Speed, Chrome and bugs. I’m not talking cars, grilles and things that stick to grilles. I’m talking about YSlow Page Speed being available for the Chrome browser, without needing an add-on, like Firebug. YSlow is a tool for webmasters that helps identify ways to speed up page load time.
Download YSlow for Chrome
I arrived in Austin on Sunday and have been soaking in the sun and BBQ waiting for PubCon to start. This is PubCon #9 for me and today I am speaking on the Essentials Overlooked by 90% of Affiliate Managers. I’ll be summarizing the happenings over the next two days right here and going into full detail for members of the SEO Revolution.
In the meantime, you might want to read an article I did last month, How PubCon Made Me a Millionaire.
Skype announced today via a press release that for the first time they’re offering display advertising. Ads appear in the Home tab of the Skype software, for Windows users only in the USA, UK and Germany. Groupon and Nokia were two big names that shoved off the launch. Ads can include audio, video, social media sharing and click to call. Advertisers can target their market by country for the time being. The majority of ads will appear to users of the “free” version of Skype.
Skype Display Advertising
The Do Not Track Me Online Act was introduced in the House of Representatives February 11, 2011 by Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-CA). It prohibits the unauthorized tracking of a consumer’s online behavior. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will regulate, monitor and enforce the bill should it become a law. Noncompliance could result in unfair or deceptive business practices (civil action) by the FTC. And you can bet if you don’t comply that your competitors will be alerting the FTC.
In December 2010, the FTC outlined expectations which included more transparency between companies and how they track consumer information, and the ability for consumers to opt-out. Being proactive, Google, Bing and Microsoft all created opt-out browser add ons.
The message sent by Congresswoman Speier, sponsor of the bill, was “privacy over profit.” (Sorry, I had to pause for a little laugh. I was imagining politicians during campaigns using their voter databases, behavior and location analysis, and other stats to help win an election. Good thing politics is non-profit).
Jerry West Speaking at PubCon Vegas
PubCon happened.
While I had ten years of experience in web design in SEO at the time, I was just doing “okay” in my business … not great. I wanted greatness. I knew I had the knowledge and the drive, but I was missing a few key pieces. But I had no idea what those pieces were.
I had been a member of Webmaster World for about four years and I was always impressed with the knowledge the senior members shared. People like tedster, pageoneresults, incrediBILL, engine, g1smd, and countless others.
It just made sense that if I was going to turn the corner, I had to go to where all these people were. And go I did.
I still remember walking into the kick-off session an hour early and seeing Brett Tabke, who runs Webmaster World. I walked up and introduced myself. While I expected a brief chat, Brett took the time to ask about me, my business and what I hoped to get out of PubCon. “It’s not about attending all the sessions that you can Jerry, it is about meeting people, asking questions, meeting vendors and building relationships. You can’t just sit in the back of the room and expect people to come to you, you have to go them. PubCon started as a networking event and it still is. You have to take what you learn and actually do something with it.”
Taking what you learn and actually do something with it…those words stuck with me.
Almost every session I attended, I sat in the front, took notes, asked questions, followed up with the speakers afterwards and also those around me. I was bound and determined to figure out what I was missing. Before going to the next session I wrote down at least one thing I would do that night with my campaigns.
After the first day concluded, I went back to my room and the temptation was there to go to Bourbon Street and have a great time. But I had to keep my focus and apply what I had learned while it was fresh in my mind. Despite the obvious distraction, I kept my focus and applied each technique I had written down to my campaigns, closed my laptop and went out.
Upon returning back to the hotel, I checked email and usually I have 2-3 notices of sales during the evening, but this night I had 16. Seriously? 16? Awesome!!
I did the same thing on Day Two … sat in the front, asked questions, met more people, exchanged contact information, but today the exhibit hall was open. I spent a few hours talking to new merchants and building new relationships. That night was the “Meet the Google Engineers” party. Since I had preregistered, I was the first one through the door. I had more than 20 minutes of uninterrupted time with an engineer over search and I showed him all the issues and problems I was having. He gave me insight I hadn’t considered and once again, I returned to the room, applied the things I had learned to my campaigns and then went out.
When I got back to the room, I had 23 more orders than usual. First night 16, then 23, and after the third day, I had 28 more orders during a span when I would normally have 2-3. Was PubCon worth it? Absolutely. But the key was taking what I learned, molding it to my industry, applying it as soon as possible, tracking the results and making modifications where needed.
The bottom line is, I would not be where I am in my career today without the help of Brett Tabke and PubCon. So, if you’re stuck and you’re struggling with your campaigns, get to PubCon in Austin March 8-9. It could be the best decision of your career like it was mine.
If you go, make sure you go and introduce yourself. I’ll be presenting my “SEO in a Box” technique live. See you there!
This seems to be getting worse and worse … without an end in site. People either claiming to be Google AdWords professionals or they really have the title and they do shoddy work for their clients. Just as “SEOs” charge outrageous fees upfront with little or no real guarantees for their work, “AdWords Professionals” are doing the same thing and it is causing a lot of frustration for business owners out there.
Most of the problems lie in “education” or “perception” or what I like to call miss-perception. Why? Well, in the interviews I conducted, nearly all the business owners who feel they were cheated thought the “AdWords Professional” was a Google employee, which isn’t the case. They have merely passed a test issued by Google.
So let’s say an AdWords Professional has scammed you in some way, how do you go about it? First you need to make sure they are really AdWords Professionals and are certified by Google. Then you can fill in a form that can be found on their Google page. Look for ‘report a complaint about this partner’, and clicking that link will direct you straight to the form to fill out. Then it’s up to Google to look at the complaint and take appropriate measures.
Or, you can hire the right person the first time. I’ve used Joel McDonald for years to handle my AdWords campaigns and I have been very happy with the results. Click for more info on Joel and what he can do for your business. Just realize that he focuses on companies that are spending at least $5k a month in AdWords.
Twitter is one of the hottest social networks these days with thousands of users following each other. Using Twitter seems to be the most fashionable thing to have happened to the masses and we are all enjoying every bit of the twittering moments. It is one platform where people of different likes and origins unite to discuss their thoughts and aspirations.
However, despite all the hype, it can also be a place where there is a lot of people talking but not a lot of people listening!
But, did you know that Twitter also helps in getting traffic to your blog or website?
Tricky thing!
Well, that’s true! Twitter is the most popular micro blogging system that helps in gaining traffic to your blog (but yes, you need to take help from some SEO experts). However, there are certain rules to be followed. I will mention some major points for you so that you get an idea.
Twitter allows only 140 characters per message, which is why it is called a micro blogging system. Twitter is so simple to use and it is even easy to find friends and a great way to start communicate with them. This is the main reason that this particular social networking website has become so popular.
Twitter is the only place where you can hang out with people and also tell them what you are doing and how you spend your days. Starting from very light-hearted communication to blog sharing and information transfer, everything is possible on this social network. You can as well build a community of your own and have thousands of people following you, while you also follow others.
This is how traffic is generated, and traffic means profit in turn.
However, there are certain areas in this social network that needs to be optimized to drive more traffic from twitter. So, what are the steps to be taken care of, for fetching more traffic from Twitter? Some important points are mentioned below:
Tip#1: Create your Twitter Profile
Your Twitter profile should be interesting enough to grab user’s attention. The cover page determines what kind of personality you are having and also reveals your interests. If you provide the best information about yourself, you will likely find more like-minded people following you. Add your picture or something that’s interesting and might grab attention to your profile as well. Choosing an appropriate username is also very important.
Tip#2: Give the Link to your Website/Blog on your Profile page
Linking your blog or website to your profile page with proper heading and description of the content in the particular page can help in generating roe traffic. As Twitter is a great way to interact with people and make thousands of friends, you simply cannot miss out on this. This is the best way to let people now what you are capable of doing and how. Your username should speak about your interests too.
Tip#3: Interact with People
Twitter is a platform where people follow each other while sending messages. So once you receive a message from someone, never miss the opportunity. Always make it a point to interact with people who have expressed their interest in your profile. After a few moments of casual talks, you can get back to business, but informally.
Tip#4: Find Like-minded People
As there are thousands of people on Twitter, you can easily find some friends sharing common interests and having similar thoughts, in order to find them you just need to choose from a few options. Whether you want to search on twitter or on some other networks or invite some friends via email or check for the suggested user options, it’s all your choice. Also, you can use all these options together.
Tip#5: RSS Feeds are great help on Twitter
Display the RSS Feeds of your blog or website on Twitter to get more traffic. As you publish an article on your blog, you can tweet and inform your friends and get it done automatically. This will generate traffic and your followers will target your writings and make it a point to see what you have written.
Always monitor your Twitter account and be consistent – that’s the way to tweet!
tweet
Other posts that might help you to increase your website traffic:
• SEO Tips for the New Year
• Affiliate Marketing
• Boost Your Web Traffic Now
Search engine spiders or crawlers are all the same names for common software which indexes content on the web. A search spider is basically a software program that is frequently used by search engines like Google to index important pages on the Internet for retrieval by their users.
The basic task of these crawlers is to index content and follow all the links it comes across to gather even more content.
While it might apparently seem to be difficult, it’s not. I highly recommend using a “robots.txt” for your website. It is through this file that instructs the spiders what they can and, more importantly, what they can’t index on your site.
Note: If you need a walkthrough, I have a great tutorial: Robots.txt File – No Website Should Be Without One
More articles related to SEO:
• Basic Steps for SEO
• Meta Tags Google Advice
• Improve Your Site Ranking in Google
• Yahoo! Search Engine Friendly Design
Getting nailed and penalized by Google just sucks. It is a webmasters worse nightmare.
Google Penalty
Getting hit with a Google penalty is hands down one of the greatest threats to a website’s existence online. Most of the time they are given when a site breaks Google’s Terms of Use, but sometimes they happen for no reason at all … and innocent webmasters are sent reeling.
Why does Google give out penalties? Simple. They want to protect their customers. Did you know that Google makes an average of 8 cents in revenue for every single search conducted on their search engine and partner sites? That’s real money … and factors into billions and billions of dollars. Google doesn’t want to see that revenue stream end anytime soon so they are aggressive at protecting it.
Here are some methods that have been proven to cause Google penalties in the past:
- Hidden Text: using targeted keywords in the same color as the background of the page so they can’t be seen by the visitor but the search engine indexes the text.
- Paid Links: Using a broker or going direct to the webmaster to purchase links with targeted anchor text to manipulate the rankings in Google. It has been said for years by Google that if you buy links you will be punished hard.
- Cloaking: Showing the search engines a highly optimized page with no graphics, just text while showing the visitor the beautifully designed page. Google has stated that if you show them one page and the visitor another you will be penalized.
- Malware / Code Injection: If you cause code to be installed on the visitor’s machine to allow you to change their user experience across the Internet, and not just your site, your site will be flagged as malicious by Google.
… we’ll discuss more in a moment …
Google has stated time and time again that if you build a site with nothing but good, unique content then people will link to it naturally and your rankings will go up. That is one of the biggest lies on the internet. It isn’t going to happen. You have to build a site with good MARKETABLE content and then get off your butt and actually work to market your site and your offer. You can’t just build the site and sit on your hands expecting something to happen. You have to MAKE it happen!
What else do you need to be wary of?
• Your website is linking to a site that has been banned by Google
• Your website is Linking to “bad” neighborhoods (Google makes the determination of what is “bad” and it seems to change from month to month)
• Over optimization your website (keyword density for on-page factors or incoming anchor text)
• Duplicate Content
• Keyword Stuffing (spamming)
• Automated page redirects
You can check more guidelines and rules at: Google Webmaster Guidelines center
Recovering your website from a Google penalty may take around 2-3 months after you rectify everything, which includes going into the “Google Confessional”. If your website has been removed from Google’s index, then apply again for re-listing by submitting a re-inclusion request at http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/request.py?, or better yet, through your Google Webmaster Tools account.
I am often asked which conferences I recommend. There is only one that I have attended every year since 2005 and that’s Webmaster World/PubCon. Why? It kicks ass. Google is there. Some of the best webmasters and affiliates in the world are there. Do you need a better reason? Oh, yeah, it’s in Vegas!
But if that wasn’t enough, Brett Tabke, owner of WebmasterWorld and the host of PubCon has asked me to be a speaker on Affiliate Marketing again.
PubCon: Las Vegas this November 8-11, 2010
If you haven’t scheduled to go yet, I would highly recommend it. In fact, today is the last day to get discount pricing. PubCon is both affordable and worthwhile. My first PubCon was back in the summer of ’05 in New Orleans, just before Katrina hit. It was THE turning point in my career and things I learned from the sessions, hallway discussions and from talking with the Google engineers I literally put into play each evening while in New Orleans and I saw results, real results.
And if you don’t go for any other reason than to come and hear me speak, that would be killer. PubCon is what you make of it. If you keep to yourself it will suck. Introduce yourself. Talk to other webmasters. Buy them drinks. Share your knowledge and they will do the same. Webmaster World is hands down the best community around.
Here are some of my favorite moments from the past PubCons (all pictures taken by me – except for the first one, of course).
PubCon: Hot Topics in the Affiliate Space
I spoke on the Affiliate Marketing panel during PubCon 2009. I always struggle when speaking on affiliate marketing as it is what I do that supports 80% of my business. What do you share? What do you keep private? It is a hard line to walk.
So, what I decided to do was give the same type of advice I received at PubCon over four years ago that really jump-started my campaigns. It wasn’t that I had to get smarter, I just had to DO stuff. Stop the whining, the bitching and the moaning and just get stuff done. It worked.
If you’d like a great summary of my presentation, Lisa Barone over at OutSpoken Media, did a great write-up.
Photo courtesy of Scott Hendison, one of the best SEO consultants out there.
Here is Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! sporting a “Supermanish” t-shirt underneath his regular shirt.
Interviewing Jake Baillie of True Local
Jake Baillie is one of my favorite presenters at PubCon due to his no-nonsense approach and wealth of knowledge which can actually be implemented in your business. Much of what I know about competitive intelligence can be attributed to Jake.
His motto is simple: “Use the Damn Internet!” … as too many people are lazy to figure things out themselves by tapping into this killer resource at the tips of your fingers. If Jake is presenting, make sure you catch him.
I’m almost always on the front row as I’m less likely to be distracted and conversations between the presenters are often audible. 
From the Boston PubCon in '06 - First time in Fenway
I try to relax at night during PubCon and this time I went a Red Sox game.
The bottom line is … if you need a jump start to your business, you should seriously consider investing in PubCon this fall. I would not be where I am in my career if I didn’t take the plunge five years ago and go. Oh, and Brett is putting on a special training all day on Nov. 7th which I have purchased a ticket to go to. I have no doubt that it will be killer as well.
And in case you are wondering, I don’t get a dime for promoting PubCon. See you there!!
Some SEO “pros” are advising that adding exact keyword phrases to your Title Tag will get you top rank. In fact, some SEO sites will tell you that without a doubt the Title Tag is the most important tag in terms of rank. Really? Is top rank that easy? Does it all come down to a 65 character line?
Well, let’s take a look at a few random Google searches and see if the exact keyword phrase appears in the title.
Real estate refinance (Only result #9 uses this exact phrase in the title).
Online flower delivery (You won’t find this phrase until after position #5).
Medical coding courses (None of the top 10 sites use the exact phrase).
Of course there are exceptions where almost every result has the exact phrase in the title, for example real estate leads. If the Title Tag is the most important tag and adding the keyword phrase will get you top rank as some SEOs state, then why isn’t result #9 for “real estate refinance” #1? It’s the only site with the exact phrase in the title, yet it’s at the bottom. Likewise, none of the top 10 sites for “medical coding courses” use that phrase in the title.
According to my testing, you can rank #1 for Google for a phrase without including it in the title. (more…)
If you are using Paypal for receiving store payments, or for paying your affiliates, you know the fees can be exorbitant. But did you know that Paypal offers different payment options, depending on the amount of the payment?
PayPal is a great option for many business owners that don’t want to go through the approval process for a merchant account, but the fees can really add up and squeeze margins that are already pretty tight in this rough economy. So here are some tips to put more cash in your pocket if you use PayPal.
The only time Paypal does not charge fees is when the money is being transferred from a Paypal balance, or directly from a bank account; any other time, the fees range from 1.9% to 2.9%, plus an addition 30 cents per transaction. Doesn’t sound like much until you start having large numbers of transactions; then these fees add up really quickly, and it gets sick to the point of causing indigestion.
Paypal now offers a different payment fee structure for payments made that are less than $12. Under their micropayment structure, Paypal has changed its fees to a total of 5% plus 5 cents per transaction for smaller payments, whereas payments over $12 will incur the smaller fees of 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction.
Micropayments are only available to business or premier account holders in select countries. It also requires you to have 2 accounts: one for micropayments and one for macropayments.
The money you can save by taking advantage of micropayments with Paypal can add up. Many webmasters have saved between 11-13% per month, which is significant. Depending on the amount you are paying out, this can be a considerable amount of profits.
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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?" 