ComTech News

As the New York Times detailed yesterday the Chinese government is activating legislation that may give problems to the possible Microsoft Yahoo purchase. The new Chinese law would "give Chinese regulators authority to examine foreign mergers when they involve acquisitions of Chinese companies or foreign businesses investing in Chinese companies’ operations. Beijing could also consider national security issues, according to a report by the official news agency Xinhua.," NYT reported.

Read the Rest from Search Engine Watch 

Popularity: 65% [?]

OK so do we really need yet another social bookmarking online community (aka a Digg Clone)? At Franklin Spirko we decided that yes indeed we do and hence the launch of HatedOrLoved.com

The reasoning was simple, there are so many sites like Digg, Mixx, etc that utilize a community approach to share news, stories and just plain cool stuff. In theory they work great and spam is kept down because the community can "bury" (or what ever the equivalent may be for the site) the story and push it off the popular page and out of the normal listings. The theory behind this functionality seems solid enough but the reality is in practice many good (content wise) stories are buried.

These stories could be about god forbid on Digg, SEO, and labeled as spam simply because of the subject. This is one of the factors behind the success of Sphinn. Yet it is not just internet marketers that are beaten down on many social sites. Perhaps the story is political and against the majority thought on the site so it gets crushed. Why should this be? Just because a story is an alternate view does not make it spam, trash or poor content.

So the concept of Hated or Loved is remarkably simple. You don't bury a story you don't like, you "Hate It" which is far more and expression of opinion then a false need to push a story 40 other people found worthy out of the popular results. When we are done with our next set of modifications you will be able to view not just upcoming and popular stories but hated stories as well.

So each day you can check out the most hated and loved stories online, we though the concept was kind of cool so our new Web Developer (Bobby Wilson) went to work less then a week ago and we have the Beta (very beta) site up already. We invite you to sign up, sumit your content and play around with some hatred and love.

A few things to note about the site for right now

• When I say Beta I mean Beta the "Featured Hated" does not function yet. It requires a lot of work to basically recreate the algorithms for popular on the other side of things. So ignore the "Top 10 Hated for Now" it is just a place holder.

• The avatar function is not working right yet so you can't upload a picture with your profile just yet. Bobby is working on it, the platform we are using is on PHPDug, if anyone has over come this issue we would love to hear from you about it.

• This site is designed to be SEO and Marker Friendly you most certainly are welcome to submit both third party and your own stories. We do not use nofollow and we do have permalinks for each story. So feel free to link build away in your submitting.

• When you find a bug let us know about it but give us some time. Again right now we are in really a pre beta mode but wanted to start getting some SEO exposure and some founding members right away so we decided to open up the site.

• We are looking for help with this project. I need both contributors and probably moderators in the near future if you want to be considered for either let me know. If you have a blog and blog about solid content (in any niche) we will consider adding your feed to the site for automatic inclusion. If your are interested just post your blog link in the comments and we will evaluate your site for auto inclusion.

So please let us know what you think of this new concept for a site, let us know your ideas to make the site better and by all means let us know what you love and what you hate.

~ Jack Spirko

Popularity: 66% [?]

Izea is working really hard to get the message out about Real Rank.  Which you can sign up for at IZEARanks.com.  I had my doubts about Real Rank in the begining but I really like the way this service is shaping up.  My biggest concen is in the beginning it looked like Real Rank was just something for bloggers doing PayPerPost or in the future those in Social Spark.  However, Real Rank is now open to any and all blogs including those that don't have any interest in PayPerPost or any paid blogging service.

The way IZEARanks works is by using a simple piece of javascript to collect and report a rank based on actual traffic. You can choose whether you want to display page views and visitors or just your RealRank.  Oh and to make it cooler Izea is giving away $1000 each week in February to the blog with the #1 RealRank (see the site for official rules).  Oh and if you are worrying about a Google Page Rank Spank (like ComtechNews got) for being in PayPerPost don't worry the code is different and again for use by any and all bloggers.

What is cool about Real Rank is it is based on actual traffic and visitor activity.  Unlike Alexa it tracks all visitors not just those dim enough to voluntary install the Alexa Tool Bar (spyware) into their browsers.  I sware AOL users are the only thing keeping data going to Alexa.

For example below is a screen shot of the Real Rank for Comtech News covering a three month period, as you can see Google's smack on my page rank number has little effect on my visitor count.

I really hope to see a true alternative to Google PR come along.  Google is just getting to damn powerful.  For blogs at least Real Rank may be the way for that to happen.  So if you blog, install and try out RealRank.   I have done so on all my blogs and I am finding some interesting things about how they compare to each other beyond raw visitor counts and conversion rates.

Popularity: 68% [?]

American Express has a program called "Open" that provides services, advice and a sense of community to their small business customers.  You have probably seen it advertised on TV.  Now some jerk inside AMEX just sent a communication to all Open members stating,

"Don't Waste Money on a So-Called SEO Specialist"

Now clearly this dolt must have had a bad experience that was quite honestly probably with a "so called" SEO but to make such blanket statements is beyond moronic.  This would be like oh I don't know perhaps…

• Having a crappy Doctor then advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called Doctor"
• Having a dentist that does a poor job then advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called Dentist"
• Buying a car that ends up being a bad buy and advising all your contacts to "not waste money on a so called car"
• Having a bad date and then advising all your contacts to "not waste efforts on a so called date"

This is all absolutely just plain stupid and morons that make such remarks simply show the depths of their ignorance!  If SEO is a waste then why in the hell does American Express themselves put so much effort into Search Marketing and SEO.  The actual source of the article is some group of idiots called "The Cuban Council" who I won't dignify with a link!

Mark Jackson over at SEO Watch wrote a very detailed account and an excellent rebuttal to it. You can read that in full here.

By the way AMEX I just canceled my cards (corporate and personal) and won't ever use another Amex product until this stupidity is corrected with a retraction. 

Popularity: 67% [?]

OK look I am not an "I told you so kind of guy" in most instances but I feel vindicated here and I just have to say it this time.  I reported back BEFORE ANYONE that some sort of deal was being brokered between Yahoo and Microsoft with MS being the buyer and the big Y being the bought.

I was told I was nuts, I was bashed for this opinion on the Search Engine Watch Forum.

I mean check out this post I posted back in April of 2006 - look at the lecture I got.  I even stopped arguing understanding not to "cast my pearls among swine". 

OK now check out my sweet, sweet vindication - Microsoft Bids 44 Billion to Buy Yahoo

I just feel like screaming you see, I told you so!

I didn't blog about this once, or twice, either.  No look at the following posts…

• Could Microsoft Buy Yahoo - 7 Reasons It Could Happen
• Microsoft to Buy Yahoo - Act 2
• Thoughs on a Possible Microsoft Purchase of Yahoo
• Microsoft to Buy of Partner with Yahoo

Now look will the deal happen?  No one knows yet but the deal is now on the table.  This is a 44 Billion Dollar deal though and what we know about 44 Billion dollar deals is they don't happen over night.  I would say this deal has been in the works for um I don't know 18-24 months at least.  So just when was I blogging about this?  April of 2006, that would be right at 21 months ago.

Now everyone is talking about this and acting like it is brand new and I am sure my prediction will be ignored or just called lucky.  Personally I am not an arrogant person and I generally don't care what people think of my opinions, I just wanted to go on record with this one. 

Just for the record the "I told you so" is mostly targeted at one individual on the SEW Thread which is now unfortunately closed.

So what do you think about this deal?  If it goes through what will it mean to search marketing as a whole? 

Popularity: 67% [?]

The SEOmoz blog just published a great article on ways to help get your content Dugg and to the Digg popular page.  The primay method here revolves around time of the day, day of the week and proper category exploitation.  I won't go to deep into it and will just suggest that you read this article by Dave Naffziger on the SEOmoz Blog.

Popularity: 65% [?]

A lot of people seem to believe that SEO is about nothing more then getting a web page to rank well for high traffic terms on Google and the other major search engines.  Back in the dawn of SEO that was pretty much the case and anyone that could do it consistently was quickly able to gather clients at almost break neck speed.  Then something happened, as we say here in Texas, "the chickens came home to roost" and well, there were some unhappy chickens.   Indulge me a second on the chickens, you see when chickens go "out" for the day they pick on this and that, eat some bugs and do what ever they feel like but at some point they come back to the coop and they expect to be fed.

In the same manner SEOs got clients all sorts of rankings but in the end the client expected (rightfully so) to see a very measurable increase in revenue.  In some instances the increase was there but in many it was not.  During this period most SEO firms only made changes to clients web sites with a single goal, increase rankings.  Optimizers felt if they brought you traffic their job was done it was up to your company to have a product that sold and a message to sell it.

I personally always saw this philosophy as massively flawed!  I honestly don't even like the terms, SEO and Search Engine Optimization, I only use them because they have become the industry adopted term and the one that lets people easily understand what our company does.  To me Search Engine Marketing or just Search Marketing, are a much more appropriate terms.

You see to me the "optimization of search engine traffic" is a holistic process, one that simply can not end with a click and a visit.  Just last week my company Franklin Spirko Media, was fortunate to gain a new client.  The client is Trump University, which is Donald Trump's online educational business that provides Real Estate Training, advice on Wealth Creation and how to become a successful entrepreneur.  As you can imagine we are very happy to have signed a consulting agreement with such a well known company and there is no shortage of competitors that would like to have this opportunity.  If I had to state why I believe we were given the opportunity, I would say it was two primary things.  First we were able to show that we have a great deal of competence and Knowledge about SEO and second that our primary concern was increasing conversions.

Honestly if you have a good network of sites and partners, reasonable skills in regard to on site optimization and the work ethic to make sure you get everything done, rankings in and of themselves are not that difficult to achieve even for many highly competitive terms.  The real question is what happens after the visitor comes to the web site?  There are a series of things we ask about and or look into prior to any attempt to gain a ranking for a term, they are…

1.  Has any PPC been done around the term, if so how did it convert?  If a term does not convert well with PPC, then in most instances it is not going to convert well organically either.  In fact beyound direct conversion and profit one of the greatest things about PPC is it can quickly for a small investment tell you exactly what terms to really target and which are not worth the man hours.

2.  What is the goal of the page the ranking is being attempted for?  It may seem silly but many times people ignore this!  If the site has an over riding goal then many SEOs simply try to get any related term ranked for any page.  The right way to do things is to look at the page, determine its' conversion goals and seek terms that are likely to bring in visitors in the right part of the cycle.  In other words very broad terms often work well for things like a free membership or news letter opt ins, yet if the page is more of a direct sales page, terms must be far more targeted.

3.  What other advertising is being done and how is the sales process working in conjunction with the web site.  You have to look beyound search engines today to do a good job as a search marketer.  You need every scrap of data a client is willing to share with you, direct mail, seminars and anything else that pushes people into the clients process.  There are always nuggets of gold in this data, nuggets that create viral link building, social media campaigns and other other over looked opportunities.  People don't realize that things like Digg, YouTube and other new media sites are becoming "ways people find web sites and information".  If they are ways people find information to me that makes them a form of "search" and therefore something you can't afford to ignore.

4.  What analytical data is available and what additional tracking can be installed?  SEOs should live inside the analytical data of a clients site.  Not a day should go by with out at least a look at current data and trends.  This process leads good Internet Marketers to a point where they actually are able to do what I call, "feel the pulse of a web site".  In time with the right mind set you are able to know at once when something changes about a site, you can almost feel a very modest trend forming before it is really visible and you can take advantage of positive changes quickly or head off negative ones before they have a marked result.

These are just four of the areas SEOs really need to be involved in beyond simple link building, on page optimization and monthly reporting.  To sum it up a good firm needs to treat a clients site better then their own.  If you could bring 5000 visitors a day to your own site but it didn't do anything to positively impact your revenue would you do it?  Would you invest the man hours, money and resources to gain a ranking just because there was traffic behind it if there was no real value to the traffic?  Of course not, when we invest a clients money it is up to agencies and firms to evaluate the time and money of the client with the same critical eye we would evaluate our own budgets with.  Optimization is not just about traffic, it is about optimized traffic and whether you are working on you own website or a clients site you have to keep that in mind.  Your goal is to optimize the entire process and the best way you can do that is to test, measure and question every piece of the process along the way.  Doing so results not only in happy clients but a better image for SEO industry wide.

~ Jack Spirko 

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimization, internet marketing, search marketing, wealth creation, web 2.0, new media, social search, real estate training, successful entrepreneur, wealth creation

Popularity: 48% [?]

I blogged over a week ago that layoffs were coming for Yahoo and today they have occurred.  In fact the total layoffs have been announced at 1000 people.

What I found interesting is this article from Search Engine Watch that has 4 very positive things for marketers to see in this adjustment.  They are….

1. Search marketers can count on improved click-through rates from Yahoo searchers clicking on paid search (PPC) ads.

2. Search continues to be strong and as close to "recession-proof" as any form of online advertising. Advertisers can expect high ROI unless the recession significantly reduces commercial searches.

3. Yahoo share of searches continue to increase, reassuring major brands and search marketers that the Yahoo spotlight will continue to shine on search.

4. Search marketing agencies who specialize in one vertical would be well-advised to diversify their client portfolio, with weakness in housing, financial services, travel, and to a lesser extent retail.

In any event it is clear that Yahoo is not in the hole just moving to maximize their business model.  I feel band for anyone laid off but I have a feeling some of those let go will be courted pretty aggressively by those who would like to get inside the head of a "Professional Yahoo"

Popularity: 38% [?]

I remember 4 years ago when I moved my family from Pennsylvania back to Texas.  We were traveling with 2 dogs and 2 cats.  What an "experience" that was!  Since we were just moving it was one of those drive until you are to tired to see, find a hotel and then crash for a while, get back in and keep going.

Hard part was finding a hotel that would let the animals in.  In Virginia I eventually found a place where they were OK with the dogs and we just did not mention the cats.  I had to sneak them in and was able to pull it off.

I sure wish I had known about a website that offers your the ability to find pet friendly hotels back then. The site is called Official Pet Hotels and it is really cool they even have a section with excellent pet travel tips.   What do you think the first one was?

Before leaving, check to make sure the hotel accepts pets. And check either our on-line
advertisements or directly with the hotel, to find out any restrictions, fees, etc.

Well that is one I certainly would have followed had I known about this website back then.  The site is simple to use you just enter a bit of information like you would at any hotel site and they provide a list of available hotels for you and you can make your reservations online.  The difference is simply that all the hotels accept pets.

This site is a brilliant example of understanding a need in the market and addressing it.  The real cool thing though is how this site is very niched focused simply by combining to very broad markets.  Think about these industries individually, the pet industry and the hotel industry.  Both are huge and hyper competitive markets but combined OfficialPetHotels.com makes them very focused and far more effective.

Think about it for a minute how hard would it be to start a new site and compete in either of these markets alone?  The marketers behind this website have a lot to be proud of.  Not only is this a cool site to look at as a web marketer but it offers a very cool service.  I can tell you when traveling with my dogs in the future I will def finitely use it.  As for traveling with the cats, well, I don't plan on ever doing that again.

Popularity: 37% [?]

I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I watch all the new ways to market online come out.  Demographic targeting from Google, mobile search is booming and behavioral targeting is getting more accurate.  More and more main stream marketing professionals are beginning to truly understand the internet.  I firmly believe we are still in the dark ages of real hard core Internet Marketing by big powerful companies.  People that really know what they are doing are still in very short supply.

Right now anyone with a bit of knowledge, a blog and a web editing program can make money online, in fact very good money online.

What do you think about all the advances?  Will making money get easier, harder or stay the same.  Will major corporations take over 90% of the market or will the small time marketer retain the advantage of being faster and more nimble then the big companies that debate every decision before acting with untold meetings and fears?

I have my opinion but for now I want yours.  Please comment below. 

Popularity: 38% [?]

The beast of Google continues to grow, evolve and dominate.  Last year Google bought Double Click which is honestly just a "legal" spyware provider that tracks user behavior online.  Now according to Search Engine Watch Google is Beta Testing Demographic Targeting for AdWords.  As a marketer I will of course use this feature and I am actually excited about it on the surface.

It does beg the question though of where is this all going?  How long before Google knows everything about everyone?  How much of that information will the government require/ask for/take in the future?

Something to think about. 

Popularity: 37% [?]

Now this is something new different and cool.  I just was asked to review a new service called Net Audio Ads that allow a site owner to make money for every single visitor that stays on your site for about 5 seconds.  They call this new type of advertising…wait for it…pay per play or PPP.   It seems like a pretty easy program to work, all you do is add some code to your website and when a visitor lands on it a short 5 second audio commercial plays in the background.

For high traffic informational sites this seems like a no brainer drop some code, don't even need a click and each visitor is cha ching money in the bank.  The question will be how much will they pay per play?  At a penny it could add up for a high traffic site.  At a nickel a play it would be really good!  As in even a site with 100 visitors a day would put 5 bucks a day into your account to do absolutely nothing.

I just signed up to be both a publisher and an affiliate.  I recommend you sign up very soon if you would ever want to earn from referring other advertisers because enrollment into the affiliate program will close on February 1st. The affiliate program will pay out on two levels of referrals and I plan to do quite a bit of referring to my email lists.

I do have a few questions that I won't be able to answer until I implement the system 

1.  Will visitors be cookied so as not to be slammed with an ad every page load?  I mean if you do this on a site like a forum where one user views many pages per visit it could be big bucks but it could annoy your users to be hit every page load.  If they do cookie and only play one time per X views or something like that it will be very cool.  If drop the code in your site wide footer and rock on.

2.  Again price per play is going to be key.  They are not telling us right now what the price will be but again for a price per visitor it can make any site with decent traffic a decent return.

3.  What will the typical ad be like?  The sample ad was a Taco Bell ad that honestly would be ok on any type of informational site and may typical sales sites.  Seems with 5 seconds we will be talking mostly simple quick branding messages is so this could be a great tool for big companies and small publishers to get a great benefit from each other.

This type of advertising is not really new and that is a good thing.  If you use AIM for your Instant Messaging you probably have experienced it.  AIM has been playing backgrounds of movie trailers etc for a long time.  I think that type of use in the past may make this advertising fairly well accepted by many surfers.  The short 5 second limit will be key to making it work out and kudos to Net Audio Ads for getting that right strait from the beginning.

I am looking forward to testing this new form of advertising and will blog about my results in the near future. 

Popularity: 37% [?]

Wordpress has what they call the famous 5 minute installation of the Wordpress blog platform.  Can you do it in 5 minutes?  Sure if you have done it before, know your web host's back end well and if you know how to set up a SQL database, edit a raw config file and a few other things.

So does that sound like you?  Honestly I can do it in under five minutes now but I don't do it their way any more.  I have all my blogs on hosts that use Cpanel and Fantastico.  With that I can install a brand new blog with data bases and all in under a minute flat.  Here is the best part so can you!  Even if you don't know anything about setting up a data base or other technical stuff, just a few clicks and typing in your Blog Title, Description, etc is all you need to know.

Now here is the bonus, install your blog this way and you can do Wordpress Updates in under a minute as well.  You just deactivate your plug ins, go into Fantastico, click update, then reactive your plug ins and done. 

The video below is one we provide to our members at our Internet Marketing and SEO Training program called MarketingICE. I decided to do a low res YouTube version and share it with everyone because it can save the person building a blog network so much time and can help new folks get off hosted solutions and onto their own Wordpress platform so easily.  If you want to use this method you just need a web host that uses Cpanel and Fantastico,  I use HostingWithUS but there are lots of Cpanel Hosts out there.

 ~ Jack

Technorati Tags: wordpress, blogging, blog, fantastico, cpanel, web hosting

Popularity: 41% [?]

My previous post on going to Vegas for the PBR along with the fact that it is freezing in Dallas right now has me thinking about vacations.  I was thinking about one particular vacation we took one winter to Tennessee.  It was totally unplanned and was one of the best we have ever taken.  We were headed to northern Arkansas and and ice storm shut down Fayetteville Airport.  The airline offered to fly us anywhere we wanted to go at no charge to make up for us being stuck.  Those were the good old days of being a Platinum Flier with American.

We wanted mountains and tried Denver, Albuquerque and some other spots all either took to much time to get to for our short trip.  Last ditch try I say Nashville they say yes and off we go.  My wife and son ask what is in Tennessee and I say we will see when we get there.  We spent 4 days driving around the state, saw mountains, civil war battlefields and caverns and other cool stuff.  We were never in a rush and everything worked out perfect including getting a car with no reservations at the airport.  We got lucky and it was fun.

If I was to take an impromtu vacation now though I may rely on a service like Trusted Tours and Attractions and take one of their sightseeing tours or may be just beat the cold for a bit and head off on a Miami Vacation.  A bit of sun would be great right now.  One more thing if you visit the Trusted Tours website be sure to sign up for their news letter.  When you do you could win a hand held GPS.  Those things are cool and great to have when you are visiting new city or even just bumping around town.

Popularity: 14% [?]

One of my favorite bloggers is Michael Gray, (aka Graywolf) who is always willing to tell it like it is.  Well he has done it again pointing out a typical hypocritical action taken by Google and showing how sites like MSN and Forbes are given a "free pass" on the issue of duplicate content.

I also noticed that Michael's blog is now down to a PR3 which we all know is total rubbish.  Checking Yahoo Site Explorer the Wolf-Howl Blog has over 111,000 links including some from hugely popular sites like ShoeMoney and Search Engine Journal.

Michael may want to consider being careful for telling the truth of he may one day get smacked to a PR0 just like I did here.  I hope he doesn't back off though, getting smacked but still getting lots of traffic is liberating.  I can now say whatever I want on this blog with no fear, of course I pretty much always have anyway.  Anyway keep it up Gray Wolf! 

Popularity: 9% [?]