The death of superstar Micheal Jackson is turning out to be one of the biggest phenomenons that is illustrating the power of online and mobile communication throughout the world and is really fascinating from an Internet marketing perspective.

On a personal note…

Let me say that I am truly saddened by this news. As my regular readers know, I came to this country from the former USSR in 1975 as a young child and Off The Wall was the first album I ever owned, yes in full on vinyl.

His music was my first introduction to American pop and dance culture and coming from the USSR with both of my parents being classical concert pianists this was certainly a change of pace.

That album and the many great songs that came after hold a lot of great memories for me and brought me lots of joy throughout the years.

It is truly amazing the kind of impact he had on people all over the world. I suspect that we will learn that his early death could have been avoided, as with the many celebrities who came before him and I really hope that he can find some peace in death that he could not find in life.

The unprecedented impact of Michael Jackson’s death on the Internet:

The news of Michael Jackson’s death had an incredible impact on the Internet with record breaking traffic and search volumes that actually shut down Google for about 26 minutes on Thursday afternoon because they thought they were being attacked.

Google Trends labeled Thursday’s searches for “michael jackson died” as “volcanic.”

Thursday was also a record-breaking day for Yahoo when their story, “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital,” received 800,000 clicks in 10 minutes, which made it its highest-clicked story ever.

Yahoo revealed that Yahoo News set an all-time record with 16.4 million visitors, beating the old record of 15.1 million set last election day. The four million visitors between 3-4 pm also set an hourly record.

Twitter reported 5,000 Jackson-related tweets per minute on Thursday afternoon.

Facebook reported status updates in triple numbers on Thursday afternoon.

AOL, whose AIM messaging service was knocked offline for 40 minutes Thursday, stated “Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We’ve never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth.”

The massive search volumes also affected, Bing, as well as mobile communications which saw an unprecedented amount of text and communications volumes as well.

From an Internet marketing prespective this is quite fascinating and shows the power and speed of information distribution that is the Internet.

I was watching to see who had the story posted first, as thousands of bloggers, both in news and celebrity fields took to their keyboards to spread the news.

TMZ.com broke the story first, with CNN and local news channels following closely behind, but apparently Wikipedia still won out over everyone, including Twitter and poor Google (:-)) that struggled to revive after the massive search volumes.

Here is an interesting post by SEO Moz, that lists the exact time line of the developing news online:

A Bad Day for Search Engines: How News of Michael Jackson’s Death Traveled Across the Web

And Google’s official blog posted an explanation of their downtime and a search volume graph that really illustrates the spike in searches best at: Outpouring of Searches for the Late Micheal Jackson

On a lighter note…

Don’t we all wish to have at least 5% of that kind of traffic???? Incredible really.

Okay well it seems that a June Google Page Rank update is underway right now, which is weird since the last one was just last month, but all my newer PRO sites went to PR1 or PR2, and 2 PR2 sites went to PR3 and other bloggers are posting the same updates on their sites.

And, this explains the shake up in the SERPS that I talked about the other day.

I do not think the update is done, because a couple of my sites went to PR2 which they surely did not deserve due to very few links, I’m not complaining but I think that it will go down.

Again for the newbies to this business, the toolbar PR is mainly useful for our own egos

and link building.

the real PR (the one that matters) is updated daily behind the scenes of the Google Algorithm.

The SERPS, traffic and sales is what really matters, but it’s always fun when the update comes around.

SERP Update:
Just checked the SERPS and they are still all over the place with odd page 1 results and several of my sites, though given an increased PR falling radically, so most likely they are not stable yet.

Do you guys see PR updates on your sites as well?

A couple of my good aged site’s home pages just plummeted in the SERPS. One site, while it still ranks for other keywords, was pushed back to the black hole for a keyword that it has ranked for for over 1 1/2 years and the keyword is very low competition and now there is a whole lot of junk sitting on page 1 for that keyword.

And the same with other SERP results that are also showing a lot of crappy and spammy sites, as well as irrelevant sites.

Now in doing some reading around the web this seems to be an on going issue for many in the last couple of weeks with even aged authority sites losing major rank and sites dropping several pages in the SERPS. Coincidentally a very similar thing happened in June of 2008.

There also seems to be a pattern with index pages (home pages) losing rank while inner pages remain solid across the SERPS.

Now, while there will always be fluctuations in the SERPS , this seems to be something bigger and on a larger scale and similar shifts happen several times throughout the year.

Some guess that Google is trying out a new filter to catch paid links, and others think that the filter is negating blog comment links. I doubt the latter because my sites that lost rank have very few blog comments as backlinks.

Google just announced that they added external resource loading capabilities capabilities for Flash and indexing of flash, this may also be a part of this, learn more at Google Webmasters Blog post on this.

Really it could be anything. As that famous saying from The Godfather goes, “this is the business we’ve chosen” and dealing with Google SEO is always a roller coaster rider

I am not sure how major this one is, but I, as well as others do not think (at least I hope not) that this will last, most likely things will calm down and the SERPS will return to normalcy.

The most important thing to remember: DO NOT PANIC!

One of the biggest mistakes that webmasters make when their sites see a significant drop in SERP rank is to start making drastic changes on their sites.

1. This is often a mistake because it can trigger alarms and filters such that when the SERPS do return to some normalcy your changes may have adverse effects for your original rank positions.

2. The traffic is all that really matters. Another factor to consider is look at your traffic patterns, usually losing SERP positions for a couple of pages or even the home page will not affect traffic that much because most sites come up for lots of keyword searches, especially the long tails from inner pages.

This is where Google Analytics really comes in handy for analyzing those SERP patterns affects on your sites.

3. Remember to have faith in your work and if you are not doing anything extreme or super black hat then do not worry, just keep on working as usual, add some content to your sites, that is always a solid and safe route to take.

4. And also remember that this is probably not personal but a web wide change.

…Best thing to do in these types of situations is to wait it out.

If you go over to this thread in Webmaster World you will see a very interesting discussion on this topic with lots of webmasters sharing their experiences with this shift.

Have you guys noticed the SERP changes? Anyone lost major rankings?

Now, before the flagship bloggers start screaming this is not meant to replace your beautifully and thoughtfully written posts! This is meant more for the money sites.

Outsourcing is a great way to save precious time and brain cells by hiring others to write content and articles and especially for those of us who have several niche sites where writing content becomes an overwhelming task.

Here is a list of the best content and article outsourcing sites for content management on your websites and blogs.

Because these sites provide original content that is copyrighted to you, you can use them for on-site content development, as well as for article marketing and submit using Article Marketer, to Ezine Articles and all the other article sites without being penalized in any way.

You can also use Copyscape to check the content for originality, all though these sites guarantee originality and copyright to you.

Some of these writing outsources are really expensive and some are quite cheap, depending on your needs there is something for everyone. 

24 Writing Outsource Sites

Textbroker - This is the one I use and it’s the best deal in town. Articles start as little as 0.10 a word and you can pick quality levels that cost a little more up to the highly technical articles.

There are tons of excellent authors for every possible niche. Basically you post a job, give the details and then writers send you the finished product to review. Once the author sends you an article you can ask for revisions and deny the article if you are not satisfied or accept if you are. I have only rejected 2 articles out of the hundreds I have ordered.

Turnaround usually within a couple of hours and they are copyscape checked by the website.

Terry Didcott - Terry is a great guy and writes quality blog posts.  200 words : $12; 300 words : $18; 400 words : $24

SEO Content Writers - $6, $10, $14 etc. based on Word Count

Quality Online Content - Starting at $3 per article.

Article Writers - Niche Store Content - Articles starting at $3.50 for 200 words. They also have package deals.

Also offer a unique service that is really a great deal: Squidoo and HUB page creation for $20 each or 5 for $90
Includes:

• 1 Hub or Lens
• Minimum of 800 words of unique content
• Relevant Images
• Keyword optimized
• Bookmarked for Indexing by Search Engines

Articles and Beyond - Starts at $8, based on word count

Have Articles - Packages start at 3 200 word articles for $12 and get cheaper

Article Authors - Articles start at $8 plus they offer press release writing, custom ebook creation and ghost writing

SEO Article Writing Pros - Single articles starting at $13, plus package deals

Articles Alive - Package deals with articles starting as low as $0.023c/word

Website Content Writing - Starts at $10 for 125 words. They offer lots of services, like, technical writing, mini sites, ebook creation, movie reviews, press releases and more.

Pricier Writing Services

Your Article Writer - Articles start at $20. Also, ebook creation, website proofreading and editing.

Article Alley - Starts at $40 per article with package deals.

Article Base - Starts at $40 per article

Constant Content - Pre-posted articles by a variety of authors with various prices for usage, unique and full rights.

Niche Content - PLR and full rights articles, prices vary and can be pricey but there are good articles.

Informative Sources - Starts at $25 per article

Ghostwriter4you - Starts at $24 for 400 words. Specialties: natural health, alternative health, inspiration and Internet marketing

Freelance Writers - Promise well researched and SEO’s content. Starts at $15 per 500 words, package deals get cheaper

Deskins Writing Service - Quotes per order. They offer in depth research and you can buy content packages to build entire sites or blogs full of content that are well researched and SEO’d

Writing and Other Website Services Bid Sites

iFreelance - Freelancers bid on your projects

BizReef - 250,000 freelancers bidding on your project. Includes, writing, web design, graphics, photos and programming.

eLance - All services, writing, tech, programmin, logos, web design and more.

Rent A Coder

There are actually a few good changes, like the ability to search for and install themes right from your dashboard. It also offers better options for a more user friendly layout of the screen option windows in the admin dashboard within the post and page editors. You can choose to only have one column so the editor sits  on top and and screens like tags, categories and publish are set below it, which really opens up the editor area.

All plugins seem to be working with the 2.8 version as well.

Great Admin Plugin

I personally hate the new dashboard that came with the 2.7 upgrade, especially the lack of color and the way the toolbar now sits on the left side of the admin area making you have to scroll all the way down the page to find settings, tools etc… and that there is no drop down so it takes two clicks to get to anything.

So I found this great plugin - Ozh Admin Drop Down Menu. It puts the admin nav bar at the top of the dashboard (like it used to be in WP 2.6) and you can choose from a variety of colors and settings that makes it much more user friendly than the 2.7 version.

All admin links are available in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu. No need to click on “Manage” then “Pages” to edit pages, you can go to any admin page from any admin page and there are several other setting options to make Wordpress life easier!

Check it out at:  Ozh Admin Drop Down Menu

1. They are really good for the look of the site design, look and enhance the visitor experience, especially with product guides and tutorials of any kind.

2.  They are great for on-site SEO because they add keyword relevancy via image alt tags and this includes any header graphics for site-wide keyword relevancy.

3. They can also bring you lots of website traffic and money.

Search engines cannot read images you must use alt tags for descriptions, which should be keyword relevant to the page. By the way, it is blackhat to give inaccurate descriptions for the purpose of SEO trickery in the Alt Tags.

Image HTML Code:

<img src=”http://mydomain.com/image1.jpg” alt=”Keywords- Descriptions”>

Link Image to URL code:

<a href=”http://mydomain.com/”><img src=”http://mydomain.com/image1.jpg”  alt=”Keywords- Descriptions”></a>

The above code is for images that are hosted on your servers. With Wordpress you can upload images directly from your computer via the Browser Uploader and the Title area in the Image dashboard is the Alt Tag.

The Traffic Connection via Images

The best benefit of images is traffic. Google often shows image results when people search particular keywords.

Lately I think they must really be doing more of this than before because I have 3 new sites that have been getting a lot of traffic from Google Images and its converting to sales.

To make sure my images show up in correct keyword search results I name the image file in detail, for example:

SonyEricsonMobilePhone.jpg
SonyEricson350.jpg

And, I also make sure the Alt Tag is there with the correct descriptive words.

I launched a new site last week and within 4 days I had something like 2,000 visitors all coming via Google Images and 6 sales and that is pretty good for a new site. I think this is especially good for shopping sites that use product images.

What I like to do is place at least 2-3 images on my content pages that are related to the topic of that page. They really make the content pages look better and more professional, especially with guide type pages.

I also make sure to have several images on my home pages like around the welcome message, that is a great place to provide keyword relevace for the sitewide keywords.

Google has a developed a cool free website tool called Page Speed that works with the Firefox add-on Firebug, and it analyzes your websites and offers a list of problems that cause slow loading websites, which we all know are an irritant and can cause visitors to leave before they even enter.

This tool also tells you how to fix these issues for faster load times.

Learn more at Google Webmaster Central Blog - Page Speed and get make sure to get the Firefox Firebug Addon as well as Page Speed, which, has very user-friendly instructions for install as well as use of the tool.

And then when I got back home last night I noticed there has been another Google Page Rank update, which was another nice surprise as several of my sites went up from PR2 to PR3 and they are all money sites. This blog stays a PR3 because I have not been doing any manual link building, been busy focusing on my money sites.

One of my sites went from PR1 to PR0, have no idea why, have to do some checking.

Remember that PR is all about link building and there is about 2-3 months till the next update to get those backlinks up and running.

Congrats to Matt for getting his PR4 back on Sacramento Weddings!

How did you guys do on the PR update?