Seo for your living

We Will Not Make Editorial Judgements, But We Desire to Rank Our Content #1

With the announcement of Knol, Google displayed their desire to become a publisher. Why? To make free information more accessible. It doesn’t hurt that publishers dominate other industries, like music - where in some cases giving artists nothing, while some artist get less than nothing, even if they made millions in sales.

Danny Sullivan had some reservations on Knol, as does Rich Skrenta, and just about every other successful results oriented independent web author.

While claiming Google will not make any editorial judgements of quality, and Google will treat Knols like any other web pages, Google’s Udi Manber had this to say:

A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions. Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content.

They desire it to be a starting point for searchers and yet they will not promote it?

Think back to the YouTube purchase. After Google bought the site, did they start blessing / featuring any YouTube content? Yes they did. Google’s Uinversal Search integrated YouTube so tightly in their search results that now people add YouTube to the search query for many music searches . Don’t believe me that they shifted user behavior? Try using Google Suggest for music searches and see where YouTube shows up.

Manber wrote not to worry about spam, as Google has that issue covered:

Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

Sure they will filter out some of the garbage people submit, but the good stuff will rank better than it should. I am not a betting man, but if I were I would bet that Knols get ranked right at the top, next to Youtube. As John Andrews describes it:

As TrustRank (the Google version, not the Yahoo! version) takes hold as the #1 or #2 ranking factor for SEO, this Knol thing steps in and bingo… who could be more trusted than Google itself?

Wikipedia has amazing momentum in Google, and is poised to rank for everything. How will Google compete?

How can Google come late to the game, offer no pay, desire to throw their ads on it right out of the gate, and expect to win marketshare UNLESS they rank this content better than it deserves to rank on merit? Put another way, what person who gets paid to create content is going to prefer putting it on Google Knol for free UNLESS Google gives Knol preferential treatment? If you are producing content out of passion with no profit motive, why would you put it on Google instead of your own server? If you desire peer review with your name attached to it why not publish it on YourName.com?

Offline media has always been biased and aggressively consolidated, it looks like the web is going to suffer the same fate, but worse, unless you are a Google stakeholder. Or, if Google gets too aggressive with this cross integration maybe they will hurt their relevancy enough that people search elsewhere.

DietsInReview.com Reviewed (or, Why Email Spam Whois Data of Bloggers With High Touch Marketing Ideas?)

Some marketers aggressively email spam people to promote their best ideas, thinking no harm could come from it. If you do not take the time to personalize emails and actually visit the sites you are emailing then you probably going to send someone like me an email, and there is a 5% chance I will blog about it. If I blog about it, I am probably not going to be talking up the product.

DietsInReview.com recently launched their celebrity weight loss calculator. I was sent a bulk unpersonalized email containing the following tip

The tool is specifically un-branded so it can blend with your experience. All we ask is that you post the entire code which contains a link back to our site.

Their site has a great growth chart. They come up with great marketing ideas. They are clever with SEO. And they are too lazy to connect the pieces without untargeted email spamming. Silly. Spend $10 an hour hiring someone to send out the emails if you are too lazy to do it yourself.

If you are reactive to blog feedback (like they were here kimkinscontroversy.com/2007/09/25/kimkins-affiliate-spotlight-dietsinreviewcom/) then why not be proactive in creating meaningful relationships in the community? No point putting great ideas on churn and burn sites, and no point burning relationships with leading editorial voices in your market if you are creating a longterm site.

Dealing With “My Competitor’s Are Doing It!” Syndrome (Search Engine Roundtable)
Ad: Convert visitors with Google Analytics - free 
 If you have been doing SEO for a little while you have most likely heard the phrase “My competitors are doing it, why should we do the same thing?!” or my personal favorite “Why is this guy that is nobody in our industry ranking above me with that spammy link exchange directory thingy, shouldn’t install one too!?!”. Those questions never …

Google Not Best for All Searches
When you re looking for information do you go to an encyclopedia or a specialized book If you answered Neither I check the Internet don t click away. The question has more relevance for the major search engines particularly Google than you might think….
Web Design & Free Domain Free domain & hosting with 1 yr package from Network Solutions!

Introduction Thread - Who Are You? What do You do?

With about 4,000 members signed up so far I figured it would be good to have an SEO Book introductions thread. Please use this thread to introduce yourself, and give feedback on how we can make this site better for you.

Why Did the Search Marketing Associations Fail?

One of the big differences between things that are successful and things that fail is simply staying around and staying active in the community. By those measurements, the regional Search Marketing Associations were all failures.

• SMA-UK.org - blog last updated a little over 2 years ago
• SMA-NA.org - dissolved in September of this year
• SMA-EU.org - now a PPC lander page

Cooperatives are exceptionally hard to run because you have to balance business interests, egos, recruiting new members, creating member benefits, and pull time out of your schedule for the organization. And if you don’t see what the other members are doing, it seems unbalanced, so you go back to working on your own projects. Even a partnership with only a couple people can be a bit of work to balance when you add in individual business interests outside the partnership and balancing work with family life.

It is exceptionally hard to create organizations that are for everyone. Many of the top marketers in the SEO space get paid more precisely because the field has a dirty reputation. I put that theory to test a few years back when I created a non-self-promotional guide to buying SEO services, registered the domain via proxy, and, in spite of having core community members mention it, watched it fall flat on its face. It seems virtually everyone who wanted to make the industry better only wanted to see improvement if their name was attached to the improvements.

In most cases if you want to create a successful trade organization or group exclusivity is much more effective strategy than appealing to everyone.

Google`s Environmental Endeavors
If you re one of the few that still doesn t believe in global warming then this article isn t for you. Because even those who refuse to do anything about it can still accept the barrage of facts and scientific data that support climate change. Unfortunately this isn t the time or place to get into such things but I can tell you about the many initiatives sponsored by Google to help combat this worsening issue….
Software Development at Shopping.com! Find, compare and buy Internet and Communication Applications and other Computer Software products at Shopping.com. Read product reviews and compare prices with tax and shipping.

Fumbles and Features for Search and Social Network Firms
It feels like Thanksgiving was just yesterday but of course that didn t slow down some of our favorite search engines and social networks well except in one case. Here s a quick round up of some of the good bad and ugly news currently breaking about Yahoo Facebook and Google….
Development Software Looking for development software. Check out The Webz Best now!

Results Oriented Thinking & Marketing Advice for SEOs

Focus on Results & Achieve Them

Cygnus offered this quote on Rich Skrenta’s blog post about PageRank:

I like all the traffic types coming in; in order to get that traffic on a couple of sources I have to jump through a few hoops. Big deal. So long as the requirements cost less than the expected revenue from ranking, I’ll meet the requirements.

As long as something works and is within your personal ethical, financial, and risk boundaries then why not give it a try?

Setting Up a Baseline for Risk Tolerance

Bob Massa published a great article casting aside the hats while looking at link buying from a business objectives standpoint:

SHOULD I BUY LINKS? … Most of the people who ask me that question are the people who least need to worry about the risk. The risk motivating the question being whether or not they may be penalized by google instead of the risk being about going broke.

Logic would dictate that anyone concerned about the risk of being penalized by Google, is actually worried about losing something they already have. In this case sales coming from targeted traffic generated from superior organic placements in the SERP’s. …

But far more often than not, when I take a look at the site belonging to the askee, I see a site that looks like a third graders ransom note. … Little traffic to speak of and certainly no sales to lose. There is VERY little visible investment in design, content or anything else. Yet they brag of the #3 spot they have for a keyword with over a million results like that is all they need for proof of their valuable contribution to the world of online commerce.

The biggest risk to most businesses is that they will never be found and never gain any traction. That is why I found the concept of debating the risk of buying links getting you in trouble 5 years from now a bit intellectually dishonest. If in 5 years you built no momentum and someone can just wipe you out that was not a very good business model.

Bob Massa’s article is also a nice summary of why SEO client experiences are bad unless you have a strong brand and/or are selling to the right clients. If you are going to the effort to market thin affiliate sites you may as well keep the all revenue for yourself, and design to at least 4th grade standards!

Why Trust Another Business More Than Yourself?

John Andrews did a fun comparison between AdWords and doorway pages. Considering the cheating wives offers that AdWords promotes I have to agree with him that Google’s moral superiority strategy is a bit thin.

In a post about domain consolidation Michael Gray wanted an opinion from Google. Marisa left this great comment:

The underlying question is, “Why are we seeking permission from Google to do webmaster things when it’s Google’s responsibility to make their search engine work according to our typical practices?”

Just because Google is the most popular SE doesn’t mean that they can now make the rules. They need to go back to coding their SE to be better than the others rather than spending so much time trying to make us code or setup sites to their specifications.

After Google bought YouTube they integrated YouTube directly into their site and their search results.

Many sites and marketers that are considered spammers by Google only use aggressive push marketing off the start to market their sites because the framework for ranking that Google set up require it. If the “spammers” were given the same head start that YouTube pages or Knol pages will get then they would not need to “spam” to rank. They would just produce the best content and watch it rise to the top of the results.

The Value of Exposure & Feedback

I recently spoke with a mentor who told me that starting about 20 years ago he lost 10 years because he was sitting around expecting everyone to figure out how brilliant he was. His tips and advice likely saved me from making that mistake on some fronts - and saved me a couple years of my life. And while he is considered a guru by many today, what more momentum would have have today if he didn’t lose those 10 years? What if someone would have gave him the speech he just gave me? How much richer would he be? Would I have even been able to afford hiring him for a consult?

If I was not a push marketer a few years ago and I avoided link buying without debating the risks, would I have been able to afford that phone call that will likely save years of my life? Probably not.

Everyone starts off as a push marketer, and then moves toward pull marketing as they gain feedback and get more well known, and build a brand they do not want to risk damaging.

Just saying hi
I was asked to properly introduce myself, so here I am ..
I'm a webdeveloper and, amongst other things, create SEO scripts.�

Optimizing a Web Site`s SEO Ranking
No one has time to surf all the sites listed in a search engine. Most people just click on the sites listed topmost and surf through them. This is the reason sites listed at the top gain huge traffic. This is the reason sites use Search Engine Optimization SEO . Keep reading to find out how to optimize a website s SEO ranking….
Better software development info. Get better choices for software development from the best sources. All in one.

Questions about High Rankings® Search Marketing Seminar (High Rankings)
.Normally I wouldn’t post this type of seemingly self-promotional stuff here in the newsletter, but I feel that others will benefit from my answer. (Plus, I really couldn’t find any decent SEO questions that I haven’t answered a million times before!)

Re: Patriots winning
It's over.� Now you're gonna have to listen to Dolphin's fans say it doesn't mean anything unless the pats win the superbowl.

Which they'll do.� U…

SEO / SEM Resouces (High Rankings)
As an education-oriented company, High Rankings offers a number of search marketing resources to the community. Learn more about SEO and SEM through our SEO FAQ, search engine optimization articles, our search marketing glossary (coming soon) and the High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum.

Need 5,000 Quality Uniques From Seo/sem W/ Diverse Abilities (High Rankings)
Looking for 5,000 uniques per day for one specific entertainment niche and am willing to pay a premium.

Fumbles and Features for Search and Social Network Firms
It feels like Thanksgiving was just yesterday but of course that didn t slow down some of our favorite search engines and social networks well except in one case. Here s a quick round up of some of the good bad and ugly news currently breaking about Yahoo Facebook and Google….
Development Software Compare products from thousands of trusted retailers. Save time and money every time you shop by starting your search at Shopping.com

Business Sector Will Increase Capital Spending by 10-20% Next Year (donga.com)
Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo said, “R & D spending will be increased 10-20% next year.” Shinsegae Vice Chairman Koo Hak-seo said, “Following the move of turning 15,000 irregular workers to permanent employees, we will recruit more people.

Re: How Many Links Do I Need?
Yeah I was looking for what he was talking about earlier too Bomps. Where is it that he's talking about on the Syndk8 Viagra blog?

WorksForWeb Releases iLister, a New SEO-Friendly General Classifieds Software (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)
WorksForWeb (WFW) is announcing the release of iLister, general classifieds listing software. iLister is one of several products offered by WFW to cater for the online classifieds website market worldwide, in addition to iAuto vehicle classifieds software, and iRealty, real estate classifieds software.

Fumbles and Features for Search and Social Network Firms
It feels like Thanksgiving was just yesterday but of course that didn t slow down some of our favorite search engines and social networks well except in one case. Here s a quick round up of some of the good bad and ugly news currently breaking about Yahoo Facebook and Google….
Development Software Compare products from thousands of trusted retailers. Save time and money every time you shop by starting your search at Shopping.com

How to Save Over $1,000 on Next April’s Tax Bill

The year is almost out, and tax time is just around the corner. Here are some tips for SEOs and web marketers on how to lower your income by increasing your expenses.

• Donate to Charity - want to do some good? Why not donate some cash to a good charity?
• Domain registration - make sure your domains are registered for at least 5 years.
• Buy a better name - does your domain name suck? Now is the perfect time to buy a better one.
• Hosting - have hosting bills coming up soon? Pay them early.
• Directory registration - if any of your good sites are not yet listed in BOTW, Business.com, JoeAnt, or the Yahoo! Directory then submit before the year is out
• Yahoo! Search Marketing - if you are a big user of Yahoo Search Marketing you can pay a few thousand extra in advance
• Affiliates (& other Marketing Costs) - do you have payments that are typically done on the first of the month? Consider paying them early.
• Website design & custom programming - need new features or a fresh look to take your website to the next level? Make that down payment made in the next couple days.
• Software & tools - thinking about trying out a piece of software? Now is a great time to buy.
• Sell loser stocks - did you buy CountryWide at $45 earlier this year? Get the writedown you deserve.

What are your best tax tips?

Introduction Thread - Who Are You? What do You do?

With about 4,000 members signed up so far I figured it would be good to have an SEO Book introductions thread. Please use this thread to introduce yourself, and give feedback on how we can make this site better for you.

Yahoo! releases Slurp

Yahoo has released a new search crawler. Meet Slurp, a more efficient website visiting engine. Yahoo has estimated that website owners will see a 25% reduction in the number of requests coming from Yahoo servers, thus decreasing bandwidth.

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Google Not Best for All Searches
When you re looking for information do you go to an encyclopedia or a specialized book If you answered Neither I check the Internet don t click away. The question has more relevance for the major search engines particularly Google than you might think….
Better software development info. Get better choices for software development from the best sources. All in one.

Contextual Web Ads Exploit Weak, Poor, Desperate, and Stupid People

As an advertiser and a publisher I have ad CTR data spanning hundreds of millions of impressions and about a million ad clicks across a wide array of verticals. One of my early opinions on contextual ads and search ads was that people are far more likely to click ads if they are desperate, stupid, or ignorant. While I was flamed for my opinion, this opinion has only been confirmed from talking to friends who have much more data than I do, and Dave Morgan from AOL also confirmed it.

Seth pointed to this post by Danah Boyd, which offers a hypothesis on who is clicking ads:

Based on what I’ve seen qualitatively, my hypothesis would be that heavy ad clickers are:

• More representative of lower income households than the average user.
• Less educated than the average user (or from less-educated environments in the case of minors).
• More likely to live outside of the major metro regions.
• More likely to be using [social networks] to meet new people than the average user (who is more likely to be using SNSs to maintain connections).

The problem with catering to the lowest common denominator is that the people who are clicking the ads

• have less of an ability to buy premium products
• are less likely to do follow on marketing for you to promote your products to other
• are a small minority of your visitors
• are driven away from your site when they click
• each day many ignorant users learn more about the web and click less ads
• the new users coming on the web replacing those who are learning about it are even poorer and less socially connected than those already on the network

In the next couple years there is going to be a major shift in online ad based business models where many publishers push themselves up the value chain. The trend for profitable publishing, is going to include the following aspects

• fewer ads
• ads with more information
• ads that look more like information
• ads tighter integrated into the content
• having a semi-porous brand which allows your free content to do your marketing for your paid content
• in many case selling ads that include personal endorsement, and ads for white label products or house products (often via subscription)

As more premium publishers shift from ad based models to selling white labeled and house products it is going to get harder to buy ads affordably on the clean parts of the web. And the trend has already started. If you look at some of the most popular investment sites you will see that many of them provide free offers for products that lead you into buying a subscription service.

If you are going to monetize your site from a small minority of your visitors it makes sense to build relationships with them and charge recurring if you can. If your only monetize 5% of your audience would rather have $50 a month from them or 50 cents?

Results Oriented Thinking & Marketing Advice for SEOs

Focus on Results & Achieve Them

Cygnus offered this quote on Rich Skrenta’s blog post about PageRank:

I like all the traffic types coming in; in order to get that traffic on a couple of sources I have to jump through a few hoops. Big deal. So long as the requirements cost less than the expected revenue from ranking, I’ll meet the requirements.

As long as something works and is within your personal ethical, financial, and risk boundaries then why not give it a try?

Setting Up a Baseline for Risk Tolerance

Bob Massa published a great article casting aside the hats while looking at link buying from a business objectives standpoint:

SHOULD I BUY LINKS? … Most of the people who ask me that question are the people who least need to worry about the risk. The risk motivating the question being whether or not they may be penalized by google instead of the risk being about going broke.

Logic would dictate that anyone concerned about the risk of being penalized by Google, is actually worried about losing something they already have. In this case sales coming from targeted traffic generated from superior organic placements in the SERP’s. …

But far more often than not, when I take a look at the site belonging to the askee, I see a site that looks like a third graders ransom note. … Little traffic to speak of and certainly no sales to lose. There is VERY little visible investment in design, content or anything else. Yet they brag of the #3 spot they have for a keyword with over a million results like that is all they need for proof of their valuable contribution to the world of online commerce.

The biggest risk to most businesses is that they will never be found and never gain any traction. That is why I found the concept of debating the risk of buying links getting you in trouble 5 years from now a bit intellectually dishonest. If in 5 years you built no momentum and someone can just wipe you out that was not a very good business model.

Bob Massa’s article is also a nice summary of why SEO client experiences are bad unless you have a strong brand and/or are selling to the right clients. If you are going to the effort to market thin affiliate sites you may as well keep the all revenue for yourself, and design to at least 4th grade standards!

Why Trust Another Business More Than Yourself?

John Andrews did a fun comparison between AdWords and doorway pages. Considering the cheating wives offers that AdWords promotes I have to agree with him that Google’s moral superiority strategy is a bit thin.

In a post about domain consolidation Michael Gray wanted an opinion from Google. Marisa left this great comment:

The underlying question is, “Why are we seeking permission from Google to do webmaster things when it’s Google’s responsibility to make their search engine work according to our typical practices?”

Just because Google is the most popular SE doesn’t mean that they can now make the rules. They need to go back to coding their SE to be better than the others rather than spending so much time trying to make us code or setup sites to their specifications.

After Google bought YouTube they integrated YouTube directly into their site and their search results.

Many sites and marketers that are considered spammers by Google only use aggressive push marketing off the start to market their sites because the framework for ranking that Google set up require it. If the “spammers” were given the same head start that YouTube pages or Knol pages will get then they would not need to “spam” to rank. They would just produce the best content and watch it rise to the top of the results.

The Value of Exposure & Feedback

I recently spoke with a mentor who told me that starting about 20 years ago he lost 10 years because he was sitting around expecting everyone to figure out how brilliant he was. His tips and advice likely saved me from making that mistake on some fronts - and saved me a couple years of my life. And while he is considered a guru by many today, what more momentum would have have today if he didn’t lose those 10 years? What if someone would have gave him the speech he just gave me? How much richer would he be? Would I have even been able to afford hiring him for a consult?

If I was not a push marketer a few years ago and I avoided link buying without debating the risks, would I have been able to afford that phone call that will likely save years of my life? Probably not.

Everyone starts off as a push marketer, and then moves toward pull marketing as they gain feedback and get more well known, and build a brand they do not want to risk damaging.

The Next US President is a Bad Marketer

As Frank Luntz says “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.” Politics is a game of marketing. Raise money, invest in messaging, and spread the message.

Most of the leading presidential candidates are not running AdWords ads to place a donation message on search result. Given Howard Dean’s experience in raising money online, where they tested and changed page layouts based on donation data, the Democrats ought to know better.

this data, I am buying more display ads for SEO Book than any of the presidential candidates are.

conversational marketing guru to advertise. In a couple hours I could create a campaign for any of the candidates that gets in excess of 100,000,000 monthly impressions and brings in far more than it costs. They are doing interviews on TechCrunch about technology and the web. Why don’t they put their money where their mouth is?

Wal Mart SEO Services

Anyone surprised that Sam’s Club offers SEO services?

I think I am going to fight back by selling Chinese made US flags for 3 cents each.

• What Is SEO Knowledge For? (Turks.US)
The art of Search Engine Optimization or SEO is viewed as the process of increasing the amount of visitors or online traffic, to a Web site by letting it rank high in the search results of a search engine.

Contextual Web Ads Exploit Weak, Poor, Desperate, and Stupid People

As an advertiser and a publisher I have ad CTR data spanning hundreds of millions of impressions and about a million ad clicks across a wide array of verticals. One of my early opinions on contextual ads and search ads was that people are far more likely to click ads if they are desperate, stupid, or ignorant. While I was flamed for my opinion, this opinion has only been confirmed from talking to friends who have much more data than I do, and Dave Morgan from AOL also confirmed it.

Seth pointed to this post by Danah Boyd, which offers a hypothesis on who is clicking ads:

Based on what I’ve seen qualitatively, my hypothesis would be that heavy ad clickers are:

• More representative of lower income households than the average user.
• Less educated than the average user (or from less-educated environments in the case of minors).
• More likely to live outside of the major metro regions.
• More likely to be using [social networks] to meet new people than the average user (who is more likely to be using SNSs to maintain connections).

The problem with catering to the lowest common denominator is that the people who are clicking the ads

• have less of an ability to buy premium products
• are less likely to do follow on marketing for you to promote your products to other
• are a small minority of your visitors
• are driven away from your site when they click
• each day many ignorant users learn more about the web and click less ads
• the new users coming on the web replacing those who are learning about it are even poorer and less socially connected than those already on the network

In the next couple years there is going to be a major shift in online ad based business models where many publishers push themselves up the value chain. The trend for profitable publishing, is going to include the following aspects

• fewer ads
• ads with more information
• ads that look more like information
• ads tighter integrated into the content
• having a semi-porous brand which allows your free content to do your marketing for your paid content
• in many case selling ads that include personal endorsement, and ads for white label products or house products (often via subscription)

As more premium publishers shift from ad based models to selling white labeled and house products it is going to get harder to buy ads affordably on the clean parts of the web. And the trend has already started. If you look at some of the most popular investment sites you will see that many of them provide free offers for products that lead you into buying a subscription service.

If you are going to monetize your site from a small minority of your visitors it makes sense to build relationships with them and charge recurring if you can. If your only monetize 5% of your audience would rather have $50 a month from them or 50 cents?

WorksForWeb Releases iLister, a New SEO-Friendly General Classifieds Software (PRWeb via Yahoo! News)
WorksForWeb (WFW) is announcing the release of iLister, general classifieds listing software. iLister is one of several products offered by WFW to cater for the online classifieds website market worldwide, in addition to iAuto vehicle classifieds software, and iRealty, real estate classifieds software.

Miss SEO contestants prepare for local competition (CentralOhio.com)
ZANESVILLE - As Megan Earley gets ready for the Miss Southeastern Ohio competition, she hopes her three years of experience will be in her favor. “I hope the third time’s the charm,” said the 23-year-old Zanesville resident and Coshocton High School graduate.

Make Money by Domain Parking
GoDaddy has set up a new service whereby webmasters can earn a profit based on clicks to their parked domains.

The program is targeted at owners of small amounts of domains in their portfolio. GoDaddy serves ads that are based on the domain name, and the analysis of what people click on and search for in the site.

This new service, CashParking, not only helps webmasters make a few extra dollars, but provides another means by which websites and companies can get search related traffic through links on unique domain names that are not as yet built out.

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Help With Resume Skill Set (High Rankings)
So how do you guys write your skill set for your resume when searching for a new SEO position? Ive never seen a resume for SEO and I just fell into my current SEO position but im looking to progress my career so can someone provide examples of how you would write your resume for SEO/SEM position?

• What Is SEO Knowledge For? (Turks.US)
The art of Search Engine Optimization or SEO is viewed as the process of increasing the amount of visitors or online traffic, to a Web site by letting it rank high in the search results of a search engine.

Re: Top 3 Blackhat PHP Scripting Mistakes
we can name XSS as “undocumented script feature “� (USF)
/BP

Re: Unverified Paypal
Can you buy online via PayPal if you're unverified?

Yahoo Ads in eBay
As a result of eBay and Yahoo’s partnership, Yahoo has begun to display ads on eBay auction search results pages. The terms of the deal also include Paypal integration into Yahoo Channels and Yahoo Search.

The ads have just been starting to show up in the results pages, and I personally have yet to come across them in any pf my searches, however Loren Baker suggested searching for a misspelling “burberry rain boats” to get results. Through this search I was able to see the nicely integrated ads, offering the corrected spelling products.

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Effect Of External Links Vs Seo (High Rankings)
, Which has more effect on SERPs? What will have more effect on how well a specific page ranks for a specific phrase: Working with the keywords on the page, or the link text in off site pages (articles) linking back to that specific page?

linkshare datafeed
Anyone used the linkshare datafeeds ? Are they worth it ?

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Wikia Search Alpha Launch

Search is so consolidated that it is uncomfortable being an SEO. If Google decides to profile you or kill your sites there is not much you can do, especially because Yahoo! and Microsoft are losing marketshare month after month. Why are Yahoo! and Microsoft losing marketshare? Their bad marketing coupled with Google’s good marketing:

The toolbar has NEVER given anyone any real information. BUT, it has given the world a perception that whatever Google ranks that must be right. It has also helped to give Google millions of devout followers and millions more who are willing to give access to a lot of private data just to see a little green go a little farther to the right. BRILLIANT. So brilliant in fact I have never understood why MSN and Yahoo haven’t done their own white paper and give away a little blue bar to “prove” it works. BUT, that is why Yahoo and MSN seem to be losing market share. Not because their results aren’t as good. It is because they aren’t as good at marketing. I don’t begrudge Google for that. I admire them.

To appreciate how bad Yahoo’s marketing is, consider the following:

• Overture Keyword Selector - their public facing keyword tool is unreliable and does not even promote their own brand or their own network on it.
• Want to sign in to Yahoo search marketing? Go to sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com. Yup…2/3 of the companies revenues come through a subdomain of a subdomain.
• Yahoo powers millions of domain landing pageviews every day, and are afraid to put their brand on it, all while Google puts their brand (and typically search box) on everything they touch.

Anyhow, this is Christmas and this is supposed to be a happy post. And I am happy, because Wikia Search just launched in Alpha, and plans to publicly launch on January 7th.

Given that the difference between Google and Yahoo is largely one of marketing, and given that Google has been doing more manual editing of the search results, that lends credibility to Wikia’s human search model.

What happens when Wikipedia has a “search powered by you” box promoting an engine other than Google on every page of Wikipedia? Does Wikipedia keep ranking #1 for everything? Does this create another viable search channel for marketers? Does this competition make Google less arrogent and harsh in their webmaster relations department?

Here is Wikias’ whitelist, and here is a blog tracking Wikia’s progress. And here are some of Google’s human review documents that were leaked a couple years ago.

Google`s Environmental Endeavors
If you re one of the few that still doesn t believe in global warming then this article isn t for you. Because even those who refuse to do anything about it can still accept the barrage of facts and scientific data that support climate change. Unfortunately this isn t the time or place to get into such things but I can tell you about the many initiatives sponsored by Google to help combat this worsening issue….
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Open Q&A Thread for Internet Marketing Questions

Let me know if you have any questions about SEO or internet marketing stuff. I will try to reply to your comment right below it in less than a day, often within minutes, for as long as this thread is open.

Please ask do not ask for in depth site reviews or questions that would be applicable to just one website.

Update: thread closed… I have to start working on a big project. Thanks for the questions everyone.

Forced Verticals: You Are Not Spam if You Are the Only Option Available

Google opts to not show AdWords ads above the search results unless they deem them exceptionally relevant to the query, with the ads proving that relevancy with a high CTR. With Google’s other verticals, they have a database of options which is

• much shallower
• spammier
• less efficient
• with fewer signs of relevancy and trust

Markets start out ugly then you try to make them more efficient as they develop. Google tries to make some of the verticals become relevant by pricing them at free and forcing exposure upon them, front and center at the top of the search results - hoping competitive market forces and market feedback will drive the new verticals toward relevancy, and a market leading position they can charge for. You rarely see Google charge for basic level usage of something if they are the #2 or #3 player in the market. First they want to buy the market leading position by giving it away, then start charging for it.

In some cases they are willing to hold these new verticals to a much lower standard than their paid ads in an attempt to win marketshare. Google tracks CTR on Google accounts and knows most of the people searching for SEO Book click on SeoBook.com, but they still show their product search ads for that query:
Defending Your Website Against Unjust Ranking Penalties

In the past many Google penalties were blatantly obvious. You either got traffic or you did not. But as time has passed penalties are getting blurrier, meaning your site can be penalized and still get traffic from Google. Some traffic reductions are due to competitive market forces, some are due to algorithm changes, some are due to automated filters, and some are due to penalties. If you are new to the market (and in some cases, even if you are experienced) it is hard to know which problems, if any, are holding back your ranking potential.

A friend just told me about how his Google traffic went way up after he spoke with a Google engineer, but he didn’t want to talk about it publicly. I wonder how many other people are just like him, but don’t speak about it or don’t know they are penalized? And then I think back to the ban of the official AdSense blog, Brian Clark’s PageRank hit, and Sugar Rae’s ranking woes, and have come to the conclusion that spam fighting has become more of a shoot first and ask questions later game. They do not make a lot of mistakes, but when your site is just a number, it hurts pretty bad.

From a marketer perspective this shoot first shift is an important one which requires a few things of online publishers hoping to keep their businesses profitable:

• Track your traffic using analytics tools, such that you know if/when something goes wrong, can prove it with hard stats, and can research it more specifically.
• Publish at least 2 or 3 sites in different markets to give yourself additional data points on whether the issue is site specific or not.
• Use public relations and viral link marketing where you once used link buys. If you are still renting links try to make them covert, and offset them with many natural links.
• If possible package your offering as a service, so that you can justify charging recurring, and/or create an affiliate program. These make your income less reliant on search engines.
• If nobody cares that the site is missing there is no harm nor foul. Build up enough social significance that you can cause enough noise if/when something goes wrong such that Google gets enough blowback to fix the issue quickly.

Google Not Best for All Searches
When you re looking for information do you go to an encyclopedia or a specialized book If you answered Neither I check the Internet don t click away. The question has more relevance for the major search engines particularly Google than you might think….
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Optimizing a Web Site`s SEO Ranking
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Google`s Environmental Endeavors
If you re one of the few that still doesn t believe in global warming then this article isn t for you. Because even those who refuse to do anything about it can still accept the barrage of facts and scientific data that support climate change. Unfortunately this isn t the time or place to get into such things but I can tell you about the many initiatives sponsored by Google to help combat this worsening issue….
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