September 2007

Beware…I’m pissed today for some reason. There is a lot of NSFW profanity in this post. It’s rated R so go away and eat some fruity pebbles and watch bunny rabbits mingle in the grass if you don’t like it. Otherwise, let’s do it (Warning: I didn’t spell check or edit so forgive and forget the grammar and/or spelling mistakes):

* Look at this shit. For only $375 they’ll build you a sitemap for all three engines. WTF? They also mention it takes 5 to 10 business days. I tell you what…if you’re thinking about hiring these fucktards for their sitemap service give me a call…I’ll do it for a mere $275 in 1 hour. Or go take their “SEO seminar”, I’m sure you’ll learn all kinds of cool stuff. On the other had, go kill yourself. Can’t even get that right? See here and here.

* DealDotCom… If you’re going to be a shady blackhat that scrapes shit and makes money off the work of others at least try and hide the fact you lame asshole. I’m find scraping content to death and spamming everything I see, but at least take 5 minutes to change a font or maybe even a color. Steal the idea, not the whole company. To top that off they are selling f-ing “make $2000 overnight” shit-bag software. Dammit.

* Google and Matt…Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! You get off easy today since I’m mad at everyone else.

* Do I even have to mention BlogRush? You’ve probably stabbed your eyeballs out by now having to read about it everywhere. Here’s the blackhat makeover. The end.

WAIT, it’s not all gloom and doom this week. Here is some good stuff I should mention:

* Bill does it again with 20 More Ways that Search Engines May Rerank and screw up all your work. Bill does such a great job with these it becomes almost pointless to read about it anywhere else. I don’t know where he finds the time for that stuff.

* Iraq is for sale. And ironically it’s owned by Kuwait.

* A little self promo here but I saw the Hat on a logo quiz yesterday from the Search Engine Marketing Spot. Here are the answers (and if you didn’t already know you probably should go crawl back into your cave near Transylvania). That little ego boost made my week better so thanks again for the mention.

* Zombie proof baby. Props to master-baiter oatmeal on cool quizzes and shit. I’ll even give him the link for Online Dating since I couldn’t get the button to work correctly. Anyway, check out the interview on how he busted through the powerhouse companies like eHarm-somebody and stalker.match.com. He did it all in 3 months. Impressive.



* Intraweb Gold and totally NSFW so don’t even think about opening it unless you work where I do, then it’s okay. I was couldn’t remember the HEX code for yellow so I searched for FFF and came across this FFF and I’m not even sure what to say about that.

That’s it. Next week will be Friday Happy Dancing Bunny Time.

I am so freaking cool. Don’t even think otherwise mere mortal. Magnificent. Superhuman. Awe-inspiring. Glorious. Spine-tingling.

Okay, that’s enough boastful exaggeration. At the time of this publication the population of the Earth was approximately 6,619,141,604, not including midgets and hairy Sasquatch. Also at the time of this publication Technorati says that this blog is ranked 97,290 of all things blog like. Of course Technorati is fucked up as hell but that’s beside the point. Anything that says you’re cool is fun. Breaking the 100,000 mark was sort of a milestone. Something like getting that first 100 subscribers, that first comment from an A-Lister, that first million, that first sexual experience, and so on. Okay, I’m full of shit. 97k isn’t much to brag about but for a part-time blog that I can’t give real attention to it isn’t bad. The important thing is that the numbers are steadily increasing.

I didn’t have an explosive rise like some bloggers do (congrats to Patrick). I thought I would go through some things I did well and some things I didn’t and things I still hope to improve upon.

Things I Did Right (I Think)

Have A Unique Voice - This is one I think is very important. Your visitors don’t want to read something they just read on Search Engine Land. Feel free to write about something you found there but add value to your post. Give people your opinions whatever they are. Regurgitated news is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Post Consistently But Not Carelessly - I don’t do a high number of posts (not enough time in the day) but I tend to post once or twice a week and deliver the Friday Tea Time on schedule. Occasionally I miss it but when you have something people like be sure to deliver it. However, as I’ve mentioned before, don’t sacrifice quality just to be consistent.

SEO - Basic SEO will go far. I haven’t actively marketed this blog much so I’m just relying on referrals and search engine traffic. Use popular plugins like SEO Title Tag, use the post slug to customize your URL, pay attention to your keywords, and do your basic link building.

Keep Your Blog Clean - Don’t confuse your audience with advertising clutter all over the place. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your feed. Unless you do multiple posts per day, then only use one feed. I know you’ve read elsewhere to have a feed for each category, but I disagree with that blanket statement. In a few cases it may apply, but it’s not the norm. Keep it simple.

Converse With Your Audience - When someone takes the time to comment about one of your posts, it’s rude not to respond. If they disagree you can have meaningful debate, and if they agree you can just thank them for stopping by. I realize that when you have 10,000 readers it’s probably not possible but getting started you have to do this.

Converse With Other Bloggers - Post relevant comments and opinions on other blogs and do it regularly. This is another time issue for me but I do my best. A-Listers or Z-Listers (me) you’ll gain respect and readers will know you’re here to stay if they see you in other places. Don’t name call and don’t post a bunch of “Nice Post” comments. Add something. Don’t dump your links all over your comments unless they are actually relevant!

Find Alternate Methods To Gain Traffic - Things like StumbleUpon can give you a big subscriber boost. Here is my #1 tip for using their ad network: Don’t submit your homepage. Instead select some of your best posts and promote those. $50 is worth the connections you’ll make from it. MyBlogLog is another good one for me. It will bring some decent traffic in. Hint: Have a good avatar and use it consistently. I think mine kicks ass and people remember it. I wish I could find the guy who designed it so I could give him some link love.

Things I Could Do Better (I Think)

Create A Top Posts Section - I really need to do this, I just haven’t had time. I keep writing these long ass posts instead of improving my blog. Creating a top post section will let new visitors get an idea about the quality and topics on your blog. You should have an idea fairly quickly from your analytics.

Improve My About Page - When I first started blogging I didn’t think many people would bother to read that, but it isn’t the case at all. My about page is too short and boring. I need to put up some more information on my experience and post links to other places on the web that I can regularly be found. A good example of an about page is Alister Cameron. This technique also will let you p0wn the results for your vanity search.

Bribe Matt Cutts - Link every post to Matt’s blog with nofollow, and tell him you’ll remove it if he will just link to you. In every post. Then link to the REAL Matt Cutts.

Quit Talking About Google In Every Post - It’s hard but there are other things to talk about.

Post More Blackhat Stuff - I have the same syndrome as all black/gray hats…we don’t like to divulge information. When shady stuff works we don’t want the Google Gestapo hunting down our methods. I’m changing my thought process on this one though. By the time you figure out some blackhat technique and get it posted you’ll need to be changing it up anyway. Posting some of that information will let people new into the SEO world learn. If you haven’t heard it before…the best whitehats were blackhats first. Unless your name is Rand. He just kicks ass.

Run More Tests - One of the most visited posts on this blog is the Wikipedia data I published a while back. This type of research takes a lot of effort but it is rewarded in the end. Another great example is the web analytics study that was done by Stone Temple Consulting. Quite possibly the longest study that is freely available. That could have easily been in MarketingSherpa.

Fix My Search Bar - I just realized it doesn’t work right if you’re inside a post. A good reason to constantly test different parts of your site.

Give Away Stuff - Everyone likes free stuff. That’s a no-brainer.

Be More Sociable - Everyone in the SEO industry is easy going and will happily sit down and chat over a beer. There are still a lot of people I haven’t met thus far and I plan on doing much more networking at conferences and so forth. I just have to quit being so scary.

Well, that about wraps up this post. Anyone that has any ideas on how I could improve my blog please comment of shoot me an email. I’m a big fan of constructive criticism. We all know we’re always learning! If you want to say hello and meet the 97,289 people that are more magnificent than me, register for PubCon. It’s warmer than Chicago.

We’ve gone from tea to tequila this week based on my level of frustrations. Exploding laptops, leaking roofs, barfing dog, and so on. munchers del asno. That’s what people are who don’t freaking listen to me. Over.

* One of my favorite books of all time. Six pints of bitter. And quickly please, the world’s about to end. Here is The Hitchhikers Guide to SEO from Ford Prefect, errr SEOish.

* Let’s welcome back the Gypsy who must have been working with Matt Cutts on his new SEO software…

* Here is a very detailed post on using nofollow for deeper index penetration. I said penetration. INDEX penetration you perverts. I’ve fooled around with doing this on a couple sites. I keep running into confusing results on larger sites (25k pages +). This can have some beneficial use but it’s not for the beginner. I’ll have a follow up post after I get better at deciphering it.

* Links with Java OnClick events don’t pass pagerank. What? JavaScript you mean maybe? Please don’t forget to optimize with a keyword density of 5.4%, and use Web Position Gold because it will give you a #1 ranking, and only use html extensions because .php will get you banned. Kudos to Boser for calling her a Dumbass and echoing the need for a bury/lame/idiot button on Sphinn. That whole story wasted about ten minutes of my life that I’ll never get back. Kind of like the time you’re wasting right now reading this post. At least mine is more entertaining because I can say things like those two are munchers del asno and Danny can’t delete my comment.

* fantomaster has some advice on hiding from Google when/if they buy GoDaddy. That will suck…moving all that shit will be expensive. He also spills the beans on gaming social networks because hey, what the hell else are they good for.

* Interested in domaining? Brian has the lowdown on what it has been like entering the domain market nine months ago. I’ve been doing some domaining for about six months and he has some excellent pointers. Read every scrap of information you can before getting into this, it can be a tricky business.

* AMEN to Todd. He’s an optimizer optimizing to become optimally optimized. If only more people would follow his advice. Business sense plus SEO experience and knowledge is the key. Go stuff some meta tags up your ass if you don’t think so.

* Interweb Gold: NFL Predictions - Star Wars Style. The Chiefs most resemble a Taun Taun (that thing Skywalker cut open and slept in). That is what is happening to our season so far.

Adiós muchachos y muchachas…I’m off to slam some Don Julio Blanco.

All over the web you see tips and techniques for starting and succeeding in the world of blogging. Most of what you come across is good advice, but a lot of times there are exceptions to those rules. Let’s take for example the rule of being consistent with your posting frequency. You can find this specific advice on many well known and popular blogs, for example:

Problogger - 8.9 Posts Per Week - Too Many? Not Enough? and Post Frequency - How Many Blog Posts are Too Many?

Pronet Advertising - 5 ways to building a better blog

You get the point. Keep reading my post dammit.

Now I’m sure both Darren and Neil will say that quality is just as important if you asked them, but I think everyone has taken this “consistency” thing a bit far. Let me ask you something: Would you rather see me write average posts consistently or great post sporadically? (Bite me if you don’t think I have any great posts) My reader has over 300 feeds in it and I don’t like seeing posts just for the sake of a post. It wastes my time which none of us have enough of anyway.

Finding topics to post about is one of the more difficult things to do while running a blog but don’t sacrifice your voice. Granted, if you don’t post for a month or two you’re going to lose some subscribers (Unless your name is Chris Hooley…I’d never be able to remove him from my reader. Must be a man-crush or something). I am however going to start removing feeds that have too many “gotta post this cause problogger said so”. Quality over quantity is the golden rule for the majority of things. Links. Tequila. Women (errr, maybe not always…the more the merrier), Buffy, etc.

PS: This was not a post about posting just to post a post. This was a rant just for the sake of bitching and moaning about a pet peeve of mine.

OFF TOPIC ALERT: Please link your logo to your home page. I also hate when people don’t do that.

This is a really tough question. I’ve had an idea I have been thinking about for 6 months or so but I haven’t been able come up with a suitable domain for it. I recently ran across PickyDomains which is a service that will do it for you if you are stuck. We’ll get to their services in a moment. Picking the right domain is a very important step when starting a project. It could set you up for success or dismal failure. A lot of your branding power comes from your domain name and you can build immediate trust with your users. For example, a long generic domain with a bunch of dashes (buy-my-online-ebook.com) looks really low quality. A better solution would be something easy to remember and portrays a bit more quality (ebooksuccess.com). Here are some additional things to consider when choosing your domain name:

1. Having keywords in domain name for increasing search engine rankings is always useful, but this may not always be the case. Currently Google ranks keywords domains very well but they could lower the weight at any time. You’ll need to weigh the pros and cons when determining this. If you find a highly brandable name without keywords I suggest going with that.

2. Your business name may be useless to use as a domain name. This can arise if you have a long business name or plural words with apostrophes. “Jim’s Surf ‘N Turf Advertising” wouldn’t turn into a good domain name.

3. Double letter problems. Double letters in domains can get confusing to searches and type in traffic. For example “Pratt Tennis Shoes” would look like pratttennis.com. If you do go with something like this be sure to register and redirect all combinations (pratennis, prattennis, pratttennis). It will work, but it’s confusing and that isn’t good for your customers.

4. Domain extensions. Get the .com. Better yet, get them all. If a domainer has it you may have to pay a higher price. If some Joe Schmoe has it then just contact them via a whois search and express interest in purchasing it if they are willing to sell. You can usually get a pretty good deal doing it this way. A lot of times the Joe in question will want to know what you’re going to do with it (why I’m not sure, but it happens more often than not).

So you’ve had 15 brainstorming sessions and you’re still stuck? That’s where PickyDomains comes to the rescue. They have a team of domain experts from around the world that will do your brainstorming for you and pick a domain name. For 50 risk free dollars it’s a great deal considering the value your domain name plays in your business. If you don’t go with anything they submit, you’ll get a full refund. I’m going to give them a shot and I will post a review after I have my new domain.