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How Fast is Google Indexing New Content Right Now?

August 17th, 2009 : 8 Comments ·

The answer??

6 minutes..

The previous blog post was indexed by Google in exactly 6 minutes, by the time I got around to taking the screenshot above, 35 minutes had passed.
This is about as quick an indexing time as I’ve seen.

- Dave -

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For the SEO Geeks..

August 17th, 2009 : 5 Comments ·

This one is for those of you who don’t mind reading some semi geek speak SEO stuff.

Tom Costello is the CEO of Cuil, for those of you who don’t know much about Cuil, it’s a search engine, and one whose interface I really like, (though others hate it) but that’s not the point here.

Tom’s wife Anna Patterson, formerly employed by Google, has her name on one of Google’s search patents so this is more than just some mindless blather so assign it some weight, though by no means is it a super deep sampling of data.

The article compares Bing results to Google.

Form you own opinion..

If you get bored easily reading these types of docs you might not get beyond the 3rd paragraph, but there is one very interesting item mentioned in the doc, (at least I think it is) see if you can find it, and then test it yourself.

READ IT HERE

- Dave -

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Totally Useless “Monday” Trivia

August 17th, 2009 : 7 Comments ·

There are now more file sharing sites that I care to count..

But way back in ancient times there were 2 biggies that received most of the attention.

One of those was Stroud’s and the other was TUCOWS.

Here’s the question..

Without looking it up, and you’re on the honor system here..

What was TUCOWS an abbreviation for?

There’s a little bonus for the first correct answer..

- Dave -

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Are You Addicted to Your Email Client? I Am..

August 14th, 2009 : 12 Comments ·

I admit it, I’m addicted to my email client. Yep, I’m finding it hard to let go.

I’ve been using Eudora for longer than I care to remember, probably at least 12 years, maybe more.

I’ve been updating through the years but stopped at version 6.2 which I thought was about as rock solid as they could ever get it.

I have virtually no crashes, it has every feature that I want except one. Portability. It’s a bit of a pain to move the data between machines when traveling.

The problem is, Eudora has changed to an open source project modeled after Mozilla’s Thunderbird client. No more support or development for the paid versions of Classic Eudora.

The new versions are supposed to build off the features of Thunderbird while retaining the interface of Eudora, so far I’ve found it to be a bit less than what the old versions of Eudora offered.

I’ve been testing Thunderbird and while I like it, I still find it more cumbersome to achieve the same tasks in the same amount of time that I can do them in Eudora.

I’ve never been fond of any Microsoft email product so none of those are even a consideration. I’ve looked at “TheBat”, “Claws”, and a few others, and no matter what, I am finding it hard to break way from Eudora.

So what do I do. What would you do? Do I stick with my ageing Eudora classic till it completely craps out when the next major OS is released? Or do I switch now and go through withdrawal?

What email clients are you using? What are your experiences? Are you addicted to your email client too?

Keep in mind I have about 13 accounts I check every 30 minutes and have over 250,000 emails stored in my database so I need something that is fairly industrial strength and will seamlessly import everything..

But it’s the interface, those damn interfaces.. I just like Eudora.. Tell me why I should change and what I should change to!

- Dave -

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Job Opening: Do You Have a Good SEO Background?

August 13th, 2009 : 10 Comments ·

NOTE: This Job has now been filled, Thanks for all the inquiries!

—–

I have an immediate job opening for an individual with a decent SEO background.

You do not have to be an SEO guru, or have done it for a living, but you need a very good understanding of basic SEO techniques, and also be very customer oriented.

The job would require appx 10 hours per week from you, but it could be more.

You being able to write SEO oriented educational materials world be a bonus.

The job functions would largely revolve around providing SEO customer support to an existing customer base.

You would be working from home with this job and the hours would be flexible.

Dependability is a huge requirement. The ability to communicate in writing with others is mandatory, I’m not talking IM chat or tweets. You need to be able to, when needed offer in depth explanations to why something is being done a certain way as it applies to the specific business.

If this is something you are interested in, please email me at dave (at) arundel.net  and I can give you more information.

- Dave -

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So how do you value a link??

August 13th, 2009 : 6 Comments ·

Let’s start with Google Page Rank. It’s a topic that can generate a lot of passion and a lot of opinions, some of which is based on an individuals analysis and experience, but far too often it’s based simply on what someone reads on a forum.

One of the first things you learn in SEO is not to follow or believe what you read in forums, but believe what your eyes and data tell you.

There are a lot of myths perpetrated on a lot of forums regarding Page Rank, and really anything related to search engines.

I’m not going to come out and claim I know everything about how page rank operates, nor every dark secret about SEO, anyone that claims they do is a liar. And that would include most of the folks who work at Google. Only a few are really privy to that info.

But the continuing obsession I see from many regarding Google Page rank is not only foolish, in many cases, it is just plain wrong, and more importantly, really wastes a lot of valuable time that could be used pursuing more profitable activities.

Let’s talk about a couple basics.

1) Don’t put much stock on what you see on that little green toolbar. At best it is nothing more than a really rough estimate of your true Page Rank from a snapshot in time that often is many months ago. It has virtually no relationship to your CURRENT internal Google page rank, which more than likely is a constantly moving and adjusted value.

2) The toolbar’s main purpose has always been as a data gathering tool for Google. Sure it offers you some features other than the little green bar, but just be aware that if you are using Page Rank checker, you are passing info on to Google about your surfing habits.

If you have no issues with this, no worries, but if that’s all you need a better option if you are using Firefox is to grab this extension.

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

So does Page Rank matter?

Well it’s pretty clear that the influence Page Rank has on actual rankings is very mixed at best.

Now let’s not confuse Page Rank and Authority. Remember, Page Rank is factored on a page by page basis, Authority is more likely site specific.

Let’s say you got a link from a major authority site, whose front page has a PR of 8, but your link is somewhere on an internal page that shows little or no page rank. What is the true value of that link?

A link from an authority site regardless of the PR of the page is going to be weighted more heavily than a link from a page on another site with an equal PR, that has far less authority.

Page Rank may be indicative of the general authority status of the site, but the PR of the specific page is not what passes the real value to your site as far as the effect it will have on ranking.

Authority also can be talked about in terms of trust, how much is the link from a site trusted?

So use Page Rank as a very basic guide to trying to come up with a site’s authority or trust.

Another important factor to consider in determining the value of a link, is the spidering frequency that a site receives from Google. A real easy way to check this, and it’s far from fool proof is to just check the cache date of a specific page.

If you have a site that is both deeply indexed, and getting the internal pages deeply spidered on a frequent basis, the site has some quality to it, regardless of the actual Page Rank being displayed.

While it is generally true that sites whose PR is higher tend to get spidered frequently, that is not always the case. But so can sites who PR is low or zero why? Well, if your site is indexed, your PR is higher than zero, and you have no idea of the true internal PR Google is using. There are a few tools that try and guess it, but it’s just that, an educated guess.

The reality is there are many factors that you need to look at when trying to place a value on a link, and far too many people are only looking at the Page Rank of a site and that is a huge mistake.

I have a lot of sites that are ranking in the top 5 for fairly competitive keywords that have a PR of 0 or maybe a PR of 1.

These are not new sites or sites that just showed up in the top spots recently, these are sites that have been hanging around the top 1-20 positions for quite a while.

The first thing I look at when trying to place a value on a link is the possible authority status of a site. Again, I’ll use the front page PR as a guide but it is just a very rough indicator of authority, but if a site has some perceived authority I don’t care what the PR is of the page my link will be on, as long as it is spiderable.

You can also try and gauge authority status by looking the Alexa rating of a site. Is the trend going up or down? Is traffic steady or very spiky?

I then focus on site saturation which can easily be done by entering

site:www.domain.com

…into Google.  The more pages indexed the better.

I then look at the cache dates of the front page and some random internal pages. It’s important to make sure the internal pages are getting spidered fairly often as well.

Another possible item you can look at is the actual age of the domain. do a whois search. An older domain is always better, but not if the domain has had multiple owners, and has been dropped at a registrar multiple times, so this one I don’t worry about too much.

I rarely concern myself with the PR of a specific page.

So, even if a site has a low or no PR, even on the front page, if that site is getting indexed heavily with very frequent cache dates, I’d still gladly take a link from that site.

Google tends NOT to aggressively spider crappy sites, at least not consistently.

I’m still amazed when I see threads of excitement on forums stating that Google has done a Page Rank update, Great you now have a very rough estimate using a totally generic methodology, of what they thought of your site some time in the past.

And also remember, Google updates the toolbar PR, probably 3-4 times per year, at most. Why not more often? What’s the need? They get exactly what they want out of the toolbar now without having to expend much in the way of resources to get that data.

- Dave -

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Are You Throwing Away Great Ideas?

August 10th, 2009 : 14 Comments ·

Ideas are the foundation upon which we all make money.

I don’t care if you are an affiliate marketer or someone who creates their own products and services.

Without a good or great idea you’re really dead in the water.

I never had a problem coming up with ideas for products or ways that I thought I could better do something that was already a part of my business.

Where I had the trouble was in remembering them 10 hours later.

Maybe I would be in my car, a great idea would pop into my head. I’d make a mental note of it, and tell myself I would write it down once I got home, and then guess what? By the time I actually got around to being able to put it down on paper, I really couldn’t remember all the details that I had just several hours ago. It’s not that my memory is bad, it’s just that often, in the time that transpires in between you having that possibly great idea and being able to put it down somewhere, a lot of events can transpire that just relegate other previous thoughts to the background. Sometimes you remember them, other times, not.

I now don’t go anywhere without my little 8 year old hand held Sony digital recorder. It’s cheap, old, obsolete, but still works great.

Any time I have an idea, I just hit the record button and verbally record my ideas.

Just this past weekend alone I added 14 verbal entries, which I finally played back and made written notes of this morning.

I have literally about 25 pages of written notes filled with potential money making ideas sitting on my desk printed out, and 100% of them are from items I recorded into my ancient digital recorder.

Without having my little digital recorder handy I’m guessing I would have less than 1 page of ideas.

Right there in front of me is enough to keep my coders busy for the next 2 years.

Ideas come and go and what you may think you’ll remember in a few hours or the next day often proves to be a very incorrect assumption, and one that could really cost you a lot of money.

I don’t care what you use to record your ideas, the bottom line is, if you’re not doing it, it’s almost certain that you are losing money from ideas that were there one moment, and then gone the next.

- Dave –

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This is one of the Coolest Wordpress Plugins I’ve EVER Seen

August 9th, 2009 : 1 Comment ·

Every now and then you see a product come along that is so unique and different, that it just makes you go ‘Wow”

Well I’ve just come across one of those ‘Wow’ moments

If you use Wordpress, this is the one ‘Must Have’ plugin for 2009. It doesn’t matter if you have one site or one hundred.

Check this out..

And another vid for you..

See More Right Here

- Dave -

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Do you spoof your whois info?

August 9th, 2009 : 2 Comments ·

This is a real simple question:
Do you spoof your whois info when registering a domain?

If your answer is yes, are you aware that the registar can literally disable your account and essentially confiscate your domains?

If the registrar has reason to believe that the whois info on a domain may be spoofed, it is not uncommon for them to send a snail mail notice to the address on record, and if it bounces back as undeliverable, there is at least a reasonable chance that your account and domains could go bye bye.

There are many reasons that could trigger this action but more often it results from a complaint of some type being received by the registrar, often these are spam complaints, even if you are not spamming, just having a double opt in mailing list can still result in complaints being logdged.

So while overall, the risk may be low, you spoof your whois info at your own risk.

- Dave -

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10 Simple Steps to Writing Better Sales Copy

August 7th, 2009 : 3 Comments ·

I’m not going to claim I am the greatest sales page writer, in fact compared to some of my buddies I downright stink.

But when I do need to write sales copy for myself, there are 2 things I know.

A: Imitate the best
B: Follow the basics of laying out good sales copy.

When I say imitate the best, I am not advocating you actually take someone elses copy, in fact if you did that I hope you get your a*s handed to you, but there are some really great sales letters in virtually every market that if you take time to study them, are literally a free master class on how to create great sales copy.

There is one thing that virtually all sales letters have in common. They all tend to follow a certain formula.

Let’s take a look at 10 basics of writing a great sales letter.

1: ATTENTION: You MUST grab the visitors attention immediately with your headline. You’ve got about 2 seconds to get their interest or they are gone. How many web sites have you seen that start out with a phrase such as “Thank you for visiting my web site. Here you will find some great products” BLAH BLAH BLAH. Bye bye visitor. I can’t imagine anyone would still write this way but there are a lot of sites that read just that way.

The headline of your site must pull the visitor in, make them want to learn more. If you don’t have a killer headline, the rest becomes somewhat irrelevant.

2: INTEREST: Once you’ve managed to convince the always skeptical visitor that they need to keep reading with your great headline, you need to start building overall interest in your product or service, how will the potential customer benefit from your product or service. Never EVER start talking about yourself, you must focus on the benefits your product can provide to the visitor.

3: BUILDUP and CREDIBILITY: So far so good, you haven’t lost them yet. Now comes the tough part. Up to this point you’ve lured them in with some great writing, but now you have to start backing up your claims. This is where you need to throw in some testimonials. Any testimonial you use must be 100% authentic. When someone sends you a nice email complimenting your product or service, thank them and ask them if it’s OK to use their words as a testimonial. Do it every time! Make sure you ask them to offer the wording they would like used and if it’s OK if you do very minor editing.

4: PROVE YOUR CREDIBILITY: I recommend you always use the person’s real name, and location in the testimonial, also asking the person giving the testimonial for a picture you can use next to their testimonial adds credibility. This one will be a bit more hit and miss but you’ll find the majority of people really don’t mind giving you their picture to use.

Testimonials that simply use someone’s initials are always looked at with a skeptical eye, and you know why, no one really knows whether they are real or bogus. Guess which is most often the case?

5: BELIEVABILITY BUILDERS: Make certain at this point you offer a no hassle guarantee. A Strong guarantee does not increase refunds, it reduces them. Make the potential customer know that you stand 100% behind what you sell and if they have a problem or are dissatisfied in any way, you are there to help them.

Don’t make your potential customers have to hunt around for contact info. A simple, ‘contact us’ link at the bottom of the page usually does the job, but don’t ever link it to an email address, link it to a support page that offers an FAQ or a form where the customer can submit questions.

Don’t make financial claims you can’t backup. If you are going to brag about how much money you have earned, you better be prepared to actually prove it. Screenshots can be easily faked. If you haven’t made $500 per day selling a given product, don’t say you have. Keep it real. But if you have some serious earnings, this is where you want to hit the visitor with that info. It creates sort of a WOW effect.

6: SCARCITY: The limited time offer has been working wonders for years, in all kinds of businesses. Now that you have them WOW’d with your earnings, you’ve got to get them to feel like they are going to lose out if they don’t take action.

Giving the visitor a deadline on pricing or membership levels, tends to build a sense of urgency. If they don’t act now they may lose out. And stick to it. Using a bogus deadline worked 7 years ago but not very well anymore. If you say you are going to raise your price or close the membership on such and such a date. DO IT!

7: ACTION: Quite simply, make it easy for the visitor to order now. ie; Call this number to order now: or, Just CLICK HERE to go to our secure order page.

Don’t make the visitor jump through hoops or have to look all over your site for a place to make an order.

8: THE WARNING: Learn to play on the visitors fears and emotions. Use a simple statement like this:

“Listen, you can go on making no money for the next year, It doesn’t matter to me, but if you’re serious about changing your life, what are you waiting for?”

(Now that is an example of really crappy sales writing, but hey, it’s just an example!)

The key is to try and touch an emotional flash point. If they’ve gotten this far into your sales letter, you obviously have their interest, so hitting those emotional buttons can be the one thing that makes that sale.

9: NOW: This is building off the emotional buttons you pressed in #8. You need to again drive home the urgency. Convince them they owe it to themselves, that they don’t have to struggle anymore, that there is a better way etc. This is pretty much the icing on the cake.

10: THE POSTSCRIPT: Always end with a PS. You can restate #6, while rewording it differently, remind them this is a limited offer. You can also use the PS to throw in added bonuses by stating that if they act now you will throw in this bonus, or that bonus. You start piling on.

If you’ve followed these 10 points you pretty much have the outline of how some of the best copy writers in the world construct copy that has turned ordinary people into millionaires.

Remember that getting the visitor to your website is just the start. Once they are there you better know what to do with them.

- Dave -

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