Archive for September, 2005

Aaron Wall is one of my favorite SEO Bloggers and SEO book authors, & chat buddy, was just interviewed by Andrew Johnson.

Here’s a quote from Aaron:

"I worked for my first customer for $100, and the second site was adult and they paid me $300. They both quickly ranked #1 and the adult site owner loved me so much that he gave me a Christmas presant somewhere around $1,000 just because he was making so much money."

(reminds me of when some of my first clients started to send me extras money….and I knew they must be making some nice $ themselves)

If you haven’t read SEO Book, what are you waiting for? Still not convinced? Read NickW’s review at threadwatch.

Aaron’s also been in the news recently for being sued by another SEO company called Traffic Power / 1P. 

I gotta say, Aaron’s one of the wildest ones at search engine conferences, I could tell ya stories, but I don’t want to tarnish his "pure" name in the industry

Popularity: 6% [?]

I was listening to the Jupiter Webinar "How to Select a Search Marketing Partner" by Chris Sherman today and during the end Q & A someone asked about Monthly fees for SEO.

Chris did say that for pages which don’t change, optimizing once is probably all they need…..but he also said something like "as search engines change their algorithms, your pages might need to change as well" (I’m paraphrasing from my poor memory)….but I’d have to say that I disagree with that idea….how would you know that a search engine changed what it likes for on page optimization? ….won’t it always be pretty much as it is now….lots of text with your keywords sprinkled in? If a page is "optimized" aren’t you done….forever?

It reminds me of a SES panel I attended once called something like "How to price for SEO services". During that session I listened to people debate on hourly prices, and per page pricing, and other pricing which all centered around continual fees for "on page optimization". During the Q & A of that,  I stood up and basically said that I don’t understand how people can charge monthly for on page optimization. That’s a one time job.

I feel that companies which charge monthly to "optimize" pages that don’t change, are just scamming. I can only see charging monthly for link building – not optimization.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I don’t want my blog to ever turn into a regurgitated news blog, but today I came accross such a good article on factors which effect search engine rankings that I just have to post a link to it here too.

93 factors which effect search engine rankings from Rand Fishkin with the help of some pretty wise people at SEO Chat.

Popularity: 6% [?]

I used to get about 100 emails a day in my Yahoo Bulk Email Folder. I now get about 5 a day in my bulk folder. The other 95 are going right in my inbox. What’s up with that Yahoo? Are your bulk email filters broken?

I mean like how does stuff like this get past your filter?

and no, my email is not coyote_ugly_galpower@yahoo. com, and I don’t speak jiberish.

I thought it was just me…but after talking with a few other employees here (we all use yahoo email accounts), I found it wasn’t just me.

I also have manual Yahoo filters in place for some email, but they’re not working either (as I’m getting email from places I’ve set filters up for as well).

I’m guessing it’s a result of Yahoo working on their new email, but it seems to be at the expense of the rest of us.

….I’d love to be a beta tester of the new email, not just because it sounds real cool, but so that I can not have to weed through the shit that used to get filtered, but now doesn’t seem to get filtered.

….also, this past week about 1/2 the time I go to send emails they make me fill out the random character string verification which is getting quite annoying….perhaps it’s time to switch to gmail?

….oh yea, and when I’m viewing an email, and I want to put it in a folder, all my folders under the "move" button 1/2 the time are gone…then I’ve got to exit and come back in so I can file the email….yes, things are getting rather annoying.

 
To the left is about 100 folders which should come up as choices, but don’t 1/2 the time now.

All this crap started about 7-10 days ago.

Popularity: 8% [?]

What’s the best order in the Chaos of Linking?

I’m often asked these questions:
How does Google order websites? How do Yahoo, and MSN order websites. Why don’t they give the same results? What does it take to be #1? Why did my rankings change?

I’m going to attempt to answer all these questions with a picture and a bit of explanation.

Here’s a picture of some linking neighborhoods. Print it out, then read below.

Think of all these clouds and houses as separate websites. The arrows represent links. Some links are one-way, and some are reciprocal.

Now, look at the picture and answer me quickly. What is the most popular sport?

Give up? Good, it’s a trick question.

Think of any search engine looking at this picture and trying to decide who should be #1.

They can “kind of” understand the neighborhood (here’s a bunch of sports sites linking around in a community), but even within this, who has the best equation to be #1?

Maybe Google likes the equation in my picture for “Hockey” and will place that at #1, and maybe MSN favors the linking equation of “Basketball”, and maybe Yahoo favors “Tennis”.

Maybe next month Google will change what equation it thinks is best and will favor “boxing” and sites with that type of linking structure. Yahoo and MSN will surely change what linking structures they prefer over time too. This is why rankings often change. It’s not always that you did something “right or wrong”, it’s just that ranking equations change, and they always will. What is perfect today, may not be tomorrow.

Next thought: Look at that site on the top right which is called “SEO”. This site follows popular SEO’d sites patterns (it’s got lots of links to it – but not from within the neighborhood). Each day, these types of sites are slipping in rankings.

Moral: Rankings change, and they always will. Stop chasing a moving target, and just settle down in your neighborhood and start making connections there. Buy, beg, borrow, or barter your way in, or get in with great content. He who is most connected in his neighborhood will have the most and the best rankings accross time and engines.

Popularity: 20% [?]

I played around some today looking at the new .job domain name extentions.

These domains are still available

• www.jim.jobs
• www.internetmarketing.jobs
• www.searchengineoptimization.jobs
• www.411.jobs

I passed on the above…but I ended up buying www.sem.jobs for $160.15 ($119.95/year + $39.95 application fee (yea, don’t ask me why math doesn’t add up)) from Godaddy.

PS.
Darn….I see searchengineoptimization.eu is available….but I don’t have an address in europe (which you need in order to purchase a new .eu domain). (these are only $19.95/year)

Popularity: 6% [?]

Today I ran a search in Google for "what time zone is ohio"

It answered my question…but it gave me a few new questions.

Before I got to the #1 Result, I see 2 areas Google’s put on top.

1. how did this page:
http://academickids.com/encyclopedia/o/oh/ohio.html
get above the "Book results"? (and hey…another www.wikipedia.org type site!)

I see in the URL when I mouse over the OHIO that Google Answers is in the URL….but….how can I get a page listed like this?

2. Why are there "Book Results for what time zone is ohio" in the search results? some "Book" filter tripped??

side note: site #3 www.timeanddate.com/  I can see in the description "Current time, Monday, September 19, 2005 at 10:53:14 PM EDT"

…pretty cool in that by having a time and date on a page, you can see exactly when Google spidered the site…or any search spider for that matter.

another side note: #6 www.mccsc.edu/time.html  "What Time is it in Indiana?" shows the power google gives to edu’s….a crappy result for the search I did…but hey, it’s an edu. (right google?)

Popularity: 6% [?]