Archive for October, 2007

I get countless spam emails promising to get me the top listings in Google by submitting my site to 1000’s of directories. It’s easy for anyone to start a web directory these days. Just buy some web directory software, and you’re good to go. That’s the danger! The proliferation of Web Directories from all the web entrepreneurs using web directory software, or some kind of php directory script.

Many web directories are brand new “out-of-the-box”. And, they don’t have authority, aged domain, and a strong inbound link profile. So, submitting to these directories will not provide any substantial type of SEO lift you might hope for. The reality of the matter, is that some of those submissions may actually put your site in a “bad neighborhood”, and hurt your SEO efforts.

Bob Mutch put together a cool chart listing the top web directories as rated by their Inbound Links.

One of my personal favorite web directories is BOTW. Here’s an Interview with Greg Hartnett of BOTW. Greg shares some of his wisdom from being the President of the internet’s oldest directory (since 1994).

Before Google existed, Sergey Brin and Larry Page used BOTW as a reference in their thesis paper “Backrub” before they incorporated as Google. Check it out, BOTW is the 1st reference they use.

Here are some Factors to look for in a quality Web Directory:
1) Quantity of Inbound links.
2) Quality of Inbound links.
3) Age of Domain.
4) Topical relevancy to your site.
5) Human-edited is better than automated-based.(editorial control = quality).
6) How frequently the directory gets crawled…( check the Google cache).
7) The directory itself ranks in the Search Engines. (this can be a sign of authority, and can drive clickthrough traffic).
Are their links direct static links, or are they redirected to your site?

Bottomline: Web Directory submissions do help. However, it’s better to cherry pick a handful of the most reputable/authoritative web directories instead of taking the easy way & shooting yourself in the foot by using an automated process to submit your site to 1000’s of directories.

I had one of my friends ask me how he can learn SEO. An opportunity just fell into his lap. Currently, he knows nothing about Search, Marketing, or basic programming. He definitely has a mountain of learning to climb.

We spoke for 2 hours last night, and I showed him many things. Although, he really didn’t understand much of what I was showing him. He told me it’s all greek to him. He didn’t even know what I meant when I used the term, “URL”. But, he really wants to learn this specialty.

Which leads me to this post. I thought I’d compile a short list of articles/posts, that he (or anybody that desires to learn SEO) can read thru.

I loaned him a basic HTML tutorial book, and emailed him one of my proprietary SEO Analysis spreadsheet templates (unpublished) I created for my own use. Also, I highly recommended buying the Search Engine Marketing book on my right sidebar. It has great stuff on both SEO & PPC.

Below are some SEO Tutorials that should help anyone wanting to learn SEO:

Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization

Key Factors of SEO

SEO Quick Reference Sheet

SEO Powerpoint Presentation

SEO Consultant Proposal

Metrics to Measure SEO Success

SEO Tutorial

Criteria & Time Period for Link Effectiveness

How to SEO a site in less than 60 minutes.

And finally, any newbie is gonna need to fill their toolbox with quality SEO Tools to make their job easier, and more efficient/productive. So here is the famous SEO Tools by Mr. Ploppy.

Reasons why RSS is good for Users:
- Users benefit from better information control and efficiency.
- Permission based.
- Easy opt-in, and opt-out process.
- No inbox clutter.
- Enhances productivity.
- Enhances organization of files
- RSS is spam/virus proof.
- No more clogged email servers (or harddrives).
- No more duplicate messages (for the most part).

With the current state of what Google did to my listing in the SERPs, I am relying much more on traffic from my RSS feed, and other bloggers who link to me from within their posts to generate traffic to my blog. I’m forced to look to other ways to generate “free” website traffic, because Google has essentially been the traffic killer for all my clicksthroughs on the Google domain.

Fortunately, I’m still getting traffic from Y!, MSN, Ask, and other referrers. So, more than ever before, I’d very much appreciate subscribers to my RSS feed.

Google is also waging war on honest sites that add value to their readership by selling relevant textlinks. Google’s most recent PageRank update could also potentially decrease many advertisers natural traffic.

If you mouse over the green PR pixels, you’ll see Google says, “PageRank is Google’s view of the importance of this page”. So, all of a sudden, your network of sites drops in “importance”, then your rankings ( and traffic) will most likely drop also. This is another unnecessary Google slap at the entire Search industry.

So, if you’ve found some blogs you like to read, if only occasionally, then I encourage you to subscribe to their RSS Feed.

Some good RSS readers are:
FeedDemon
Bloglines
My Yahoo
Google Reader

So, given the state of things…I’d very much appreciate subscribers to my RSS feed.

With the recent PageRank update, I noticed Google labeled my site as potentially malicious in the SERP’s. Just below where the title tag appears, they inserted this line of text: “This site may harm your computer.”

This is totally unfair. How prevalent is this throughout the web. My guess is that they have begun an unfair practice of mass blackballing law guideline abiding sites.

This is one step away from de-listing an honest site. Now, I have to go into my Google Webmaster Tools and request a review…similar to a reinclusion request.

Google is so bogus! Their business decision has the affect of crippling honest people who rely on their site for their livelihood.

And to top it off, they probably will take a very long time to getting around to re-examining the large volume of “requests for review”. Unbelieveably bogus

Is Google evil? Do they want us to rely on Adwords? On paying for clicks?
Can Matt Cutts help? Or, is he part of this business decision?

Alternate sources of traffic:
This seems like just another warning sign that we need to look for other methods to drive traffic to our websites thru: link buying, blog reviews, sponsorships, Social Media, PR, Word of Mouth, RSS feed for my blog, offline advertising, and any other possible way we can think of.

UPDATE:
Here’s what I did yesterday…

1) My webhost backed up the database & restored the files to an earlier date.
2) Also, I moved my database to another server.
3) Changed logins on both server & wordpress.
4) Searched files for any malicious scripts.
5) Tested it on an uninfected PC.

The issue is now resolved. Whew!
6) As added security, I will be upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress.

A big thanks go out to Bluehost & Philipp Lenssen (and Matt Cutts for the indirect tip thru Philipp).

More comments and updates from Matt at Sphinn.
And, my good friend Ron helped me out tremendously. You can read about it on his IT Security blog.

Once your Google Account Team sets you up a My Client Center. You become empowered to upload accounts yourself, and link accounts to your MCC.

From that point forward, the only thing you’ll you’ll need them to do, is to generate a Service Agreement for each campaign you want to run. Here are the steps:
1) Build your own campaign using this Google Bulksheet template.
2) Load the campaign into Adwords Editor, and upload to Adwords.
3) Link the campaign to your MCC.

Here are the details…

Follow these steps in AdWords Editor to upload your campaign:

- Start with the “Campaign” tab and be sure to include the appropriate dates and daily budget.
- When uploading keywords, please click on the “Keyword” tab and hit the “Make Multiple Changes” button.
- Select “Add/Update Mulitiple Keywords”
- Hit the second radial button (My keyword information below includes…..)
- Then, copy the entire data area on the buildout spreadsheet within the “keywords” tab. Paste within the popup box in Adwords Editor. Then, hit finish!

To copy and paste text ads, you can follow these same steps but do so in the “Text Ads” tab. Additionally, once your CPCs have been set, please be sure to update and include an overall ad group CPC in the “Ad Group” tab.

Once you’ve uploaded the campaign from Adwords Editor into the Adwords interface, you still will NOT be able to see it in your MCC until you “Link” it to the MCC.

Now, go to your MCC. There should be a hyperlink on top of the campaign list that says, “Link existing account“. Click on the link, and type your CID (Customer ID number) into the box.

Now, go login to the individual adwords account you just linked. It will ask you to approve. Now, approve it.

That’s it. You’re finished. Congrats! The only thing you’ll need your Adwords team for now, is to generate Service Agreements.

It’s been over a year that I posted a basic proposal for an SEO Consultant. So, I’ve been thinking it’s about time for a post that outlines the basic criteria within a PPC Strategy document.

This post is meant to describe what elements go into creating a PPC Search Strategy document that can be woven into the overarching digital marketing plan. This document should provide further detail to the buys, as well as the strategic, creative, and optimization recommendations.

Background:
This paid search program is geared to support the overarching marketing efforts surrounding *your client*.

Objectives:
Primary:
- State what the business objectives are here. The measurement for success will be stated below.
Secondary
- Reaching and connecting with the targeted demographic audience to generate buzz & awareness.

Destinations:
http://www.clientsite.com

Recommended Search Engine(s):
Google – Paid Keywords across Google.com, Google Content Network, and Google’s syndicated network which includes: AOL, Ask, HotBot, Iwon, Lycos, and Netscape)
Yahoo - and their search distribution network: (AltaVista, and AllTheWeb)
MSN

Timing & Budgets:
$24,000 budget.
- Pre-Launch:
Brief and pre-plan: Complete (1 week).
Approval, copy development and placement: Complete (1 week ).
QA and live: (1 week)
- Flight Dates (tentative):
October 22, 2007 – February 22, 2008

Keyword Strategy:
- Determine which keywords will pull in qualified traffic, how many searches do these terms/phrases receive, how should keywords & copy be used in combination to attract search traffic.
- Determine which keywords and campaigns are most popular and effective within their market segment.
- Keyword Bucketing - Terms separated into 4 (or as many as you feel is relevant) audience segment buckets:
1. Bucket Name #1
2. Bucket Name #2
3. Bucket Name #3
4. Bucket Name #4

- Bidding on Similar brand terms to capture the genre audience.
- Perform a thorough keyword analysis to identify under-priced keywords and keyword combinations.
- Utilize various keyword matching options; broad, exact, phrase, and negative.

- Keyword List: Initial keyword list will be adjusted (+/-) as performance data is accumulated

Creative Strategy:
- Tone of ad creative customized with keywords to appeal to the targeted audience demographic.
- Combination of Broad terms/Specific creative, and Exact terms/Specific creative.
- Deliver ads to a broad audience, and appeal to specific demographic.
- Bi-Weekly Ad copy optimization.

Copy:
- Two sets of copy for each of the keyword buckets will be utilized initially for this campaign.
- Test multiple versions (A/B Splits) of Ad copy per search engine.
- Optimize ads on a bi-weekly basis.

Targeting:
- Nationally targeting.

Demographic:
- Gender: Men/Women
- Age Groups: 18-55
- Geography: USA
- Ethnicity: Caucasion

Bid optimization:
- By tracking & optimizing keyword level performance metrics, we will be able to execute a high level of campaign efficiency in relation to campaign objectives.

Forecast:
- Initial Media Plan – (Option #1)
- Based on the approved initial digital media plan, we estimate 51,151 available clicks across 3 engines for the remainder of the year. The CPC for these terms varies which is reflective of more competition for these terms by other etailers. The terms would average $6,000/month and would drive over 12k monthly brand engagements.

- Expanded Opportunity – (Option #2)
- Expanded Opportunity: If *Client* can find additional funding, there is room to expand the brand/products “findability”. Using the same search engines and the same keywords, the opportunity is over 1,030,877 available clicks from Sept thru Dec. And, over 257K monthly brand engagements. Average CPC is lowered due to the overwhelming opportunity on Google.

Budget Recommendation: As seen from the options above, the opportunity exceeds the initial budget. In order to increase efficiencies, drive a more effective CPC, & generate a higher SOV, we recommend a minimum monthly spend of $10,000. ($40,000 Total Spend)

Success Metrics:
– perhaps create Primary & Secondary Success Metrics? –
– Ideally, only identify 1 or 2 success metrics. Below are some examples.–
1. Rank (1 – 3rd position sought for prominence and syndication benefit)
2. Efficient volume of qualified visitors to site (Manage to a Avg CPC Performance Metric ($0.45-$0.47 Avg CPC)
3. *Describe a specific ROAS objective, or a Conversion Rate*.
4. *Another metric for success*

Dependencies:
- Measurement requirements: Install tracking code on appropriate webpage(s) associated with paid search.

Next Steps:
- *Client* to authorize approval to begin Search Campaign.
- Install Tracking Code on appropriate webpages.
- Launch 11/1/07

I’ve always had a heightened sense of the spiritual realm. I grew up in a rural area in Pennsylvania. Walking thru the woods at nightime in my youth, sensing spirits there with me. Getting chills in the dark once in a while from a “feeling”. But, it has never interfered in my life.

A few months ago I started hearing, “thump thump thump” at nighttime between the hours of 9:30pm-12am. I couldn’t figure out what it was. My wife told me it was coming from outside. She heard it also. However, it sounded like a little child running across our upstairs hallway. Several times I tried to investigate what the sound was, and where it was coming from, but to no avail. Recently, I was convinced it was our 5yr old son getting up from his bed, and running into our bedroom to sleep. That’s what it definitely sounded like. It was in the house. When, I went upstairs to check…he was sleeping soundly in his bed. I looked outside, and found nothing. Freaky.

Just as I was sitting down to do optimize websites, these demons became activated. Are these SEO Demons, or what?

So, I started learning more about Jewish belief regarding demons/spirits. Gemara ( Mesechta Brachos Daf 6a), and kaballah (Me’am Loaz 1:31, & Derech Hashem) on jewish belief regarding demons & ghosts. I also searched youtube, and found a convincing video:

Then, one of my very good friends told me this true story that happened to him:
A few years ago, there was a orthodox woman in our community who was hit by a car on Shabbos. She died at the scene. My friend was at the accident scene. A group of people stood back from the woman lying on the street. But, my friend walked over to her, and started speaking to her. Telling her that everything was going to be okay, and saying some bible verses in hebrew, and generally just praying for her welfare. After the ambulance took her away, he felt heavy. He attributed the feeling of heaviness to the severity of the entire experience. A few days later he visited another spiritual woman (his chiropracter/alt medicine), and as he walked into her office, she looked at him wide-eyed, pointed at him, and exclaimed, “You need to leave now!”. He looked behind him, thinking she can’t be speaking to him. He felt a sensation of feeling lighter. She told him she saw a woman clinging to him, around his neck. Then, vanishing. Apparently, this was the woman who died on the scene, but she was in denial that she was dead. He told me this story at midnight as the two of us were sitting in my Sukkah. By the way, the chiropractor is no longer in this world either.

Okay, spooked yet? I was. This “thump, thump thump” noise was still driving me crazy.

Some demons are created when a life force gets killed, or some interuption from the life energy entering into the eternal world. For example, when a man spills his seed (masturbation), the semen is a life. Damaging angels are created that testify against him in the heavenly courts. Some of those demons that are created, don’t leave him. They are malicious, and cling to him from that very spot. Another type of spirit is a Dybbuk. A dybbuk is a life spirit that gets chased for eternity. These are just a couple of ways demons are created. There are many more ways that go beyond the scope of this post.

I found out that the sound of “thump, thump, thump” every night, was our teenage neighbor running sprints up along the side of our house. His heavy footsteps on the soft grass made that noise. (freakin’ teenagers). I have him to thank for my mishagas (craziness). But, I still strongly believe there are spirits/demons. That’s factual.

However, I also know that we have a guardian angel that protects us, and that Hashem is ultimately calling all the shots. If we stray too far, our guardian angel might let these forces in to affect us…to scare us back on the path of righteousness.

I’m not spooked anymore, although that’s basically what brought me back to learning Daf Yomi, praying with a minyan, and learning Mesillas Yesharim.