Grumpy Old Man

This one is for me

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:08:38 +0000

Excuse me for a moment. This is a private list of my blogs.

www.better-english.com/coaching
www.effective-presentation-skills.com
www.grammar-teacher.com
www.kateinfrance.com
www.pearson-brown.com
www.thesmallbizconsultant.com
www.thelotfrance,com
www.live-in-france.com
www.thingstodoinuk.com

www.stroppycat.com

www.toy-train.net

Keywords are not always logical

admin — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 15:56:36 +0000

I was giving some free advice to some friends over a meal. They are having problems getting bookings for their new rental house in the South West of France, between Bordeaux and Toulouse. We were brainstorming some keywords, trying to guess what keyword people searched on when Googling. We were pretty sure that South West France would be the best one. We all thought that the most accurate name, Quercy, would not be a c good choice.

Later I checked it all out using Market Samurai. We were certainly right about Quercy. But South West France had a surprisingly low score too. In fact, it scored lower than The Lot France. Who would have guessed that?

Facebook advertising. Some useful tips

admin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 19:14:39 +0000

There is no doubt that a good advert on Facebook can make you a lot of money.

Here are some good tips.

Facebook advertising

Panda bites man

admin — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:49:37 +0000

Sweet creatures, Pandas. Gentle giants, wouldn’t hurt a flea. Happy eating away at bamboo shoots all day.

Unless they are a Google Panda. For Google’s Panda bites hard. Over the last few weeks, Google has been coming down hard on many spammy sites. Not before time either. You must have come across the problem of not being to find what you are searching for. Hotels are a particular bugbear of mine. If you put in the name of the hotel you wanted, you would find lots of hotel hotel directories but not the hotel itself. well things are starting to change, thanks to one Giant Panda.

The spammers are quite upset but I notice that my own traffic and earnings are up. quality content will finally win.

Content or no content

admin — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:06:11 +0000

There is a very interesting post on Michellr MacPhearson’s blog.

She wanted to target subjects that are of interest to women. The problem is that the ‘group name’ for such sites is not something that people search for. Do you really see anybody putting ‘women’s interests’ into Google? Of course not. They might put in ‘lipstick’ but Michelle doesn’t just want a lipstick site.

Received opinion is that she should do exactly that – have a series of mini-sites based on different searched for keyword terms. But that conflicts from the apparent message from Google that they want larger ‘authority’ sites. So Michelle is just concentrating on ranking the individual page for the keyword term by the use of good on-page SEO.

I think that is the way to go. What do you think?

The best PLR offer in the world?

admin — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:12:57 +0000

I see endless threads asking about PLR article products. Most people don’t seem to be very satisfied with what is out there. There is a reason for that. A lot of PLR is incredibly awful. Poorly researched, poorly written by people whose first language is not English.

If only we could have a Rolls Royce service in PLR. If only we could find an experienced teacher who knows how to do research and is a born writer. If only such a service were available for less than thirty dollars a month.

My friend. (yes, he is genuinely my friend) Martin Avis has done the necessary. He has done an amazing job and I am delighted to be a member. You can join too by clicking here.

Spamming Fools

admin — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 22:15:03 +0000

For my sins, I moderate in certain forums. On the whole, i really enjoy the work. Most people are really appreciative. However, one category of person is not, the spammer.

For me, a forum spammer is anybody who comes to a forum with the intention of making money from it. Ten years ago, we all did it. We would make a post and include an affiliate link in it. I never once made a penny from such a link. We all posted the links but nobody clicked on them.

These days things tend to be a lot more subtle. The affiliate link might still be there but everything is done to stop the moderator spotting it. Lots of ‘shortened’ links and misleadingly phrased ones.

A common tactic these days is to send people off to a mock “review page”, often a video page, where you read nothing but wonderful comments about a product and the affiliate link is prominent. Not seen any of those? Then I’m doing my job

RSS Feeder and the rest

admin — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:58:22 +0000

Ed Dale has put out an excellent video about this.

I don’t agree about saving stuff for later. Deal with it at once or drop it.

Goodbye, Bev

admin — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:26:51 +0000

Internet marketing is in mourning today. Bev Clement had finally lost a long and brave fight with cancer. Bev campaigned long and hard to raise standards on the Internet. No liar, cheat or charlatan was safe from her. When I became a moderator on the Warrior Forum, she encouraged me to go after the dodgy characters and, with a few others, we cleaned the place up.

Miss you, Bev.

Long time, no see – almost literally

admin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:58:12 +0000

Sorry for the long gap in posting. I have various problems with my eyes and I had to give up most online work for a while. That’s the great thing about Adsense sites – it really can be passive income. Of course, your sites do gradually fall back over a period – but not as quickly as you might expect.

I’m now beginning an experiment in renting sites to artisans in the Redditch area. This is based on ideas by Mark Vurnum. You can see my initial attempt at http://redditchwebhelp.co.uk Do you recognize how I did the sales page? It’s made with an add-on for WordPress. Look at the bottom of the page if you can’t guess what it is