* article updated: see bottom of article

Josh Davis reported on how Pinterest, the web's new this is going to change everything" social site, seems to make its money; by stealthily inserting affiliate codes into your links.

If you post a pin to Pinterest, and it links to an ecommerce site that happens to have an affiliate program, Pinterest modifies the link to add their own affiliate tracking code. [...] They dont have any disclosure of this link modification on their site [...]
– Josh Davis, Pinterest is quietly generating revenue by modifying user submitted pins

Thats not cool.

Its totally OK to make money with a site. Really, were all for it! And if you want to do that by doing the we modify links so they become affiliate links for our benefit – more power to you.

IF there is is clear, upfront disclosure, that is.

If not, well, then it becomes as sneaky and backhanded as ISPs hijacking search sessions to inject moolah inducing content (another reason why Google going HTTPS is cool).

Clear, upfront disclosure is key.

Like the +1 button as fake spam blocker earlier this week, this may all very well fit just between the lines — but it feels wrong.

And talking about wrong, how is Google going to balance their intense dislike of affiliate-driven sites and Pinterest's 36+ million indexed pages?

Of course there are two sides to everything with those that are all for disclosure and those that don't really see the point; some calling it outright the  hypocrisy of affiliate disclosure rules.

Their House, Their Rules

Of course if it can be done, if it's fully allowed, then it's their house, their rules. As long as we're not throwing that out there to simply cut off any discussion I'm fine with that. But the question how we want our Internet to be is one in flux and not a bad one to discuss.

How do you feel about this? Would it matter to you if Twitter were to start modifying it's t.co links to add Twitter-benefiting affiliate code?

* Update: Skimlinks, the company powering the link injection, informally responds via its blog, distancing itself every so slightly from Pinterest's non-disclosure :

Pinterests use of Skimlinks technology is nothing new, nor is it secretive. Skimlinks has been around for almost 4 years now [...] Creating a beautiful, user-friendly site, as Pinterest has done, mandates a non-intrusive way to make money. [...]

While we fully encourage transparency and disclosure, at the very least because it is a nice thing to do, many sites choose not to be blatant about their monetization techniques [...]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Pinterest Changing Your Links Into Their Affiliate Ones

So yeah, the Daily Mail is now the world's most read online newspaper. If that gives you a "so what" moment consider what was left behind to reach that spot; top properties like the New York Times, The Guardian, The L.A. Times, and the Boston Globe, to name a few.

That's an impressive feat especially considering what the Daily Mail is.

What's The Daily Mail All About?

The Daily Mail is to news and newspapers what Cosmopolitan is to feminism and women literature. For our US readers: the Daily Mail is the text-version of Fox News, sorta.

That's what beat the New York Times and I can assure you much hand wringing will follow. Woe us, the Internets are making us dumb(er), "I'm above all this and don't even watch TV", and likely someone will yell "first!" somewhere. That kind of thing.

But — they did it. And that's what counts.

How Did They Do It?

First, their home page takes cues from the long sales letter. Their home page is long. I mean, it's huge. Just how huge is it, Ruud?

The Daily Mail home page is 22,000 pixels long. More than 5 times longer than the New York Times' measly 3900 pixels (amateurs!).

I tell you; if you go there now, there's no way you'll make it to end of the page without having clicked at least one headline. Yes, even those that are far beneath you… Go, I'll wait. <10 minutes later> See, that was scary, wasn't it? That's what a black hole feels like…

The long sales letter works and the Daily Mail's home page is proof of it.

Always Be Selling

Not counting the celebrity news headlines in the sidebar, the Daily Mail sports roughly 100 headlines on its front page. The New York Times has roughly as many.

What's different is how those stories are brought to market, how they are sold.

The Daily Mail uses 4 times as many words to sell copy as the New York Times.

To sell its copy, to get its clicks, the Daily Mail uses 7900 words; almost 80 words per story. The New York Times uses a sparse 1900: no more than 19 words per story.

HUGE headlines … Really?

Part of that long copy must come from the Daily Mail's long, run-on headlines. They're famous (infamous?) for their tabloid-style headlines.

30+ words run-on headlines are non uncommon at the Daily Mail online, but the (mean) average is 17 words.

Headlines at the New York times tend to run 11-13 words; 40% of Daily Mail headlines are 15 words or less. About a third are mini stories of 20 words and more.

But yeah, those are some headlines man.

Relentlessly Be Above It All

You can laugh at the Daily Mail, sneer it, look down upon its readers and vilify it in many other ways — some of which may be creative — but the fact of the matter is that they don't look down on their audience.

Neither should you. I know, you were there today for the first time. Or maybe the second time, counting that clickthrough you did from that post your friend shared on Facebook. But to get this many readers at least some of them have to be the highly educated, super intelligent people your site goes for. Right?

The Daily Mail is never "above" getting the click. They're not of the "TV? I don't even have a TV!" crowd. Heck no; they like Damon over Stefan, think Meredith should stop whining, and that Walter is doing awfully good for a regular with this much blood on his hands.

ps: Heba Hosny knows how to write those kind of descriptive headlines too. Stuff like 7 Easy Steps To Turn Your Twitter Account Into A SEO Magnet, From a Mess To Success! 5 Twitter Time Management Tips For The "Twittaholics", or 7 Awesome Twitter Content Curation Tips Inspired By Paper.li

If you want to learn more about writing good headlines, don't miss these:

• Prevent Your Blog Titles From Sabotaging Your Efforts [Headline Writing 101]
• 5 Traits of a Great Headline
• Social Sharing: How To Optimize Page Titles To Generate More Clickable Links To Your Website

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Why The Daily Mail Is The World's #1 Newspaper And You Can't Get A Single Click

Yesterday Joe Hall became annoyed. Otherwise soft spoken outspoken Joe had some choice words for an SEO company which had come up with what can be described as a creative way to get +1's:

The site's pages contained an inline popup layover thingie. You know, the page gets dimmed, the inline popup appears and then you have to click somewhere?

No biggie – popups work, after all – but this popup was different. This popup pretended to be a "spam" blocker. What? You're not a spammer?!?! Well, click the +1 and get immediate access to the site! It's that simple!

A kerfuffle broke out with the offending company claiming to be not only fully above the board with this but also that Google is A-OK with it.

Which seems too silly to be true – and Joe Hall quickly pointed it out:

Yet the weird truth of the matter is that as long as no money or prizes exchange hands, publishers may exchange content for clicks:

Publishers may not direct users to click a Google+ Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers may not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for Google+ Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers may direct users to a Google+ Button to enable content and functionality. When a Publisher directs users to a Google+ Button, the button action must be related to the Publisher or the Publishers content.
– Google button policy (Ed.:yes, they have a button policy )*

Not long after Alan Bleiweiss – not a stranger to uncovering even criminal activities during an SEO audit – became involved the company decided to take the popup down.

I think they did the right thing there. I also wouldn't be surprised if the company actually did receive confirmation that this " having to click +1 to get access to content " from Google. I'm pretty sure you're as surprised as I am to read that, yes, Google's policies are OK with this.

What do you think about this line in Google's policy? Surprised?

* button policy archived here.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

To Everyone's Surprise Google Says "Sure, Go Ahead" To Swapping +1 Clicks For Content

By the way, I backed the New York Giants on the wholly unscientific and almost unreasonable basis that they are from New York " and I like New York (disclaimer: I've never actually been to New York Go figure). A previous choice which team to back was based on the color of their uniforms Hey, I like yellow, OK?

So Who Is The Super Bowl Winner?

And is it super bowl or superbowl? According to US Americans, it's super bowl; the rest of us are either somewhat divided or we lean towards superbowl.

15 Minutes After The Game

About 15 minutes after the game had ended I asked Google "superbowl won".

Notice that there is no spelling correction. Google does know about the two different ways of writing this and highlights both superbowl and super bowl.

There's news on top but it's old news; there is no winner.

There is a best guess instant answer for the previous super bowl.

The authoritative NFL domain superbowl.com has the score and Google is able to parse it into its search results but this information doesn't seem to be fed back into the system to conclude that the game is over and/or who the winner is.

Half An Hour After The Game

30 minutes after the game 3 out of 4 searches give a winner in the news items.

superbowl winner is the only search to not feature news on top. It does show the best guess and does so prominently as the first result. About both I wonder; Why?

superbowl won still shows best guess but super bowl won does not show best guess. Why?

Over An Hour Later

More than an hour later all searches show who won the super bowl.

Notice how supebowl won and superbowl winner will get a "Showing Results For" notification on top; only who won the superbowl doesn't get a "Showing Results For" notice.

The Best Guess is gone for superbowl won. It's still there on superbowl winner but in that search news has moved up from #3 to #1, overtaking the best guess spot. None of the searches features a best guess for this year's super bowl

This Morning

It takes until this morning before the best guess is gone on who won the superbowl as well.

It still includes search results for both superbowl and super bowl but no notice on top yet that that is the case.

Some Observations

• although Google has historic spelling data for some reason the notice "Showing Results For" starts to appear on searches only later; it is as if we're starting from scratch here
• the best guess instant answer for last year's super bowl was stubbornly persistent. That's especially surprising in light of Google's freshness changes which specifically list regularly recurring events. I had expected that this specific instant answer would have a date reset; if today = superbowl then don't show old best guess.
• and talking about that best guess; the search superbowl won has it while the more (US) correct super bowl won hasn't.
• superbowl winner had news on 3rd, best guess on top. While the other searches showed the latest news including who the winner was, this search showed old news. Old facts with old news. Again, weird in the eyes of the freshness update.
• logged in or not, anonymous or not, these were all straight forward results; not a social result in site.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Super Bowl XLVI Winner: Google Freshness & "Who Won The Super Bowl" Searches

Anyway, this is what I gobbled together:

Snow

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Snow SEO Video [Nostalgia]

1. Star Bookmarks For Google+

If I'm allowed to keep only one Google Plus chrome extension, this would be the one. Insanely useful.

Star Bookmarks For Google Plus adds the same type of togglable star as we know from Gmail, Google Bookmarks, and Google Reader so that you can now star Google+ posts to remember or come back to later for a full read.

Starred posts are stored in your Google Bookmarks so that the extension not only works across all your computers, you can access the information even from other browsers and machines.

A must have extension; no-fuzz installation and a real timesaver.

Download

2. Google +1 Button

Super handy.

No need to srufe to Google+ and add a page there; simply click the +1 button in your browser to (publicly) +1 the page, then click in the window that came up to share the page on Google+.

From the makers of Google, Adsense, and +: google.com

Download

3. G+me for google plus

Make the layout of and functionality of Google+ just so that it actually works for you.

Main feature (according to me): collapsible posts. Can it do collapse all you ask me. Yes, I say. It can. The only thing that could make that even better is if it were to play nicely with the Star function mentioned above. G+ Google Reader style FTW.

Other features include: true comment count, notifications, mark post read, mark comments read, and mouse-over instant preview.

Did I mention it has collapsible posts?

Download

Bonus: Google+ Notifications

One of the many extensions that displays a Google+ notifications badge & count with the option to reply.

What makes this extensions different is that it's the official Google extension. Given the choice between same functionality and official or not, I prefer to go with the official one.

Of course I can't in all honesty recommend this extension and instead should warn you against it. Dings!, beeps and alerts are intrusions of the attention firewall, stealng unique-this-comes-only-once life time that's better used to make awesome stuff.

Download

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

3 Indispensable Google+ Chrome Extensions You Deprive Yourself Of

Markdown is a way to quickly write in common, plain text the way you would when writing in Notepad, for example in such a way that it adds quick indications for formatting like bold, italic, or blockquote, and for actionable markup like hyperlinks.

Plain text marked up with Markdown can be converted to HTML, PDF and other presentation formats.

The benefits of Markdown are ease of use, speed, and long term compatibility.

Easy & Fast

Some formatting and actionable presentation take more keystrokes or even mouseclicks than is optimal when writing. Youre in the flow, youre in the zone: why leave?

While writing using underscores to go _italic_ or **this to go bold** isnt that much faster than pressing CTRL I or CTRL B in most editors, writing > to make a blockquote or forming a link by typing [anchor text](URL) is.

Ease equals speed. Speed equals ease. The no-slowdown, no-pushback style of writing Markdown brings to your writing process is an incredible win.

Compatible & Portable

Markdown text can be written anywhere text can. In Notepad, in Word, in an HTML editor: anywhere. But in essence it adds formatting agreements to plain text; the type of files Notepad makes.

The power of plain text files is that it is an open document format which can and may be used by virtually any software on Earth. It is the most common text presentation format. Where Word and Acrobat will one day go the way of WordStar and WordPerfect (if you dont know what those programs are then take that as a case in point), plain text wont.

Plain text can be opened by any program (PDF and .docs arent) and is always readable (PDF and .docs look like gibberish in software not meant to open it with).

Your advantages are that you can easily port your text from one program to the other, retaining all formatting and never being limited by the software you use; and your files will be human readable for the LongNow; and your files will never be locked down; and you can still output them into any other presentation format you want.

How To Write Markdown

Open a text editor and start writing.

Basic syntaxes (more here):

_italic_ or *italic*

__bold__ or **bold**

> blockquote

# H1

## H2

### H3

[anchor text](URL)

There is more goodness but this will get any writer going in no time.

How to Convert Markdown

WordPress

Get a Markdown plugin, upload, activate; done.

Desktop

Download MultiMarkdown, install it.

For drag & drop goodness on Windows, create a shortcut on the desktop. Right-click on it, choose properties and at the end of the Target line add:

-b

Text files dropped on that shortcut will be converted to an HTML file with the same name on your desktop.

I like to pretty the shortcut up with this icon:

iPad, iPhone, Dropbox

There are many editors doing markdown (remember, you can type it in any text editor) with syntax highlighting and other goodness.

Among them are Elements and Nocs.

See Also

• Markdown: An introduction
• Babelmark: see what the syntax converts to
• Calepin: Publishing for writers who love Markdown and Dropbox
• Dillinger: cloud-based Markdown editor with export features

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Markdown: How To Write Better, Faster, Effortlessly (& 100% portable between all your apps)

hashtagify.me

Explore Twitter hashtags and their relations.

Excellent as a keyword research tool.

mppr.me

Have your business address on your site? Maybe even a Google Map showing where that address is?

Good!

Now enable your visitors to one-click send that information to their smart phone where they're actually be using it.

Gamification Q&A

Gamification is and remains hot in marketing and has both its proponents and opponents.

But how can you gamify a YouTube account to add value? Or how does gamification change consumer attitude?

Not sure? Use the Gamification Q&A site. Gamification.com is a service looking to gamify life itself but the Q&A section is open to anything.

Domain Hole

Good set of tools to absolutely, one-hundred percent find a domain name.

• Expired search
• Name spinner
• Instant check
• Complete check
• Name generator
• Alerts
• Bulk check
• Brainstormer

And talking about gamification (see above), they also feature the world's first domaining game.

replo

Track how your web advertising campaigns are doing by monitoring conversions, reach, etc.

For those who don't like to use Google Analytics or prefer a specialized tool.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

5 Web Tools You Certainly Didn't Know Yet

Dashboard

A standard dashboard view. The view is fully configurable.

Site Tab

The site tab lets you add your site's keyword, webmaster tools, etc.

I particularly liked and enjoyed the competitor tab A brilliant idea and implementation to keep your enemies close.

Research

This is where a lot of the money is. Compared to the hotchpot of tools you need to get together to get a thorough research process in place, this section definitely delivers.

You can go about the research two ways: analyze the domain or analyze a page.

The domain report is thorough.

A lot of data is pulled from SEMrush. That's a given with Raven Tools; you pay once and get so many value from so many services back.

Organic keywords are reported with their position, traffic %, etc. The target URL is shown. You can then one-click add the keyword to your manager or to the SERP tracker. Handy!

I like the competitors in organic search view. Again, standard SEMrush data but the Raven value is in being a centralized tool set, not in being unique or in reinventing the wheel.

The URL level analysis gives a nice, detailed keyword view of a page.

Of course the reporting is backwards: from search engine view to the page, instead of analyzing the page and stating what it is relevant for. Difference is that the first is possible and doable while the latter is useless. Analyzing a page for keyword meaning with tools and filters other than Google's makes no sense.

I experienced the quality analysis as a bit of filler.

It shows the standard feedback for this type of report but to me it's not that useful. I don't spend a lot of time with this kind of data.

Likewise the semantic view amounts to either a feel-good moment, analysis paralysis, or worse – working on stuff that doesn't matter that much. Don't get me wrong; this is not a Raven issue – this is how I feel about these kind of reports in general.

Content

The idea of the content manager reminds me a bit of Market Samurai from which you can also directly add content to your site. I prefer tailor made tools in that regard and am particularly fond of Windows Live Writer. The tool-set functionality and ease of use of such software is hard to compete with in an "we also do…" kind of way.

Obviously the demand for such a tool was there, however, and who a I to deny others their joys?

As-is the content manager does what it needs to do and does it very well.

The blog manager lets you add all your sites.

Very interesting and desirable is the integration with Textbroker to order and get specific content.

Pick the category of the content you need. Give your desired article a title. Add your target keywords and an article description. Minimum and maximum word count. Raven reports the estimated cost for the article and off you go.

Smart. Very smart. Active verb: cranking.

SEO

The SEO section is essentially a link manager. All the tabs relate to link building.

The link manager is one of the best I've seen and contains all the data points you need to make sense of this stuff a year down the line. Beats an Excel spreadsheet? For a company, definitely. As soon as you're working with more than one person on stuff like this, collaborative tools make sense.

I love the site finder but some of the results were very very high level. Here I do a search to find sites where I can work with my keyword evernote and I get feedburner, sites.google.com, twitter.com and posterous.com. Obviously user content in user accounts or on subdomains of those domains can be applicable but the top view? Not so sure there.

The backlink explorer is cool. Here's a report for my own domain.

Social

Now this is something. If you're in the market for a social tool, consider going this route and get social and so much more.

Obviously one of the best features here is Raven's Persona Manager.

There are tabs for Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

The social monitor provides a really nice way to stay on top things.

Likewise the forum search provides not only another excellent monitoring tool but content angle too. Both tools could just as easily have been added to the content manager and in fact should be cross linked, I think.

Very cool is the integration with KnowEm :

KnowEm let's you see, easily, from one place, if your user name is available across pretty much every, every, social network on the planet.

Metrics

Besides the metrics already in place across the tool you can go wider here.

Add your Google Analytics account.

The SERP tracker can be found here too.

The email tab is for email lists, not your own email. Here you can find Campaign Monitor and MailChimp integration.

Reports

The agency/company aspect of Raven Tools shines through here.

Options include which brand template to include. Smart.

Setting up the report with the different sections and options is very easy and intuitive.

Basecamp

Finally (cherry on top?) Raven Tools easily integrates with Basecamp. Doing so would round off a killer collaborative, project driven setup.

Conclusion

Starting at $99/month Raven Tools clearly isn't for those dabbling in making money online. You have to be serious about making money and already make money to warrant investing $1200/year in a tool set.

Then again, Raven Tools isn't aimed a priori at the affiliate marketer or the single site owner. The primary market are SEO service companies. For those companies, Raven Tools is a perfect match.

Can you do everything it does in another way? Yes. Can you do it cheaper? Sort of…

Once you start to bill for your time, having clear, streamlined processes in place is key. Using a bunch of random tools, switching from context to context, importing and exporting until things match – all that costs time and drives up your price. Raven Tools has done all the work and offer a full platform.

If you're not doing these things in-house, Raven Tools is a good place to start looking.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Raven Tools Walkthrough

Google has announced it will redesign Google Reader, integrate it better with Google+, and  — oh yes – rip out existing sharing features such as friending, following and shared link blogs.

Ripping Out Features To Push Me Elsewhere Is Douche

I get it that you want to promote Google+ and push as many people there as you can – but crippling existing products to force people to do so is not cool.

• Leaving the sharing and following features in costs nothing; they're there already. They work.
• Google Reader sharing & following doesn't interfere with Google+ at all.
• So taking them out is just to push me to Google+.

What's next? Disabling email forwarding of articles so people have to share via Google+ instead of Gmail?

But Google+ Isn't RSS

RSS != Social Network. That's semi-geek for: RSS doesn't equal social network.

RSS is a content vehicle; RSS readers are a form of content consumption.

Shared RSS (following, in Google Reader) is a new RSS channel, a new RSS feed – not a social stream (a New York Times article vs. "this is my kitty").

Google+ Isn't An RSS Reader Either

Google Reader has list view, expanded view, search view. I can see stories lined up the way we work through our email; by subject line.

Views

Look, let me just show you then. This is 640×166 pixels of shared content in Google Reader this morning:

And this is 640×166 pixels of Google Plus:

Content

Like I said, RSS and Google Reader are about the content, not the sharing. Google Plus on the other hand is about the sharing.

So in Google Reader I see this:

Because what is shared is the content – not a link to the content.

Compare that with Google+ for the same article:

If you think "well, that's just a click away, quit crying already, dude" then let's not forget that tons of mobile RSS readers pull from Google Reader; we can read the whole thing, synced, offline because we have the whole thing. Google+ link sharing just doesn't do that for you and me.

Now You Tell Me To Sod Off?

In Perception Of Betrayal: Why Every Company Should Be Considerate, in July, several months before Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings' apology, I wrote;

[…] ripping customers off (because that is how people experience what you did) is introduced with a "hi folks!"-toned blog post outlining how much better life will be for "most" customers.

• Fail #1: Don't do that. Your customers aren't stupid. You're fooling no-one and only succeed at making yourself look like a glib sales guy. Don't go there.

That's why writing this, sucks;

We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That's why we will also be extending Reader's subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

Translation: "…and if you don't like it f…. sod off already."

Well thanks for the kind words… Sorry for relying on your product, sorry for the implicit trust.

Just Pretend We're Not Here! (Please?)

We RSS folks, we're a bunch of fringe users. We don't even make up one whole percent of people sharing! Just 0.5%!

We're passionate about content and information, zealous where it comes to efficiency in sharing of content (not links…), and on a whole, as users of one of your least used products, we know Google well and are among your core brand evangelists.

Please, please, please, let us keep our toys – they don't do anything bad to you but make us feel f…. messed over when taken away just like that. Please don't tell us there is a Right Way and a Google Way.

Please?

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Please, please, pretty, pretty please! A passionate plea to keep Google Reader's sharing features