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W CAREV WORLD CONSUMER ALLIANCE

2012-09-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Me acaba de pasar un programa, que aún no está en manos latinas. Somos los primeros. Un amigo suyo, parte de un equipo en el que trabajaba de hace muchos años y de mucha confianza de él, lo está abriendo. Este programa intentará como muchos llenar el vacío que dejó Zeek. Por su estructura es muy posible que logre este cometido ya que en este momento es el único que dará ganancias solo por comprar "AVISOS". En Zeek comprábamos BIDS y ganábamos de estos, en este programa compraremos Anuncios y ganaremos de estos de la misma forma como ganábamos con la compra de BIDS en Zeek.

El proceso de ganancia es igual que en Zeek.

Formas de Ganar en W CAREV (WCA) World Consumer Alliance

La Plataforma de intercambio de ingresos para clientes fue creada con mucha previsión.

- Está diseñado para no estancarse ni dejar de generar ganancias para los clientes ... De hecho, está diseñado para hacer exactamente lo contrario, y seguir proporcionando a los clientes ganancias en el largo plazo.

- Ha sido desarrollado para permitir a más clientes a ganar dinero más a menudo! Usted, literalmente, puede sentarse con su cuenta abierta, y ver como sus ingresos aumentan en tiempo real en una base diaria.

- Fue creado con 2 niveles de ingresos por referidos para que sea más competitivo y atractivo para los nuevos clientes.

- Proporciona a los clientes una exposición instantánea de nuestros servicios publicitarios para ahorrar la búsqueda y el pago por estos servicios en distintos lugares de la web. Todo lo encontrará en nuestra página directamente.

- Se quita presión a los participantes para referir a nuevos clientes, especialmente aquellos que están vendiendo anuncios y banners, ya que muchos de los participantes pueden obtener ganancias de estos esfuerzos.... Literalmente, es la primera vez en nuestra industria?

- Se faculta a los afiliados para ofrecer un entorno altamente atractivo y comprometido para que los nuevos clientes puedan disfrutar de la firma, y se esfuerza por crear un alto nivel de satisfacción que se extiende a las recomendaciones boca-a-boca.

- Permite a los clientes proporcionar información que puede ser utilizada para atraer a nuevos clientes con auténticos testimonios en tiempo Real.

- Proporciona a los clientes altos niveles de emoción que genera una marea en las relaciones y hace que la actividad se contagie a otros miembros - en el buen sentido.

¿Cómo funciona?

Una vez que te registras, puedes comprar bloques de anuncios por un precio asequible para todos, y recibir publicidad de calidad, en forma de impresiones de anuncios de banners y texto. Pero no sólo eso, hay muchos bonos que los clientes disfrutarán.

Promociona tu enlace al cliente, y cuando tus clientes compren bloques de anuncios, usted ganará un bonus por clientes referidos directos en dos niveles. Primer nivel ganas el 10% de sus compras y recompras de anuncios y 5% del segundo nivel.

Lo bueno de WCA y lo que la diferencia del resto de las otras empresas, es que contamos con un alto margen de beneficio del 85% de empresas como esta marca, y es nuestro interés compartir la riqueza con TODOS los afiliados activos en nuestro sistema. Francamente, lo que decidamos hacer con nuestras ganancias es nuestro negocio y retornar de vuelta estas ganancias a los afiliados activos tiene más sentido. No está mal, ¿eh?

Los beneficios de las empresa entrarán en un pozo de Beneficio Global para Afiliados que será compartido con todos los afiliados activos que compra banners publicitarios e impresiones de texto! Ellos automáticamente recibirán un porcentaje de estas ganancias de la empresa en función de su nivel de participación.

Con la compra de un paquete de bloque de anuncios por 2$ mínimo, recibirá 500 impresiones de banners y 500 impresiones para anuncios de texto . Asegúrese de utilizar las impresiones de anuncios, ya que es esto por lo que pagamos. Este es un proceso simple para lo cual seremos capacitados. Por cada compra de publicidad que utilicemos, tendremos derecho a obtener un porcentaje del pozo de beneficio global. 65% de la ganancia va a la sección de recompra que le da la posibilidad de comprar más bloques de anuncios y mantener sus anuncios en constante funcionamiento y 35% va a su cuenta para withdrawl.

Nota: Puede ganar comisiones directas cada vez que usted compra un paquete de publicidad e impresiones. A continuación, puede utilizar su comisión haya realizado a comprar impresiones publicitarias porcentajes y calificar en la piscina beneficio! Todo lo que necesitas saber en este punto es que cuanto más dinero se gana, y cuanto mejor lo hagas con la empresa, las oportunidades de obtener ingresos más tendrás con la Alianza creación de riqueza.

Note: Usted siempre ganará comisiones directas compre o no paquetes nuevos de publicidad. Puede usar sus porcentajes de ganancia para seguir participando de las ganancias del pozo una vez terminado el tiempo de uso de los paquetes comprados.

UltimatePowerProfits was founded by entrepreneur Mr. Scotty Evans

2012-08-25T11:08:00.002-07:00

I like dreamers. Entrepreneurs are attracted big dreamers. When we see large companies of our high-tech times we see that they were:

People who did not complete their studies, common people started in their garages (Apple Computers and Microsoft)
College kids in their bedrooms (Facebook)

The reality is that it takes tons of iron to move something from a dream to reality. The efforts of most entrepreneurs are charged with a string of failures and test challenges laying on his commitment to his dream.

Researching this new adventure be it found opportunity all, good and bad.

But not so important but what really negative and I found the biography of Mr. Scott Evans you can read it here: http://www.ultimatepowerprofits.com/docs/bio_scott_evans.pdf

We do not know for sure about how to work Unlimited Power Profit (Global One) but since the march as I know, again nothing is guaranteed in this life.

I hope this biography is truthful, because if Mr Evans was struggling like everyone else to get where he is today - and that is at the forefront of something that can have a positive effect monetarily and healthy for people of all the planet.

I have not studied the science behind the products offered by this company to help prevent the spread of disease. However, I know that science exists even if it is bed nets for malaria in remote areas. And I know a lot of the world's water is infested with parasites. Would not it be wonderful if we could have a company with a humanitarian component plus a profit?

I've been to some lectures and presentations on the compensation plan, where all those who join will share in the profit pool, I have also heard that the pool Go Global Profit Pool include several profit centers (business centers) - including a penny auction.

And what if they have a penny auction! Penny auctions are very profitable. Unless Mr. Evans wants to be like the guy Zeekler and faces the SEC, I doubt the penny auction GlobalOne equal. There will be no promises of profits - guaranteed.

As for all other products and services that you are proposing - they sound amazing. The guy has a big dream and recognizes that overall up leaving is where the money is. In our team we have people from all over the world - USA, UK, Ireland, Israel, Canada, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, I've never seen so much global interest in a business opportunity.

I am a dreamer too. And I dream of a better world, travel to exotic places, take care of the family, multiple residual income, and people helping each other.

GlobalOne may fall or may rise to heights unknown, is like watching Real Madrid play.

I wanna thank you for being a dreamer like me .... and I invite you to keep dreaming for a better world.
http://www.ultimatepowerprofits.com/multinegocio777

Announcing MozCast - The Google Weather Report

2012-07-31T15:44:00.001-07:00

If you follow me on Twitter at all (and, if so, may God have mercy on your soul), you may have seen me saying things like this over the past couple of months…
…and you may have found yourself wondering “Where does he get all that wonderful data?” Like all of the best things in life – cookies, babies, belly button lint – the answer is that I made it myself. Luckily for you, I’m in a sharing mood.
So today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of Mozcast.com – the Google weather report. You can visit it right now, and it looks something like this:

The first thing you'll notice (besides Roger's smiling face), is yesterday's weather. The hotter and stormier the weather, the more Google's algorithm changed over the past 24 hours (a "normal" day is roughly 70°F). The weather report updates automatically each morning (about 7:30am Pacific Time currently, but that may change over time).
One every page of MozCast.com, you can view a 5-day history on the left-hand side of the screen. The home-page also provides a complete 30-day history – mouse over any day on the graph for the date and a specific temperature reading. In the near future, we'll be adding a 30-day average and may open up more historical data.
There's a detailed explanation on the MozCast site, but here are the basics. We track a hand-selected set of 1,000 keywords every 24 hours. Those keywords are delocalized, depersonalized, split evenly across 5 "bins" of search volume and are tracked from roughly the same location and the same time every day. Our goal has been to keep the system as controlled as possible.
For each keyword, we store the top 10 Google organic results, and then we compare those results to the previous day. We calculate a metric called "Delta10", which is essentially the rate of change across the entire top 10. Then we take the average of all Delta10s (which ranges from 1-10) to measure the daily flux. We multiply that by a fixed value (currently, 28.0), and that becomes the day's temperature on MozCast.
Each temperature is also converted into one of five weather states: sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy, or stormy. These are completely dependent on the temperature - think of it as the quick view. The stormier it is, the more rankings changed. If it's really hot and stormy, odds are good that something big changed in the algorithm.
We've also created a new Twitter account @mozcast - stay tuned there for daily weather reports, feature updates, and occasional deep dives into unusual events. If you're at Mozcon, I'll be at the Garage party tonight and around all day Friday, so please feel free to stop me and ask questions about MozCast. I hope it keeps you out of the rain, even here in Seattle.

Coming to #MozCon? Tips for Your Conferencing.

2012-07-31T12:43:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited to meet all of you coming out for MozCon this week. Like many of you coming for MozCon, it's my first one too.

Here are some n00b tips (and a few refreshers for those long-time MozCon attendees) to help you out.
You're probably wondering what to pack in your suitcase. Should you bring an umbrella and rain jacket? Should you pack shorts and sunglasses?
My recommendation: both. This week's weather is predicted to range from mid-50s to the 80s. In Seattle, bringing something for the rain is never a bad idea. Plus, you'll be indoors at the Westin -- hotels are some of the few places in Seattle with air conditioning -- so you'll want to factor that in.

Don't worry, we'll have a coat check on the fourth floor for your stuff.
If you're wondering about dress code, it's true that we wear flannel and blue jeans 365-days a year. Dress in what makes you comfortable around your industry peers. Whether you're tailored to perfection like Joan Holloway or look more like a lumberjack, you'll fit right in. I'll be wearing jeans and my staff shirt for all three days.
There are going to be ~750 people at MozCon this year. Bigger than ever!
One of the most wonderful things about MozCon is the chance to meet other SEOs and inbound marketers. Whether you're saying hi to someone you only knew on Twitter or making a new friend while tossing a bowling ball, you'll find yourself rubbing elbows with geniuses all week long.
Plus, there will be SEOmoz staff a-plenty for you to chat with. Feel free to ask anyone wearing an "I'm with Roger" t-shirt what it's like to work at the Mozplex or just where lunch is.

These people are here to help you!
We're super excited this year to use our MozCon Live site: http://www.seomoz.org/mozcon-live. (Sorry, friends, this isn't quite ready for you to see!)
Here, you will be able to see agenda, find out more information about parties and the speakers, watch the Twitter hashtag #MozCon, and download the speakers' slide decks as they present. Also, you can ask your q&a questions for the speakers here! For those community members who can't make it, you can join in a bit of the fun and knowledge.
Our Registration area is located on the second floor of the Westin. There you'll be able to pick up your MozCon badge and swag. All you need is a print out of your ticket or photo ID.
Your MozCon ticket comes with breakfast, lunch, and two snacks. Due to popular demand, there will be bacon for breakfast one morning. We should have plenty of options for all sorts of people: carnivores, vegetarians, vegans, lactose intolerant, etc. Or those who only eat ice cream and cupcakes.
Breakfast and lunch will be located on the second and first floors of the Westin. (The main hub of activity, including the main show, is on the fourth floor.)
Additionally, at our night meetup on Wednesday at the Hard Rock, we'll be providing appetizers. On Thursday for the big Garage bash, we'll have food, drinks, karaoke, bowling, and more.

On the Twitters, we're #MozCon.
Don't forget to RSVP on our Google+ event page.
Roger will be making appearances so you'll be able to get a photo op with him. Don't be shy as Roger's thrilled to meet you. Give him a hug!
His photo booth is located on the fourth floor, and there will be a sign with all the times for his appearances, so you won't miss him.

Those of you who went last year probably remember that we had issues with wi-fi. We're working to make wireless happen, but we need your help.
To make our wifi connection strong and out of courtesy for other attendees, please only hook 1 device up to our wifi. Also, refrain from using mifis, hotspots, or any other personal wireless network creator as with over 1,500 wireless devices in the room, these signals may work for you, but degrade the main wifi signal for everyone else.
If you are having a problem connecting to our wifi signal -- and you seem to be the only one -- please ask any SEOmoz staffer to assist you.
There will be table tents with wireless network and password information.
Need to do some heads down work? On the fourth floor, we'll have the 5th Avenue room open for you. There will be a live feed of what's happening on the main stage. But if you need a break or a corner to tuck in for a while, this is a great place.
The fabulous Laura Lippay from How's Your Pony? will be emceeing MozCon. She'll be introducing our wonderful speakers, sorting through q&a, and generally keeping the show running. If she asks you to jump, time to jump.

Check out Jon's recommendations for coffee shops and Rand's recommendations for food. Seattle is ridiculously amazing.
Photos of SEOmoz events by Rudy Lopez.
About Erica McGillivray — I'm SEOmoz's Community Attaché! You may have seen me hanging out on Q&A, playing on LinkedIn, popping up in your inbox via e-newsletters, working on MozCon, or reading your questions on webinars. I do a little of everything. In my spare time, I run a non-profit called GeekGirlCon, review a lot of comic books, and watch genre TV.

Google's Unnatural Links Warnings May Not Be Cause for Concern

2012-07-31T09:42:00.001-07:00

At SEOmoz we do virtually nothing in the way of active link solicitation. We're living what I would call an SEO's dream: we've already put a great deal of effort into building a community of passionate, engaged, thoughtful people who care about the industry (that's you guys!), and we devote a ton of time and resources to creating awesome content and sharing it with you guys. The result? We've got the best kind of links: the kind that build themselves.
Imagine the sinking feeling I got in the pit of my stomach, then, when a Google Webmaster Tools check on Thursday revealed that we'd incurred an unnatural link warning:

When I saw this, I was pretty sure I knew what had happened. A few months ago, just as I was coming to work at SEOmoz, there was a discussion in the Traffic Planet forums about negative SEO and whether pointing a bunch of spammy links at another site (like, say, a competitor's or rival's site) could actually harm them, SEO-wise. The guys who started the thread claimed they had successfully performed negative SEO on Dan Thies' website, he disagreed that their tactics had been effective, and the debate raged.
Post-Penguin, there's been a lot of concern about links that are beyond one's control doing irreparable damage to one's site. But surely Google will put in place some algorithmic defenses against this sort of underhanded webspam attack! Rand felt so confident in this being the case that he hopped into the forum discussion and challenged the spam community to point black hat links at SEOmoz.org in the name of science:

(Personal anecdote time: This was happening after I had accepted the offer at SEOmoz, but before I'd started working here. I was sitting at my old job getting emails from Mozzers being like "just so you know, this is happening." Never a dull moment!)
Rand also discussed these efforts in a Whiteboard Friday video, Negative SEO: Myths, Realities and Precautions.
Needless to say, the spam community was like:

We did see an increase in the number of spammy and black-hat type links, including links from sites with "black hat" in the name - but we also continued the regular link growth through our usual content sharing and community outreach that we love so much.

We didn't see any traffic or ranking impact.

To be honest, I wasn't too worried about it - until we saw the unnatural link warning.
It turns out that we needn't have worried - the warning came from an update to how Google is surfacing unnatural link warnings in Google Webmaster Tools. Matt Cutts has the scoop, over on Google Plus:
"If you received a message yesterday about unnatural links to your site, don’t panic. In the past, these messages were sent when we took action on a site as a whole. Yesterday, we took another step towards more transparency and began sending messages when we distrust some individual links to a site. While it’s possible for this to indicate potential spammy activity by the site, it can also have innocent reasons. For example, we may take this kind of targeted action to distrust hacked links pointing to an innocent site. The innocent site will get the message as we move towards more transparency, but it’s not necessarily something that you automatically need to worry about.
If we've taken more severe action on your site, you’ll likely notice a drop in search traffic, which you can see in the “Search queries” feature Webmaster Tools for example. As always, if you believe you have been affected by a manual spam action and your site no longer violates the Webmaster Guidelines, go ahead and file a reconsideration request. It’ll take some time for us to process the request, but you will receive a followup message confirming when we’ve processed it."
TL;DR: You may see an unnatural links warning if Google detects unnatural links, but it's more of an FYI - as long as you don't see a concurrent drop in traffic, you should be just fine. Phew!
We'll be continuing to test the effects of spammy links on SEOmoz, and we'll keep you guys updated as we learn more. In the meantime, if you see an unnatural links warning, don't panic. Many sites have attracted lots of black hat links without intent to manipulate Google's rankings. If you're in that group and still receive the warning, you should watch your traffic and rankings, but unlike the past, when these warnings were more directly impactful, it may simply be a "heads up, you've got some spammy links," message.
If you've received the warning or have insights, we'd love your feedback and opinions, too!
About RuthBurr — Ruth Burr is the Lead SEO at SEOMoz. She's a believer in solid on-page tactics, scalable practices, and using testing and tracking to improve ROI.

Improving Social & Subscription Calls to Action - Whiteboard Friday

2012-07-31T05:09:00.001-07:00

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, we'll be discussing ways that you can improve your social and email calls to action to make them more effective. Often times, when wandering the web, you'll find web pages that are filled from head to toe with all the possible calls to action that are available. By limiting your usage of these calls to action and by placing them purposefully, you will a significant increase in your conversions.
As always, don't forget to leave your tips, tricks, and pieces of wisdom in the comments below. Happy Friday everyone.

Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're talking about how to make your social and email calls to action more effective. I've drawn out a page here that I think represents what a lot of us see on the Web, what a lot of us do, particularly when it comes to blogs, but also when it comes to a lot of e-commerce types of pages, pages on the Web that we use for B2B types of content, really, any pages that you find where there's social calls to action, calls to action that want you to take some . . . subscribe to me, follow me on Twitter, subscribe to my email, become our fan on Facebook, follow us on Google+,
post to our Pinterest Board, whatever it is.
All of those types of actions that are generated on the Web often follow this format where you see, okay, here's a site. Here's the menu. There's a page title. And then they'll be just littered, literally littered with calls to action. I'm going to highlight in red all of the places where I see social calls to action oftentimes simultaneously. Over here on the sidebar, we'll use this left-hand nav that kind of pops out. Then we'll have some areas up here that have got a few. Oh yeah, make sure to put our Facemash on the right-hand side to show off all our Facebook. Oh, and let's have our tweets. Then we'll have the subscribe to email. Oh, at the bottom of the post we've got to have it there too.
Are you kidding me? I know you really, really, really want people to follow you on these social services and subscribe to your email. But is this the right way to go about it? Imagine if it was an e-commerce page, and it was just littered with buy buttons. Everything always said buy, buy, buy, add to cart, add to cart, add to cart. Kind of crazy. Right?
There should be one place where there's that one call to action, but instead we've overwhelmed. We've let the social web overtake our normal logic, our better knowledge of UI and UX practices, and we're delivering an experience that is essentially, "Where's the content man? If I subscribe to you, it's because I want to follow your content, and all you're telling me with your page is, 'Follow me.'"
This is a little overwhelming, and so I wanted to provide some best practices, some ways, some tips to help streamline this process and make it a little bit better. Let's walk through those. First off, as you can imagine, one of my top tips, one of my best ones is limit the choices. Don't overwhelm. I mean this two ways. I mean, number one, limit the choices in terms of decide where you're getting your best usage, your best customers. Limit your network to those places.
If Twitter and Facebook are the place for you, great. If it's Facebook and email, great. If it's Pinterest and it's LinkedIn, fine. You can provide, if you want, and a lot of people will do this, where they'll put one section up in the top right-hand corner. That's got the little icons for each network so that all of those are findable, sort of like the contact us page and the about us page or the terms of service and legal use and privacy policy. Those things are findable. Great. That's fine. That way, someone can go to any page on your website and, "Hey what's these guys'
Twitter? I want to tweet something at them. Great. There it is, right there."
In terms of calls to action, things where you're actually trying to get the subscription, where you're saying, "Hey, here's our Twitter box, and subscribe to us, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our email," in terms of those calls to action, limit those choices. I would highly recommend max, max one to two. Really, seriously, you should only be trying to drive one or two social email actions on a single page. That should probably be relatively consistent.
You also probably don't want to overwhelm, meaning there's no reason to have this many. If you've got one box that's got them all somewhere on the page, in the footer, near the header, at the top, great. Then you want to have your one call to action in the place . . . this is tip number two. Promote where the action is most likely to happen.
I'll give you a great example of this. If you follow OkCupid's blog, which is called "OkTrends," I urge you to check it out. They have lots of phenomenal, interesting content there. What OkTrends has done is a ton of testing to see what's most effective. They found Facebook to be their most effective channel. What happens is, as you scroll down and are reading the page, in fact you'll see something like this. I've reached the bottom of the content, right, so all the content's up here. They have great graphics and images. Then here are the comments starting down on the bottom of the page. What you're going to see that's fascinating is as I've scrolled down, as soon as I reach the bottom here, where I've essentially said, they can detect via the browser, via JavaScript, hey, this person just reached the bottom of our content, the end of the blog post. Now is exactly the moment where we're going to drop down this little blue thing up here, and it's going to have a message sort of written in here that's like, "Subscribe to us on Facebook," or "Like us on Facebook."
Brilliant timing. They know which of the right call to action is to make, and they're making it at the time when you've finished consuming that blog post and you are most likely, because clearly, you've been engaged throughout reading the post. Think of asking for this at a time in normal conversation before you've even given the value proposition. Right? It's not like I tell you, "Hey, I want you to share what I'm about to tell you with all your friends." "What is it? Why do I need to share it before I know? Shouldn't you ask me that after you tell me what it is?"
And that's exactly what OkTrends is doing here, and that's what I would urge you to do as well. Make it happen at the call to action time. If there's content that makes someone scroll down a page, I really like having it at the bottom. At the same time you're asking for the add a comment or make a purchase on a page, that's the time to ask for that sharing activity. Prior to that, it's just a little odd. It's a little out of place.
Customize. Don't just use the standard calls to action. Right? Standard calls to action would be like the Tweet Me button, or the Facepile, embed, or those kinds of things. Those can be fine. Those can work. You can certainly test them, but I really like customizing, because the problem with the standard ones, especially those Facepile, Tweet Me, and that kind of stuff is that those buttons, those images, those graphics, those embeds, they start to look the same across page and sight and all over the Web.
When that happens, ad blindness happens, banner blindness happens. This is the same sort of thing that advertisers talk about with branding advertising that the ads just don't stand out anymore. People stopped noticing them. If you can customize, if you can make it unique, you can add your color scheme, you can your brand, you can add clever messaging, you can make it unique and different from what everyone else is doing on the Web with their social, that's when you'll stand out. That's when you'll have a much different experience that makes people stand up and pay attention to what you're showing them.
Number four, create an expectation and then, please, fulfill it immediately. This is most important with things like email, but it's also important with tweets and Facebook, etc. What I mean by this is if you have a call to action that says, "Like us on Facebook and get updates like this," or "Be notified when we do these kinds of things," your Facebook feed, the Facebook page should be a list of a lot of those things with not a whole lot else. It should be doing exactly what you say.
If you tell them, "Subscribe to our Moz Top Ten email" - we have a Moz Top Ten email - one of the things that we should probably do is as soon as you subscribe, we send you the last one. We don't do that right now, but we should. We're working on it. That way you get this sense of, "Oh, look, it's just what I asked for. It's as promised. Here we go. This is great."
Now they're delivering on the expectation they've created, and that creates a sense of trust immediately. Excellent way to go about this.
Use relevant social proof, number five. A lot of times people will say, "Oh great, I'll put the Facepile in, or I'll show them who else from their network is following me." Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not. Social proof is very case specific. For example, if I am going to be going out and buying a consumer product, maybe I am interested in what my friends are doing. But if I'm going out and I'm buying a product for my business, I might actually be interested in what people like me, who are relevant, who are at companies I know and like and trust, who are influencers and authority figures, their opinions may be much more interesting and important to me than, hey, your friend on Facebook, or hey, your LinkedIn connection bought this. That's kind of less interesting.
So I would urge you to figure out what the social proof is that's case specific to you and then apply that on these pages. If it's we are followed on Twitter by . . . I don't know if we are but Danny Sullivan or Avinash Kaushik or Richard Baxter or Will Critchlow, whoever these people are that you sort of go, "Oh, I know those guys. I really respect what they say." I will also follow SEOmoz or whatever your business is.
This is UX 101. Make the process dead simple. I have started to see these more complex social subscription, particularly email ones, where it pops up in a box and it asks you for more information, wants you to confirm before you do this. If you can, make it dead, dead simple, meaning, if you have an email box, I want it to look like this. Your email, subscribe. When you click subscribe right here, you get a little popup that says, "Thank you. We've just sent you an email to confirm your address. As soon as you click on the confirmation, you'll receive your first email from us." Amazing. Dead simple. Took me, literally, my email, a click and a confirm. Done. Sold. Easy. That dead simple process, that's the kind of thing you want to create, not just here, but anytime you have calls to action, because simplicity will promote higher conversion rate, better funnel mechanics.
Number seven, eliminate the noise from your social and email feed. If you are sending a lot of email blasts to your subscribers, if you are sending a lot of tweets, you're doing a lot of Facebook status updates, and you're looking and seeing the click through rate and conversion rate and engagement rates are low on a number of them and then occasionally high, gets a little spiky, try to focus on the spikes. Get rid of the noise and focus on curating that content better so that you have essentially fewer messages, but more high quality messages.
This works extremely well as people who subscribe to these services start subscribing to more and more. In the early days, very early days of Facebook, early days of Twitter, early days of email, way back in the day, people didn't get as overwhelmed and, therefore, more messages were more welcome. Now signal to noise ratio matters a lot more.
Finally, number eight, so, so important, if you can at all, measure the channel ROI that you're getting. What I mean by this is measure the difference between the value of someone coming from Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Google+ or email, or whatever it is, your RSS feed. Look at those different channels and say to yourself, "All right, I see that when I get someone subscribing to our RSS feed, that is just a huge value ad, because they come back to us on average 5 times in a month, and within 3 months, they become a buyer, and 60 percent of the people who touch our RSS feed, within 6 months will buy something from us." Fantastic.
Figure out what those different numbers are, and then focus on the channels that matter most to you. It might seem weird sometimes, but I've seen a lot of B2B case studies where LinkedIn is the highest referring. I've seen a lot of case studies where email is a much higher converting source than Facebook or Twitter or any of the other social networks.
Pay attention to this and make sure you focus on the ones that matter most. Don't be persuaded by popular media, social media, technology media that says, "Oh, Pinterest is the next hot thing." And you think, "Oh no, I don't have a Pinterest board. I've got to get people signing up for my Pinterest board and following me on Pinterest." Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses. Is that actually a valuable channel for you? If you don't know, you should test. You should spend some time there. If you do know, and it's low, well, don't bother. Maybe that's not your demographic. Maybe that's not your psychographic. Maybe your customers just aren't there. Maybe, for some reason, the medium and your media don't connect well. That's okay. If you focus this, then you can do a great job on limiting the choices, promoting the right actions, and all of these other things.
All right everyone. I hope to see some fantastic calls to action for your social and email campaigns in the future, and I'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

PHP Errors as a Means of Getting Links

2012-07-31T00:36:00.001-07:00

I was reading the article about “Broken Link Building” the other day when I realized that there might be a possible extension to the idea of helping webmasters with keeping theirs sites together. Since there is a lot of stuff that can go wrong with a website, I started probing possibilities. Here is what I came up with.
Definitely, there might be other problems with an internet site that might be noticed by an ordinary user. And in order to take a well-structured and organized approach, I had to find sites with a certain clear and present problem, and be able to find these sites in bulk.
While thinking about this, I was doing my usual everyday routine when suddenly a php error popped out on the site I was browsing at the time. You are no doubt have encountered something like that lots of times.

I knew for sure that I had seen such type of error A LOT. Only all of those times I was in an absolutely different frame of mind and had no idea how I could use it to my benefit.
The site was related to my own (that’s why I was browsing it in the first place), and of pretty decent quality and value, so it made perfect sense for me to ask a responsible person for a link from it. Only all of us know that you do not simply contact a person and ask them to link to you right away. You wouldn’t, would you?
From experience we all know that all our requests that generate little or no value to the requestee should better be based on relationships, even if they are established by one simple sentence which says “Hi man, it seems your PHP is getting out of control, you had better do something about it:
”.OK, let me explain everything step by step.

Try more subtle approach, show them that you sent the message only because you felt that it would be appropriate to let them know about the problem, not because you wanted to use it to your benefit.
“By the way, I was thinking if there is any chance that you can link to my site. It seems your visitors might be interested in this sort of thing. Anyway, size it up for yourself and if you of the same opinion, kindly add the link and let me know”
But let me explain everything step by step.
A lot of you probably have quite perfunctory understanding of PHP. So do I. The beauty of it is that you do not have to be a programmer to help webmasters with their PHP problems. I will try to explain in short what you should know in order to be ready to write a PHP error message.
Let's assume that you already know that PHP is a server-side scripting language.
If something goes wrong and a php command/function can not be executed properly on a page loading in a browser, PHP engine throws up a notification on the page (like the one displayed on the picture above). Sometimes they are not displayed, though, if the webmaster has chosen the "not display notifications in browser" option in the PHP settings.
There are several major types of notifications, but all of them are uniform, which makes it possible for us to find them on Google. Let's take a look at a couple of examples:
Warning: include(../inc_header.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/actualad/public_html/hotel_soaltee_crowne_plaza.php on line 21
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in /var/www/odkryjpolske.pl/op3/functions/functions.php on line 1952
Fatal error: Call to undefined function tweetmeme() in /home/content/40/8396940/html/blog/wp-content/themes/magilas/single.php on line 54
Deprecated: Function ereg_replace() is deprecated in /var/www/virtual/sleepingparis.com/htdocs/admin/filemappa.php on line 18
Strict Standards: Non-static method DB::connect() should not be called statically in C:\wwwAmauta\php\dosmanosperu\connection\gateway.inc.php on line 28
I was able to spot five types of error notifications and then made an attempt to figure out a way to find them on Google so that the results were as relevant as possible. After taking a closer look I figured out that the part "php on line" was present in all the types of notifications. The only other part that seemingly remained the same were the words "Warning/Notice/Fatal Error/Deprecated/Strict Standards"
So, in order to get results containing pages with PHP error notifications, you should form queries:
"warning:" "[function." "php on line""notice:" "php on line""fatal error:" "php on line""deprecated:" "php on line""strict standards:" "php on line"
But that might not be enough. Instead of getting search results with actual error notifications on faulty pages, you might stumble on a discussion of that error on some forum, or even the official PHP site.
The solution is as follows: add some relevant keywords to your query (defining the type of site you want to deal with). Let's assume I have an online hotel reservation site and I want to get in touch with tour and hotel sites all over the world. I do the following:
"warning:" "[function." "php on line" intitle:tours"notice:" "php on line" intitle:tours"fatal error:" "php on line" intitle:tours"deprecated:" "php on line" intitle:tours"strict standards:" "php on line" intitle:tours
The result is more than satisfactory one. There are 1,380,000 results for the query "warning:" "[function." "php on line" intitle:tours and even the last hundred results out of 1000 displayed on Google are at least 50% relevant to what I was searching for. I mean the pages displayed indeed have a php error notification on them and offer tour services.
But if you somehow feel that the results aren't relevant enough, you can always expand your search query by adding additional keywords.
There is also a more thorough way to go. You may further brake down the types of PHP errors by the contents of a notification.
Let's assume you have stumbled upon the warning notification which looks like:
Warning: include_once(language/mn.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /hermes/waloraweb061/b490/pow.sndmn/htdocs/destination/index.php on line 34
It is the easiest one to solve since it clearly states that the file or directory are missing. So all you have to write to the webmaster is "check your files and their names carefully"
Let's find the constant value of the message and delete all the information which changes (like the names of the files and folders, paths to them, etc.). And do not forget to attach your keywords!
That's what we get after some tweaking.
"Warning:" "[function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in" "php on line" intitle:tours
The query produces 132 results, which is quite something to start with since you already have the solution to the problem in your pocket. Now all you have to do is send your message to the respective parties in the results and wait for them to reply!
Usually, if you direct the attention of webmaster to the problem with their site, they should know what to do about it since they have probably earned being called "webmasters". Still there are a considerable percentage of people who take care of their site to some extent without deep understanding of its mechanics. The site might have been created by a company for a client who does not know much in this sort of stuff. In this case, your ability to search for information on the Internet will enable you to warm up the hearts of mighty number of people who can add your link on their sites.
What I am talking about here is trying to get to the bottom of the problem before contacting the webmaster so that not only could you state the presence of it, but also could help with figuring things out. It's nice if you are into PHP and can crack any related problem without referring to World Wide Web.
If, however, you are not that sort of person, you might want to read some specialized PHP forums:
PHP Freaks
SitePoint PHP Forum
PHP Help
Codewalkers PHP-Related Forum
If the search comes up with a page which contains a following notification:
Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/zungahto/public_html/includes/joomla.php:836) in /home/zungahto/public_html/includes/joomla.php on line 697
you have enough information to be able to find a solution. Let's try to perform the following search:
site:forums.phpfreaks.com "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by"
site:sitepoint.com "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by"
Google comes up with as many as 4,350 and 4,700 results for forums.phpfreaks.com and sitepoint.com respectively, which is one damn mighty pile to browse through. You might want to look through the top 10 and send the links to the discussions you deem appropriate in your message. Another way to go is just simply send the url of the forum so that the recipient could start a new thread for themselves to address their problem exclusively. Of course it's not an exhaustive solution, but it will give the webmaster something to lean on. If you want to go hardcore though, you can plug in one of your company's programmers to give advice to the recipient (only I think it should be one hell of a good site to go into such extremities for a link).
Finally, check out this list of common PHP error messages. If you want to proceed with the idea of searching for a specific sort of error, you might want to read this one and then continue on with the search.
Let's assume I have chosen to proceed with the "use of undefined constant" error. I have some sort of solution already, poor as it is. (It’s in the document provided above). So all you need to do is search for this sort of messages:
"Notice:" "Use of undefined constant" "php on line" intitle:tours
And heeeere we go! 59 results.
Further on, the fact that an error notification has been around long enough for a search engine to index it means that the site is getting seriously out of hand and might have been completely abandoned by the crew, so before sending a message insure in some way that the site is still in business. I do it by performing these steps:

Enter the query consisting of the advanced “site” operator along with the domain of the site in question. (site:phperrorsite.com)Collapse the list of the Google Search Tools under the "Show Search Tools" link on the left column of Google search result page.In the time selection section choose the “past year” optionThe options “sort by relevance” and “sort by date” will appear; choose the latter.Now pay attention to the date in the first search result. The more recent it is, the better. This, along with the number of the documents in the search results pertaining to the domain, gives you an approximate idea of what is going on with the site.
Remember, this is far from precise and I would be glad to hear of any other ideas about how one can discover whether a site has been abandoned or not.
You may also want to check whether there are any other php errors of one sort or another by performing a respective search query modified by the “site”
search operator:
site:phperrorsite.com "warning:" "[function." "php on line"
The higher the number of the documents found, the higher the likelihood that the site owners/editors just do not give a rat’s ass about their website and won’t probably respond to your message of good intention.
Now you have ensured that the site is still kept a close watch on by finding out that there is only one document with a php error, which, in its turn, happens to be in some secluded corner of the site and might simply have been missed by the webmaster. There is no excuse for a php error notification right above the header on the main page of a site. I think twice before contacting sites of that sort. Like, how could they have missed that and even gave time for a search engine to index it!?
Well, I guess I have fed you all I had on the subject. Now for the pivotal point - email composing. I guess it's one of the most popular subjects among SEOmoz blog writers, so I do not want to write something that has been written thousands of times before me. Try to check out the most recent article on the subject (at the time of this writing).
Nevertheless, here is my way of doing business. I hope this example might be of use to someone.
Subject: , I have spotted a problem with your site.
HI,
I was browsing through your site phperrorsite.com out of professional curiosity (I maintain an online hotel reservation site myself) and came upon a page that was obviously getting out of hand:
<the url of the page with a PHP error>
I understand how tiresome it might be to keep everything in line, so I have attached a document with possible solution to this problem
.
There are also quite a few discussion on the internet pertaining to this problem, check them out if you will:

However, I would recommend you to start a new thread on one of the forums laying down all the details.
Please drop me a line at your convenience; I would like to know how things worked out for you.
Best of luck with your work!

You could omit some of the stuff like specifying the urls of forum threads. To keep it simple, you could just mention the page with the error and ask them to get back to you. After the reply, you can move on to asking for a little favor. Hopefully, you will be granted one!
Hi again,
I am glad my message was of use to you. I guess we, webmasters, should back each other up when we can. We could learn a lot from each other.
By the way, I got this idea that maybe my hotel reservation services might be of use to some of your visitors. Hotel reservation and tour services go along quite well, don't you think so?
Please check out my site yoursite.com and if you of the same opinion, kindly add a link to it where you think it would be most appropriate.
I hope I do not impose you. It's just that it's so hard to stay on surface these days, if you get my meaning.
Hope to have a word from you soon.
Rock On,

Well, I guess that's about it. It might not be the best message ever conceived, but it worked fine for me.
A thing to remember: I guess it's not a good idea to ask for a link in the very first message - wait for a little while in order to establish some sort of connection with the webmaster, and when you feel that you get along quite well - make your pitch.
Remember, if you do not get link - you still get yourself a grateful person who might do you a favor of one sort or another later on. So, not time wasted.
I would be glad to hear any suggestions for improving my messages!
I have been trying to make the point that you should be creative and try different approaches based on something that has been done before. Helping webmasters to keep their site neat and clean is the core here.
So let's take a look at another method you could use as a reason for contacting webmasters:
Looks familiar, doesn't it? If you spend eight hours a day on the Internet (as most of us do), it's something you have seen a lot of times. And you probably know that there is something wrong with the site when you stumble upon something like that. And "that" can be called "directory indexing/browsing enabled in Apache server"
.
There is a whole movement of hackers excited about finding sites webmaster of which were reckless enough not to disable this default feature of Apache server. Having this enabled constitutes a great security risk to your website since there are a lot of ways in which the sensitive data could be manipulated. It can be even a lot easier for someone to breach your site if you are one of those guys who has a document with password for all of your accounts. Believe me, there is a lot more of those than you can think.
Besides, it simply looks untidy to find such page in Google results.
There is a system and structure to everything. If you look at a couple of pages like the one on the picture, you will realise that there are constant values which never change. Here is what I use for finding such pages:
intitle:index intitle:of port apache server
The query comes back with 100% relevant results. (OK, let's say 95% relevant results just to be on the safe side)
But we do not want to contact random sites, do we? Almost all of us involved in a specific kind of business and we want to find sites relevant to it.
Assuming that my own site is dedicated to online hotel reservation, I modify the query as specified below:
intitle:tours intitle:index intitle:of port apache server
I come up with lots of tour sites around the world who have some security issues.
You contact the webmaster (or anybody else involved with the site) and tell them to disable building of directory index by opening the apache config file "httpd.conf" and removing the word "indexes" found in it. After that you can gradually shift to the "quid pro quo" part of the conversation.
About the author: Eugene Krall is a humble link-building-oriented search engine optimizer from Chernihiv, Ukraine, who started off as an economist, became interested in linguistics somewhere along the line, but ended up working for the major Ukrainian-based hotel reservation company Booked.net, who took him in and taught him how to seo.

The State of Content Marketing: An Interview With the Speakers of #MozCon

2012-07-30T21:00:00.002-07:00

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
This post wraps up the three-part post series that includes the "The State of SEO" and "The State of Social Media" multi-author interviews. Today, the MozCon speakers share their thoughts, beliefs, and suggestions about an old friend of any marketer that regained its fame over the past few months: Content Marketing.
Out of all the disciplines that make up Web Marketing, Content Marketing is surely the oldest. It was an established discipline before the web as we know it was even invented.
However, thanks to updates like Panda, it seems that SEOs have finally understood the importance of Content Marketing. As with any new idea, they can't stop talking about content of all kinds, from blogging, to video, to data visualization, to gamification, and more...
While this renewed interest in Content Marketing is something I'm absolutely thrilled about, I fear that this craze might open the door for a superficial and not-critical approach to possibly the most difficult web marketing discipline of all: Content Marketing.

Question: The first thing I am going to ask is more of a request than a question: may we all try to
avoid using the “Content is King” phrase in this interview?Content is at the base of any potential web marketing success, but I consider that phrase chopped, overused, and – worst of all – misused. Content is essential, but that phrase is misleading as content without all the other web marketing disciplines may risk being just that: content. Content might be wonderful and relevant, but ignored without the correct marketing practices.Do you agree with this statement? What is your take?
Peter Meyers: I’m honestly not a big fan of arguments over semantics. For every person that uses “content is king” too much, there’s a person wasting too much time complaining about the first person. Let’s just say that no smart SEO strategy in 2012 can fit on a bumper sticker.
Paddy Moogan: I’d probably agree and it is something that sometimes gets forgotten. You can have the best content in the world but if no one sees it, then it is a bit pointless. This is where the argument of “build great content and you’ll attract links” fails. Sure this can happen, but for most of us that content needs promotion in order to get traction and succeed. So when people say content is important, yes it is, but for most sites promotion of this content is just as important.
Richard Baxter: Content is just content. How it’s promoted is the strategy. I’ve seen bad content do well and great content do badly – because of strategy. That’s where “Content Marketing” comes in to play.

Mike Pantoliano: I think you’re exactly right. I can’t stand "content is king." If a blog post or presentation uses the phrase, or any other web marketing platitude for that matter, they’ve lost me.
Cyrus Shepard: How about "Content First?" The worst job in the world is doing SEO for a site with crappy content or an inferior product. Conversely, when you have a great product, the marketing process becomes a joy. Too often, businesses want to market the hell out of something without making that something great. That’s why I say content first, then marketing.
J Kohn: Content is hugely important, but it must be marketed. Too many think that they’re Kevin Costner. They believe that if they build it, people will come. Sadly, you’ll be waiting a very long time for traffic to line up if you take this approach. This is real life, not the movies.
This is where SEO fits in perfectly. It’s our job to ensure that content gets in front of the right people. Great content makes that job a lot easier.
Rhea Drysdale: There’s a word missing from your question — marketing. As in “content marketing” has had a surge of popularity in the past year. Skimming the next questions, it looks we’ll get to this, but my point is: yes I agree, we can’t separate good content from good marketing. When content takes off without marketing, it is an anomaly, not the standard by which all content should be measured.
Mike King: First, Michael is King and there can only be one! Ok, now, that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I believe the reality of it is that most brands are not there yet for a variety of reasons. This is largely because remarkable content creation at scale needs to penetrate the general culture of a brand the same way that enterprise SEO only works if the whole team is onboard. Also, there is this issue of compliancy and way too many stakeholders needing to review things before content can go live. It’s a very challenging problem as content is obviously the glue to every channel.
I certainly agree that content is not this “if you build it, they will come” situation. Don’t believe me? Look at the graveyard of failed infographics out there.
Ian Lurie: If you use the phrase "content is king" in the post, I may start crying. The statement cheapens content into a crappy parlor trick, when it’s communication. Marketing, messaging, etc. don’t exist without content. King? Meh. Let’s just talk content :-).

Question: Over the last 12 months, Content Marketing has been portrayed as a recent invention. I have
never read so many posts written about content in one year, especially in the SEO blogs. I find this occurrence quite funny as Content Marketing has always existed, even before web marketing itself.Do you believe that this focus on content is a sign of maturity that has reached the SEO discipline, or it is because the only way to obtain lasting success both in Search and Social Media Marketing? Worse, is the recent focus on Content Marketing becoming another fashion trend in the SEO world?

Peter Meyers: I’m not sure I’d use the word “maturity,” but I do think it’s a natural evolution. Look at analytics – we all chased hits, then page views, then unique page views, then conversion metrics, etc. Each time, the majority of people acted like the current obsession was something they knew all along, even though they still had tunnel vision and were really 3-4 years behind the people who really got it. People paying lip service to content marketing like it’s some brand new discovery don’t get it, and they don’t see the big picture.
Paddy Moogan: I think the focus on content marketing has come about partly through necessity. Older SEO techniques that were quick and easy have slowly started to die off and not work as well as before. SEOs have started to realize that to win in the long term, you need to deserve to get links, and you can only deserve to get links by making something cool. Whether it is your product, service, a tool, or a piece of content.
Richard Baxter: It’s easier to build links with good content. I think the industry, for the most part, has matured enough to recognize this. Better webpages (usually with a richer, more valuable content experience) tend to rank better now more than ever, with obvious credit given to the search engines for (finally) making this the case. The SEO industry is highly motivated to drive traffic and links and therefore, SEO’s are highly motivated towards learning and mastering the techniques that work.

Mike Pantoliano: I think you said it. It’s a sign of maturity of the industry. Something needs to be created in order to get links, just as something needs to be created in order to get mindshare, market share, sales, coverage, tweets, etc.
Cyrus Shepard: Not to be cynical, but the answer is simply many SEO ‘tricks’ like link networks and blog commenting have lost much of their effectiveness, and folks don’t know where else to turn. “Oh yeah, maybe we should actually create some content people want to share.”
AJ Kohn: I’m not sure why content marketing has become the hot new buzzword. It’s certainly not new. Perhaps the animal rollercoaster ride (Panda and Penguin) has created an opportunity to bring content marketing to a wider audience.
Publishing platforms like WordPress and Tumblr, among others, allow more people to produce content. The explosion of content is astounding. So it makes some sense that people would become more interested in content as a strategy.
Finally, the Google tax continues to rise. All those small businesses that ignored the Internet for years, and then stubbornly used it while holding their collective noses, are now realizing what it can do for them. But they need alternatives to the rank-high-quick schemes.
Rhea Drysdale: I give Google more credit for the growth of content marketing than anything intentional from the industry itself. When Google’s Panda update devalued cheap, spun content farms, everyone took note. If you do a search with Google Insights for “content marketing” you’ll see a massive surge from 2011-present. The industry will mature at the same speed of the major search engines.
Jessica Bowman: I believe a lot of it has to do with many things:
The infusion of new talent in the SEO space. Many early generation SEOs were not the creative types that come up with innovative, hilarious content we see today. They liked to work with the site, spoof the bots, test to see what worked, etc. They wanted to do as little as possible to get as much as possible, and in that SEO era, it worked! In the last five years, creative types joined the SEO space, bringing a different skillset to the SEO scene – voila, they brought immense creativity that SEO needed to maximize conversions and improve the brand, while simultaneously improving SEO rankings.Non-SEOs in the organization suddenly paying attention to what SEO is doing. In many organizations SEO was the red-headed stepchild, given little attention and free reign to do what was needed to boost rankings. We now have management on board and willing to invest in creative content. We are also starting to see Public Relations departments stepping in with ideas for content that will build the brand AND increase rankings.
Mike King: Unfortunately, it's another sad reality. Content marketing is trendy right now and that’s why I decided to speak about how to get buy-in for content marketing at MozCon. There are so many ideas floating around about how everyone should be investing in content and how there are so many cool, agile brands creating remarkable content in this ideal world. However, content creation is a process that no one owns and everyone owns, and it’s incredibly hard to push through.
At iAcquire, we’ve bet the farm on content marketing and it’s such a challenge to get a brand to let us place even high quality content on their sites. Brands typically think of their sites as a way to advertise and pull from users rather than a way to answer questions and entertain. Obviously a lot more are coming around and you have brands like Coca Cola, Red Bull, and Old Spice leading the change, but they are not the norm.
The other issue is that a lot of times we are championing content as an overnight success done on a shoestring budget (for example, the Dollar Shave Club video), but then we find out that there was some large agency (in this case BBH) with the appropriate budget that pushed the content via a service like Sharethrough and it’s not the organic and viral success that we make it out to be. I don’t think we’re maturing in practice because much like link building a lot of that conversation just isn’t pragmatic at this point.
Ian Lurie: I think a lot of really crappy marketers and SEOs suddenly have nowhere else to turn, actually. Sorry, does that sound bitter? For folks like me, who’ve been pushing strong content, strong messaging and smart outreach since, I dunno, 1998 or so, the ‘sudden rise’ of content as a marketing tactic is a little sad. If you’re suddenly talking content now, when you never did before, it means you probably did your clients a pretty serious disservice. Look at the leaders across all marketing disciplines and you’ll see folks who’ve been talking marketing for years or decades.

Question: Before starting my career as a web marketer, I spent many years working in the television
industry as Head of Programming. My main duty was to decide what movies, series, etc. we would broadcast and at what times. One of the classic disputes was – and still is – what content we needed to buy and produce. Should we follow what Nielsen was telling us was working, or should we emphasize our own opinions to be consistent with our vision and run the content that we wanted people watching. My team finally chose the latter to avoid a leveling in the quality of our programming.I see worrying signs of the same issue (but on a larger volume) in what content strategy businesses decide to follow. If people want infographics, they are given infographics; if people want posts just about two or three topics, let’s write just about those topics; and so on. It seems that the more I surf the Internet, the more I see the same content everywhere.Am I alone, or do you experience the same findings? If so, what should be at the base of a content strategy that a business should follow?

Peter Meyers: It’s really tough because we’re content producers, and we’re surrounded by content producers, so when there’s a trend or meme, we see it pounded into the ground. We’re not the end-consumer in most cases. The industry naturally chases trends, and they wouldn’t do that if it didn’t work at all. Obviously there’s a lot of mediocre content out there, but it’s hard to say that chasing the trends is completely wrong. I think it depends a lot on your audience, and it’s a difficult balancing act.
Richard Baxter: Every good search marketer needs to understand this and be able to innovate. Anyone who is marketing ever-so-slightly ahead of the game will be able to capitalize on the “seen it all before” fatigue you’ve just described.

Mike Pantoliano: I don’t think we have to worry about the web being flooded with shit content. It already is! And yet, the best content still manages to bubble to the top. Consider the trash magazines at the supermarket near the checkout. Have you ever read the headlines? They’re essentially just clickbait blog posts. “10 ways to lose that belly fat for summer!” That will always exist. And for that reason, no one’s making any connections with the producers of that content. It’s transient.
I wouldn’t call myself a content strategy expert, but since you asked, I’d tell any business to skip the clickbait lists and create something that is genuine and unique.
AJ Kohn: Cookie cutter solutions and bandwagon strategies can be seen in almost any industry. I think it’s more obvious with content because it’s what’s in front of you everyday.
There are always those who are willing to simply follow the advice of others blindly without thinking about whether it makes sense or if it’s right for them. So, yes, I’m rather tired of stitched together infographics. I find many of the headlines and formats for blog posts to be rather stale.
I believe content should be authentic and tailored to your specific industry and vertical. A highly technical industry may not want infographics but instead want white papers. Videos might be a great match for one industry but lousy for another.
Giving users what they’re asking for can be smart, but switching things up can keep users engaged. In the end, it’s the businesses that take risks on new topics or content types that wind up winning.
Rhea Drysdale: It’s natural to want to write for your audience. Where I find the greatest issue is in the definition of that audience and our responsibility to them. Just because a certain audience likes kittens, it doesn’t mean your SEO blog should feature a daily kitten. We still have to write timely, relevant content that our community responds to. When it comes to the content strategy of a business, the business should start by identifying who they are (e.g. company values, brand, voice, etc). Then identify their audience (both customers and industry). Identify what your competitors are doing well and not so well. From there I feel like content will naturally fall into place.
Jessica Bowman: This is definitely happening. When we define content strategies, we focus on understanding what everyone else is doing and how to differentiate and one-up the competing content, instead of keeping up with the Jones’. Instead of following the trends, focus on the target personas and what they would like to see, in the format they would like to see it. Instead of focusing on the content type that’s hot/trendy, focus on diversification – having infographics and 3 blog posts a week could be right for your business, but that is not likely the only thing you should be doing.
Mike King: Well as an artist myself, I’m constantly conflicted with the same issue, but the thing you have to consider is businesses are generally very risk averse and if they do those risks have to be very calculated. Even those brands like Axe that take big risks in creating a video like this have to put those through a series of market tests to ensure it connects with its demographic. By the same token, we are generally locked into doing things that are proven to work. In fact, advertising generally tends to leverage the 7 story archetypes that are known to resonate with consumers when telling those stories.
And that’s exactly it. Ultimately, brands need to be committed to telling a story and to that point SEOs need to learn how to sell a big idea and then weaving that thread throughout all of the strategic content that is created. Content should never be an isolated incident, it needs to be a part of a bigger story.
Ian Lurie: I think online content strategies suffer from this a little less, because content is so much cheaper on the web. I don’t mean $50/article garbage – I mean really great stuff for $1000-2000. Compare that to the cost of a TV show or ad. It’s mind-boggling.
Folks will always jump on the bandwagon – infographics are hot right now. Elf Yourself spawned all sorts of copies and derivatives. Something else will show up later. But that’s how a lot of this stuff evolves. So believe it or not, I think it’s OK, because online these trends happen much faster, and you don’t see folks getting mired in one kind of content (reality TV, anyone?).

Question: One of the biggest misunderstandings I see is when people consider “content” a synonym
for “written content,” while – in my opinion – everything on a website must be considered content. This includes: The design;The imagineryThe videos the site presentsProducts and servicesData visualizationAPIs and code (if justified)Written content (obviously)
Even though there is no obligation to include the above factors in a Content Marketing strategy, small business this side of web marketing are sure to assume a central role, which means more investments and bigger budgets. As a consequence, many small businesses say they cannot fight against big brands.
What would you says to businesses owners and marketers who complain about the costs of Content Marketing?

Peter Meyers: Although I’m not sure I’d define “content” that broadly, I definitely agree with the concern. Too often, I’ll talk to a small business which is generating fluff to cover up the unfortunate fact that their product or service just isn’t very good. A bunch of words slapped on a page aren’t going to save you if you suck at what you do. Content is an extension of your core business and the value proposition of your product or service. Without that core, you’re building everything else on a very shaky foundation.
Paddy Moogan: I’d argue that you can film a good quality video and take good photos on an iPhone. Sure it won’t be as good as a high quality camera, but some of the most popular videos on the web have been filmed on bad quality devices. It is the creativity that is harder to nail but fortunately, everyone has the ability to be creative, even if you don’t think of yourself as a creative person.
Richard Baxter: For those people, I explain how SEOgadget was started – on a blog. It’s pure content that opened the opportunities for our growth over the past 2.5 years.

Mike Pantoliano: Well, the first thing I’d do is tell them that they’re right. It’s a serious struggle. Then I’d tell them, “Hey, listen. Content is king.” Then I’d bill them.
But seriously, I think the best strategy for a SMB is to focus on what makes them unique, target an audience, build something for that audience, make sure that audience knows about it, rinse, and repeat.
Cyrus Shepard: In my opinion, content marketing delivers the highest, long-term ROI of any form of online marketing. I also reject the notion that you need a big budget to compete. You simply need something useful or entertaining to offer the world, and a unique presentation style – which may be as simple as your point of view.
Every small business has someone on staff that’s an expert at something, even if it’s just in their local area. Finding ways to harness this expertise and get it into the world presents a long term, low-cost content marketing solution.
AJ Kohn: What are the costs of not doing it? The fact of the matter is many small businesses fail because they suck at marketing. That’s true offline and online.
Creating compelling and authentic content is an investment in your business that can pay long-term dividends. Those are assets.
Why go to the trouble to invest in PPC and drive them to a brochure-ware site? Why start to have a social media presence if you’ve got nothing of your own to share?
Rhea Drysdale: Any form of marketing should always be driven by both curiosity and business case. If something has a positive ROI, it’s easy to invest in it regardless of the budget. It’s much less easy to invest in intangible assets like brand and reputation, but these can often account for a massive percent of company’s value. With that in mind, do what you can. Determine the resources, timeframe, and budget you have and put together a strategy that fits within that. Putting together a few great pieces of content will matter more than quantity.
Jessica Bowman: It’s the cost of doing business online in 2012 and beyond. If you cannot compete with the sites creating compelling, useful, authoritative content, then the business model needs to be assessed because it will not thrive online. I would also challenge a small business to assess where they are spending their marketing time/budget vs. where they are getting the leads. I would talk to them about creative means of getting great content on a shoestring budget – most companies just haven’t brainstormed enough low-cost content generation tactics.
Mike King: I would simply say “I don’t want to work with you.” I sincerely would like to see more inbound marketers turning away business when the client does not want to build content. In fact, if your brand is not committed to telling a story and creating content that helps people, then you’re essentially obsolete. Stop complaining about brands. Be a brand. Content Marketing in 2012 is not optional, it’s a reality.
Ian Lurie: Business owners complain about the cost of everything. I should know :-).
I’ll steer clear of this question otherwise, because the best online content is a tiny fraction of the cost of traditional stuff, and saying it’s too expensive is a little ridiculous.

Question: On the contrary, how would you tell big brands that web marketing (and Content Marketing as a part of it) is something that needs velocity and alertness, and that their bureaucracy may kill their web marketer’s (in house and agencies) efforts?
AJ Kohn: This can be tough. You point to case upon case of a bigger brand getting beat by the agile upstart. The response is often, "but we’re different." There’s a sense that it won’t happen to them. And, often, when they do realize that it is happening to them, well … it’s too late.
Marketing innovation is accelerating and if you’re not keeping up you’re being left behind.
Rhea Drysdale: I’d tell them that they need to develop a streamlined, enterprise-level content marketing strategy. That may sound ridiculously corporate, but roadblocks stem from fear — fear that a big brand will lose control because of a poorly timed or inflammatory piece of content. To combat this, establish clear expectations, brand guidelines, content policies, social media policies, approval flow chats for certain topics, response strategies, etc. With these in place it will be much easier to publish content even if it washes some of the originality from the process. Think in baby steps. Once content is being consistently added and promoted, it will be easier to demonstrate results. As trust is gained it will then be easier to push the boundaries.
Jessica Bowman: They need to assess their marketing operations for 2012 online marketing needs. In sales “time kills all deals," when it comes to online marketing “time kills opportunities.” I would also challenge the in-house web marketers to learn how to work in the reality of the operational limitations. If it takes 3 months to get content approved and out the door, then keep pushing content through and the only lag you have is the first three months. Many in-house marketers are not consistent enough to keep a steady stream of content. When I was an in-house SEO at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, it took us 3 months to launch content changes. It was frustrating, but I was diligent about content planning and kept a steady stream of updates and over time we made efficiencies to address the SEO need for speed.
Mike King: I’d tell those brands to look at Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Red Bull, Old Spice, and Coca-Cola. It’s very feasible for big brands to be agile and create content that tells that compelling story. Think about it huge brands invented that. If you recall, big brands are responsible for soap operas.
Ian Lurie: You guys are in big trouble. Big brands have had a lot of chances to get moving – they’ve seen Amazon, Woot, Zappos, and others all start eating their lunch in a matter of years.
I don’t see many big, traditional companies making smart moves, content-wise. Turf wars between marketing teams, branding teams and others seem to block progress at every turn.

Question: I consider a good content strategy one that is able to “recycle” its content production in every possible online channel. It is in that “recyclable” content strategy that I see the secret of inbound marketing. Is this theory correct? If so, what is the process you follow?

Peter Meyers: While it’s certainly smart to re-use bits and pieces of what you’ve built, I tend to think that the best content only fits in certain channels. What works for video or an infographic might make a lousy e-book or blog post, for example. I think the best content marketing is paired appropriately to its channel, and not all combinations work. Recycling may be cost-effective and a sound strategy at times, but you can definitely push it too far.
Cyrus Shepard: Recycling is key, from large agencies to small businesses. you express your ideas and information through an infographic, you can also express it in an eBook, blog post, video, animated cartoon, song, and social media campaign. Every time you produce something on the web, ask yourself if you can release this same information through another channel. That’s high ROI marketing.
AJ Kohn: Content that can be used in multiple ways is valuable.
Give a presentation at a conference and you’ve also got yourself a handy SlideShare deck. Write an awesome how-to guide blog post and you can turn it into an eBook. Hold a Google+ Hangout On Air and then you’ve got a YouTube video as a result.
Not everything has to fit into this multi-channel model but when you’re mapping out your content strategy you want to take an inventory and think creatively about how to get the most out of your assets.
Jessica Bowman: We work with clients to create a content creation worksheet that forces them to think about all of the different ways a piece of content can be used, promoted, repurposed in their world. It contains the email to customers, tweets, Facebook likes, YouTube videos, blog posts, articles, presentations, and more. I know it works because when the SEOinhouse.com team uses it, we maximize potential, when we don’t use it, we leave opportunities on the table, every time.
Mike King: Absolutely, always start from a content audit and see what can be repurposed and think of how to build any new content as a maximum viable product to make it hard to copy.
Ian Lurie: Definitely! First, you have to define "content" as ideas, not writing or video or something else. Then you present those ideas as many ways as possible. Say I do a webinar. I’ll certainly record that and offer it as a screencast. And, if I used slides, I’ll annotate those and turn them into a Slideshare presentation. And, I’ll probably write a blog post to narrate the whole thing.

Question: Let’s talk about specific Content Marketing tactics. What do you like and dislike? What are your best tips about:
BloggingVideo MarketingImages and Data VisualizationContent and Social Content CurationEmail MarketingDesign and CodingGamificationOther tactics of your choice

Peter Meyers: I think we all naturally gravitate toward the channels that fit our skill-set, so it can be really tough to compare and contrast. I don’t do much video work, because frankly, I’m not good at it. There are definitely times when I see the appeal and effectiveness, though. In general, I think diversity is important. Too many people bad-mouth email marketing as outdated, for example, but it’s still incredibly powerful, and maybe even more importantly, it’s Google-proof. If you build up a solid list of 10K+ subscribers that regularly read what you send them, it doesn’t matter what the algorithm does. That’s critical in 2012.
I also think it’s important not to get carried away and try to fit every round peg into a square hole. The obvious example right now is infographics – people try to turn everything into an infographic, even when it’s not visual, just because they think that’s what’s hot. So, we end up with some real crap, because they’re picking the tool before they understand the job. Every channel has its place.
Mike Pantoliano: Related to Data Visualization, my suggestion would be: interactivity. Let people play and experiment. Any good data viz should come accompanied with a writeup and/or press release detailing some of the industry stories the data tells. But some has to be left for the user to uncover themselves.
AJ Kohn: My suggestions are these:
Blogging: I love it. Do as much of it as you can. Quality over quantity and make it readable.Video Marketing: Get good at editing and pay close attention to retention rates.Images and Data Visualization: Please read something by Edward Tufte before you crank out your next infographic.Content and Social Content Curation: I’m a big proponent of curation. Pointing people to the best content in your industry is a great way to build trust and authority.Email Marketing: There are few things better than having access to someone’s inbox.Design and Coding: Don’t be afraid to break your site by futzing with the code! Think about usability and understand progressive enhancement.Gamification: Be very careful that you are incentivizing the right behaviors.
Rhea Drysdale: I’ll keep this short—I like all of those. It depends on the business, but each could/does work wonderfully when implemented in an intelligent and timely fashion. The biggest tip I have is to simply keep things relevant. I hate seeing content placed on a site purely for social appeal even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the brand nor does it even attract their audience. You know who also hates it? Google. They want to see content that is relevant to a domain. Whatever tactic you choose, make sure it makes sense. If we don’t do this, I have a hard time believing that our industry has matured much, because we’re still looking for a shortcut.
Jessica Bowman: Blogging is a good marketing tactic, but it’s often un-optimal. Make sure that you are saying something innovative and thought provoking, something that showcases your expertise. Far too often I visit a blog only to find run-of-the-mill content that does not make the company or blogger shine in the best light. It was content created for the sake of creating content (or content created fast). Think of every blog post as your stage at a conference – say something that would make someone say, “I need to work with that person!”
Video marketing is very under-utilized. It’s tough to get buy-in for it and companies shy away from things that do not look professionally shot. The reality is that video is the future, and now is the time to test the waters, get experience, and make mistakes. You do not want to get started with video marketing in a few years – your early videos will look very amateur then!
Mike King: Here are my suggestions:
Blogging: Love it. I have no secrets here; just spend the time to write exhaustively on your topic with great design so everything you right is a definitive resource.Video Marketing; Love it. Use the TubeMogul OneLoad tool to distribute videos to all the video sites and also use a solution like Wistia to host it on your own site. Use your video sitemaps. Own the SERPS! Obviously this isn’t inbound marketing stuff, but considering using solutions like Sharethrough or TubeMogul to kick off shares and experiment with offline advertising with Google TV Ads, it’s cheaper than you think to get on TV.Images and Data Visualization: Love it, but tired of infographics there’s so many other ways to visualize data and get more contextual content around them to distribute the link equity. Thank me later.Content and Social Content Curation: Love it. It’s content marketing for lazy people. It’s a way to prove out content marketing at the price of a copywriter essentially. Start there if the brand says we can’t afford that.Email Marketing: Not crazy about it. Hubspot murders my inbox, but I understand that it is incredibly effective. I think it’s important to realize that flooding someone’s inbox is annoying regardless of what the data says. There needs to be a qualitative look at what we’re doing not just the numbers.Design and Coding: This is my favorite. I love to make beautiful things and focus on innovation. Challenge yourself to do just that. At iAcquire that’s exactly what we’re doing with the new tools I’ll be releasing at MozCon. I think as SEOs we need to think more about what we can do that’s not already out there and weave that into the big idea after you’ve sold in and proved out easier quick hits.Gamification: I’m a sucker for this too. I don’t have any tricks for it, but I get sucked in by it regularly.Events and Community: I think Jen made great points and they work so well in context of gamification. Simply build a community around brands so that your link building is just pressing the publish button.
Ian Lurie: This one’s a bit big for me to tackle in one post. Most of what you’re describing above are channels, like games, video, e-mail etc. I think any channel, used wisely, can generate great results. The only tactic I do not like is “get content on the cheap.” That’s a mindset that eventually gets you buried in Panda update, penalized by a Penguin update, or drives away customers because you sound like a moron.

Question: This last question is about mobile. We have discussed the importance of mobile for SEO and Social Media in the previous two interviews, but it is also important for Content Marketing.
What are the challenges that mobile presents to Content Marketing, and what new approaches to content marketing do you see working?
AJ Kohn: I think a lot is currently going on in terms of how content is presented versus the actual content. Mobile applications like Instagram, Foursquare, and even Google+ show the power of feeds and the priority on good visuals.
Of course, the current challenge is simply ensuring that your content is optimized for multiple screens: desktop, phone, and tablet. I think at some point we’ll move beyond that to thinking about what kind of content might make sense for those in the mobile context.
If they’re on the go do they have less time to devote to content? Are they interrupted more often? As such, should our content be shorter? Should it be even more scannable?
It’ll certainly be interesting to find out.
Rhea Drysdale: The greatest issue with mobile is finding the balance. How do we make content that is accessible, but not overwhelming? I love seeing apps like News.me or even Twitter’s new summary email that detail the stories that are relevant to me from my networks. LinkedIn is starting to do the same with their email campaigns tailored to my network. It’s much more engaging and will bring users into their sites. Personalization. That’s a big hurdle for content marketing, but one that’s being solved in interesting new ways.
Mike King: Mobile and tablet devices are obviously the future. Essentially your portable device is the best way to eliminate the distance between what is happening on and offline. The future is to create content and interfaces that facilitate that. Mobile and tablet are going to revolutionize so many experiences. Think about how we all converse via hashtags during tv shows; now think about how TV networks could leverage that to build collective TV watching experiences and have brands build games relevant to the commercials being aired to keep people further engaged with the ad as it’s being broadcast. Whoever gets the jump on that will the next instant billionaire. In fact…I gotta go.
Ian Lurie: I consider mobile a huge opportunity. Folks who are getting good at responsive design are going to rule this category. Folks who rely on apps will do OK. And people who continue to ignore it are going to see opportunities pass them by.
I don’t, however, see it as a revolution. Mobile is another channel. The devices are revolutionary, insofar as they can deliver video, audio, photos, etc. from anywhere, and read them anywhere. But the channel is an incremental expansion of the internet. That doesn’t reduce the importance. It just means you don’t have to revamp your whole strategy to capitalize on mobile. Adjust a little, tweak your site to perform well on mobile devices, and you’re set.

Outranking Google

2012-07-30T17:24:00.001-07:00

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
“Know your enemy, know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster...”
The Art of War, Sun Tzu
I wouldn’t say Google is the “enemy”, but all too often they’re far being from a friend. Understanding Google and understanding yourself will set you up to avoid catastrophe.
Here on SEOmoz, we love reading about tactics. Smart, repeatable, step-by-step processes you can implement and see results from right away. Everything else is a frustration, right? So, if you'll kindly bear with me... we're going to talk strategy rather than tactics. How to future-proof your marketing from Google. Deep breaths.
First, let me paint you a picture…

You have billions of dollars to spend...
(Image Credit: One Billion Dollar (Most Expensive Artwork Ever)
You have thousands of super-talented software engineers. You also have thousands of super-savvy marketers. (Image Credit: Joel on Software)
You derive almost all your revenues currently from selling adverts.
Oh, and you also have thousands of shareholders and analysts breathing down your back.
What do you do?
Some ideas that come to mind...
Turn commercially-focused searches such as shopping into a pay-to-play game.By-pass parasitic “search within search” sites and own other multi-billion dollar industries such as flights and hotels. Start experimenting with disrupting job search, insurance comparison, credit card comparison, people search, lawyer search, real estate search, Google+ dating… and put forward the convincing argument that it’s better for users (at least in the short term?).Use Adwords data to find other high-paying industries where Google can cut out the middleman, setup shop on their own, and take a higher margin.Buy out or joint venture with successful incumbents to gain rapid market share and infrastructure in these high-margin industries.Replicate the total dominance of Adwords in search in other media channels. Google TV, intelligent and responsive outdoor media, and Google Glasses (or whatever becomes of that) coupled with inevitable integration of everything with Google+ to give Google unparalleled reach and targeting to advertisers across every media channel.It begins to get very evil, very quickly...
This is a new world we could be entering into. Basic rules of SEO may begin to go out of the window. Building anchor text links to “hotels in New York” is meaningless when Google has rolled out their own solution straight into the search results.

It sort of feels like this.

So what to do about the 600lb gorilla in the cage? Here are five strategies to get you thinking.

This isn’t experimenting into influencing Google suggest, running Superbowl ads, or other similar short-term wins. You need to build something that, once someone knows about you, they’d be crazy not to come back to each time they need to buy. Brands, as companies and as products will perform better against Google. Building a brand stops both people and Google treating your products as commodities. They'll come to you first.
Zappos, for instance, strives to delight customers. Whether it’s the fast, free delivery and free returns for up to a year, or the huge resources pumped into phone calls to build relationships with customers, Zappos has built a truly great platform for customers. ~75% of their sales are from repeat customers.
Being remarkable is important. Instead of relying on unbranded search terms for shoes, it's better to use word of mouth marketing by your delighted customers. They might start at Google, but search instead for your brand rather than the product they want. Google, outranked!
Similarly, invent your own search demand. Apple didn’t make a “tablet PC”. They made an iPad. The ensuing onslaught of consumer searches was for the “iPad” - a branded term. Since users love brands, and Google says it will continue to serve its users interests first, Google will steer out the way.
You don’t even have to be a massive company conquering a massive industry to do this. The brand new startup Dollar Shave Club pulled off a one-hit video stunt, but the long term marketing win that delivers lasting value is people talking about their brand.
Branding isn’t just a name. It’s what other people call it and why they identify with it. (Fast Company has an excellent primer on brand building). How do people identify with your company and products? You need to spend time mapping this out and defining a brand for current and future customers. The community on Inbound.org has some great links on branding too.
Of course, you have to make sure your all set up to win your branded SERPs. Here are two Whiteboard Friday refreshers for you on Dominating Your Brand SERPs and the Renewed Value of Branding.
What information is so critical to your customer’s next purchase that, if you had it on your site AND they knew about it, they’d be crazy not to check it out?What in your company can you brand so that you can manipulate search demand?
If customers really care about you, they don't need Google to find you. You need to build a customer base who want to hear from you, and who can buy from you in the future. These customers will be people who will come straight to you because they know and trust you.
I bet you’ve read countless articles and guides on growing larger email lists, getting more twitter followers, and earning more likes on your Facebook page. That information is great, but the trouble with this scoreboard mentality is that it focuses you on building sheer numbers rather than real engagement. A list of 100,000 subscribers isn’t really a list of 100,000 loyal fans. 50,000 Twitter followers aren’t really 50,000 people who will go out their way for you. 1,000 Facebook Likes isn’t really a list of 1000 people who will passionately defend the webpage and content if it’s ever criticized. The bar in and out is set too low.
You have to gain genuine permission assets from your audience by their loyalty rather than numbers. What have your followers done for you lately?
Look at some of these examples...
TheOatmeal has a clear, loyal following. His tribe rallied behind him during his recent legal spat.Seth Godin has a clear, loyal following. His tribe helped him convince publishers to put his upcoming book in physical stores.Zappos has a clear, loyal following. Their tribe post rave reviews and testimonials publicly on their Facebook page. In their thousands...?If your business closed down, website disappeared and employees disbanded today, would your customers, audience, and community miss you tomorrow? Or the next time they need to buy?
You need to build a loyal audience and community or customers that will go out of there way for you, even if that means just skipping Google search results. Find the people who will miss you dearly when you’re gone. Those loyal few are your strongest asset. Don’t measure your audience by numbers, but measure their responses instead. How much revenue do they generate? How often do they send enquiries? What kind of email do they send to you?
Build an community. Connect your followers together, and build a stickier brand. Jen Lopez put together an excellent, pithy post on using community as an Inbound marketing channel.
See if these people would be interested in forming a community that aligns with your brand values by seeding a relevant conversation. This ties in closely with the actions in Strategy #1, building a brand.
This could be online (Twitter chat, LinkedIn group, webinar, G+ hangout) or offline (drinks, meetup, conference, breakfast).
BONUS! Buy Tribes book by Seth Godin and/or watch Seth’s TED Talk on The Tribes We Lead (It's 20 minutes. You can watch it in your lunch break.).

If Google shopping and Google flights are any indicator of the future, it's likely Google will put you on a diet of some kind of Adwords-type service you must adopt in order to keep you in the SERPs. That means you must be getting ready to master online advertising in your niche, which doesn't work without knowing your lifetime customer value, costs per customer acquisition and conversion rates. Who’s to say you can’t thrive under Google?
In search advertising in particular, where Adword’s quality score appears to tie more closely with SEO (relevant pages, strong social signals, passing “the panda questionnaire”), continuing with traditional SEO appears to be the future for staying in the SERPs. SEOs and Adwords folks appear to be getting closer anyway, and there's more and more relevant information we can learn from one another.
In the long run for both, in competitive niches especially, knowing your numbers and driving down costs to acquire customers will only help win, be that for increasing PPC budget or SEO spend on content, outreach, acquiring data or anything else. Conversion rate optimization is the key to unlocking a prosperous future with Google. You need to get your team on top of this.
In order to truly win at SEM and the Adwords game, you must conquer conversion rate optimization. Thankfully there are many great resources on CRO here on SEOmoz; my favourite so far is by Stephen Pavlovich. Send this to your team.
I’ve always loved Conversion Rate Expert's case studies for insights to processes as well as for reinforcing the case for CRO. Here’s an example of a case study where they doubled a companies conversion rate, making them £14 million extra that year, and another slightly older case study, but with a familiar face.
SEM is process driven. CRO is process driven, too. The asset you need to build is a process for testing and winning at CRO. You need to bring your developers, designers, other marketers, and C-level execs on board with the idea of incremental benefits to CRO, and get them onboard with a continual process of testing new ideas. Incidentally, the same skills will be needed for mastering Adwords, when the time comes.
Consider a rolling contest for people to suggest things to test, and if they move the needle by a significant percentage, a significant reward be dealt out. Keeping that in mind...
Read through the guides above, and pinpoint one small test you can implement. The first test might be painful as there are no processes in place to make it all happen easily, but once you’re setup you can run more and more experiments.
But start with one. Today. You could have tangible results at the end of the week. More money, please!

Our search comrades in Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, and many other countries will still benefit from lack of Google dominance... for the time being, at least. Focus on targeting places where Google is not inherently strong and is unlikely to invade within the medium term. There will still be good money to be made here, and often these are high-growth, emerging markets. Who in travel doesn’t want to be selling holidays to the emerging middle class in China?
That said, “understand your enemy." How long until Google, Microsoft, or even Facebook makes a move for Yandex, Baidu, Naver, and all the foreign incumbent search engines?
First, take care of the essential technical SEO to target foreign countries. Rand put together a Whiteboard Friday on international SEO a while back, and Matt Cutts also has some suggestions for using unique domains to target specific countries. Take a look at this detailed list of country domain extensions.
Yandex, Baidu, and others all have broadly similar interests algorithmically, so you’re not going wrong following Western SEO advice you get from SEOmoz or Google’s user guidelines. A few links worth following and bookmarking:.
If you've got any additional helpful links to add, please post them in the comments :)
Although it’s horrible, overwhelming advice... you’ll need to have language skills on your SEO team. Bring bilingual SEOs onboard by recruiting internally and externally. Foreign language skills are going to become invaluable for tapping lucrative emerging markets. Like having talented designers, developers, and marketing processes, you either have them or you don’t. Put yourself ahead of the competition.
Search within your organization, on LinkedIn, Facebook, maybe via local universities and colleges for people who have an interest in online marketing and language skills in emerging markets. It needn’t be something full time and permanent, but at least someone you can turn to and ask about their local market. Just one person who can speak Russian or Chinese or something significant.
BONUS! Buy your .cn, .ru, .kr etc. domains

Search is only one step in the chain. You can construct your business to force people and/or Google to come through you before or after visiting Google. There are two ways to do this: you can either win the context war (pre-commercial search) or you can win the fulfillment war (post-commercial search).
Google can’t create contextual information surrounding a search without degrading their search quality. If Google starts inserting flight and hotel search results whenever you search for “Maui,” maybe looking for pictures for a project or something, it’s going to frustrate users. This is where you can win.
Amazon jumps early on the e-commerce chain by becoming the canonical source of reviews and product research information. What’s stopping you from listing products on Amazon? Similarly, TripAdvisor drives huge volumes of traffic by becoming the canonical source of information for hotel reviews.
Win the fulfillment war by becoming the one and only way of fulfilling a certain good. This might mean proprietary products, proprietary software or complete monopoly over a certain, specific market. Apple owns the supply chain for sales of their goods, but you don’t have to be a pan-global company to have a similar effect.
Travelocity earns commissions from selling tickets. They launched a Travelocity rewards program for regular customers and offered various ways to earn points redeemable on more travel through booking tickets through them and using Travelocity-branded credit cards. This encourages people to keep returning to book through Travelocity, while still maintaining other loyalties and benefits such as frequent flier miles with the airlines they actual travel with.
What content would be so incredibly useful that users would have to go through it? Take a look at Rand’s Whiteboard Friday from a few years back on The Path to Conversion, and use it to work out where you can add incredible value in your market.
Alternatively, what value-add could you build into the chain that Google can’t touch? Could you add a loyalty program with unique rewards?
… then brainstorm ideas around each one where you might be able to add value that can’t be copied easily.
Google has a ridiculous amount of resources and motivation to disrupt your market. They’re going to take your cake and eat it too, unless you can fight for your turf.
Use these five strategies to fend off their advance:
Build a Brand - Start by identifying your brand positioning
Build Genuine Permission Assets - Connect a dozen people together + Buy book/watch Tribes talk by Seth Godin
Prepare for Long-Term SEM - Start a small CRO test
Conquer Emerging Markets - Find one bilingual helper + buy your foreign domains
Build an Essential Step in the Chain - Start by mapping out the buying process, from research to fulfillment
PRO Tip: Do all of them!
... but if none of these hit the spot, consider this ...

Image Credit: This Green Machine
Of course, if you can’t find a way of outranking Google in the long run, consider giving in. Expect Google+ to encircle your industry. Embrace G+ now, and win in the long run.
Alternatively, consider selling out to Google.
Or you could give up completely. Google is hiring. ;)
I think it’s time to end! See you in the comments for more serious strategy talk, and also more “If I was CEO of Google I would _______________________” :)

The 6 Month Link Building Plan for an Established Website

2012-07-30T13:49:00.001-07:00

You've probably seen the extremely comprehensive noob guide to online marketing by Oli Gardner, or the companion noob guide to link building from Mike King, you've also likely seen one of the many posts or presentations on SEO for startups (here, here and here) - suffice to say there is plenty of reading material for building new web properties but what about link building for an established website?
There are an abundance of link opportunities (and challenges) that are pretty unique to an established website.
I decided to compile a public Trello board which is based on some of our internal boards for clients to help you to visualise the process I am about to run through.
Please bear in mind that this is not a six-month SEO plan so we won't be covering site audits or keyword research for example (although you should read this post if you are planning to conduct an SEO audit), I will be focusing on the acquisition and optimisation of links and content for links.
This is how we approach established websites where we are given a full link building brief. I welcome any feedback and additions to this plan. In any case, this is simply the "ideal" scenario, so we don't do ALL of this with every single client because each situation is different and because realistically we might not have the budget or even the project scope to implement all this. That being said I do hope that this post will give you some avenues to explore. The idea behind the Trello board was that so anyone could copy it and then edit as they see fit, dragging and dropping the various elements and scaling up or contracting the task list as appropriate. I have divided the elements into the following four areas:
Content TasksResearch TasksLink TasksOther Tasks
On the Trello board, I have put them into our recommended order but as I say, the reason for doing this as a public board is so that you can move elements around as you see fit.
Remember to copy the board before you can start making it your own!
By month
The ideal way to start any link building campaign for an established website is to take stock of the existing link profile.
At this point, we're not even drawing comparisons between competitor link profiles and our own but merely understanding what we have and how closely that aligns with A) the clients goals and B) recommended best practices. I'm not going to get into a white hat/grey hat debate here, when I say best practices, I am talking about what is generally accepted within an educated audience as 'sensible'.
A blissfully unaware client, and a website with a closet full of forum profile spam for example is something that you need to be aware of (and make the client aware of) before any further work can be carried out. You are not nit-picking at the work of the previous agency but from here on out you are likely to be responsible for the performance of that website in the search engines (and links making up a big part of that performance) and it would be pretty hard to explain to a client with any amount of credibility why their website has dropped off the face of the planet three months into your engagement if you didn't bring issues like this to their attention. It may well have been links acquired in days gone by, but the client is probably going to blame you to a certain extent.
What to look for?
Type of linkAnchor textClusters of similar IPsLink position on the pageQuality (defensibility) of the site link originates fromIs the page where the link originates actually indexed?Asses internal link structure as well
Some of the above can be automated and that should help you to reduce the number of links that you need to audit by hand.
Action steps:
Talk to the client - get previous reports, lists of links developed and understand what has been done up until nowListen to the client - to understand their goals and their current appetite for riskFire up your favourite link analysis tool
Some recommended tools for the job
Recommended reading
This is far less "corporate" than the name suggests. Essentially there are two elements:
Competitor Link Profile AnalysisOpportunity Mapping (link opportunities and topic areas)
Competitor Link Profile Analysis
You should follow near enough the same process for analysing your key competitors' link profiles as you did for your own. Not because you want to help them identify their bad links but rather because it enables you to spot their weaknesses, steal anything they have been doing well and frankly, see who is probably swimming naked when the tide goes out.
If a competitor ranks above you but their link profile turns up something which is considered less than 'best practice' by all means take this into account but don't take it as gospel that it will work for the website you are working on.
The key to using your competitor link research to identify opportunity is to think in terms of direct and indirect opportunity. For example, if you spot a strong link that you're competitor has acquired that you could potentially also earn then this would be a direct opportunity. If, for example, you identify one or a set of links from a particular type of site or niche then this could be considered an indirect link because it might open your eyes to other potential link opportunities from corners of the web you and the client have never been before.
Sometimes though, analysing a competitor's link profile brings up next to nothing useful that's fine, just demonstrates that you have the opportunity to stand out in the market long term by doing things the right way.
Opportunity Mapping
Work 'outwards' from core customer groups to try to identify key opportunities and niches to target both with the content that you are going to be producing as well as the outreach and promotion you have planned. Communication with the client is key at this stage because it can help you to really understand their various customer segments and branch out from there.
You are aiming to:
Find link opportunities/identify the nichesDiscover topic areas
My favourite tool for this is Mindmeister which is a nice, easy-to-use, web-based mind-mapping software. The reason we prefer mind-mapping to say a spreadsheet is because it allows us to visualise the client and then explore different branches, connect niches and even help them to identify new market segments.
Action steps
Understand who your competitors really are (not necessarily the businesses your client thinks they compete against).Analyse competitor link profiles - using the methodology described in the previous exerciseBenchmark your link profile versus competitors - does your profile stand out in comparison to average figures based on competitors?Identify key opportunities based on competitor link profiles (direct and indirect)
This is where you turn the MLA into something actionable. Set the course of the rest of the campaign with a clear and focused link building strategy which takes into account your identified weaknesses (i.e. closing the natural search gap) and exploits the obvious opportunities both internal and external. I'm not one (in fact we're not a company for...) 500 page strategy documents.
A concise set of actions and time-frames that fit onto one A4 sheet of paper is generally how we work.
Never base your strategy entirely on competitor actions; 1) It just isn't good business sense to be clinging to the tailcoat of the competition because usually that's where you'll remain and 2) Just because it worked for them, does not mean it is going to be effective for you.
That's it for month 1 - it might seem like an awful lot of planning and not much doing but remember that PPPPPP so it will be time well invested. If you have additional time and budget of course you could always bring some activities, scheduled for month 2, forward.
There are two schools of thought here; some say that although certain links might be harming your website you can outweigh the negative impact by focusing on developing good quality ones.
The other school of thought says that you should focus on getting rid of your bad links before you even contemplate acquiring new ones.
Whichever side of the fence you sit on comes down to your opinions and experiences but I personally feel that in a number of situations, a round of link removals and profile pruning is a wise way to spend your time because there is little doubt that some links and in particular those really artificial and spammy links may well be holding a website back - with no amount of good karma going to shift those misdemeanours of the past.
If you are going to embark on a spot of profile pruning and/or link un-building then luckily there are quite a few tools out there to help you. What kinds of things are you going to want to change or update? The anchor text is a common one but consider also URL destination (is there a more natural page that this could link to?). If however you feel the link just doesn't align with your strategy moving forward then a removal may be a more suitable option.
Tools for the job
Link Management Tool from The Link Auditors - free software, makes it really easy to manage your progress, automatically checks the status of links so no need to send a chaser email to see if a link has been removed. All round fantastic tool and my favourite.SEOgadget - Data Gathering ToolRemove'em - self-service link removalrmoov - the backlink removal tool
New websites require new content but the beauty of established websites is that very often they have a catalogue of content assets at your disposal. With a bit of tweaking, repurposing or even just using as they are, the existing content assets can be put to work attracting links naturally (and almost passively) over time and as a reason for proactively contacting webmasters, bloggers and journalists. What kinds of things are you looking for?
WhitepapersLong-form blog postsMobile Apps & toolsFree resources & downloadsGuides
Think about the customer groups and refer back to your opportunity map. If it is a very large website it can sometimes be worth using Google to perform a site search in order to find an asset which perhaps even the client themselves has forgotten they produced (we've done this a few times and turned up something which the client would then say "Oh yeah that old thing...").
This is a largely manual process but we've found Social Crawlytics to be quite useful at identifying content assets which perhaps got 'a bit of love' but not really the amount the content deserved. These would be prime examples of assets in need of a facelift or just an update because they are outdated. In essence you are looking for content assets to use 'as they are', as well as assets that just need a bit of improvement to get them up to scratch. Identifying content assets rather than just creating new ones obviously saves you some time and the client some budget (since you are optimising what they have) which means other activities can be carried out.
Action steps
Talk to the client to understand any content production they have done in the pastDig through the archives of the site (use site: search in Google)Look for pages on the site which have a fair number of links (and ask if it could perform better after a bit of TLC?)Try Social Crawlytics to uncover hidden assets
This is one of the simplest analysis methods at your disposal (read how to perform a Gap Analysis) but it is also very effective in forcing you to consider where the asset currently is, what you want to achieve and the specific way you are going to get it there.
For example, you may have uncovered a guide to 'growing an email newsletter database' for your email marketing software client. The guide is about 1000 words long and includes some fairly generic tips. They created it because their previous agency told them they needed "great content" on their website, the problem is that "great" means much more than just spelled correctly.
Anyway, the bigger issue is that it doesn't align with the client's brand of being a market leader in the space and a competitor has produced a far more comprehensive guide, not amazing but still leading the way currently. Your content asset needs a reason for existence; if you're not aiming to make the content asset the category killer then you may as well not bother. Go big or go home I'm afraid.
So we now have "the future state" and "the current state" - how do we fill in the gap? We identify all the ways we could lead the market with the asset e.g. enhancing our guide to make it more detailed, paginated for better user experience, add videos, action steps, screenshots and templates that clients can use.
You're not aiming to match your competitor's content assets, you need to surpass them. I'm not so naive to believe that you can create this "awesome content" and then Google will rank it where you'd like but having a solid reason to rank is definitely a required starting point. It will also help you answer the question "why would someone link to this?" - it's pretty hard to answer that when you have the second or third best resource in the market...
Arguably this would come under the remit of whoever is performing the site audit but more often than not we will discover opportunities to optimise internal links simply by performing a link profile audit. It could be that every page has a link to itself within the body copy using the keywords the page is trying to target.
From our experience, the SEO benefit of including a keyword link from the page right back at the page is almost non-existent and in most cases it can harm the user experience as a visitor lands on that page looking for something around that keyword phrase, they will likely click on a highlighted link containing the keywords only to find themselves confused when the same page reloads.
In fact you could even argue that stuffing keywords into internal links is going to harm your search engine performance.
Only applicable if your client has previously embarked on guest blogging. Identify any guest posts that currently drive referral traffic then look at whether these could do with updating or enhancing.
Remember that if a guest post worked well for the client the first time it was published, there is a strong chance it will be well-received by the audience a second time, particularly if the post is quite old or outdated. It is a good idea to include old guest posts in your plan because updating these can help to preserve your brand reputation should a prospective customer find your website via this post - you don't want them to think your ideas and expertise are outdated (even if there is a date on the blog post!).
Pro tip - look at ways to promote old guest posts that perform well. See here for more on second tier link building.
The theory here is that over the years as domains change, staff come and go, site structure evolves, there are very often hundreds if not thousands of pages that get left behind without a redirect.
Many of these have links pointing at them which now that your page 404s are likely to be doing very little for your website. Link reclamation involves you taking back that link equity, no real extra effort required, you are just making the most of what you already (in theory) have. Still don't believe me that established websites offer incredible link opportunities?
Garrett French covers this process spectacularly in his 7 ways to find your long lost links.
As Eric Ward rightly points out, the bigger and older the site, the more opportunities for link reclamation there are likely to be.
At the half-way point in the plan, now it's time to get on to the really fun stuff. It is going to be a busy four weeks...
This may not be a possibility with some larger clients as many will have either a dedicated agency or in-house department that looks after social but link building and social media are becoming more and more intertwined so the need to have access to a usable social media account is essential.
In some situations we are able to utilise the main social media account of the client, and where this isn't possible, we'll establish a sub-account usually based around an individual within the business who we are working closely with - they're going to become the public face of the business for the campaign.
It is important to have access to some form of social presence (ideally Twitter) because it enables authentic communication with the higher-value link prospects that might need warming up before the email outreach. It also gives a further avenue to push out blog content and promote guest posts so that as time goes by you have an extra carrot to dangle in front of link prospects in the form of social traffic to their website.
Taking control of social is never easy, we have had situations where we couldn't tweet a guest post because it was on a site that wasn't owned by the client!
Back in month 2 we conducted a gap analysis to identify any content assets in need of some attention and more specifically what it is that we needed to do to bring them up to scratch.
Here we are in month 3 and it is time to get to work. When it comes to improving the content, consider whether what you are doing is going to benefit your prospective customers, or whether you are just padding out an already mediocre piece of content.
I am a big fan of creating content that helps to attract links and simultaneously helps to support the sales process in some way either through attracting attention and bringing targeted visitors into the top of your funnel, or helping a user in a buying state of mind choose between which printer they need.
Don't add bulk to your assets just for the sake of it. Align closely with your Gap analysis to ensure your asset is going to be the indisputable top dog in the space.
This element can be broken down into three areas:
The overall aim is that we are trying to get the links that are 'rightfully' yours because someone is either 'borrowing' your content, using images without attribution or mentioning your website or brand without linking to you (potential missed opportunity).
Images
Using Google's Similar Image Search or the seriously cool TinEye you can quickly find other places around the web that use your images. These may be corporate photography that you paid to be produced or it could be charts and graphs. Basically another website publisher is using your image (knowingly or not) and you rightfully deserve an attributing link. You can work your way through the image collection on the website (ignoring stock photography that you don't own the rights to...obviously) and building a list of webmasters that you need to be contacting. TinEye also offer a number of products and services for doing this on a larger scale.
We have experienced a fair response rate to our emails simply by being friendly and explaining that we're glad they've chosen to use our image but that it would be really great if they could just include a link back to our website so that people know where it came from. Nothing heavy or involving legal action...most seem amazed that they have either been caught out or that this kind of thing is even monitored and in their state of shock are more than willing to include an attribution link (hint: don't go for keyword rich anchor text).
Words
You can also employ a similar tactic with all the words on the website, by using Copyscape you can quickly identify text from your website that has been "borrowed" by others. A big, established website with oodles of content perhaps as a knowledgebase or a series of blog posts will find that a lot of content has been pinched by others without attribution.
Let me be perfectly clear here, many websites who pinch content are just doing it to essentially steal your work for their own purposes. A polite email is unlikely to score an attributing link from them but there are a small sub-set of content copy and pasters who overlooked copyright issues and were simply referencing your work to support something they have written. These are the ones that will likely result in a link.
To try and prevent this in future consider deploying Tynt which allows you to automatically add attribution to any chunk of text that is copied from your site and pasted elsewhere.
Mentions
If you are working on the website of a large established brand then there are likely to be an abundance of opportunities on almost a daily basis to seek a link when nothing more than the brand name or URL is mentioned - bloggers and journalists do this all the time.
It's not a guaranteed link of course because some purposefully haven't included a link and don't forget to be polite because the mere fact they have mentioned the brand or website is worthy of a thank you :-) Getting a link in this way can help improve user experience because if the reader wants to find out more then they would have to Google it or manually type in the URL - you get the link, the reader gets a better experience.
To try and prevent this in the future consider setting up Google Alerts for key brand mentions so that you can strike the prospect whilst they are warmed up and ask for that link.
This is a link building plan right?! What's blogging got to do with building links? We see blogging as central to a link building strategy because from the blog so many opportunities can come:
Directly earn links with solid contentEstablishes credibility to help with outreachGives you a platform to get the attention of link prospects
When it comes to this particular link building plan, it is a good idea to co-ordinate your content calendar with your guest blogging targets for the month ahead. This allows you to include links to any websites that you might be targeting and also gives you a highly-relevant post that you can showcase to link prospects if they are unsure of the calibre of your work. I have produced a fairly comprehensive and regularly updated guide to blogging for your business and I would encourage you to have a read of this for more detailed thoughts and advice on corporate blogging.
Back in month 1 you researched and analysed the link profiles of competitors and now it is time to put into action some of that research. Any opportunities that were labelled "direct" e.g. worthy of you also acquiring should be acquired at this point in the campaign. There are all sorts of justifiable business reasons to go after links that your competitors have, not just because it is a case of "they have it, we want it" but rather because you don't want to be missing out on referral and even sales opportunities when your competitors are clearly taking advantage of them.
Use your best judgement when it comes to acquiring competitor links because replicating their link profile is unlikely to be a good idea and more importantly you want to make sure that any links you are developing are going to align with your current strategy and help to support the achievement of your goals rather than hold back the site.
As we pass the halfway point for this plan, month 4 involves fewer activities but they are often more involved and require more resources.
In month 3 the blog published content that was tailored towards a specific niche (tied back to our opportunity map in month 1) ideally linking to a few prospects. Now we are looking to push out some guest posts to bring in some fresh links and boost referral traffic. I have published quite a few posts and guides around the topic of guest blogging and so I won't go into too much detail here but essentially you can break the process down as follows:
Identifying link opportunities (use your opportunity map)Sifting and evaluating opportunitiesResearching prospectsContacting prospectsWriting contentFacilitating publication
Reading to consider
Yes, these were all written by me (hence why I said "reading to consider" rather than "recommending reading" - I don't have that big an ego) and whilst there is other content out there on the topic, most describe "how to do guest blogging" in a different way and I prefer to only talk about what I know. Guest blogging makes up quite a large part of the plan for Month 4 so ideally you will pick your largest and most opportune topic area from your opportunity map.
Very simply this is a reminder to keep your blog on the map. Tailor this month's content calendar to the guest blogging campaign a month ahead. This will give you the same advantages as before when it comes to targeting a new topic area in month 5.
In month 3 we improved a content asset and with the best will in the world this takes time so it is only really likely at the start of month 4 that you will be able to start putting the asset to work in the form of promotion. We typically separate outreach and promotion to bloggers (and journalists where applicable) and webmasters. We target the former first as many prefer to talk about fresh topics whereas a webmaster including a link to your guide will still likely do so as the guide becomes more established.
Telling a blogger that you launched something three months ago is unlikely to evoke a feeling that they are important to you. Reaching out to a blogger to promote a content asset is different to the pitch you make to secure a guest post spot and in many ways it can be more challenging. We recommend a two-pronged approach to blogger outreach
Social outreach - taking control of the client's social account suddenly seems like a good move :-)Sending emails
It need not be any more complicated than that. The devil is in the detail though because it is how you do these things which affect the results that you see.
I think Mike Essex's contribution to this post (see the section on 'push content') is a really solid example of a good outreach email for this kind of thing. Your social efforts should follow suit in the sense that it needs to be specific and targeted towards what the individual is likely to be interested in and how it helps them. I would add to this that the success comes in selecting your prospects and developing a relationship over time.
Perhaps connecting the practices of guest blogging and blogger outreach to make the most of your connections and be specific in all communication, call to actions are essential if you want to get things done. Don't leave them wondering why you emailed or what they need to do.
Additionally, the campaign is made or broken by the targeting, if you have for example 3 clear niches to approach it encourages the systematic acquisition of all available links, thinking that your content appeals to "everyone" is going to result in you poorly targeting everybody.
In month 4 we promoted the content asset to bloggers (and potentially journalists), now we are going to be pushing the asset to other webmasters with the view to securing permanent links on resource pages and the like to really cement the asset as an authority resource and ensure the long-term visibility of it (in the search results) after the initial buzz and social traffic subsides.
How to find opportunities
Link prospector from Citation Labs
One of our favourite internal tools for identifying link prospects for further qualification. This tool has a "links pages" report type which allows you to discover authentic resource pages within your market.
Competitor analysis
Your asset may well be the market leader now but before it came to existence there was a competitor earning all those links. Using your favourite link research tool, you need to track down all the links and look for direct opportunities as well as the indirect opportunities such as "this type of website linked to the resource, let's look for more of this type of website". A key reason we divide outreach rather than do it all in one sprint is because it allows us to tailor our approach based on what is working rather than exhaust our prospects right off the bat.
As before, but targeting a new segment from your opportunity map.
As before, but focusing on the area you intend to target for month 6 with your guest blogging.
There are several approaches you can take when it comes to creating a new content asset and the reason I wanted to include within this link building plan was because in reality even established websites won't necessarily have usable content assets at your disposal when you walk in the door. There are multiple ways to approach this and here are a few of our preferred methods:
Publish content they already have - large established websites usually have established businesses behind them and frequently established businesses have mountains of content that they aren't really putting to good use. In your quest to create linkable assets, you might decide to repurpose something that they already have - (think optimising what they already have).Look for opportunities in your market centred around customer questions - if you really are working from scratch then it is advisable to return to your opportunity map from month 1 and explore each of the market segments in detail to help build a picture of the type and theme of your content. (Read HubSpot's excellent guide to creating content centred around buyer personas).Find content assets of competitors that you could really do better - identify opportunities in your market by looking through the content your competitors have created, chances are they haven't done it as well as it could be done then do it better.Look for pages in your competitor's site that 404s but has link equity (from external links) - this is a long shot and to tell you the truth we have only managed to do this once. Essentially you perform link reclamation on your competitor's website but rather than help them with their redirects, you create your own amazing version of the page that 404s on their site and reach out to all the webmasters that link to it. It isn't that this can't work, it is that the opportunities are rare but I felt it still merited a mention.Outsource something - a content asset could be more of a linkable asset for example a mobile app, a bit of free software or a handy tool, if these things fall outside of your expertise then you may consider hiring someone to take care of it.
You made it, six months of link acquisition and link optimisation. By now you should be really seeing the fruits of your labour paying off. Just one more month of activity then time to benchmark performance...
Based on all your activities in the market over the previous half a year, you should have developed some relationships with influencers such as bloggers, curators, editors and maybe even journalists. Both they and the market as a whole should now have a feel for what you or your client is about and have some sense of goodwill towards you.
This activity is about enhancing this goodwill but also leveraging it because you will be seeking the help of the influencers you are now acquainted with to help you launch the shit out of this new content asset.
There's no template outreach email for this one...subtly interweave some egobait into the asset and just ask for people's help. Most (because they now know you) will probably help spread the word with links, tweets, +1s etc.
Webmaster Promotion to the new content assetGuest Blogging (to the new content asset) - target a portion of your guest blogging efforts towards building links and raising awareness for your new content asset. You can even rework some of the content and tailor to specific blogs to save time when it comes to writing the guest posts.Guest Blogging - as before, this time targeting a new niche from your opportunities map.Blogging - once again think ahead in terms of the content you produce, align with any plans you have on the horizon.
What do you think to the plan? Obviously one-size-does-not-fit-all when it comes to link building but this is just designed to be a loose template to give you an idea of how we work and also some food for thought. How would you improve it?
James Agate is the founder of Skyrocket SEO - a trusted link building & content marketing company.

Smarter Internal Linking - Whiteboard Friday

2012-07-30T09:39:00.002-07:00

Hey there SEOmoz readers! This week we are talking about what I like to call "Smarter Internal Linking". Rand mentioned internal linking a few months ago before Penguin even hit, back when we were still calling it the "over-optimization penalty". A few months later, we can see the potential effects that Penguin has had and the factors causing them.
So how can we be smarter in our internal linking? How can we target our important pages so that they are able to rank well for competitive terms, yet not be in danger of being slapped by algorithm updates? This is exactly what we are talking about in this video, including a few pro-tips I've picked up doing SEO in the competitive travel industry, especially in regards to microsites and ccTLDs.

Howdy, SEOmoz fans. My name is John Doherty. I'm from Distilled in New York City, out here in Seattle for about a week, for MozCon. I came out here a couple days early, and SEOmoz was happy enough to let me shoot a Whiteboard Friday for you.
This is a topic that I've been thinking about a lot recently. It's the topic of internal linking. Today, in a post-Penguin world, we need to be careful about how we're linking to the other pages on our websites, both internally and externally.
Internal linking is a factor in Penguin, from what we've seen. I've been digging around on a lot of travel sites recently for a client, and I realized that sites that are in competitive niches, such as travel - there are a bunch of others that you can think of that we all may or may not have worked in at some point - that use a lot of internal links, site-wide footers especially, point to here site-wide footers in order to drive targeted anchor text deep into their site.
The problem I've been noticing here is that when you have a set-up like this, this is a beautiful little webpage that I drew for you, with a little URL bar, and I guess this is Chrome because we've got the extensions there, maybe a map here. You've got some text, and you've got your different products through here. It's just going to be an e-commerce site, or it could be a travel site. Here are sidebar links. So this could be your categories, what have you. But then often here, in the footer, there are links that say, "Atlanta Hotels, London Hotels, New York Hotels," and they're on every single page of the website. If you have a site that has 200,000 product pages, you have 200,000 links saying this. One term, two-
word term, key term, pointing back to that page. Something is going to look a little bit suspicious, right?
What I've been seeing here, as I've been going through, doing some competitive analysis, is I look at their search visibility using a tool. I use a tool called Search Metrics Essentials. I look, and a lot of them, their traffic is going up. It's ticking up.
Get to the Venice update, which happened back end of March or the beginning of April, which basically prioritized local content. This especially affected the travel industry, so category pages weren't ranking quite as well. They were bumping up the most well-linked-to individual hotel pages, what have you. Traffic dropped for most of them. Almost every single travel site I've seen, traffic dropped. It happens. Google made an algorithm change.
Then they take tick along, and we get to the next algorithm update, Penguin. Every single site that I've seen that has site-wide links like this, boom, dropped. Most of them have recovered a little bit. They've started ticking back up, but almost every single one has dropped. The sites that didn't, that are not linked this way, might have seen a little bit of a dip, but by and large they were good.
So what's going on here? The only thing I can think of, when it comes to internal linking, that I can see on these sites was these site-wide footers. They're also doing this externally. A lot of these brands, especially, have microsites, individual hotel sites that are linking back using the exact same footer as is on the main website. Same terms on every single page on those sites. Multiply this by four thousand, five thousand, ten thousand, once again, you have thousands upon thousands of links saying these terms. This is a problem.
Today I want to talk about smarter internal linking. How can we link to our important pages in a smarter way? I have a few points for you. How can we be smarter? This is the question we should ask ourselves. How can we be smarter about our internal linking?
Question number one: Go back to the user. What would the user expect to see? Google wants to reward a good user experience. They want people to be able to find what they want to find as quickly as possible. So I always start with the user. What is a person going to expect to see? Then, from an SEO perspective, I think, "Which pages are the most competitive?" You go and you do your keyword research, maybe use SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool. You look at the SERPs. You figure out which sites are ranking. You look at all the links that they have. Which ones are going to be the hardest to rank for? Especially if you're working in-house, you probably know what this. You probably think off the top of your head, "Oh yeah, I know this keyword." This one is going to take a lot more, not only external links, but also internal.
So which pages are the most competitive? You need to prioritize those, but not the way that I just showed you. The third point is think about your taxonomy. Think about the page types on your site. I've drawn out here a little site architecture for you, right? We start with our home page, and then this is another page type of ours, the category. Then we have the product, and then we have the product details. If we're keeping with the hotels example, it's going to be your home page, domain.com. Your category, domain.com/londonhotels, or language/londonhotels, what have you. Product, so this is going to be a hotel page. Product detail, this could be like amenities for the hotel or something like that. It's a subpage of your product page.
Obviously, these are going to be your most important pages. They're higher in your site architecture. They're going to be more useful to the users. These are going to be the ones Google wants to serve up for the competitive search terms. We link to as many of those as we can off the home page. If you have a thousand of them, how are you going to be able to do that? If you have hotels in every single city in the United States, there's no way you can link to all of them from your home page, nor would you want to. You're diluting your link equity basically irreparably.
Here's another category page. This guy's sad. He's like, "What's going on?
I'm getting no love at all." Then he's got product pages underneath there, who are also getting no love. I'm not going to link. First of all, this isn't going to be my most competitive term. This is probably going to be like second-tier competitiveness. I'm not going to link to this guy.
Let's say this is London, this is Atlanta, this is New York, this is Boston. I live in New York, and there's a New York-Boston feud going on, so we'll make Boston second-class. If you're from Boston, I apologize. I love you guys. But I don't want to link to the Boston page, necessarily, from the individual London product page. But it will make sense for me to link to Boston from New York, from Philadelphia, etc. It's the same thing. If this is Atlanta, and this is New York, I don't necessarily want to link to it. London and New York, I don't necessarily want to link to an individual New York hotel page, but I may want to link to the New York hotel page from Boston and vice versa. We're joining these two up. Or if I know I need to prioritize Boston a little bit, I'm just going to link to it from New York, because that has more link equity going to it, because it's more of a direct line from the home page.
Be thinking about some creative ways that you can do this, some creative ways that you can link between your different page types and your important pages.
Some that I've seen, that are working, especially in the travel industry right now, are sidebars. Once again, these are not site-wides. Most of them are doing it in the form of popular products, popular locations, trending locations, something like that. A lot of them I think that they update them semi-frequently. If I was doing it, I would update them semi-frequently. Keep the main ones. Keep London and Boston, etc. Keep your very competitive ones. But then you can switch them as other keywords become competitive. If you know people are going to New York for Christmas, you can switch that out, and you can prioritize that page for a while to get that ranking right before the Christmas holiday hits.
Here's a little pro tip for you, something that I've seen working. This isn't necessarily internal linking. It's like quasi-internal linking. Think about your ccTLDs. If your company is in the U.S. or in the U.K., in France, etc., think about how you can use the ccTLDs to link back to these pages from the relevant page on that ccTLD. So you've got domain.co.uk/londonhotels with UK English. Domain.com/londonhotels with U.S. English, think about how you can link from this page, from this London hotels page, back to this page. You're still driving the targeted links. You could do it through an image. I've seen some sites doing it with all of the countries down in the footer. On that UK page, if you mouse over the US, it says "London Hotels," pointing back. Super-smart way to do it. They don't do that site-wide, and so they're able to drive those targeted links back from a different domain. Those are going to be very valuable for them.
One last thing that I've mentioned briefly at the beginning here was beware of your microsites. Beware of your microsite site-wide links. If you have sitewides on your microsites, as well as on your main site, this is exactly the kind of thing that Google can easily figure out. They can see everything. They can see the code. They can see the way that it's structured. They can look at the Who Is information. Of course, we can do things to try to finagle and try to trick Google, but those are only going to last for the short term. So think about building for the long term. Microsite site-wides are not really working anymore, from what I've seen, so beware of these. Think about the taxonomies within these as well. You can still link. Think about these the same as you would think about your ccTLDs, linking to the relevant pages back on your main website.
Now I want to get a little bit bluebird for you. I want to think a little bit big. If I were Google, what would I do if I were Google? If you were Google, what would you be wanting to see? How would you want people to structure their sites? How would you want people to link? What kind of content would you want on there? How should people link between all of that? Google wants the best user experience. If I'm trying to serve the best user experience, I'm not necessarily going to have a travel guide on another page. If I have a London hotels page, why I'm not going to have a travel guide that I'm sending people all around? It's bad from a user experience. It's bad from a conversion experience, etc. I'm going want all of that right there.
If I were Google, I'd be looking to rank sites that are like a London hotels page that also has a travel guide on there. I saw one site doing this recently. I was like, "Light bulb brilliant." Put your travel guide there on the page. You get links saying London hotels travel guide, London hotels, hotel travel guide. You can also link to the travel guide internally so you're not just using London hotels to link to it. That's the kind of thing that I would want to be rewarding, if I were Google.
In summary, I hope this Whiteboard Friday has been helpful to you. I hope I've given you some things to think about when it comes to internal linking. Feel free to tweet at me, dohertyjf on Twitter. Email me, my email is on the Distilled website. Once again, I'm John Doherty from Distilled New York City. It's been a pleasure. Please leave your questions and comments down below. Thanks.

Your Money: Coverdell Tuition Tax Break Still Controversial Even as End Nears

2012-07-30T05:35:00.001-07:00

If you’re not familiar with it, you’re not alone. Plenty of otherwise savvy tax professionals and financial planners don’t know much about it, either.
It’s called the Coverdell Education Savings Account, and there is nothing else like it.
The Coverdell lets people put away up to $2,000 each year in an investment account. While the contributions are not tax-deductible, you don’t pay any taxes on the earnings you take out as long as you use them for tuition or other qualified expenses, including those for elementary or secondary education. Even with that annual contribution limit, the tax savings can add up to thousands of dollars for people who are persistent savers.
Now, however, the question is whether this quirk will last. As with a lot of things in the tax code, the Coverdell tax break for elementary and secondary tuition costs is scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, absent some legislative action in Washington.
Whether you want to root for its continued existence may depend on your political outlook. The years of debate over whether this tax break should have come into existence in the first place featured some of the most colorful political rhetoric in recent history.
The late Senator Paul Coverdell, a Republican of Georgia, for whom the accounts were eventually named, locked horns with President Bill Clinton in 1997 over Mr. Clinton’s threat to veto the senator’s effort to create accounts that would give tax breaks to parents who steer their children away from public schools. Senator Coverdell said the threat, which the president later made good on, was “almost a Pearl Harbor for education reform.”
Why was the president so opposed? Cue the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who said in 1998 that he believed that an account like the one that Senator Coverdell had proposed “hangs the sign for all to see on the front door of public schools of America, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Get out while you can.’ ”
Newt Gingrich, then the speaker of the House, had seen the accounts much differently one year earlier, speaking of “parents and children who want the right not to be destroyed by bad schools.”
He and Senator Coverdell finally got their way in 2001, when President George W. Bush signed a bill allowing holders of what became known as Coverdell accounts to use the earnings for kindergarten through 12th grade education, albeit with a $2,000 annual contribution cap. “In terms of a financial benefit, you’re talking de minimis,” Joe McTighe, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, said this week. “But in terms of its historical importance, it carried a lot of weight. As far as I know, it’s the first federal tax relief specifically helping parents with kids in religious or independent elementary and secondary schools.”
Despite the Coverdell’s status as a sort of totem of school choice advocates, no one has figured out just how many people are using the accounts to pay for a primary or secondary school education today. The Internal Revenue Service does not know, and neither do the big brokerage firms like Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch that offer Coverdells.
What we do know is that overall use of Coverdells, which people can also use to save for college, has been falling quickly, declining from 985,000 tax returns mentioning contributions to Coverdells in 2005 to 644,000 in 2009, according to a brief released this week by the Joint Committee on Taxation. The committee said the decline was probably because of the low Coverdell contribution limits compared with other tax-advantaged ways of saving for college, like 529 accounts. That said, it’s possible that many more people would be in on the Coverdells if they knew about the tax breaks for parents with children in private or religious schools.
Here’s how those tax savings break down, according to Jason Derbyshire, business development manager for the company that makes TradeLog accounting software for active traders and investors.
If parents saved $2,000 for each of 16 years in a normal brokerage account, earned returns of 6 percent for each year (a realistic return for someone in a mix of stock and bond index mutual funds who rebalances annually) and then pulled the entire balance out in the summer of the 17th year, they’d end up with $54,425.76. Those 16 annual $2,000 contributions mean their cost basis for capital-gains tax calculation purposes would be $32,000, leaving them with a $22,425.76 capital gain.

Apple Is Said to Discuss an Investment in Twitter

2012-07-30T02:00:00.000-07:00

While Apple has been hugely successful in selling phones and tablets, it has little traction in social networking, which has become a major engine of activity on the Web and on mobile devices. Social media are increasingly influencing how people spend their time and money — an important consideration for Apple, which also sells applications, games, music and movies.

Apple has considered an investment in the hundreds of millions of dollars, one that could value Twitter at more than $10 billion, up from an $8.4 billion valuation last year, these people said. They declined to be named because the discussions were private.

There is no guarantee that the two companies, which are not in negotiations at the moment, will come to an agreement. But the earlier talks are a sign that they may form a stronger partnership amid intensifying competition from the likes of Google and Facebook.

Apple has not made many friends in social media. Its relationship with Facebook, for example, has been strained since a deal to build Facebook features into Ping, Apple’s music-centric social network, fell apart. Facebook is also aligned with Microsoft, which owns a small stake in it. And Google, an Apple rival in the phone market, has been pushing its own social network, Google Plus.

“Apple doesn’t have to own a social network,” Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at a recent technology conference. “But does Apple need to be social? Yes.”

Twitter and Apple have already been working together. Recently, Apple has tightly sewn Twitter features into its software for phones, tablets and computers, while, behind the scenes, Twitter has put more resources into managing its relationship with Apple.

Though an investment in Twitter would not be a big financial move for Apple by any stretch — it has $117 billion in liquid investments, and it quietly agreed to buy a mobile security company for $356 million on Friday — it would be one of Mr. Cook’s most important strategic decisions as chief executive. And it would be an uncommon arrangement for Apple, which tends to buy small start-ups that are then absorbed into the company.

But such a deal would give Apple more access to Twitter’s deep understanding of the social Web, and pave the way for closer Twitter integration into Apple’s products.

Twitter has grown quickly, amassing more than 140 million monthly active users who generate a vast stream of short messages about their lives, the news and everything else. An Apple investment would give it the glow of a close relationship with a technology icon, and would instantly bolster its valuation, which, like that of other start-ups, has languished in the wake of Facebook’s lackluster market debut. In fact, word of the talks comes at a time when some are asking whether expectations for the potential of social media companies have gotten out of hand, and shares of Facebook, Zynga and other companies have wilted.

But Twitter does not need Apple’s cash. Earlier this year, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, said the company had “truckloads of money in the bank.”

The truckloads, according to people familiar with the matter, add up to more than $600 million in cash on hand. This comes from the $1 billion in financing it has raised over the years and, more recently, from a healthy flow of advertising revenue.

Regardless, Twitter is widely expected to pursue a public offering within the next couple of years, whether or not it agrees to deals with investors like Apple.

Apple and Twitter are logical partners in some ways. Unlike Facebook or Google, Twitter has no plans to compete with Apple in the phone business or elsewhere. And as Apple has found, social is just not in its DNA.

“Those guys are a great partner,” Mr. Costolo said of Apple in a recent interview. “We think of them as a company that our company looks up to.” Mr. Costolo would not discuss any potential investments or anything else related to the company’s relationship with Apple.

Spokesmen for both Apple and Twitter said on Friday that their companies did not comment on rumors.

Nick Wingfield contributed reporting.

Founder Institute’s Requirement: Create a Company

2012-07-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

CAN you build a technology entrepreneur from scratch in four months flat?

Yes, contends a global training program called the Founder Institute, which was started in 2009. For tuition of less than $1,000, students attend classes with one goal in mind: to create a fully operational company. In fact, they are required to incorporate before they can graduate.

To be accepted, students don’t need to have a fully baked idea, but they must take a test that the institute says can predict their entrepreneurial success. They can keep their day jobs while attending class, but that does not mean the program is easy. The workload is grueling, and 60 percent of the students fail to graduate.

But this for-profit institute, based in Mountain View, Calif., says it has helped start more than 500 companies. It has done so by going global, with chapters in 14 countries, in a total of 27 cities. It aims to make money partly through its equity stakes in the companies created by its graduates.

Boaz Fletcher, 44, a consultant to new companies in Israel, started the Tel Aviv branch this year. “As a country, Israel is amazing at technology, but not great at building sustainable businesses, and that is one of the things the Founder Institute teaches: how to build an enduring, stable company,” he said. The branch’s first class of nine students will graduate in September.

The institute is the brainchild of Adeo Ressi, 40, who has started eight companies of his own. Back in the mid-1990s, he was a co-founder of Total New York, an online regional city guide that was acquired by AOL.

Mr. Ressi saw a need for nurturing entrepreneurs even before the idea stage. He set out to create a vocational school of sorts to teach the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship, setting it apart from highly selective programs that often support start-ups before the venture capital stage. One of the best known of these “accelerators,” TechStars, accepts only 1 percent of applicants.

Mr. Ressi says he wants to reduce the failure rate for new companies. For every Dropbox, the popular file storage service, there are hundreds of businesses that never make it, he said, adding: “Why is that the case? And can it be fixed?”

HE came up with the idea for the institute as C.E.O. of TheFunded.com, a Web site where entrepreneurs and chief executives rate venture capital firms and investors. Through the site, he has a community of founders at his fingertips, and he was able to ask them: What would they have done differently at the beginning?

From Tel Aviv to Chicago, the curriculum is partly based on answers to that question from 2,000 executives. Classes often consist of around 30 students, with a much smaller number making it to graduation. In 15 sessions, students learn about topics like revenue, costs and profits; marketing and sales; presentation and publicity; and fund-raising.

There are adjustments in the curriculum to address local markets. In Singapore, for example, there is an additional session on doing business in China. Sessions are taught by chapter leaders and by seasoned entrepreneurs who can also serve as mentors.

Fundamental to the institute is the belief that many aspects of entrepreneurship can be taught.

Jose Luis Senent, 43, had been a car broker in Paris for 20 years, but had no previous experience with technology or start-ups. He graduated from the Paris chapter in April 2011 and now runs Autoreduc, a group-buying site for cars that he says is profitable and will expand into Spain, Belgium and Switzerland this year.

“I cannot imagine starting a company without knowing what I learned at the institute — there is so much to know about marketing, business models and raising money,” Mr. Senent said. The institute connected him with mentors who challenged his ideas and set his company in the right direction, he said.

Mr. Ressi says he wants to help budding founders avoid rookie mistakes — like bad Web design and off-key marketing, or creating the wrong corporate structure.

Katherine Bicknell, 31, a graduate of the New York chapter and co-founder of Kindara, an app that helps women track their fertility, would still be calling her company “Moonlyght” if not for a session on naming and branding.

“The Founder Institute said that you had to be able to say it, spell it, read it easily, and the dot-com had to be available,” said Ms. Bicknell, whose company is based in Boulder, Colo. So far, she and her co-founder have raised $100,000 from friends and family.

The institute aims to democratize the access that up-and-coming entrepreneurs need, partly by opening up networks and opportunities to those on the outside of the tight-knit start-up world. It “helped me build my network — when I came from Turkey to the U.S. in 2008 to start my company, I didn’t know anyone,” said Eren Bali, 28, co-founder of Udemy, an online learning company that has raised $4 million from investors. “I was starting from scratch, ” said Mr. Bali, who graduated from the Silicon Valley chapter in 2009.

Carlos Rozo, 38, a graduate of the chapter in Bogotá, Colombia, said the institute steered him away from a potentially fatal mistake — starting something big and complicated — and toward something more narrow that would fill a niche. He abandoned plans for a content-sharing platform in favor of Thotz.net, a provider of software that companies can use to share information among employees. Mr. Rozo says he has received $50,000 in seed funding from Wayra, which is backed by the Telefónica Group.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 28, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the person who began Founder Institute chapters in Colombia. He is Alan Colmenares, not Colemenares. An earlier version also misidentified the company that Carlos Rozo started and contained an incorrect link for that company’s Web site. It is Thotz.net, not Thotz.com.

The Boss: Hikmet Ersek of Western Union, and a Spectrum of Tradition

2012-07-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

I’m 6-foot-2 and was good at basketball. While attending university, I was recruited to play semipro ball in Austria. As a result, it took me longer than usual to complete a combined undergraduate and graduate degree in economics, called a magister, in Austria. But it was worth it. I was able to be paid for my hobby and travel around Europe for tournaments.

My first job, in 1986, was in sales for Europay MasterCard, now MasterCard. I was responsible for signing up merchants such as hotels and restaurants. I rose to vice president for sales and marketing and left 10 years later to work for GE Capital as vice president for retail sales finance and then for consumer financing. A year later, in 1997, General Electric asked me to be national executive for GE Corporate as well, responsible for Austria.

In 1999, I joined Western Union Financial Services and held various executive positions and traveled throughout Europe and Asia. Over more than 25 years, I’ve learned how globalization works and how to navigate in new countries, traveling to 81 so far.

In January 2010, I was promoted to chief operating officer of the Western Union Company and moved to Colorado. Eight months later, I became president and C.E.O. Western Union had always been a brick-and-mortar company, where customers sent or received funds through our agents in grocery stores, post offices and the like. When I took over, I instituted a number of changes to modernize operations. Not only did we add more agent locations, but customers can now send money using a credit card. We also added prepaid cards and a mobile wallet application.

Last year, we bought Travelex Global Business Payments and introduced a business-to-business electronic money transfer service for importers and exporters and other small- and medium-size businesses. People are often surprised that Western Union has transformed itself in two years, but it’s still happened too slowly for me.

I can relate personally to one of these changes. My parents divorced years ago, and my mother moved to Vienna. My father, 88, still lives in Turkey. I’ve been sending him money for medicine and other needs every week for years, from whatever country I’m in. He has a cellphone but doesn’t use it. Before I became C.E.O., he had to walk a mile or two to the closest Western Union agent. Now there’s one much closer, and thousands of other people can send and receive funds in several ways.

We’ve been criticized for our fees, but we have been an industry leader in providing transparency to our customers about our prices. And we have millions of satisfied customers, which is why we continue to grow. We have just under an 18 percent market share in an extremely competitive environment for money transfers, and consumers have more options today as to how, where and when they can send money. I believe that in an open market, competition and consumer behavior determine the price.

Besides the diversity I experienced as a child, I married Nayantara Ghosh-Ersek, who is half-Austrian and half-Indian. We met in Austria. At home, we celebrate Christmas as well as Hindu and Muslim holidays. Our company serves a global population, so we pay attention to traditions around the world. Diversity attracts diversity.

Mohamed El-Erian Is the Bond Market’s New Leading Man

2012-07-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

RECESSIONS, crackups, bailouts — these are profitable times for Mohamed A. El-Erian.

Mr. El-Erian is the crown prince of the multitrillion-dollar global bond market, the figurative heir of its long-reigning king, William H. Gross of the mighty Pacific Investment Management Company, known as Pimco.

From the company’s trading floor here in Newport Beach, some 2,500 miles from Wall Street, this odd couple, Pimco’s co-chief investment officers, preside over the world’s biggest bond funds — funds where many investors turn in uncertain times.

Mr. Gross is the maestro behind the biggest of all, the $263 billion Pimco Total Return fund. But as the financial world has come unhinged — first in 2008, with the subprime fiascoes in the United States, and now in Europe, where the debt crisis flared anew last week — Mr. El-Erian has come into his own, stepping out of the long shadow of Mr. Gross, one of Pimco’s founders and his former boss.

On many mornings, you can spot Mr. El-Erian, who is also Pimco’s chief executive, on CNBC, BBC or Bloomberg, or somewhere in the financial pages, expounding on the financial crisis of the day. He cultivates financial reporters and presses Pimco’s message with flair on the conference circuit, occasionally flanked by financial illuminati like Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, as if he were an I.M.F. supremo himself rather than a fabulously wealthy money manager.

Indeed, even by the standards of Wall Street, where many financial types pull down eye-popping paychecks, Mr. El-Erian and Mr. Gross make gobs of money. Mr. El-Erian, 53, was paid about $100 million last year, according to a person with knowledge of Pimco’s finances who spoke on condition of anonymity because the firm, a unit of Allianz, the big German financial company, doesn’t disclose compensation.

To put that in perspective, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase and one of the most powerful figures in American finance, got a quarter of that. Mr. Gross, 68, made about $200 million last year, according to the person with knowledge of Pimco’s finances. (As for how much he and Mr. El-Erian are paid, Mr. Gross, in a joint interview with Mr. El-Erian, said only this: “We all earn too much, but I can sleep because of the multiples we have provided for our clients over the years.”)

ON Wall Street, Mr. Gross is something of a legend, and not just because of his mega paydays. Over the last five years, Pimco Total Return has returned nearly 9.5 percent, annualized, trouncing once-celebrated stock market funds like Fidelity Magellan and even that old standby, the Vanguard 500 Index fund.

Yet Mr. El-Erian, a former I.M.F. official and an admired economic thinker, is increasingly becoming the public face of Pimco — a one-man marketing machine for the company, its views and its agenda. Last week, for instance, as Spain’s financial troubles shook world markets, Mr. El-Erian was once again in Europe — he declined to say where — assessing the situation. In an e-mail, he said things in Europe would get worse before they got better.

Still, the question on many minds is whether Mr. El-Erian, who previously made headlines with a brief — and somewhat controversial — run as the investment chief of Harvard, can possibly replicate Mr. Gross’s success.

Mr. Gross, who made his first serious money at blackjack tables in Las Vegas, relishes high-stakes bets. He doesn’t simply sit back and clip bond coupons; he trades, and trades well. Mr. El-Erian, by contrast, tends to be more deliberate and cerebral, a big thinker who likes to fly in the rarefied circles of global economic policy making.

“Mohamed is my heir apparent,” Mr. Gross said in the joint interview, which took place earlier this year at Pimco’s headquarters here. “He is more conservative than I am. I am the risk taker.”

And yet Mr. El-Erian has quietly moved away from sharing power with Mr. Gross and William S. Thompson Jr., who retired not long ago as co-C.E.O. Pimco, which oversees $1.8 trillion in assets, quite simply is Mr. El-Erian’s to lose.

“He is the succession plan for Bill,” Marilyn Cohen, who runs Envision Capital Management in Los Angeles, says of Mr. El-Erian and Mr. Gross. “I think it has worked masterfully. They have doubled-clutched it together or singularly.”

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. While Mr. El-Erian has years of experience at the I.M.F. and Pimco, some people wonder if he can successfully navigate the world’s increasingly tumultuous bond markets. Unlike Mr. Gross, Mr. El-Erian isn’t a trader by nature.

“Why would somebody with so little bond trading experience be in line for the top job?” asks Sylvain R. Raynes, a co-founder of R & R Consulting in New York, which helps investors measure risks associated with bond investments. “There are other candidates who are less flamboyant.”

Others go further. An investment executive who manages money for endowments says he is comfortable keeping funds at Pimco as long as Mr. Gross is around.

“I think once Bill is gone, we take our money away immediately,” says the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his relationship with Pimco.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 28, 2012

An earlier version of this article said incorrectly that Mr. El-Erian was born in Egypt, rather than New York City.

Welcome to the Negative SEO Wars

2012-07-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

You can imagine the buzz word at MozCon this week is negative SEO and the very real impact it is having on SEO. Despite Rand Fishkin declaring that negative SEO is nearly impossible to do (which isn’t surprising in itself since he tends to tow the Google line) there are plenty of tales of negative SEO shenanigans these days that have everybody talking. As you can imagine, flowing drinks makes loose lips, and everyone knows the real goldmine at any industry conference isn’t at the conference itself, but at the open bar after parties and then the hotel bar.

SEOMoz has been hit with the recent unnatural links warning (the one that is more a heads up that requires no action that caused Danny Sullivan to have a snit about), brought on by Rand basically daring SEOs to try and get SEOMoz banned through negative SEO. Ballsy move for someone to wave a red flag in front of a group of spammers.

That said, there are definitely those who suspect SEOMoz decided to take such a public stance because they already had seen evidence of getting hit by negative SEO, and by going the “hey, look at me, Google won’t dare do anything against me because I am the new anti-negative SEO poster boy!” they could hope to prevent it from happening with manual intervention by the spam team. And since there is no Google link disavow tool, why would Google even want such a public example of negative SEO working out in the wild for spammers to go around saying “Hey, I banned Rand with negative SEO!”

While negative SEO used to be a dirty little secret, a lot more people are being pretty open about it these days. Some are definitely doing it for bragging rights to show how kickass they are that they can do something that Google says they shouldn’t be able to do. Some are trying to take down SEOMoz because, well, some people would love the opportunity to take him down a notch (although there are just as many who would try to kick your ass for messing with Rand.)

The other group of people engaging in negative SEO are doing it in order to rank better. Simply hit all the competitors with negative SEO and they think presto-chango, they will suddenly rank #1. Of course, it doesn’t stop any – or all – of those competitors hitting it. And put some drinks in SEOs who like to brag and talk, and the stories come out – even though I really think that those who engage in negative SEO should be publicly outted in the SEO community.

When people are openly bragging about who they are targeting with negative SEO, you have to consider that there are SEOs who consider all SEOs fair game in their negative SEO wars. This means you could be next, or someone is already in the middle of trying to take you down.

seobitch – who has written 24 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Seobitch is a pen name for a well known female expert in the SEO industry that most of you likely already follow. She has more than a dozen years experience and is a very respected expert in the field. Seobitch can be controversial but writes about issues that most people are afraid to talk about due to their employers, clients or friends. She also loves to tackle industry issues from a different point of view than what you normally see the "complainers" of the industry complaining about. She is also open to suggestions for future topics you would like to see the SEObitch tackle.

Movies That Motivate Me 9 Random Tips On Being A Successful Online Marketer Where My Hatred of SEO Comes From

What happens when you delete 5,000+ Facebook friends

2012-07-28T09:29:00.001-07:00

Recently Facebook started enforcing the 5k limit again. Not sure when they stopped or why the started again but one day I noticed I could not accept a friend request cause it said I had reached the 5k max.
Then there is the issue of my iPhone Facebook app locking up whenever I use it. It tries to load all the stuff and too many friends = unresponsive app.
So I started to delete people by hand.
While sites like facedouche make this easier to put people into groups you should probably delete, its still not a easy process.
So I figured fuck it I will just nuke the whole thing and start over.
Googling for “how to delete mass Facebook friends” I came across this post at life hacker
Which leads you on to this great greasemonkey mass delete script
It only took maybe a hour to delete “all the users”
But a funny thing… it left users that had disabled their profiles. Surprisingly this was like 500 people. 10% of people I had friended had disabled their profiles.
I recognized 2 and remebered when they told me they disabled their profiles. But 500 out of 5,000? seemed like a lot.
Also there was about 200 names that were just black and had no option.
So I wrote a script in Keyboard Maestro to delete the disabled profiles (you had to click 2x to delete. A lot easier process then normal.
Anyway kind of like when I deleted 60k twitter followers, some people got mad.
I really don’t honestly understand that. If I follow 60k people why do you care if I unfollow you? What is the benefit to me following you? I couldn’t possibly keep up with the stream.
But back to Facebook. Yes people got mad also.. Which like twitter honestly baffles me.
Unlike Twitter, Facebook settings allow me to make my stuff wide open. That means if you want to message me, subscribe to my updates.. There is absolutely ZERO benefit to being friends with me on Facebook.
Now you can’t tag me in photos without my approval or post on my wall but guess what? Neither can friends.
So anyway I am adding people step by step and I gotta say actually being able to read my newsfeed and actually knowing who the people are is pretty cool.
A.D.D. annoying/egotistical sidenote: Don’t message celebrities to get them to follow you. I have some pretty high profile followers on twitter and its not cause I ever asked them to follow me. Be interesting… be someone who someone actually wants to follow..

Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2506 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
I Am a Failure The Perfect Business How A $1295 Gambling Debt Turned Me Into An Online Marketer

Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications

2012-07-27T20:40:00.002-07:00

Because Twitter is getting more popular, every glitch in the service is now felt more acutely. Going without Twitter for many people is even harder than going without email, and so outages lead to complaints. Complaints pile up and become debates, asking questions like: should Twitter be converted into a protocol and become decentralized? Is [...]

Classifieds Ads

2012-06-17T07:36:00.018-07:00

It is important to understand the business model for Zeek Rewards before calling the company a Zeek Rewards Scam. I will begin explaining this business by going into detail about the Zeekler penny auction . If you don’t know how a penny auction website works you really should visit www.zeekler.com & have a look at exactly what is going on. First you will notice that a lot of different items are being auctioned off at very low prices.

How could a company afford to give away a $150.00 in cash for $45.00 ? Well we must remember that VIP BIDS cost $1.00 and the minimum a customer can purchase is $25.00. When this customer has VIP BIDS they now have the opportunity to play in the Zeekler penny auction. If the customer decides to bid on an item, they will spend $1.00 and the item price will go up one penny. Now if we look at how this Zeekler penny auction is set up, many customers are bidding versus one another spending a dollar per bid. When an item finally sells, lets say at $50.00 the Zeekler penny auction site has really made $5,000.00!The customer also is very happy because he won a product way below the retail price.The price of the item may only go up one penny but people are spending $1.00 for every bid. When you fully understand this concept you can see how much money Zeek Rewards is actually making 24 hours a day seven days a week. Continue reading to find out if there really is a zeek rewards scam.

What Is Zeek Rewards Anyway?

Zeek Rewards is the affiliate program section of Zeekler.com (a Rex Venture Group LLC company). Zeekler is owned by Rex Venture Group LLC, a subsidiary of Lighthouse America, a US (NC) company. The company was established on June 24, 1997 and adopted the d/b/a Lighthouse America later that year.

How Do You Make Money With Zeek Rewards?

You can make money by promoting Zeekler.com, the penny auction business. You can also be rewarded for attracting customers and even other people who want to make extra money. You do this by posting pre-written text advertisements on classified sites or other places online. There are also other simple ways to earn with Zeekler. All the details are explained in a training video I have sitting and waiting for you inside.

Does Zeek Rewards Cost Money To Promote?

It doesn’t have to. You can post ads, for example, on free classified websites. It generally takes less then 5 minutes to place and Ad. Is there more work to it than that? Not really, but you can make a lot more money if you decide to learn about the other income earning opportunities with Zeek Rewards. See the full details.

Get started and watch my introduction video. Follow my steps and you’ll make it easy and fast. Get the answers to your questions inside.

https://www.zeekrewards.com/securesignup.asp?username=angelmar

Classifieds Ads

Earn Daily rewards

for placing ads

just like this

Follow these steps:

Enter this link:

http://goo.gl/BtpWJ

Follow the registration steps

The company gives you 100 points VIPs To Start

Put your first ad following these steps:

How to Post Your Ads in Easy Steps:

Step 1:

If you have your account then Login to your account by going www.zeekrewards.com. If you dont have account yet please register first here and then follow these steps.

Step 2:

Then on your dashboard oh home page click on Place your Ad

Step 3:

In Step three you will choose your ad to post. The point to remember here is, choose ad according to your subscription. For example, if you are using free account then you will choose ad from free classified, if your package is silver, then you will choose ad from silver category. Very important point.

See the step 3 in below figure

Next Step Choosing Ad format:

After Clicking on Post An Ad Free, next step is to choose your ad category, it means the ad you are going to publish belongs to which type. either it is regarding sales, or services. After this step next click on choose plan , then in next step a window will be shown. Now you have to post your ad in following manners.

After this step, choose your state, country, then click on next step, next step , Next step, then ad review and details will will be shown , approve the ad, then you will be prompted that your ad is Published and you can view your ad by clicking here. Click on Blue Written Click Here. Then you will go to the page where you ad is online. Then Do this step:

After copying the PAGE URL, Now you will have to submit this URL to zeekrewards to assure them that i have posted your ad at this link. So, that they can give you rewards and Points. This Step is very simple. Simply go to your zeekrewads dashboard, and choose step three. Register your Ad to Qualify for Today’s Cash Rewards

See the Below Figure

Final step:

Here comes the Last and Most important step. here you will have to Submit the Page URL of your published ad.

Your Free World

2012-06-16T21:12:00.002-07:00

Ever wondered how successful webmasters manage to get all the things they

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Take a look here:

Did you know that by using scripts on your web site, you can:

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There's no doubt about it -- when you utilise scripts in your every day

business, you can let the script do the hard work for you while you

concentrate on other things, like marketing.

At YourFreeWorld.com, we offer a great range of quality scripts that you

can implement into your business that are:

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You can see the whole range here:

You may be intersted in our most popular scripts, such as ad boards,

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But we also offer asp scripts and cgi scripts as well!

You'll be amazed at the different types of scripts that we offer. You can

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problem if you aren't technically minded. Most of our scripts come with

free installation so you don't have to worry.

And when you purchase any script from our store, you will automatically

become an affiliate and earn easy commissions.

Once you've added our scripts to your site, you might want to consider

taking advantage of our copywriting services as well. Our copywriter can

write classified ads, solo ads and even articles with an article

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Take a moment out of your day now to browse our store and see which script

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Here's the link again:

Seriously, I can vouch for the quality of YourFreeWorld scripts. When I

first implemented their scripts into my web site, it made a huge

difference... I wondered how I ever managed without them! You'll know what

I mean when you have one installed at your site.

Kind regards

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PS: While you're there, make sure you opt-in to be notified about new

script releases and special discount offers. In return, you'll receive

10,000 Banner Impressions (Value $25), 10,000 Text Ad Impressions (Value

$25), Classified Ad Script (Value $33) and Lifetime Membership to

7DayPromos.com (Value $19) as a bonus! This is exceptional value you

shouldn't pass up!

Your Free World

2012-06-16T20:47:00.002-07:00

If You Ever Wished You Could Create Your Own Graphic Headers, Footers, Menu Buttons & More For Your Web Site... Stop Wishing! Now There's NO Need!

Fully Customised Web Site Template Store

Earn Commissions By Promoting This Package!

A	re you too embarrassed to show your friends your online web site because it doesn't look as good as you wish it would? Are you clueless when it comes to site layout and presentation?

Are you afraid of what people will say when they come across your site? If so, then imagine how your prospects must feel?

Don't worry... You aren't the only one, and there's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, there are many people online who don't have the necessary skills to create their own web site.

Why is that? It's because many of us:

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We understand that there are many in this frustrating situation... It's like opening shop without a sign out the front -- and you won't attract visitors that way!

That's exactly why we've assembled our hand-picked range of web site templates that you can choose from to give your web site an instant face-lift.

It's Amazing How Much Impact You Can Make On Your Web
Site Visitors When You Project A Professional Image At First Glance!

Trafico Elite - Cómo Ganar Dinero Por Internet

2011-11-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

Trafico Elite - Cómo Ganar Dinero Por Internet

¿Aún haces marqueting en la forma tradicional y difícil? Sigue leyendo para averiguar…

¡Cómo Un Experto En Google AdWords Descubrió Accidentalmente Una Forma Totalmente Nueva Y Casi Sin Esfuerzo Para Lograr Posicionar Consistentemente Tus
Sitios Web En la Primera Página de Google!

Así es, este método es tan efectivo que, hasta el día de hoy, hemos logrado
las Primeras 3 Posiciones en Google para alrededor de 60 productos

Y lo mejor: la mayor parte del “trabajo” que implica ¡puede
hacerse literalmente mientras duermes!

Trafico Elite - Cómo Ganar Dinero Por Internet

IT'S 100% FREE - Get Paid To Save - Classified Ad

2011-11-12T15:43:00.003-08:00

Gratis Un Millon De Visitas

2011-10-14T12:04:00.000-07:00

CLASSIFIED-ADS

W CAREV WORLD CONSUMER ALLIANCE

UltimatePowerProfits was founded by entrepreneur Mr. Scotty Evans

Announcing MozCast - The Google Weather Report

Coming to #MozCon? Tips for Your Conferencing.

Google's Unnatural Links Warnings May Not Be Cause for Concern

Improving Social & Subscription Calls to Action - Whiteboard Friday

PHP Errors as a Means of Getting Links

The State of Content Marketing: An Interview With the Speakers of #MozCon

Outranking Google

The 6 Month Link Building Plan for an Established Website

Smarter Internal Linking - Whiteboard Friday

Your Money: Coverdell Tuition Tax Break Still Controversial Even as End Nears

Apple Is Said to Discuss an Investment in Twitter

Founder Institute’s Requirement: Create a Company

The Boss: Hikmet Ersek of Western Union, and a Spectrum of Tradition

Mohamed El-Erian Is the Bond Market’s New Leading Man

Welcome to the Negative SEO Wars

What happens when you delete 5,000+ Facebook friends

Twitter and the Architectural Challenges of Life Streaming Applications

Classifieds Ads

How to Post Your Ads in Easy Steps:

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

Next Step Choosing Ad format:

Final step:

Your Free World

Your Free World

Trafico Elite - Cómo Ganar Dinero Por Internet

¡Cómo Un Experto En Google AdWords Descubrió Accidentalmente Una Forma Totalmente Nueva Y Casi Sin Esfuerzo Para Lograr Posicionar Consistentemente Tus Sitios Web En la Primera Página de Google!

IT'S 100% FREE - Get Paid To Save - Classified Ad

Gratis Un Millon De Visitas

¡Cómo Un Experto En Google AdWords Descubrió Accidentalmente Una Forma Totalmente Nueva Y Casi Sin Esfuerzo Para Lograr Posicionar Consistentemente Tus
Sitios Web En la Primera Página de Google!