October 2007

Two-timer - a person who says one thing and does another.

You know how I said Friday Tea Time would be a weekly thing. Well, it is a lot of work and none of you asses pay me to write this so I skipped last week. If you don’t like it, buy a link and I’ll be sure to write it every week. Let’s get to it.

* Toolbar Page Rank Update - Who Fucking Cares? See kiss my ass and Irishwonder. Those are essentially the two posts you need to read then forget it and get back to making money. Or start running around in rabid circles waving your arms because your green bar got smaller. If you want more, go see the picture of Matt “Homo Cop” Cutts over at Twenty Steps. I would have yanked the pic and put it here but I like his blog and I’m not an asshole today.

* On a similar subject, Halfdeck talks about paid links with some excellent analogies on paid links. He also quotes Heat a bunch so it’s cool.

* Spotted via Seocracy: Mass moving cPanel Accounts. Anyone who has had to do this running WHM knows it’s a total clusterfuck nightmare. I’ve been finding things to make my life so much easier these days. Between that and the htaccess generator I’ve been talking about I’ve added hours onto my lifespan.

* I keep hearing people say black hat doesn’t involve PPC. Well for all you people who don’t know shit, check out this black hat PPC post. Now shut your pie holes. I found that via Fantomaster so props to Ralph.

* Sticking with the black hat theme here are a couple gems. First a nice tutorial for beginners (well, let’s go with somewhat novice) from a Blue Hat guest blogger on scraping links with PHP with cURL. Taking that further here is a breakdown of Curl multi which you can do some cool shit with. For you dot net people (not me), here’s a Wordpress comment spammer you can create in a flash. Can’t say how well it works and I don’t think I’ve met this guy before but it seems he’s coming up with some cool shit so I wouldn’t worry. Now go scrape, spam, drop links, create a few thousand accounts wherever you want, etc. Just don’t blame me when you get smacked because you will. It’s inevitable and it sucks, but a good learning experience.

* Do you have a Googlegänger? I do. This guy has my name. Too bad I already own every domain with every variation of “Aaron Chronister” in it. It also appears we live in the same city. That’s creepy.

* Bill has a very interesting post on Google blending feed data into their universal search results. If this comes to fruition I think it’s a great opportunity in the affiliate space since a lot of companies rely on affiliates for their sales force and leave SEO on the table. Just think about having a product feed full of your affiliate links straight in the organic results. I’m also thinking of ways to spam it already, but I’m sure the GoogleBorg is thinking of ways to stop me as well. Good write-up Bill. Keep us posted on any more developments in that area.

* Hey Vanessa, What’s up with Wordze squatting your typo name (http://vannessafoxnude.com/)? That’s just rude.

* Great post from my friend Dave on making relevance work for you. Follow that up with a brand new post from Joost de Valk on Semantic HTML and SEO. Rule the planet people.

* Rae posted this morning on the advertising opportunities on Facebook. She has some great ideas and gave some actual real world examples, which I like to see. Real world examples are hard to come by in the SEO world it seems.

* Hi Matt. You’re cool this week. I do have a bug to report: My Page Rank dropped…the world has spun into chaos! (My obligatory Matt Cutts Link).

* And for Halloween fun we have a few things. ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES!: a must see movie. Or titled Strippers Vs Zombies, can’t really tell. Then from Common Craft we’ve got how to survive a zombie attack that a 6 year old can understand:

* Interweb Gold: What Would Jesus Hate? Sweet.

That’s it. Happy Halloween and don’t eat any candy from people wearing black hats. They’re all no good spammers. For tonight’s party I’m dressing as a “Pawn in an Evil Plot”.

This is going to be a short post, simply because everyone else has blogged about it. Personally it isn’t the big deal everyone says it is. Everyone is all up in arms about the PR drop from the “industry leaders”. Whatever. In my opinion it’s a play by Google to push credibility to the FUD of the paid link BS. Let’s put the hammer down on some big sites so everyone will notice an get nervous! Well Matt, I’m not buying it. In fact, I think I’ll go out and double my link buys this month. Errr, wait a second. I buy links for the traffic so I guess it doesn’t apply to me.

Forward: I’d like to welcome the esteemed Chris Richardson to the Wonderland that is TheMadHat. We all know Chris from WebProWorld and he will be joining me as a writer on this blog occasionally. So give him a big welcome and listen to what he has to say!             - Aaron

What’s up folks? Long time, no see. I haven’t covered the search engine industry for a little while now, but thanks to Aaron’s kick-ass Mad Hat blog, I’ll share some of my thoughts on the SMX New York conference that just ended a couple of days ago. Great job of organizing the event Danny; next time, however, please get some better chairs. Even though this subject was brought up during the first day of SMX NY, it needs repeating.

It’s hard to enjoy the knowledge when your ass is numb.

First off, all of the speakers were great. They had some really good information and strategies to consider when tackling the social media aspect of marketing your product, and make no mistake, a well-done social marketing strategy can benefit your site’s “profile” in many ways.

One of of the main discussion points was leveraging Digg correctly. This can be done a number of ways, however, one of the more popular and successful ways is through the use of lists. Top-10 lists are a hug favorite of the Digg crowd, so find one that’s pertinent to your field get to listing. If you are travel agency, think of some top-10 lists that affect your company. What are some of the best airports in world? What are the worst (Chicago-Midway)? What makes them the best/worst? Topics like these are a good way to attract the Digg/Propeller/Delicious crowd.

Another good way to penetrate the Digg market is befriend a power Digger or two (or 10). If a Digger like Neil Patel takes a liking to your work, there’s a good chance you can make the front page. However, just be sure your web servers can handle the impending stress. There’s no point in developing an awesome, witty Top-whatever list, only to see your site die when the crowd comes running to see what the hub-bub is about.

Leverage social sites like Facebook and MySpace. These sites can go a long way in furthering your networking opportunities as well as your product’s marketing presence, a fact pointed out quite eloquently by Cindy Krum of Blue Moon Works. Cindy’s segment concerning Flying Dog’s leveraging of MySpace was very educational. I can also speak about the benefits of Facebook when it comes to networking. So can Aaron.

As Rand Fiskin pointed out, learn about the micro social sites that apply to your industry. With a little due-diligence, it’s not hard to find a community that will, in all likelihood, have some positive implications for your site. Engaging these audiences can pay noticeable dividends.

OK, this is a good stopping point for today. I’ll be back on Monday with some ideas you should consider when it comes to blogging and linkbaiting. Like Rebecca Kelley says, it’s good when you are a master baiter. I’d like to thank Shelby Garlock, the search engine maven herself, for putting up with me, especially during the Chicago-Midway debacle (nice crowd management Southwest) . She’s a brilliant Internet marketer, so keep your eyes open for her.

Great job all around to the SMX crew and thanks to Aaron for giving me a platform to share my views. Take care and I’ll see you on Monday.

Chris Richardson

Step 1: Make a shit load of money on some other online venture.

Step 2: Prove it by taking a picture of your porsche/aquarium/check/hot girls.

Step 3: Talk about how you made the money, but only the ways that don’t work anymore.

Step 4: Sell ads and promote shitty affiliate programs.

Step 5: Repeat.

Bring on the cash!

In participating in Blog Action Day, I was having some problems coming up with a topic to blog about. I knew there would be many posts on recycling, waste reduction, and so forth so I thought I would go a different route and discuss 5 things outside of the norm. However strange, all of these solutions have been proposed by actual scientists and I didn’t make any of them up. Some will never likely be feasible, but at least you’ll think about it.

1. Cool down the earth by moving the entire planet farther away from the sun - This idea was published in the professional journal Astrophysics and Space Science by Don Korycansky, Greg Laughlin, and Fred Adams. Essentially they propose to find an asteroid say around 60 miles long (the size of Long Island or so). Once said asteroid has been located they plan on using it as a “gravitational sling shot” of sorts by strapping a big rocket to it and putting the asteroid in an orbit wider than the radius of the solar system. By having the asteroid pass close enough to the Earth (every 6000 years or so), it will slowly tug the planet farther and farther away from the sun. Drawback #1: If the asteroid were to accidentally collide with the Earth it would eliminate all life on the planet (Global Warming would no longer be an issue). Drawback #2: It would take 6,000,000,000 years to finish. Drawback #3: Every time the asteroid would pass it would cause giant tsunamis and title waves and bad stuff like that. End Result: Global Warming Averted 6 billion years from now!

2. Use Aerogel to clean up pollution - You remember Aerogel right? It’s that fun stuff they used to collect space dust, hold up bricks and save your Crayons from dragons. Aside from fun stuff like that, they recently published in Science magazine that Aerogel could be used to create a sponge-like substance that could clean up heavy metals like mercury making it ideal to clean up polluted water. Seals everywhere rejoice! There is also research in progress to create purification filters for fuel cells and desalinization plants to make the world a cleaner place. Drawback #1: They are made from platinum, so our taxes are going to go up. A lot. End Result: Water Pollution Eliminated!

3. Grow genetically modified crops - For around ten years farmers in Australia have been growing genetically modified cotton that has a built in resistance to insects. This has led to a massive reduction in pesticide spraying. By using the same technology on food we could decrease the use of pesticides on crop supplies to an almost negligible level. It also reduces the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. When pesticides are sprayed, they not only kill the insects the but also organisms in the soil that keep carbon trapped. Once they are toasted the Carbon is released into the atmosphere as Carbon Dioxide. Everyone knows that’s bad. Except President Bush maybe. Biotechnology and food supplies have always been a controversial topic and this isn’t really an opinion piece so you can choose for yourself if you like eating ant killer. Drawback #1: Something could go wrong and you might be attached by a giant tomato. Drawback #2: Genetically altered crops generally offer no cost benefit to the farmers so getting them to adopt it would be difficult. End Result: Less pesticide and possible vegetable attacks.

4. Go back in time and fix stuff - No, I said I didn’t make this stuff up. First let’s quote the great Carl Sagan:

“If we could travel into the past, it’s mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn’t today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it’s possible, but it’s certainly worth exploring.”

A physicist named John Cramer is attempting to explore this very thing. His first step is figuring out if anything can indeed move faster than light. If so, he claims, through some long quantum physics thing I can’t even figure out, traveling backwards in time would be possible. This would allow us to do things like beat up George Bush and elect Al Gore and present nuclear fuel cells to the people of the 1800’s. Drawback #1: The space-time continuum would be disrupted and the entire universe would collapse. Ouch. Drawback #2: We’d probably make it worse. Giving nuclear energy to people in the 1800’s would probably be a bad idea. Drawback #3: Alien invaders from the future could find the technology and come back to eat us now. Drawback #4: Al Gore would invent the interweb. End Result: I don’t know but I bet I’d win the lottery.

5. Reduce your carbon footprint - Okay, so this one isn’t weird but I had to have a serious one. Some people think that just because they drive a hybrid electric car they’re doing more for the environment that me since I’m driving a giant SUV. What they don’t understand is the concept of Carbon Footprints. I do because my brother happens to be a Geologist. Let me give you an example. I drive a 1997 Ford Expedition 4×4 and a 2001 Ford Mustang GT (Those aren’t mine but they’re close enough). Let’s also say my environmentally focused friend drives a 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. Who is more environmentally friendly? Well, I live 5 miles from work but my friend doesn’t like the pollution of the city so he lives 25 miles away out in the suburbs. By this calculation I release approximately 1.6 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year while his little hybrid releases 2.55 tons of CO2 per year. Now obviously I could reduce my carbon footprint by driving a more sensible car, but there is more to consider than what you drive. Want to know how much your carbon footprint is? You can calculate yours at Climate Crisis. So, try and eliminate some of your carbon footprint and shut your pesky little tree hugger friend up with your advanced knowledge of the atmosphere. Drawbacks: None. End Results: Less Global Warming!

Thanks again to the Blog Action Day group. It was a cool idea and I’m excited to see the final tally. Hopefully someone will think about it next time they buy a 300 horsepower mustang