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Go Big Network is Doing Big Things

I just learned about GoBigNetwork.com (http://www.gobignetwork.com) and it seems like its a pretty cool place to be as a service provider.  It’s a site dedicated to startups and connects angel investors, venture capitalist, service providers, job seekers, employers, business owners, professionals, and startups.  It’s almost like a one-stop shop for startups, starting from creating a business plan to obtaining funding to finding employees to outsourcing projects.

Google Recent Archive Date Search is Great for Link Building

Google recent archive search is basically searching by date archived (indexed and crawled).  To enable this function, first do a search for anything then you will simply click the Advanced Search link next to the Google search bar.  Under the Advanced Search properties page you will see a link with a plus sign (+) next to it titled “Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more” … click the plus sign (+) to expand the tree.  Change the “Date” value to “past 24 hours” then click the Advanced Search button.Google Advanced Search
Google Date Archive Search

How is this useful for link building?
Let’s say you have a website which targets the keyword ‘farm animals’ so you do a recent archive date search for the keyword ‘farm animals’ in the past 24 hours, this will give you a list of recently archived (indexed and crawled) pages which relate to your target keyword.  In most cases these are fresh pages or new mentions of your target keyword. 

The great thing about this list is that you know you have pages which Google is actively indexing and crawling, so it already has some value because it has been cached in the past 24 hours — it’s active in Google.  These newly found resources are commonly available for placement of a relevant link.  
Google Farm Animals Search Results

My First GMail Phising SPAM!

I never before seen Google Gmail being spoofed, but today I got my first Gmail phising SPAM!  For me, it was obviously a spoof, to start the greeting read “Dear Members”, I have at least 15 accounts which are tied into Google and they are one of the largest companies in the world, are you telling me they couldn’t address me by my real name.  That was a big “red flag” for me.  The next red flag which sealed it for me was the link in the message (update account) pointed to www[DOT]server-gmail[DOT]com, being from the IT world I knew this was a phish!

GMail Email Spoof

The reason folks are phising for Gmail accounts (a free email service) is not so they can SPAM your email address — they already got that!  So how can they benefit?  What do they want with your Gmail username and password??  It’s Gmail for heaven’s sake!  Well, not really, because for most your Gmail username/password is also your Google Adwords and Google Adsense account, as well as a suite of other accounts, but Adwords & Adsense is the money ringer!  Imagine if someone or a team of phishers had access to thousands of accounts a day with valid Adwords accounts and the average account (credit card) shuts down in 24 hours due to card cancellation or Adwords lockout.  To recoup money they simply go to places on the web and sell paid search placement, when they use a account they first change the password to prevent immediate discontinuance by the credit card holder — then advertise the hell out of client websites until the account is inactive.  In a short time they can make large sums of money.

I reported this message to the real Gmail Team!

Yahoo Reports SPAM Sites

Yahoo! Reporting SPAM SitesYahoo! Flags SPAM sites in Search Results

I am not sure how new or old this is, but this is my first encounter with Yahoo! actually reporting on a SPAM site in its search results.  I always knew that the search engines reported harmful sites in the sense that your computer can potentially be infected with a virus or spyware if you click-thru and visit particular sites, but Yahoo! has went further and is reporting sites as harmful if they send unsolicited emails. 

The function is powered by McAfee so I would assume the data is collected from McAfee spam filtering results.  It is only a guess, but I would conclude that the function is triggered by the number of SPAM votes a particular email receives and the association with the domain name will in effect have a negative SPAM tag.  The site I came across is actually a large news station in the local area, which means either they are sending unsolicited emails or many people report it as SPAM in their Yahoo! inbox. 

It’s only a matter of time that other search engines will adopt the data usage of SPAM reports in emails and begin filtering search results by the number of SPAM reports the domain receives in the email client from visitors.  If the domain isn’t good enough for email readers, then why would it be good enough for search users?  I’ve made this far-fetched claim back in 2006, see here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=1742186&postcount=12

I am making this claim again today, that search engines use the SPAM votes to flag sites and give value to sites.

 

My Favorite Competitor Analysis Tools

Often times you will see rank position fluctuation when you rank for a competitive keyword.  Non-competitive keywords are much easier to sustain for a long period of time, but competitive keywords you must have a continued SEO effort, because your competitors are doing SEO to stay competitive.  How do you do better than your competitors?  Know how — DO BETTER THAN YOUR COMPETITORS! 

The best way to achieve this goal is to stop trying to outrank the search engine and try to outrank your competitor.  Learn what your competitor is doing and do better.  Many times competitors are ranking for natural reasons without any SEO effort, this mean you have a grand advantage to take the lead.  Just make your website growth seem natural at a more appealing rate.  :)

Here is my list of my favorite competitor analysis tools:

  1. Google Keyword Research Tool- this tool allows you to get an indication on how popular a keyword is and an indication on how much competition you have  for that keyword.  The data from this tool is based off of Google Adwords data.  Since that is the case I will caution that Google may have a bias on transpiring this data because they are vested financially by offering this tool.  If they choose, they can simply display keywords in order of bidding value oppose to its organic value.  I doubt Google is so “EVIL”.
  2. Compete- Compete is a web-based site analysis tool which gives you information about competitor websites, such as total visitors, total unique visitors, total pageviews, total pageviews per visitor, etc.  This information can be used in a number of ways.  I typically use this information to see how my website stacks up against my competitor and their traffic.  I also use this data to research new markets I plan to break into or to research multiple sites which I want to market on, such as to see if site A gets more traffic than site B — then I’ll make a more wise and informative marketing decision.  They have a paid version that goes deeper.  It’s a great tool!
  3. Quantcast- Quantcast gives (seemingly accurate) estimation of website traffic and demographics.  It shows the average monthly visits and  demographics for the site, such as: gender ratio, age ratio, household income ratio, ethnicity ratio, household education ratio, and children ages in household ratio.  As you can imagine such data can be used to target your competitors audience.  This can be very useful data if used right.
  4. SEO SpyGlass- One of the better tools out there for competitive analysis.  This tool goes deep and provides friendly reports.  It does cost a fee to have full access to this tool, but the free version will allow you to see how it actually works.  Well worth the money once you see it in action.
  5. SEO for Firefox - SEO for Firefox is a free and easy to use tool jam-packed with useful information.  It calculates the number of links and analyze data right from a Google search query.  The results are displayed in the search listings.  It is a must have plug-in on Firefox for any SEO.

Google Docs Now Support Offline Access via Google Gears

Google DocsGoogle Docs is now offering an offline solution to their document and spreadsheet processing.  Using Google Gears, their interactive browser plug-in application is what is used by Google to deliver their offline Google Docs application.

Google Date Dropdown Date Filter Box on Search Result Pages

Google Date Drop Down Date Filter Box on Search Result PagesGot a nice tip from Tech Recipes. Have you ever wanted to sort your search results by the most recent indexed pages or return only the latest search results, well now you can. Actually you always could do it via Advanced Search options, but who has the time to deal with all that and plus its not as cool as the drop down box on your search page.

Simply attach these parameters to the end of your search URL string: &as_qdr=d and voliá you’re date filter drop down box automagically appears.

In the image I use the drop down to search for the latest SEO jobs on craigslist while sorting by the pages indexed in the past 24 hours. Amazingly 429 SEO jobs have been posted on Craigslist in the past 24 hours!

Ebay File Suit Against Craigslist

Big brother sues little brother. 

http://news.ebay.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=305980

Ebay a shareholder of Craigslist.org is suing Craigslist.org with claims of having their stake unfairly diluted.  Of course Craigslist has denied these allegations and is attempting to clear its name.

Craigslist is thinking that Ebay is planning a hostile takeover of Craigslist.org or a sale of their stock to an unfriendly party.  Craigslist is dismissing all negative comments by eBay.  If what Craigslist says is true then it’s a real shame eBay chose to do business this way. 

Is eBay being a bully?  Will we soon see Craigslist fully owned by eBay … ending their partnership??? 

I know Craigslist have attorneys but they are going up against eBay (who did $7.7 billion last year).  Hey, Craig it might be time to put ads on Craigslist.org — it’s time to get your money up so you can fight back the right way!  My grandpa always said “If you not saved by God then hire a team of lawyers!”

How to Rewrite Articles Using Article Spinners Software

Writing articles is a great way to gain exposure and branding. It’s a way to become an industry leader and share knowledge. The problem is that article writing is going to always create duplicate content in some way or another. Duplicate content is a problem for search engines — there is not much you can do about external duplication, but you can at least control internal duplication.

First, you need to be sure that your website pages doesn’t have excessive duplication. Normal internal duplication is okay and consist of pages such as: print-friendly pages, archive pages, or URL trailing slash (/) pages, etc. As long as you don’t manually create any duplicate pages on your website you should be okay, use this as your rule of thumb.

So how do you stop external and internal content from intermingling and causing round-robin duplicate content issues. Easy, you have original content on your website and duplicate content for the public. When you write an article or blog post you should also rewrite that same article or blog post and share it with the public. You first need to write the main article.

Tips for writing the main article:

  • Choose a thoughtful and enticing article title
  • Focus on a particular topic or keyword
  • Write with a lot of adjectives and verbs because these can easily be substituted
  • Include 1-3 relevant links in the Author resource box
  • Write something which is useful, helps others, or entertain others this usually include: how-to’s, reviews, humor, etc.

If you had a website about a widget then you can create an article with an title similar to: “How to Use the Widget to Simplify Your Life”

Everything is weighted on the article title, because the title is what will lead to a click, if the article title is poor then you can forget about a click. Once the visitor gives you a click then its up to the article to be compelling and hold the visitor interest. If the article is interesting enough then its more probable that the visitor will seek out your other articles and/or click on the links in your resource box to learn more about you, your product, or your service.

Now since we went over a basic article writing procedure and its effects it is time to figure out a solution to promote articles in the most effective way without losing the quality or readership of the article. The key is to focus on uniqueness and originality. Using article rewriting software you can spin your articles in less time than it takes to write a new article. With that said, it does take some effort from you when using article rewriting software and article spinners.

Here is where things get tricky, to use article rewriting software you will need to know how to write for article spinners, such writings involve:

{fine#good} as {wine#juice} or {fine|good} as {wine|juice}

The output will produce 4 variations:

“fine as wine” or “good as wine” or “fine as juice” or “good as juice”

For each set of keywords in curly brackets {} separated by the pound sign # or pipe sign | it is a replacement keyword. In a real-world scenario one might have 10 or more keywords engulfed in the curly brackets, though for this research it uses only two keywords per set.  I recommend, that you use unique articles on your website and rewrite those articles to share publicly.

The rewrite syntax is also used in the article title and author resource box. The work comes from finding synonyms for the keywords, this is where the thesaurus becomes your best friend. In the beginning writing in this manner is difficult but as time goes on and you write more articles using the rewrite syntax things get easier.

JetSpinner is a free article spinner

Submit Suite offers a more robust and advanced paid article spinner

Check your spun article with the spun article checker

Happy rewriting!

Rand Fishkin Interview with Matt Cutts

Eat, sleep, and breathe Matt Cutts.  He is a high profile Google Engineer.

The tip is just know what he says, it will make you a better SEO.  Here’s a good place to start - Rand Fishkin (SEOMoz.org) interviews Matt Cutts:

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