blogging

An ever changing post for an ever changing world

blogging, search engine marketing 16 Responses »

Oct 042007

This post will never stay the same, just like the internet it will constantly move and shift. It will display different kinds of links to different urls, similar to Google Zetgeist it’ll draw upon what people are looking for, it’ll try and help those who want people to write about those ideas and topics that are important to them.

What do you want to write about?
Photo greeting card perhaps? Hardly the most exciting topic in the world granted, but someone somewhere is out there looking for it, trying to find information about, or sell a service related to that very word.

Ha, Photo Greeting Card huh? It might seem risible, it might seem very serious (I can’t predict which word appears it’s completley random, until my script breaks that is!) but for your eyes, today that word is Photo Greeting Card a word or phrase that someone somewhere is paying top $ for in a PPC campaign.

You’d think that at some point eventually, those very people would simply build good content related to Photo Greeting Card and get the traffic that way. After all, that’s all the engines want really, good content that people will read and come back to and talk about…Could it really be that simple, write it and they will come?

I’m kinda wondering too how people will react (if they do at all of course) will they say rob over at yack yack is talking about Photo Greeting Card or will the ever shifting keyword or phrase go unnoticed and get them talking about it in more generalised ways…we shall see, its fun to test and prod!

Please do tell, what is this post about? Is it about Photo greeting card or is it about something entirely different?

Search Marketing Services Holistic Search

How to improve my blog for me me meme

blog, blog conversations, blogging, meme 15 Responses »

Sep 282007

I got a shout from Maurice over at his Cayman Islands blog on a a blog improvement meme started by Dane.

I’ve been thinking about this topic for some time. There is quite a bit on this blog that I think could do with a little attention, or at least make for a bit of a discussion.

General layout

For starters, I’d like to introduce a fluid theme (that’s one that stretches to a users screen size). My fixed theme is great, I love its look Ive used it for a while, its a great looking design and an impressive job. However, I’m losing out on a lot of screen real estate that could be used in better ways. I often feel like Im writing on paper and using huge margins left and right. I wonder if others feel similarly. Many of the good blogs I read these days use a layout that’s tailored towards the bigger screen resolutions.

Of course, my main reason for not doing so sooner is that I’ve made a hell of a lot of modifications to this existing theme which will be a bit of pain to add to any new layout.Add to that the need to upgrade to WP2.3 and I find myself losing the will to live.

Comment form usabilty

I’d also like to improve the usability of my comment form. Sebastian has some good reasons for doing so over at his SEO blog. I’m also going to take another look at my comment template and see if I can ajaxify some of the componants. I’d also like to alter the way I communicate my comment policy. As it stands, I link to some rant from within a big pile of words that are a bit of a mouthful – it isn’t an ideal solution. It might help to stick the words in a little pop up somewhere perhaps and drop the rant maybe.

Subscribe to comments

I’m not too happy with my subscribe to comments option either and find that my position has shifted somewhat from my original little rant. I thought about giving people a cookie option to choose. I thought about an onload event too whereby some div opened up asking 1st time visitors how they’d like to be treated, do they want follow up emails to their comments or do they not. I’m still undecided and kind of find myself thinking about going back to the default unchecked option. The problem always was that there are pros and cons on both sides and well, I sided with one that felt ok at the time.

Interacting with existing visitors

It could also be a good idea to give regular visitors some additional insights into say, how many people had read an article they’d commented on, what locations they’d came from, who was linking to the page that sort of thing. This could be a useful hook to grab a new subscriber or registration even. I can see the subtle attraction of an <? if(user_registered) { ?> show more stuff <? }?> option.

Writing better stuff that people will want to read

I’ve said it once I’ve said it twice I’m no Shakespeare . I do tend to waffle on and fly off on tangents that began in the recesses of my cannister and bounced off of the insides of my noddle a few times. I’d like to write a few more factual informative pieces, case studies things like that. Maybe make them available as a subscription or registered user option.

I try and avoid too many topical issues. I try not to follow the crowd and parrot a different version of what someone else out there is saying already. I think that by staying individual and true to who I am then some people somewhere will carry on reading me and as more stumble across my stuff then that reader base should grow.

I had 180 subscribers earlier which is really cool and a small indicator that I’m doing something right somewhere. I never really thought about getting lots and lots of readers here, but must confess to feeling a tiny degree of satisfaction that people around the globe find some of what I say interesting enough to hit a little button somewhere.

Getting out and about more

You can improve your blogs visibilty by getting out and about and commenting on other peoples stuff. I really need to do this more and expand my little circle. I tend to read the same people daily and whilst this is a good thing (they write interesting stuff) I do find that I might be spending too much time reading them and not enough time reading others.

I try not to be one of these people who targets A-listers or people with big established subscriber bases but it does need to be said that this is a good tactic for getting yourself better known. If you bang on the right doors hard enough and in the right kind of ways then eventually they might just open and send you a boat load of traffic.

Alas, such an approach doesn’t really fit with who I am, I’m not too good at it, I’m just not one of lifes schmoozers.I did give it a conscious try some time back but found myself thinking, hang on, what am I doing, I’m only commenting because he has a lot of readers, and heck they didn’t even acknowledge what I said, what the hell am I doing, so well… end of. I’m sure it looked far too transparent, sheeat the manipulative SEO strikes again.

Henceforth, the modus operandi is, one of if I talk about someone or comment on their stuff I’ll do so because:

They are discussing something that I’m genuinely interested in that has relevance to what I’m discussing and my readership
I simply like them or respect what they stand for and what they do and how they do it
I disagree strongly with an opinon or policy and need to let them know why.

I’ll probably see my blog’s subscriber base grow more slowly as a result, but I don’t really care so much. I’d rather grow my base on the back of being true to who I am, than as a result of being some comment attention seeking brown nosing whore.

It really is possible to grow a successful blog without being so.

Anyhow I feel myself beginning to waffle so I’m going to tag….a few people I’ve seen around at Sphinn I think, and see what happens, thanks for listening.

Ben Shana Bob Marty and Tancy01

Blogrush – Join Blogrush, do it now!

blogging, blogrush 4 Responses »

Sep 162007

Another new player on the blogosphere today is Blogrush. Looks like a neat way of getting traffic to your blog. If you use my link you’ll be doing me a huge favour too. Watch the video to find out more.

All quiet on the Rob blog front

blogging 7 Responses »

Aug 212007

I haven’t blogged for a while – I just haven’t really felt too compelled to comment or remark on too much lately. I’ve also been very busy too, both in my work, leisure and personal fronts.

I don’t see the point in just banging out stuff for the sake of banging something out, but i will be back.

So yeah…the upshot is, I’m still here, just not very vocal at the moment.

Inspiration and a few hours more on a postcard please to…..

Spotting comment spammers and link droppers

blogging 31 Responses »

Jul 312007

I have an existing policy on comments on this blog, you can see it at the bottom of this post. For those too lazy to scroll down, here it is, with a link to a little rant of mine some time back.

Please do not spam or post multiple urls to your site or sites you earn from. All comments are moderated.
Your comments are your own. I reserve the right to edit anything I find objectionable. This includes the use of anchor text, links to moody stuff etc. If you don’t like these terms, then please go elsewhere, do not self promote or promote others. Say something that adds to the conversation. Spammy me2′s and yeah I agrees aren’t welcome.

Seems fairly straightforward if you ask me, yet people still try it on and expect me to just let things slide. So to help reinforce this I just thought I’d update things a little to help account for some of the more imaginative ways that people are trying to get these things called links and anchor text.

Hey, let me get things straight here 1st, I have no problem in the world with people being creative and finding ways to promote themselves or their clients. I do it daily, it’s called link building. Lots of others do it too, it’s the way of the search marketing world.

Blog comments are a great way of getting yourself out there. Heck, I should do it more too, but I don’t, because most of the time I’m too damn busy doing stuff that will, over time get links anyway, its called building good useful content.

Lately see, I’m getting comments from people who turn up and call themselves all manner of names full of anchor text to TLD’s and client promotional stuff.

Let’s just make it clear here. I really don’t want those types of commenters here.

When you turn up and drop a link to your stuff 1st time with your anchor text to your site then straight away my hackles are up. Even if your comment is good I find myself thinking hold on a minute, this cheeky bastard thinks I was born yesterday, they think I’m gonna let their link stand. Uh uh, no way. If you comment on my blog and are respectful enough to have engaged in a thread or two, then you know what – I might just think to myself, hell I like this person, I like their style. As a result I’ll probably write about you at some point too and tell people how cool you are and why they should go and look at your stuff. I just won’t be mugged off by people who think ooh cool this is a dofollow blog, I’ll dive in there and get a free juicy anchor text link.

So as a little helper I thought I’d share 3 small observations I’d noticed, hell maybe it’ll help strengthen a plugin or two.

I won’t mention the obvious ones like links to Pr0n or Ph4rms or G4mbling type sites they are easy.

3 red flags for dodgy comments

1st time commenter has a name like ‘Electrical cool Gadgets’
Not many people were christened with this monicker. It’s most unusual. There have been isolated reports of forward thinking SEM’s naming their kids Viagra or Cilais or Ringtone Julie, but generally these are in the minority and are a pretty good indicator of some kind of spammy activity.

Where I see these, if the topic is on target, then I’ll generally delink their URL and delete their email address from their comment. This prevents them from attaining approved commenter status and allows me to moderate any subsequent incursions.
The commenter links to a non blog website.
Blogs for me, are a conversational medium.Whilst not everyone has a website or a blog, some people see blog comments (especially dofollow) as an easy target for a link back to their or their clients URL. If a commenter isn’t linking back to theirblog, then it could be a case of them trying to use you for a one stop singular IP link back.
The comment is short and praiseworthy but not much else.
Akismet catches most of this stuff, but sometimes it slips through. Don’t let your ego fool you. A person wading in with a ‘hey great post thanks’ type message, isn’t necessarily sincere. They are most likely just trying to rump you for a linkback. Be mean, be ruthless, delink their ass.

There are others, some are funny and some where you’ll just have to use a degree of commonsense decide for yourself.

Free email addresses not related to the blog
Not all free email addresses are red flags for example. I use a hotmail account for this blog, its just easier to manage. I sign all my comments with my url and my hotmail address.
Dumbass email addresses that shout hey I’m gaming you
One recent commenter was dumb enough to use an address of linkbuilder@someseocompany.com which sort of made me laugh, but is probably an exception rather than a rule. One guy who is aligned to a well known comment spamming system discussed in the blogosphere recently had the shortsightedness to use an email address which helped me identify him as just that. Suffice to say his IP address was duly noted.
Iffy looking TLD (domain extentions)
Look out for TLD’s like .info or .ru or .cn or any other number of obscure cheaply acquired mass abused domain extentions. Most (not all) are fine purveyors of spam who will link to stuff that might look ok, yet might be switched to something dodgy at a later date.
Thin or shallow content.
Is the person you are linking to for real? Maybe their blog or website looks a little thin on content and substance, yet on the whole it isn’t too bad or innocuous. be cautious with this as it could be a bait and switch waiting to happen. 2 months down the road the guy decides to redirect the traffic to his latest money making program or worse still something morally objectionable.

It goes without saying of course that ultimately it’s all about what people say and how they say it. I’m all up for rewarding my commenters with a little link love, it’s one of the reasons why I removed nofollow from this blog and why I installed the top commenters plugin too (see sidebar). A good commenter will take the time to read what you have said and offer a genuine considered view on your perspective. Their interest in what you’ve written will in most cases shine through.

It isn’t always easy though and there are lots of borderline cases that make you wince a little and think…hmmn I’m not sure about this one. No one wants to alienate a genuine commenter, well not me anyways.

Heck its clear that there is certainly a need for some kind of network lookup plugin that periodically checks the content that you link to for dodgy words or imagery. Maybe those smart chaps at wordpress can come up with something useful, maybe I could even if I weren’t so lazy ;)

What do you do to identify your comment spammers? Do you even think twice about the name they use, or the type of stuff they link to?

Blogspot domains identified as fine purveyors of Spam

blogging, blogspot, mahalo, spam, squidoo 8 Responses »

Jul 122007

Free content based domains are beacons for Spam

I was over at Bill Slawski’s excellent blog earlier today researching text to link proximity stuff, and stumbled across a post Microsoft Follows the Money to Find Spammers which referred to this interesting Spam research paper from Microsoft entitled: Spam Double Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with Advertisers. For the geekazoids amongst you there’s lots of interesting snippets and observations. Bill’s already covered most of the headlines over at his blog, so I won’t regurgitate that.

What stuck out to me was set amongst the conclusions, the main one being that blogspot domains were the biggest culprits when it came to originators of spam.

…doorway domains, we showed that the free blog-hosting site blogspot.com had an-order-of-magnitude higher spam appearances in top search results than other hosting domains in both benchmarks, and was responsible for about one in every four spam appearances (22% and 29% in the two respectively, to be exact). In addition, at least three in every four unique blogspot URLs that appeared in top-50 results for commercial queries were spam (77% and 75%). We also showed that over 60% of unique .info URLs in our search results were spam, which was an-order-of-magnitude higher than the spam percentage number for .com URLs.

I don’t know if the findings of papers like these bear any weight or consideration in any subsequent re-jigs of search engine algorithms. Only the search engines truly know what is and what isn’t a consideration in any equation. We can certainly say that if a mainstream domain owned and controlled by a party other than the search engines were to be responsible in similar ways, then their tenure in the SERPs (search engine results pages) would be very short lived. Their authority score would suffer, as would their overall trustrank. In essence once identified they’d be dead in the water.

Search algorithms aren’t changed on a whim of course, its a relatively safe bet to assume that search models are consistently tested and evaluated internally, before any public release. Documents like the one referenced, give interesting insights into the minds of the people who look at webspam.

Perhaps it’s for these very reasons that people behind other platforms that allow human access to write and create content make such public pronouncements detailing there determinism to eliminate or at least drastically reduce spam in their indices. After all failure to do so, in light of the above for example, could quickly lead to a diminution in trust and authority with the resultant knock on effect of poor ranking ability and negative monetisation effects that would usually follow significantly reduced traffic levels. By publicly affirming their commitment to tackle it, they may well save themselves from the heavy axe a search engineer can wield.

Jason Calacanis of Mahalo was kinda right when he said

When I had SEOs on the last CalacanisCast they raved about Squidoo and it’s ability to game the system, and if SEOs love your platform you have a HUGE problem.

The fact is, that web spammers, (not all SEO’s are web spammers Mr C) will indeed game the system. Some see it as their job to take competitive edges and work with them to the max; the rationale being if they didn’t then somebody else would.

I guess its up to platform owners to ensure that access and effectiveness are reduced. It’s a big reason why wordpress and all the major blogging platforms introduced nofollow into their software. For those who don’t know, nofollow restricts the ability of a link to pass pagerank, or link juice or link love or whatever else you want to call it, to the page to which it points.

Perhaps Mahalo and Squidoo and Blogspot should just ‘nofollow’ everything they link out to, maybe they should just close it all off to spiders and bots. They haven’t been created for the benefits of search engines after all…

Perhaps serious individual content creators should just go out and buy a domain for $20, grab a WP install, get some cheap blog hosting and just run their own show. It isn’t exactly rocket science after all. It does make you wonder why a person would bother writing content and help make some other guy rich …unless of course you we’re writing it to funnel people elsewhere and monetise it to your own ends.

I do have some sympathy with what those guys say though, It narks me a little though, as it suggests that people like me are scum sucker sleaze buckets. Most of us aren’t, it’s just a small minority of uber spammer who spoil it for everyone else.

Maybe the likes of Mr Godin and Mr Calacanis could help by using the term web spammers instead of SEO’s. It’s a far more accurate descriptor.

Meantime, if you are blogging and on a free platform, then perhaps you ought to at least consider moving on..

Learning from your blogging mistakes – 5 things to avoid when blogging

blogging, meme 28 Responses »

Jul 112007

Some of your blogs will just suck bottom

About a week or so ago I decided to offer someone somewhere a free SEO review of a site they thought might need a little help.

It was a spectacular failure of a post! Not one person has played the game.

I thought it was a well balanced win win deal that would have stimulated a little activity and garnered some links in for me and a little stimulus for others, oh and of course a free SEO review for some random site somewhere.

The key factor for those who wanted to blog on it was this

You can write about a site that you think is really cool, or a site that you use daily that isn’t mainstream and that people should know about. It could be one of your own sites, or it could be a site of a friend or a relative even. By writing about them you will be raising an awareness and giving them some all important link juice too.

With a payback for me being

If you’d like me to consider the site for a review then all you gotta do is link back to this post and hopefully I’ll pick it up and have a little look. In an ideal world you’d choose one of these sets of phraseology, “Rob is offering the chance for some Free SEO Advice ” or “Rob is offering a website review“, but I’m cool with a rob or a yackyack or a click here even!

So why did this bomb? Don’t people want Free SEO reviews or SEO advice? Sure they do, but not amongst my readership it seems.

Most of the people who read me, are after all pretty savvy guys and girls. Most are already busy building stuff for their clients or themselves; they know all about SEO and what is needed to rank well and get spidered.

It’s funny but I thought that some people might just want to take a slightly philanthropic view and just reach out somewhere and say hey this site here is the dogs bollocks but it doesn’t rank for shit, they could do with some help. Yet, nobody did, or at least no one has thus far.

Then of course I looked back at the post and thought actually Rob, that was a bit of a dumb arse post really. It has link back to Rob written all over it.

So much for my own philanthropy.

So in view of this, Ive changed the rules a little and dropped the need to link back. Just mail me or PM me or hey link back to me even Just to let me know.

A few other things occured to me to. I categorised them as blogging mistakes as we all make them on occassions, we are all guilty of losing the plot and forgetting about what we are trying to say and to whom, so without further ado, here are 5 things to avoid or resist the temptation on when blogging.

Maybe you can share yours in a little meme even, feck I’ll tag a few people too.

I’m sure John Chow has a few to share with us, I wonder if Darren Rowse can share a thing or two, and how about Meg and what about bloggers like Link baiter Lyndon or Super SEO Consultant Joe or ace Graphic Designer David.

5 things to avoid or resist the temptation on when blogging.

Don’t forget who you are writing to and from where they come from. Respect the intelligence of your readers and don’t try and slip them mickey finns
If you haven’t got anything new or original to say then don’t say it, don’t blog just for the sake of filling up some server space. Collect your thoughts and save them for another day.
Try not to ramble on too much and stick to the point of what your post is about. Esoteric meanderings are best left for those who like to read esoteric meanderings
If you want to create something a little viral then make sure it’s something worth linking to. Don’t get too huffed up in your own sense of piss and importance. Ask a blog friend for an opinion or 2 before you go ahead with your kick ass idea.
Don’t sit there too long worrying about your crappy blog post that got no comments. Recognise that you aint shakespeare and that everynow and then you’ll write a stinker. Learn from it and move on.

Comprehensive website review for zero monetary cost

blogging, seo advice, website reviews 7 Responses »

Jul 012007

Talk about your friends and help them in to the bargain!

Today I was flicking through the blogosphere in search of a little inspiration. It’s hard at times to release the old creative juices, it can get a little tiring.

I didn’t want to complain about a service or talk about the launch of some new product or service, or reference a blogger with a cool idea that I liked, or take a good look at a google algo aspect or even point to some a-lister in the hope of some little mention or other.

Its funny how I just did all those things, but yet by reading these people today I was able to arrive at the point of where I am right now. An aspect of the beauty of how things are created is how things can just pop into your head like a little light brightening a darkened room- ping!

So, here is the idea.

This is what I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to review or look at a blog. Blog software is pretty standard with lots of tools that you can plugin and play with, I just don’t really want to look at tagging and hacking themes and generally dealing with all that stuff that so many others talk about so eloquently already.

No, what I’d like to do is look at something a little different. A standard ‘ordinary’ hand built website made by some random person out there who for whatever reason decided to build something from the ground up. They might be a friend of a blogger, or a business associate or just some resource that people need to know about yet just doesn’t show up in the serps for what they should or at least could.

Lots of sites out there merit a place in a kw related SERP somewhere. Yet an ever increasing reality is that the competition for available slots gets increasingly more competitive.

Whilst a site might have great content, its very design and layout and accessibility to spiders and indexers may inhibit its ability to perform how it ideally could.

In many ways basic SEO can help these sites perform so much better. Be it via original title tags for each page, better structured content, better copy, a few more links, better internal navigational structure, inaccessible flash, over use of graphics, a little PR…the list could go on.

There is a little difficulty with this request as most of the people who read the stuff I gab on about are either SEO’s, bloggers or savvy shrewd marketers, but I know that this isn’t entirely the case either so, we shall see.

Whats in this for me I hear you ask..

There’s lots in it for you.

Straight away it gives you a new idea to write about.

What better way to spend a Sunday or whenever, than helping someone you like or admire even?

Ok sure I can think of a few selfish alternatives, but hey – isn’t there just a bit of appeal in a “give out a little love and get it back tenfold” mindset? Giving beats receiving every single time.

What should you do?

You can write about a site that you think is really cool, or a site that you use daily that isn’t mainstream and that people should know about. It could be one of your own sites, or it could be a site of a friend or a relative even. By writing about them you will be raising an awareness and giving them some all important link juice too.

If you’d like me to consider the site for a review then all you gotta do is link back to this post and hopefully I’ll pick it up and have a little look. In an ideal world you’d choose one of these sets of phraseology, “Rob is offering the chance for some Free SEO Advice ” or “Rob is offering a website review“, but I’m cool with a rob or a yackyack or a click here even!

I’ll let things run for a week or two and select a site that I feel could do with a little help, I’ll then write up a few words offering suggestions and ideas for improvement and forward it to the blogger who wrote about them. I can’t help everyone so please, dont be offended or narked if I don’t pick you, its nothing personal. :)

If you participate then great have fun with it, I look forward to seeing you pop up in the blogosphere.

SEM an ever evolving changeling – why you need to read about stuff like this

blogging, sem, seo 4 Responses »

Jun 272007

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The post that follows is a little anoraky and gets in to some of that miniscule stuff that people like me like to muse about on occasions and disappear up our own back passages but hey, do feel free to read it, you might even learn something.

Todays poll asks you to evaluate your own understanding of SEO. I’ve given 5 possible responses. I thought it would be fun to look at SEO or SEM or whatever label you wanted to apply, and look at the topic in general getting people to think about their own skillsets and understandings.

Some of us think our understanding is good, real good. Nothing wrong with a bit of self belief and I already see that there is one person who believes that their understanding is “Fantastic, I’m the man”.

I put myself in the ‘Very good, I know a lot’ category. I only say this because I’ve been around a while at done this daily for years, I’ve got sites ranked on some very competitive terms. I understand what is required to do well with a site in the search engines. I’ve had sites banned too, it’s called pushing the envelop. Sometimes in order to go forward you need to take a step back or two.

I could have said ‘Fantastic I’m the man’ too, yet in reality in my opinion the only persons who can really say this and are worthy are the people who write the algoes themselves or someone who for some mad unbeknown reason that they’d keep very close to their chests, could get ranked for Viagra or Mortgage or any other high cost PPC keyword within a week and stay there for the duration – Yeah that’s not many people.

Chasing the magic bullets

I’ve said before too that SEO isn’t brain surgery, it’s pretty simple stuff, once you’ve grasped the basics. The problems begin when you get into the minutae and try to look for magic bullets like ideal keyword densities, or page layouts or kw to inward link ratios and other unknowable intangibles. I say unknowable because they are exactly that. The only people who really know are those who have written the algoes and…well, most of those guys aren’t exactly going to begin telling the world what they are or when they are changed.

In other words, search algortihms are constantly moving targets. What is widely accepted as a good bet today won’t necessarily be a good bet tommorrow. It evolves constantly. The only way to begin to keep up is to look at the trends. See who is ranking and why. If you look at enough serps, then you will eventually get a feel for what does and what does not work.

Evolution baby

The days of flooding a site with zillions of links or keyword stuffing are for most of the good algoes out there long gone. It doesn’t take a genius to look at a genuinely popular site and see how it grows. Toolbars, Click through data, stats packages, Unique IP’s, user agents, link data, entrance data, bounce rates, page content are just some of the things that contribute to determining what is and what isn’t rankworthy.

It’s all about the users…

Yep, that old all about the user chestnut but it really is! If you wan’t your website to rank in the search engines and make a serious effort at doing well with it then, yeah whilst it may be easy to buy a line of “just make a kick arse site and forget about ranking and leave it to the engines” the reality is however that it doesn’t hurt to think like a search engine and try and understand where they might be coming from and why. At the very least you might avoid making some huge mistake advised by some nincompoop somewhere.

It might help to look at some of those factors and explore a few of the issues attached to each.

Toolbars and Stats packages

Toolbars are a fantastic way of measuring user behaviour. A toolbar could in theory, measure and record every little thing you do, every click, every interaction, every minute spent, every IP address used, every button clicked could be recorded and measured for every site you visit. Privacy paranoia issues aside, such data could be seriously useful for measuring a sites worthiness or value. Google, Yahoo and MSN or Live as they so ridiculously call themselves all have toolbars. I’ve no idea of their uptake none of them publish any figures, but its safe to say that their users are in the millions. That’s quite a substantial set of metrics that are very difficult to manipulate externally.

Catching a cloaker

The toolbar could also be used to compare data stored about a particular url. If the content seen by the toolbar was radically different to that seen by the search engine spider for example, then this could be an indication of cloaked or alternative content which on the whole is considered a huge no no by the search engines. No amount of IP or useragent cloaking is going to be able to interfere with a user installed browser embedded toolbar.

Stats packages like Google’s Analytics are used by webmasters to glean info about their sites.

Google for example provides a comperhensive free stats package that is of very good quaility, giving them massive insights into the behaviours and traffic make up of a huge number of websites. The value to the site owners are huge, but the value to the data hoarders like Google is even bigger still.

Some people like to say how cool Google is for letting them use such a cool package for free. I’d argue the opposite and say they should pay site owners to install the damn thing, but hey – I use it here, its a neat little tool for someone who isn’t too bothered with a data monster having access to everything they do, skynet anyone?

Anyhow I digress, the point is that similar to the toolbar example above, such stats packages above give priceless insights to user behaviours and site metrics. Comparisons can be made and scaled and applied to known winners and applied accordingly. If a site or page has a high bounce rate then it could mean that the page isn’t as relevant for a query, or is lacking in quality, some other thing to look at. It could act as a flag for some kind of manual review even, at least on known competitive or popular search queries.

Entrance page data (the page that a user lands on) could be another signal of quaility or high interest. Lets assume that a site has a high % of non referal data. Whereby people have just typed in the url into their browser address bar. This could be due to say a TV advertising or paper media campaign or word of mouth thing where people had seen or heard of this great new website. Such a website might not have a reliable link profile or authority score, yet still be of intrinsic social worth. Such a site might generate an off the scale link profile that might resemble something similar to a paid link algo manipulation. Entrance page data, in these scenarios would be invaluable in terms of deciding whether the site in particular deserved to be ranked or boosted for any associated queries.

Clickthrough data

Most SERPs these days are tracked by the engines. Each link to website x y or z will be wrapped inside a little script that will check the position of the url within the serp. One would suspect that they would then look to take other factors into consideration and analyse that data too.

They could for example look at page titles and compare them against user queries and look for relationships that up such click frequencies. Such data could be used to develop all manner of new products and services. Similar to how supermarkets stock their shelves, or manufacturers present their products or write their advertising copy. Certain combinations work where others don’t. Non static ever changing constantly evolving massively complex but…measurable and noteworthy nonetheless.

They could look for users who had clicked a url only to hit the back button shortly afterwards. A high incidence of such occurences measured against sufficient data could well indicate a signal of low quality. This could then be folded in on any susbsequent data refresh.

In closing…

Just a few things to think about there, there are lots of others relative to authority and how that’s arrived at, domain names and the factors applicable, content and distribution thereof, social media and how that can help or hinder - the point is, that these and the things mentioned above are aspects of the mix that you can’t really ignore. If you are serious about your business, then you just have to keep your eye on the ball and if you can’t then at the very least you’d better think about employing an SEO who can.

As much I’d like to think that the world is this super nice fluffy place full of people wishing to help me do really well and succeed and stuff, I’m also long enough in the tooth to know that there are also a bunch of people quite happy to kick my arse and trample all over me at the 1st opportunity. It’s by and large how business works, to the victor goes the spoils and all that stuff.

I don’t know who said it, but its one of lifes truisms. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer still. For me that’s as relevant to SEO as it is to war or any other scenario where you could end up getting squashed. If you know the reasons why you might get squashed either heavily or lightly even then you might just be able to do a thing or two to prevent it. Trust me I know what its like to get squashed it’s damn painful.

Search engines are our frenemies.

Bidvertiser Review (Sponsored)

bidvertiser, blogging, paid reviews 6 Responses »

Jun 052007

This is a sponsored review of the bidvertiser advertising program. It contains affiliate links to the bidvertiser program.

I signed up with bidvertiser after reading Andy Beard’s Bidvertiser Review I even blogged on it myself too.

You can sign up as an Advertiser, a Publisher or Both. They also have a referal program where you can earn up to $50 for new publisher sign ups and $25 for new advertiser signup, both of which are conditional upon performance.

Advertising with Bidvertiser

I must confess I haven’t yet used the advertiser product, so can’t really comment on its effectiveness. I’m sure people will be able to find out info on this with a quick Google.

Publishing and Bidvertiser

I wasn’t too impressed with the backend system at bidvertiser. I briefly touched on those here . To elaborate further, my biggest issue was with what for me is just too clunky a system.

As a blogger I just want a quick and easy way of getting ads on my sites and getting paid. When you log in to the publisher backend you are auto opted in to a long list of advertisers. I didn’t enjoy having to go through 240 + advertisers disapproving sites I didn’t really feel were relevant. It was a royal PITA. I think a better system would give me an option to enable myself to opt out of all advertisers and then selectively choose which ones I wanted to allow. Sure, some people might not care what ads they show, probably because they have a broader reach or appeal yet for a tech blog like this I see little value for myself, my readers or potential advertisers in showing links to sites like Russian Brides 4 Marriage’ and ‘Casino’ and ‘Rehab, Drug and Alcohol’ . To make matters worse, once having been through what can only be described as the rigmarole of a disapproval process. I then found I had to go back and constantly tweak and add and disapprove as new advertisers came on board.

I really don’t have time to mess around like that,so for that reason and that reason alone I decided to remove the ad code.

Would I reconsider? Sure, yes of course I would, but before I did they’d have to improve upon how it currently works. I would like to see.

Catergorised ad channels – would allow me to more specific about the kinds of ad channels I wanted to show. If I run a tech site then I want tech related ads. If I run a drug rehab site then again the same kind of thing applies. I don’t see the point in showing ads to Russian Brides for Marriage websites as in 99.9% of cases very few people who read a tech blog are really that interested in such things. I want to give them ads that are in the very least somewhat related in some way.
Minimum bid rate options – What is the point in me showing ads from a network that are going to pay me such a base minimum. Niche blogs target all manner of sectors and themes. Different markets have different levels of participation and therefore profitability. A blog that deals with finance or gambling as a subject matter would ideally wish to display adverts of related content. Ads in this sector tend tomore expensive than those of other sectors due in the main to the high returns that can be made from serious program participants. A casino affiliate can earn great commisions, as can casino operators too, simply due to the high level of spend by the average new player. Why would any blogger blogging on the topic of gambling want to show a low bid 0.05c ad to a site talking about unrelated stuff, when a relevant ad could perform so much better. By having a minimum bid option, a site that decided on a benchmark level, could work from that base and if so wished exclude further as appropriate.
Opt in to advertiser options – I alluded to this above and understand that as a program bidvertiser wants to get their advertisers ads out there in the space, but jees, do please also appreciate that not all of your publishers are that carefree with who they link to or show even. If at least an option existed to automagically opt out of all, then this would be very much the welcome time saver. Publishers could then look at the list and selectively include whomever they saw fit. I’d like to be able to also have a a checkbox that prevented new advertisers from appearing as well as maybe an email alert otion if ‘ads opted in to ‘ fell below a certain threshold.Update:
My bad. I have since noticed that there is an option to manually approve each new ad, and filter out sites you may not wish to publish; such as your competitors. I hadn’t noticed this though as it wasn’t immediately apparent.

They also allow you to contact them and request inclusion in different categories. This domain was assigned to which to me is pretty restrictive Computer & Internet –> Internet Services –> Search Engines I dont get why if this is my classification I had ads for all manner of unrelated areas but hey…

Bidvertiser Referal Program

I think that the referal program has the potential to be a very good thing but feel that it could be improved somewhat. They offer up to $25 for advertiser sign ups and up to $50 for new publisher sign ups.

Whilst the lure of $25 and $50 per new sign up is on the face of things attractive, when you look at it further you do realise that once these thresholds are met, your bucks stop there.

It would be both cool and I’m sure affordable if there was some additional ongoing passive stream. Maybe some tiered bonuses relative to either advertiser spend or publisher income generation.

If bidvertiser are seriously looking to grow their publisher base then IMO they could do far worse then step up to the plate and offer its partners serious ongoing incentives.

Conclusion

On the whole I think bidvertiser has a lot of potential.

With a sufficient publisher and advertiser base it could obviously do very well indeed.

The success of Google, YPN, Adbrite and Kontera to name but a few are a living testament to this. I can’t vouch for the effectiveness of their ads from either an advertiser or publisher perspective. In many ways they look very similar to most of the other players in the marketplace and could certainly do with some additional formatting options. I think there are as witnessed by some of the advertisers who are using them, some excellent opportunities for the arbitragers of this world to come in to programs like this and exploit some of the low cost offerings that are to be had there.

Its obvious to conclude that a successful program of this type has to live up to the aims and expectations of all its constituents and users, with a little bit of work Bidvertiser IMO, could well do this.

update :

Getting your website off to a flying start – use a blog, kickstart your domain

blogging, building a readership, business, business blogging, seo consulting 7 Responses »

Jun 032007

If you are new to Search engine marketing , you’ll be forgiven for not knowing where to start. You have a website, you have your own domain, its been out there for a while, but no one is finding you in the search engines, you’ve read a bit about SEO and links but its all a bit overwhelming.

There is a lot you can do to make or break a new domain, people will try and sell you all manner of services, Link building, Link baiting, SEO restructuring, Usability services, Re-design services, Keyword monitoring services… the list is pretty long so I’ll say no more on it for now, other than you might not need any of them, at least not straight off the bat, consider employing an seo consultant before commiting any cold hard cash. A good consultant will be able to advise you on the best strategies. Recommend good people, that kind of thing. For less than the price of a weekend in Brighton you could be well on your way to getting your site up and running to where it needs to be.

If you’ve just had a new site built then IMHO you should have at least been told about some of the fundamentals of how your site was going to be constructed.

If your development company hasn’t factored SEO into your design then, well, I don’t want to depress you or anything but you’ve probably wasted a shed load of cash, needlessly, but that’s a post for a another day.

Getting good backlinks without spending fortunes

So assuming the best, assuming that your site has all the ingredients to do well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) then the next stage in the process would be to get those all important keyworded links for your target sales terms.

How can you get these? Well, you could always buy them, but that could well backfire on you. You could employ some blackhatter to go and spam a zillion blogs for you, but that’ll just create negative karma and come back and bite you on the arse, or you could do something relatively simple and generate things the natural way yourself. How? Simple, install a blog.

Install a blog on your domain

Installing a blog is a breeze. WordPress is a great piece of kit. All it requires is some file space, an ability to edit .htaccess files (check with your host) and a database, usually mysql. There are at least a 1001 templates out there and plenty of good designers who’ll be happy to help you convert your blog to fit in with your existing website or even build you a new one.

Blogs are fantastic tools of communication. Who is the best person to talk about your goods and services? The answer should be you, or the head of your sales and marketing team, but then wait up a minute. What about the rest of your organisation? What about your distribution and purchasing teams, what about your direct sales teams, what about your customer services staff? Aren’t they all expert in what they do? Isn’t there someone within each of these spheres who can add a postive contribution or two?

Why blogging matters to your online promotion mix

Why am I even banging on about this?

Well, its Sunday, its sunny, I’m in a ‘state the obvious’ mindframe, I want to get the message out there that this Internet marketing stuff really can be very simple, its not so complicated you just have to do the right things and work at it a little.

Who promotes you in the offline world? What do you do, how do you do it?

Do you write press releases and hope they get picked up by mainstream media or local news agencies? Do you give your customers great service and after sales back up? Do you have direct lines of communication with past customers? Are you building those all important relationships?

Blogging enables conversations

Bloggers are social creatures, they like to talk about each other and make reference to some of the things that others are saying – search engines too, those leviathans like Google for example are also interested in what bloggers have to say. They like the way in which bloggers link and discuss things. It gives them lots of diverse reference points to object and sites on the web that people like or have found useful, subsequently using this data to inform its SERPs and rank the websites within them, sites just like yours.

By blogging, you’ll link to others and cite good ideas and examples yourself. Others will link back to you, your domains authority will increase, your relevancy for your target terms will increase. Your customers will find you for an increasing number of keyword terms in the SERPs, they will feel reassured that your company is actively discussing and sharing what it is they do, you will be able to communicate your passion, your ethics, your ethos, launch new products and innovations in a heartbeat, create buzz and excitement in your marketplaces.

Why wouldn’t you want to have a blog?

If you run a company and don’t have a blog, then either you aren’t really that serious about your company or you just don’t have a clue, or you just don’t want more sales, or you just…look, I can’t be convinced of any reason why you shouldn’t have a blog.

Just do yourself a huge favour and go and get one today.

3 lazy tips for those who can’t be arsed to hire an SEO

blogging, seo 13 Responses »

May 192007

SEO advice good or bad

We all know that if we want to get lots of visitors and expect to get them from search engines then unless we apply a little SEO knowledge, we’ll never get past page 25 for our target keywords.

But is there a quick way to get off the ground? Especially if we don’t know where to start and can’t be fussed with what seems to be a torturous process of trying to work out who to employ or what to apply and in what way.

There’s a lot of stuff out there on SEO. Lots of it, page after page after page of opinion, speculation and hogwash.

When SEO is discussed for example what do they mean when they say

You need a few meta tags here and there?

Your title tags need to be looked at and changed?

Your copy needs to be rewritten?

Do they mean that you need to restructure everything and throw in lots of bold tags, links, H tags, blockquotes, off site links, nofollow links, url rewrites, increase keyword densities?

What do they mean when they begin to talk in terms of your pagerank or alexa score or external link building campaigns that-will-use-a-combination-of -social-and-historical-methods and yeah… wtf exactly does that mean even.!

Most would be forgiven for taking the conclusion of, this SEO stuff is a little confusing to say the least!

Just hire a professional SEO

I’d advise anyone who is serious about their website and clueless on SEO to go and hire an individual or firm who know what they are doing. Ask them for references, don’t buy any BS about monthly submission fees or ‘get you on 1st page of google in a week’ promises as you may as well just send it to my beer benevolent fund and let me drink it for you, I can promise you the same you know

I’m a tightwad, I’m smart I can do it myself thanks, just gimmee a tip!

Ok, so you wish to persist on your own and want to have a little play around yourself . Ok, without further ad0 here are 3 little tips that you wouldn’t go too far wrong applying..

Create something that is good – Kick arse with your content, do it better than everyone else.Have an idea or product that is good!If your website is crap, then improve it, add value now, before it goes down the tubes.
Add a blog, use social mediums to drive it forward, ask yourself lots of questions and be honest with your answers. Would you want to buy your product from your website? Is your site the best at what it does? If the answer is no, then it’ll pay to think that the search engines might think the same too. If thats the case, then you could be stuffed pretty quickly. Can you afford to be so?

The web is powered by links and in lots of ways, the words contained within those links. You need to get people to link to you in all manner of themed ways, to different areas of your site from as many different sites as possible. This is the juice that will power you up the ranks. If you don’t have it, then it will be very difficult to rank without it.

Link juice will be very difficult to obtain if what you are selling or saying is nothing but a lot of old rubbish or same old same old. It takes hours of effort to manufacture artificial link popularity. Your time could be better utilised on improving your product. By creating something that is useful or buzz creating, you will get people talking about you and what you do.

Use your blog to communicate with your visitors. Discuss your latest innovations or deals. Feedback to people who are enquiring of what you do. Show them a human side to your organisation/business/personality. Give them what they need.

Ping the various social connecters out there – get active in your sphere, create excitement in your marketplace, stimulate your visitors, give them a reason to return. Give them the tools to talk about you in earnest.
Use established site structuring techniques and good effective copyYou’d be amazed at the number of pages that fail at the very first hurdle of production.Go and read up about basic good page structureUse the title tag effectively.
If your site has pages that say “Company name: about us section” or “Company name: our product section” then you really need to think about that and ask yourself what the value in that is. The short answer is there is very little.

Everypage of a website should be different. Everypage should have a unique title tag that suitably heads up that page. If a page is about a Sony Vaio Ar21 then those words should come first within the tag.

It sounds elementary and obvious but you’d be amazed at the amount of people out there who miss this singley important factor. Trust me <title>Sony Vaio Ar21 Laptop – Buy your Sony Vaio Ar21 Laptops here – read Sony Laptop reviews and more</title> works infinitely better than <title>Company name: Our Laptop products</title>.

Use headings to head up your content and apply logic to what it is you are discussing.

If a page is about the Sony Vaio AR21, then put those words in your H1 tag. Do not expect to just stick an image or a flash movie in there and expect it to do well. You have to tell both your visitors, and the search engine spiders that you would like to index your pages, what it is that your pages are about. Spiders cannot deduce meaning and context from that which they cannot see. Images and Flash movies and videos are more or less useless as they offer little means for either.

Use words, and emphasise important words such as your product name – use related language to describe what you are selling or trying to promote. If you don’t want to take the time to look at your SERPs for examples of how this works, then go hire an SEO copywriter, ask to see examples of their work and look to see how these people are ranking.

Use good link navigation throughout your site. Consider using breadcrumb trails throughout. Page > Subpage> Product name

Clean your urls so they read nice. Read up on modrewrite and get rid of those session id’s and variable parameters.
Discuss one topic or product per page. If you are selling products on your site then you need to have individual pages for individual products. Unless you are a craigslist or an Amazon or a dealtime or an ebay perhaps, you just will not rank for a product on a page that contains 20 other items.If you want to have any chance of ranking for individual keyword items, then you must seriously consider creating a separate page for each.
If you have 100′s or 1000′s of products then invest in a database or spreadsheet and read up on dynamic page creation. It really isn’t too difficult, and will save you hours of editing and fannying about opening up separate files to do this that and what have you. Template design is where its at.

What you expected more? Sorry, maybe some other day

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Rob Watts – SEO – SEM – Social Media