignore them too. And if my experience/opinion is at all a bellwether – and as far as calling trends, I suggested to my college economics prof that a recession was looming for 2008 back in mid-07, and I called Google’s stock dropping under $500 – many others are tired of this too.

Think about that next time you make $7538 in a day. Drink some more coffee before you click publish. Maybe even eat a croissant.

Update: Rishi gets a link to Treatment Search, and Mike Tekula gets another link for his Web Design & SEO shop.

As always, your thoughts and insights are welcome (likewise social media votes ;D), and the better ones are rewarded with dofollow links here in the post. Also, if you liked this post, check out my friend Charlie’s blog on why trust matters, and my earlier post on credibility and linkworthiness.

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I’m a Bookworm. Really. So I’d say I’m reasonably well-placed to give out some Charity Awards for for Search Education. The way it’s going to work is that everyone who wins an award gets a shiny badge and has their name added to the donation I’m making to the Africa Is Real charity. They’re a Montreal group started by some friends I met at the OWN conference.

Picture of book stack courtesy of Luna Whimsy.

As to the prize money… I’m still a student so the total’s a modest $200. I figure it’s still better than nothing. 2008′s looking like a good year for business so hopefully next year’s Cases will feature a larger prize. Also, commenters who pledge $100+ to AIR in the comments will get a dofollow link added to their site in updates to this post, though they won’t be awarded Cases, obviously. And I know the people running AIR, so if the pledges aren’t made good, your link here will get removed.

Without further adieu, let us get to the presentation ceremonies!

First, let’s begin avec les mentions honorables.

Eli of Blue Hat SEO – His Empire and Empire Strikes Back posts are classic, not to mention his more recent series of answers. There’s gold buried in those archives.

Smaxor of Oooff – Smaxor’s taught me a whole bunch of things. This terrific bit on local, for one, opened my eyes in a few ways. His attitude towards learning is also one I’m highly appreciative of. And for those most interested in “making money online,” read his excellent affiliate marketing vs adsense post.

Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People – As someone fascinated by SEO as a business, Jeff’s really someone I look up to for knowing what he’s talking about and walking the walk. See his ideas on account management for one. While I disagree with some of his points on building an SEO business, it’s still instructive. And how about this original research on Sphinn?

Hamlet Batista of HamletBatista.com – The founder of RankSense knows his search tech, he does. He knows about paying to play and scoring more points, understands that sharing is good for the [social] environment, besides sharing lovely case data on growing mindshare. Did I mention that RankSense is exhibiting at SMX West? (Thursday, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:30.)

Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide – Andrew’s one of my favourite people in local (the others are Mike Blumenthal, Mike Belasco, Sebastien Provencher and Greg Sterling). His analysis of YellowBot brings a whole new meaning to SE friendly design.

Frank Watson of Smart Keywords Search Marketing – Frank is one of the best minds on AdWords and PPC, and he’s proven it countless times with his selfless, generous help at the SEW forums (nickname: Aussie Webmaster). Take a day (or a week, more like) off to look through his threads and posts to educate yourself. For some reason I’d initially forgotten Frank (I guess because this was oriented towards bloggers), but chatting again recently reminded me how much he’s taught me and how much I’ve still got left to learn!

Halfdeck of SEO 4 Fun – Half tests stuff, he figures out the engines weighting of individual ranking factors and generally thinks like an engineer. He’s likely to hunt the forums for their best content and has the knowledge to show for it. Much respect!

Les Récipiendaires du Prix des Bollés * sont:

Ann Smarty of SEO Smarty – From tasty blog flavour food for thought, to four-tenths tips, Ann is a force to be reckoned with. In next to no time at all, she’s won awards and gained a following on SU that repeatedly sends 200+ visitors here in no time. Another thing she taught me personally was that when you link to a site that is run on wordpress, you need to have your own post ping technorati for the link to appear in their dashboard. Makes those attention bait efforts more effective . This social jedi is wise in the ways of the force, and you’d be wise to subscribe to this smartie’s feed, too!

Rebecca Kelley of SEOmoz – Wit, friendliness and a great understanding of query intent make Rebecca a leading authority to my mind. Not to mention how hard this girl works! Most importantly I think Rebecca’s network has surpassed Rand’s by now (says A LOT, imho, because Rand has a killer network) and how she does it is instructive. There’s the Youmoz editing with generous feedback, conference speaking and networking, and leadership roles in the search community.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Matt Inman of 0at (tie) – Rand for his consistently high quality blogging and top notch answers in the SEOmoz Q&A. Matt for opening our whole industry’s eyes to the concrete commercial value of linkbait (the post of 2007, imho) and for his generous accessibility and willingness to explain ideas and concepts in private chats. It’s a shame this daring duo split up, as I don’t think SEO’s other linkbait couple are nearly as cute together …

(Photo of Neil Patel and Cameron Olthuis courtesy Dave “Search Rank” Wallace)

Dave Naylor of… Dave N – For those damn brilliant Whiteboard Friday videos. KILLER CONTENT!

Martin Lessard of Zero Seconde and Shana Albert of Social Desire – Together these two blogging socialites finally got the value of commenting – building relationships – through my thick skull. Martin did it in his chapter of Pourquoi Bloguer Dans Un Context D’Affaires (Why Businesses Should Blog) and Shana did it in a post of hers (which I can’t find; if you do, please leave the link in the comments or email it to me). I hadn’t figured it out in about 2 years of blogging!

A lot remains to be said on the topic of commenting, however. For instance, a comment can be just that – a one-off, throwaway that shares some feedback and moves on. Or it can start a conversation (like Gyutae‘s comments), which is why threaded comments and new comment email subscriptions are great. When do you use one and when do you use the other? Where is commenting appropriate? Where is conversation a better choice? And what motivates people to do one or the other?

Mike Blumenthal of Understanding Local – For making it clear where reviews were being pulled from, how frequently, and the importance these played in Maps integration. If I had anything to pitch 3rd Door Media about, regarding speaking on SMX West’s local panel, it was because Mike taught me about reviews. (Check out some of my own stuff on maps and reviews here.)

* Translated: Recipients of the Really Clever People Prize

Les Récipiendaires du Grand Prix de L’Excellence ** sont:

Maki – It seems that everything I read at DoshDosh.com is premium content. Ok, there have been a couple of exceptions where I think he’s dumbed things down and/or ignored the fact that his blog’s audience is composed of advanced marketers. We see very much eye-to-eye on the importance of influencers and how marketing is ultimately all about influence. (I actually wanted to buy Influence.ca, but apparently someone got there first.)

Slightly Shady SEO – When every post that someone writes for a whole month goes hot on Sphinn – on the merits of the content – it tells you something about the intellectual capacities of the author. Shady is a very quick learner and fine observer of both human and computer behaviour, as he’s demonstrated to me countless times in offline conversations.

Know why the first few words of your title are key to going hot on Sphinn? Shady pointed this out to me by having me consider my own behaviour. I often look at the top 10 most Sphunn in upcoming to see what’s worth a vote or two. The titles of these posts in the ‘hot in upcoming’ sidebar cut off after a certain number of characters. So it’s essential to moving up “What’s Hot in Upcoming,” Shady showed me, that your title’s first words draw attention.

This is the man who’s solved both Sphinn‘s human algo and Google’s Captcha. And even when it won’t earn him a sphinn or a link Shady helps others, which generosity I can testify to, as can Carl.

** Translated: Recipients of the Grand Prize of Excellence

Case winners can copy-paste the following code to put the badge on their site. If you feel that the badge is cheesy because it reflects my logo/colours, let me just say that I’m not trying to be Matt’s SEMMYs or the SEOmoz’s uber-sexy awards (designed by … you guessed it, Matt Inman). These are my own opinions, as the title of this post reads. And the badge reflects that. So whether you use it or don’t use it – keep up the quality content .

Large version: <a href=”http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/charity-awards-for-search-education”><img src=”http://seoroi.com/case-white-big.jpg” alt=”CASE Charity Awards for Search Education” align=”right” /></a></code>

1. Small version: <a href=”http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/charity-awards-for-search-education”><img src=”http://seoroi.com/case.jpg” alt=”CASE Charity Awards for Search Education” /></a>

It’ll look something like this:

Congratulations to the Case winners and good luck to all of you in 2008!

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

I’ve gotten two emails from a certain “RankRanker@gmail.com” (aka “webmaster@RankRanker.com”) trying to sell me their “Free SEO System and Link Exchange With Extra Earning”. While spam email pitches for terribly named, grammar-rule-flaunting, “get rich quick” systems (NEW: Now With An SEO Twist!) are high on my priority list of things to pay attention to, that I’m going to have to politely decline the offer. I’m so busy considering SEO pitches from Traffic Power, Network Solutions, and Vijayinfo.in that I have no time to consider an additional SEO system — even if it does come “with extra earning!”

However, I’d like to commend them for writing me these excellent, highly professional emails. They’re clearly way ahead of the rest of the industry’s best practices for email and have no need to pay attention to other SEOs’ inferior ideas. Besides which, SEO is about the individual’s power, not about the network. So more power to you for writing such great email pitches for your SEO system, RankRanker!

Date: 1/20/2008

By : SEO Team of RankRanker

Subject : Free SEO System And Link Exchange With Extra Earning.Dear Webmaster, You know what the best part is? RankRanker make it soooo easy for you. You don’t have to keep your ear to the ground. You don’t have to practice. You don’t have to make mistakes. All you have to do is follow the simple instructions in this easy-to-use automated system of SEO. Our Marketing department has visited your attractive site especially “the Home page”. Your relevant site theme attracted a lot and compelled for sharing with you an entire new concept, where you can earn with the help of (SEO) RankRanker.com, it’s a Business linking platform which contains One-way, Two-way and Three-way automated linking. Free-Registration offer for limited time. We would love to have you our partner in this new Evolutionary Automated System of SEO. You are just a click away to become a free member of this exciting SEO system. Click the link below NOW! http://www.rankranker.com/regiter.aspx [ED: Did you mean register? Yeah, I also hate it when my spam links are broken because of typos...] Special Area for you. You can earn Dollars. You can optimize your own site. (SEO) You can get SEO Techniques, strategies, Tips & Trick. You can get free software’s and helping books. You can get advice from our experts and international analyst. You can make your site as useful as yours seems to be. Silver & Gold Plans We have two major plans for our users, Gold and Silver feature plans. WE ARE GLAD TO ANNOUNOCE THAT FIRST 500 REGISTRATIONS WILL COME UNDER SILVER PLANS THROUGH LUCKY DRAW FOR FREE This offer stays only for first one month after RankRanker launching. We also have “Auto Advance plan” as future enhancement to maximum facilitate our visitors, towards fully automated Link exchange system. (coming soon). More and more people are subscribing because of great results against MOST ECONOMICAL PRICE, your site will reach a very broad range of potential and will adjust in our home page if you avail our feature or advance plan. NOTE: We have launched Beta version of RankRanker.com & need your precious feedbacks & comments to improve our functionality and maturity of our unique SEO product. On inauguration we are please to inform that in first month all of our honorable visitors can avail paid area/plans for free.

Best Regards webmaster@rankranker.com

Also, I’m highly appreciative of their persistence, which they demonstrated by resending me the same email which I ignored the first time. This clearly shows a marked determination to help me improve my email’s spam filters – thanks guys!

Cold-calling is a tried and true sales tactic. It may not be as effective as search marketing, because it’s classical interruption marketing as opposed to permission marketing, but it still exists today because it does work. For it work, however, you need to understand that it’s a volume game. Some tiny percentage will convert. And much as I hate spam, I recognize that even some spam emails do convert.

I’ve got to wonder though: if you’re going to use spam, why would you try it on someone who’s going to out you? And why annoy someone who’ll give you reputation management issues (like 1 and 1‘s issues)? Silly RankRanker (aka Rank Ranker aka webmaster@rankranker.com). What do you guys think about unpersonalized spam emails like this? Any experiences to share? Funny stories? Others who’ve gotten stuff from RankRanker@gmail.com?

(P.S.: If you link here, please use “RankRanker” “Rank Ranker” “RankRanker.com” and related anchor text. On a related note: go find out why Web Hosting Geeks suck. Also, do see 20 steps on Web Search PR – those “clueless numpties.”)

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.

Vanessa Fox and the team at Third Door Media have given me an incredible opportunity – the opportunity to speak at SMX. Following Danny’s great explanation of what they were looking for in terms of pitches, I thought about my experience and what I could share with attendees. I pitched some ideas for local and voila – I’m in for the local panel ! So Third Door: Thanks a lot for taking a chance on me. I can’t predict the reception, but I can promise you I’ll be working like mad to make that presentation worth it for your attendees.

I highly encourage you guys to grab the early-bird special before it expires – you save $400!  It’s THE search marketing conference, and besides, I’ll be there . Not to mention that you’ll be able to hear Eric Lander on the same panel as yours truly, plus three reps from the major (*cough incompetent cough*) SEs. Eric’s written at SEJ, SEG (does anyone else get them confused a lot too?), the ISEdb (hey, me too! ) and SEO Today. SEO Today? You know the man’s an OG.

In the meantime, see my latest post on how Google Maps have updated their SERPs with a booking engine, pics from their Panoramio site, and inserted reviews directly below each listing. This item on local-oriented domaining with Google Trends might also appeal to you. Did I mention my old blog also covered local search, and that it ranked for ‘local seo,’ in the not too distant past (if you’re wondering, that’s a useless keyword traffic wise).

I was trying to figure out how to make this post more informative and share some tips, but I’d have to get more info from Vanessa and co. on what they liked about my pitch. Considering how busy they are with preparations and organizational work, I think that can be best left to asking at the conference, in person.

Besides that, I’d like to ask if any of you other internet marketers (*cough Sphinn/SU/Youmoz friends, commenters, etc…*) who are going might care to share a room? I may be speaking, but $200+ a night is still expensive for me. FYI: I’m a clean guy, sociable, won’t wake you up if you like to hit the sack early and we might even trade some good tips . (On a related note, my sister used to rent a 1 and a half apartment here in Montreal for $800 a month …

Please write me at gab at this domain if you’re interested in sharing a room.

P.S. A pisher is Yiddish for a [usually little] kid. “Hey pisher,” is a phrase my older sisters frequently use .

P.P.S. For those of you wondering why I haven’t posted lately, there are 2 answers.

One is that my site’s technology has a bug; it’s supposed to output on a /blog page but doesn’t. Only posts categorized a certain way show up here on the homepage, but if I want the permalink to use a different category, I have no choice but to leave the post off the homepage. Hopefully it’ll be resolved soon. In the meantime, see what these credibility failures taught me about linkworthiness/linkability.

The other answer is that I’m working on a large SEO audit that’s taking up most of my free time, and what little I have left is going into working on a longer, more value-added post on motivation and influence.

Update: Motivation and Influence aka Be Nice to the Loner Kid is posted. Also, I had a blast at SMX and met a bunch of people, largely thanks to SEOmoz.

If you liked this, subscribe to my RSS feed (and make my analytics life easier using that link, rather than the auto-generated-by-a-plugin one below).

Downloads For RSS Subscribers:

• Content Marketing Cannon WordPress plugin - Consolidates content for more links, PageRank and traffic. Details: New SEO plugin: Content Marketing Cannon
• Internal Link Building, a WordPress plugin. It optimizes your internal navigation so you rank like Wikipedia. Details: Check the Internal Link Building update page.
• Get a free chapter from my upcoming book on advanced seo.
• Backlink Analysis With Majestic SEO's Data
  
• ROI on SEO Calculator spreadsheet.