February 2008

Since we’re all on this topic today. What makes a famous SEO anyway. That to me is an idiotic term. Let’s take other industries. Are there “O-Ring Sales Celebrities” and are there secret O-Ring meetings? People shouldn’t want to be famous, they should just want to make some connections. Don’t be an ass, help people when you can and they’ll help you in return. All it takes is an email, no need for a blog if you don’t want to write one. It’s called networking people. So without further ado:

If you’re a “famous” SEO and you are a douchebag fucktard that only will associate with other “famous” SEO fucktards and are holier than everyone else because you think you’re entitled:

If you’re a “famous” SEO and friendly to the people that are friendly to you, help your colleagues when you can, and although you probably don’t have time to talk to the little guy sometimes that’s okay because your time is limited and having that many people clamoring to be your friend just to use you is probably annoying but it’s the effort that counts:

If you’re a “regular” SEO and you are a douchebag fucktard that only will associate with “famous” SEO fucktards because you think that’s the only way you’re going to get anywhere:

If you’re a “regular” SEO and friendly to the people that are friendly to you, help your colleagues, and give everyone a chance whether they’re famous or not:

If you’re a human and buy me a beer at the next conference

Okay people. I don’t understand why all of the sudden we have multiple posts on “SEO red flags”…whatever that really means anyway. Can we please just say that all SEO could be interpreted by a search engine as a red flag? I agree with all of these posts, but I also disagree with all of these posts. It all depends on how it’s used so why are we writing about it?

Nofollow As A Red Flag: So they recommend we use nofollow then use it against us. Nofollow helps the search engines stay away from bad content and keeps them from indexing things that shouldn’t be indexed (in theory. Really it’s a cop-out b/c the Google spam team can’t keep up). The engines are trying to get more and more people to adopt the use of the stupid tag, so why would there be a flag/penalty/review of it. Obviously anything in excess is going to raise a flag. If I drink 117 red bulls in an hour someone will be raising a flag for me at my funeral.

Updating Links As A Red Flag: Updating links? Why is it unnatural to think you’d want to correct links that were wrong. When you change your site architecture all of your links are going to change; or they should anyway. Why would Google want links going to irrelevant pages or anchor text that is wrong. It just makes their jobs more difficult. If I were to eat 4 gallons of ice cream in one night, I’d be sick…or a woman during…nevermind.

Sitemaps As A Red Flag: Uh, telling Google where your pages are only helps them crawl and index your site. If my sitemap goes from 20 pages to 25 million pages…duh. It’s like if I used a 50 caliber machine gun to kill a mouse. There will be some collateral damage.

Links Page As A Red Flag: Everyone knows what I’m talking about. If I have 50 pages of content and 438 pages of links that would be like France getting attacked. They would be raising a flag. A white one but a flag nonetheless.

Do I really need to keep going with this? The point is everything can be a red flag if used inappropriately. Minimal use of blackhat techniques is a red flag. Overuse of whitehat techniques is a red flag. SEO itself is a red flag. Can’t we have some different colors or something? Having a website is a red flag dammit. Hey you…are you reading this? That’s a red flag, you’re out for the season.

PS: My comments are fixed if you had a problem recently

Eric Ward has completed his revenge plan and stolen $2,500,000.00 right out from under me. I wasn’t expecting it but he used Ninja like skills and pulled the rug out from under me. Here is the email I received last night. Unedited.

Dear Internet User,

This Email is to inform you that you emerged a Category (A) winner withthe sum of $2,500,000.00USD on our online draws.Your email address is identified with Batch Number:444821545-NL/2008 and Ticket Number:
PP3812/2008-08 in Category “A” and your claims portfolio is filed with Ref Number:MARKT 80 ES 9414.For further Information about your Winnings,contact our Lottery claims agent with the following contact Address.

CLAIMS AGENT.
Name: Eric Ward
Tel: +31 616-941-341
Email: ercprzlttnl@aol.com

You are advised to provide him with the following information:

First name:
Last Name:
Telephone/Fax number:
Nationality:
Age:
Occupation:

Congratulations!!! And thank you for being a user of the World Wide Web.

Yours Faithfully,
Mary Van Dotcha
Lottery Coordinator.
Thank you and congratulations!!!

It was thanking me for being a user of the World Wide Web that got me. I couldn’t resist. I’m off to bankruptcy hearing

Yea, I’ll get to an actual SEO post sometime soon. Bite me.

Patience grasshopper. I could end this post now but then you wouldn’t really know why you need patience to do well in this area. So put on your silly looking outfit and listen to Kung Fu Master speak.

As regular readers know (and if you’re new, sign up for my RSS feed right now then come back and read), I attended DOMAINfest 2008 the other day. It was my first domain specific conference and was quite an eye opening experience. Around a year ago I started jumping in on the domain bandwagon. I didn’t really know what I was doing so I figured I would just learn by doing (and screwing up repeatedly). That’s not particularly a good way to go about making money in my opinion but a year ago there wasn’t really much solid information around. There were forums of course but if you believe half of what you read in forums I’ve got a bridge in Indochina for sale.

So off I go on my domain buying spree. Out of the ~500 domains I bought in that time span probably 10% of them are worth the registration fee. Most of the ones I registered were still in the wild (unregistered) and a few I caught on the aftermarket. Out of the ones I bought on the aftermarket (not a lot), I would say 75% of those were a good investment as I’ve increased the revenue a little from the previous owner or developed and am making significant cash flow from them. That being said, the crap ton of domains I have that are worth about as much as a pixel on this screen are the problem. Lesson learned! Do more research before you go learn by doing!

Now developing domains is still where the big money goes, but there are only so many resources available to a small business like myself. Working on three or four things at a time pretty much maxes out my working week. That being said, the true art of domaining will allow you to let your hard earned money work for you while you do other things. You just have to be smart about what you’re buying. Do you want to learn how to be smart about buying and selling domains? Well I have a special treat, all wrapped up in fruity pebbles and chocolate for you.

First a little sidebar on how I ended up with this. Around six months ago I scored a beta account at DNZoom and threw in all my crappy domains (mainly cause I like beta testing stuff and being an early adopter — I’m cool). I played around with it and if you’re an unorganized sloth like me then it’s a lifesaver in terms of organization. I haven’t really had time to get everything in my account yet but I’ll be working on it soon. So anyway, I’m at DOMAINfest and I met Sean Stafford who is the Director of Product Development at DNZoom and we chatted for a bit. He also was a speaker in a couple of the sessions and was very knowledgeable in laying down the basics to a n00b like me.

Sean recently published an e-book on domaining which is a must read for anyone getting started. If I would have had this in my hands a year ago, I’d be doing much better, but as they say, better late than never. Check out the website at DomainGraduate.com. << Not an affiliate link...I whole heartedly recommend this book. And yea, I don't like long sales pages either, just skip all that and buy it. And if you know me, I don't recommend books and shit very often.>>

The book covers the basic stuff we already know as SEO’s like the types of traffic and how parking works. More important to me were the sections on buying and selling, different strategies to maximize your traffic revenue, and valuing domains.

I hear people say all the time that the gold rush is over but that’s just not the case. There is big money to be made in the aftermarket if you invest with brains. You and I as SEO’s have a significant jump on anyone else entering the market because of our level of general internet marketing experience. We know which domains we are better off building out, and now you will know which domains you should pass on if you don’t plan on building them out.

More revenue streams never hurt anyone people, get on it. I’ll be posting more about domaining as my experience level increases a bit.

What the hell is this you say? A post without calling anyone out, slamming some douchebag, or ranting? Well suck it. Here is something for you anyway. Just think what fun it would be if this prayer came true

The Friday Tea Time is back this week in full force. No playtime and no holds barred tea party. Anyway, it’s been a couple weeks so I may be a little rusty but here we go anyway.

* Eric Ward does know a few things. I figured I’d get that out of the way first. Sugarrae takes 11 smart people and writes a thesis on link development. If you’ve been doing SEO for 3 days or 10 years you need to read this post and take notes. Skip Days of Our Lives today and read this instead.

* My new favorite blogger, who’s probably younger than you: Anchor text shuffler for your link bombing box. A non-shady post on what to do if your rankings crash. And finally for you wanna be black belts: Basics of content generation and your 1st blackhat setup. Matt Cutts hates you my friend.

* I’m an Asstard. You probably are too.

* If for some reason this post was the first thing you looked at this morning…everyone including Aaron Wall reported this morning that Microsoft is buying Yahoo. Or trying to anyway. I guess Bill decided if you can’t beat them, buy them.

* Problogger has a nice post on how to effectively use twitter. Personally I am a big fan of twitter. It can be a useful tool in networking and even driving traffic to your blog. It can also be an incredible time drain. Bunch of twits.

* Speed up Wordpress. Since Wordpress is like a giant slug, here is some info on tricking out your blog. Quick and easy instructions for those of us partially brain damaged from too many head injuries.

* Jon over at Raven SEO shows us a cool implementation of the MyBlogLog API. Here is my Raven member page. I can see many cool things that could be done with that.

* Richard over at Quality Nonsense explains why you should let bloggers build your brand. Very few executive types know this and continue to pay PR firms thousands of dollars for nothing. It’s a powerful technique that is completely underutilized.

* Funny shit from cracked. (beware of automatic video…I hate that shit).

* Nic n’ Cher break down the pros and cons of a CMS system while Brian takes a look at Wordpress vs Drupal.

* BoogyBonBon has 5 common SEO mistakes. Not sure I agree with all of them but it’s an interesting perspective.

* As always great stuff from John Andrews. His take on offensive and defensive SEO (aka: being a dirty bastard) is a must read. I’ve also been into the domaining space for a bit now and can start posting a little more about it. John discusses domain development and liquidity. Newest panhandler sign: “Will SEO For Equity”.

* Ready to peddle some porn? Good luck.

* Aaron Wall is at it once again outlining how to successfully rank an affiliate site. Solid information as always.

* Every now and then I’ll remind everyone to think about the mobile web. Well, look at this bit of information. ESPN gets more mobile traffic than regular traffic. I told you so.

* Googlebomb has died. Pffft. Crazy Cults. More importantly, we get a lesson on N-Grams and why most content generators are bunk…or soon will be.

* Datapresser is out so get on the waiting list. I’ll be doing a full review of it as soon as I have time to fully get some blogs up and running. I can go ahead and tell you though it’s easily going to make you the monthly cost and it’s easy to use. Props to rob!

* Interweb Gold: Thanks to Graywolf for pointing out this golden palace of ranting: iPhone Movies Rule It.

Happy Friday Fellow Fuckers. Have a wonderful day, eat your Wheaties, and don’t forget the beer.