Many blogs and forums are reporting that the Google Penalty, which hits sites when the anchor text is “too targeted”, has been lifted. Even Matt Cutts has said he doesn’t see anything that could cause the penalty. Personally, I’m not seeing evidence that this penalty is being lifted. In fact, my testing shows it is happening and continues to hit many of my affiliate sites and many of your sites too. In fact, I’ve talked with quite a few of regarding this very issue.
Archive for January, 2008
January
30
January
29
Yahoo! Layoffs and Algorithm Update
The signs are looking worse for Yahoo! as they continue to lose money in the search arena and layoffs are scheduled. Rumor has it the organic search team will be hardest hit. The update Yahoo! completed saw initially very poor results, but the results did improve. It appears they are using incoming link data more heavily, but still allowing above average keyword density percentages to rank well. In the analysis I did, it looks like Yahoo! is driving an extra 3% in the organic search area. While that is an improvement, it won’t fix their problem.
My advice: if you are currently optimizing pages for Yahoo! you might want to focus your efforts in MSN.
January
26
Doing “Trade” with Another Business
This is a short post regarding doing trade with another business … you know, a barter-type agreement. I just terminated a trade-agreement due to the agreement wasn’t being met. It was an unfortunate situation, but one that happens many times. One of the parties invariably just doesn’t put in the same effort that they agreed to.
My recommendation to you is NEVER agree to do trade. Instead, pay for each other’s services and keep things professional. You will be far better off in the long run and won’t run into these “sticky situations” where your expertise is not appreciated nor respected.
January
26
Thinking “Outside the Box”
I was listening to the radio the other night and the talk show asked, “What was the best High School Senior Prank you’ve either seen or personally done?” Talk about memories flooding your head. But one stood out amongst the rest and it actually can be tied to your business – even I’m going to stretch to get there.
I attended Branham High School in San Jose, California. It was early June. The year? 1984. Graduation was about two weeks away. I worked after school at Shell (a gas station) 2-3 nights a week and every other Saturday. It was a pretty good job. I still remember my best friend, Dan Ostrander, got me the job.
We already had our Senior Beach Day and all of the activities were done – so it was “prank time”. You see, when Senior Pranks occur, and things need to be “cleaned up” the bill is sent to the current graduating class. Since all of our activities were done, the bill was going to go to the Junior class.
Nice.
That’s a great tip for any high school seniors – don’t pull pranks until AFTER your Senior Trip, or it might either get downgraded or worse, canceled.
Okay, back to the story. So, we had a full-service garage, which are quite rare these days, and behind the station were a ton of old tires, I mean a ton. I asked my boss what he did with the tires. He said that twice a year he had to go to the dump and pay $4.00 a tire to get rid of them. Ouch.
Light Bulb Moment.
I asked my boss if he’d be interested in having the tires removed for him for the same $4.00 per tire and he wouldn’t have to hassle with renting a truck and spending a few hours on the round trip drive to the dump. He said he was VERY interested.
Sweet.
I drove around to three other neighboring gas stations with the same offer. All the owners agreed to the arrangement.
Do you know the prank yet?
I roped in two of my senior classmates, Todd Staley and Dimis Martinez. We started at 10pm and took the first load of tires over to our high school. We had an open air quad area, and we began to build a monster tire pyramid on the roof overlooking the quad! We finished around 2am and while I can’t remember the exact tire count, it was well over 100 tires. It looked spectacular.
Unfortunately, I overslept and barely made it to school on time and saw the maintenance staff loading all the tires onto a truck. They dismantled our structure before it was seen. That sucked.
But what didn’t suck was going around to each gas station, my boss included, and handing them an invoice for the tires. Each store owner was VERY appreciative of saving them both time and money and as one owner said, “You took care of it off-hours which didn’t disrupt my business. Thank you.”
No, thank you.
Oh, and after I collected nearly $500.00, which was nearly a month’s pay for me at the gas station, did I tell my two buddies? No. I kept it. My reasoning? I pulled the business transaction, they were there just to have fun and be a part of it!
I should also state that I worked in the school bank and I saw the bill the Junior class was charged for the prank, which of course, made it even funnier … well, at the time.
After high school I got a great job at General Electric in their Nuclear Division. Before I left for college that year (just a few months after the prank), I returned to my old high school, and gave a check in the amount the bill was. I still remember Mrs. Newberry, the dean, who was in the office and took the check, asked me what it was for. “I’d rather not say, just make sure it goes into the current Senior Class fund.” She responded, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with tires, would it?”
I guess the look of guilt on my face said enough so I turned around and headed for the door.
“Jerry,” she called out and I stopped and looked back, “this took a lot of class. Keep it up and you’ll make it big in whatever you decide to do.”
Dang. I hate it when the dean is right. 
This story shows you that even in something as juvenile as a Senior Class Prank, there was a business opportunity. Think outside the box and see what opportunities present themselves to you … just don’t put any tires on my roof.
January
21
Google Webmaster Central Quick Start Guide
In the midst of a lot of “Anti-Google” talk in many of the forums, including many Blog posts about “should you trust Google” … to which I say, “Why do you care?” Run your business, use partners which make financial sense, and enjoy life.
Paying attention to rants such as, “Google IS Big Brother!” are a waste of your time and does nothing to further your business, nor your way of life. So why get caught up in it?
In REAL news, Google has launched a pretty decent Quick Start Guide for Webmaster Central. If you haven’t yet jumped into Google Webmaster Tools, this guide should answer a lot of your questions and get you moving.
I use it. I’m not paranoid. And it greatly helps me find problems on my sites before they cause problems for me.
January
14
The Trouble with Productivity
I remember when I worked at the Nuclear Division of GE in San Jose, California in the summer ’85 after my freshman year of college. My boss, Muriel Dixon, told me the execs at GE stated with the new computer systems they had installed it would plummet the paper usage at GE, which was close to a small forest each year.
The result?
GE’s paper usage went up 6 fold that year. Ooops.
It seems that when we think we will gain an advantage, we don’t. Take the web. It was supposed to make us more productive, but if you don’t watch yourself, it is the biggest time waster around – and some blame Google for much of that.
Take Seth Mnookin for an example. He’s self employed, sets his own hours and even works from home (which I think it mistake #1). He spent time creating a Google Home Page, installed the Google Toolbar, uses Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, Google Books, Google Calendar, and the list goes on…
So he spends three-and-a-half hours organizing his Google Bookmarks one day and then gets distracted poking around Google’s US Government Search. And we haven’t even discussed You Tube yet.
Then it hit him, he wasn’t actually accomplishing anything. It almost seems like we need to “time manage our time management.” If you want to play around the web, fine. But set a timer, or you may find yourself “working so hard” but getting nothing done – and that leads to massive frustration. And there is no bigger killer to creativity than frustration and stress.
January
14
“Pen Names” and Free Email Accounts
There was an article in the November issue of Wired, yeah, I know I’m behind on my reading … who isn’t these days?
So, in the article it discusses the issue of using dummy personal data to protect your privacy when setting up a free email account with Yahoo! or Hotmail (owned by Microsoft). Many marketers use Pen Names to disguise their identity for much the same reason. What does Yahoo! and Microsoft think about this practice?
They aren’t thrilled.
The terms of service are pretty clear on this (yeah, we’ve ALL read those ToS). And Yahoo! is the most clear stating you agree to “provide true, accurate, current and complete information about yourself,” or they reserve the right to terminate your account and ban you forever.
Personally, I’ve never known anyone who has been banned for this … and I have many accounts with both to service my various projects – in fact, I love to sign up for many of the marketing guru’s lists to see what they “peddle” to free loaders (non-paying list members). Sometimes it can be quite humorous.
In the article it stated when a Microsoft rep was pressed, they admitted Microsoft does little in the “policing” department.
“Microsoft relies on the customer to provide accurate information; we do not proactively confirm the accuracy of the personal information provided.”
Just play it cool and don’t do anything which would be deemed illegal (your definition may vary). If you use a dummy account to read an out of town paper, that’s pretty harmless. Using a dummy account for an online dating service with a fake name because your married, well, that could cause you more problems than just with the email police, just ask John Bobbit.
Also, using a Pen Name and fictitious email to register domain names is a bad idea. You are REQUIRED to provide correct information there. If you don’t, or more importantly, if your competitor doesn’t, you can report them and if they don’t clean up their act, they will lose their domain, which you can register and really make their day a bad one.
January
9
DMOZ and Directory PageRank Updates
There is a Google Toolbar PageRank update happening right now. Even though the data, once it updates on the toolbar (an average of 4 updates a year) it is old and useless. However, every webmaster likes to see the green pixels move up for their sites and stress when they go down.
That’s just human nature.
One of the key components to PageRank is the number (and quality) of the incoming links to the individual pages of your site. And since Google updates their link data only 4 times a year, it is best to use Yahoo! Site Explorer to measure link data.
With that in mind, as I was checking all the major directories this morning, you have to wonder what is going on over at DMOZ as they have added over 600,000 backlinks in Yahoo! since October. They now sit at over 3 million backlinks. Basically that is a 25% increase in just three months. Hmmm. And I thought adding links too fast got you banned in Google.
Best of the Web lost 4,000 backlinks in Yahoo! during the same period and secondary directory Romow added 180,000 backlinks and passed the One Million backlink mark.
So it shouldn’t surprise many that that rare quick Toolbar PageRank Update (just 8 weeks after the last update) saw many directories rise or fall in PageRank.
Check your sites and start to track the number of backlinks in Yahoo! Site Explorer every 1-2 weeks and measure the changes. You should see consistent growth. Yes, there will be times where some backlinks will be “purged” from the system and you’ll go down, but the next check should see an increase. As you measure, the “peaks and valleys” should continually move upward.
Consistency is the key to keeping your position in the market.
And it looks like Google just adjusted the PageRank for dozens of directories since the last time they did it back in November. Most of the ones I monitor, if they changed, went down.
January
7
SpyFu Updates their Data
It is about time, as the last data update was back in September. SpyFu is a competitive intelligence tool which allows you to see other site’s AdWords campaigns. There isn’t really a “secret” to this information, as you can gain access to it through AdWords, but what is nice is the searching and cataloging of data is sharp.
This is one of those “Must Have” tools.
January
5
Google Introduces “AdSense Newbie Central”
Even if you are an “AdSense Veteran” this is worth looking into. I do find Google’s statement under the “How much you can earn” section quite humorous:
For example, for every thousand page impressions you receive, you might earn anywhere from $0.05 to $5.00. While most publishers will fall within this range, you might notice that it’s a very large range.
Seriously, if you are earning 5 cents for every 1,000 page views, it is time to get out of the web business.
The main reason I started the SEO Revolution was out of frustration. Frustration at all of the lies and misconceptions that are posted in forums, given as advice in teleconferences, and even taught in live workshops. "So why didn't all of this work?" " Why wasn't my site successful?" " Why am I still stuck in a rut?" 