How to FTP Files From Email Using an iPad

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When the iPad was announced in January, it was the very first time Apple created something that I immediately wanted. I’ve never been an Apple fanboy, I don’t work on Macs for either my primary workstations or laptop – I use them for testing and ensuring compatibility only. But the iPad was different. I immediately saw it’s purpose as consumption device and it’s promise as a productivity tool.

The naysayers that tagged the iPad as “the iFail” seemed to focus on how it fails as a laptop or netbook, and how it lacks the features expected of those devices. While there are definitely limitations to what you can do, and how easily certain tasks can be accomplished, I gave Apple the benefit of the doubt, based on their track record, and knowing that this is a first generation device. As Edgar Bronfman, Warner Music Group CEO noted “No one’s got rich betting against Steve Jobs.”

Having never purchased a Kindle or netbook, I was looking forward to the 3G iPad enabling me to essentially ditch my laptop while traveling, and be a complete solution for any media (reading, music, movies) consumption needs. Most of my colleagues derided the “working exclusively from the iPad” notion as wishful thinking, and told me to be sure to pack the laptop as well. After using the iPad for over a month now, I’m looking forward to proving them wrong this week, as I thoroughly road test it during SMX Advanced. I’ve spent the last few weeks assembling the various tools (apps) that I’ll need, setting up accounts, passwords, etc. and can honestly say, with the benefit of the cloud, there’s nothing that I’d need to take care of while on the road, that I can’t do on the iPad.

Most of the apps that I use or need, relate to development – managing sites, updating sites, and keeping the trains running on time. To that end, these are the tools I employ on the iPad:

The ToolsiSSH – shell appSplashID – password managerMarkup – HTML editorFTPOnTheGo – FTP clientDropbox – file storage in the cloudReaddleDocs – document readerGoodReader – document reader, with benefits

The lack of mulitasking (for now) on the iPad, means accomplishing some tasks can be a little tricky, or are at best, not intuitive. One such task involves taking an attachment from an email, and getting it onto a server to use in post, on a page, or otherwise link to. To accomplish this – you really just need one .99 app – GoodReader.

Step-by-Step: How To FTP Email Attachments on the iPad Download the GoodReader app Configure your email account(s) under “Connect to Servers” in the right pane Configure your FTP account(s) under “Connect to Servers” Connect to the email account with the attachment by selecting that account under “Connect to Servers” Find attachment needed (GoodReader will automatically poll your account for any messages with attachments) and download it by selecting it/clicking on it from the email window Close the email dialog box – the dowloaded file should now appear under “My Documents” in the left pane Click “Manage Files” in the right pane Select the attachment in the left pane, then in the right pane, click “copy” Click “Connect to Servers” and select the FTP server In the pop up window for the now-connected server, navigate to the folder you want to upload the file to Click “Paste” (button in lower right corner of server window) …and you’re done!

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Raven Tools Review

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The following is a sponsored post for Raven tools.Not only are Raven Tools very powerful and help you get things done quickly and efficiently, but they are also offered at a very reasonable price.If you’ve been involved in SEO for the past few years you’ve probably heard about Raven Tools, but you might not have looked at them. They have a fairly extensive variety tools, that are designed to make it easier for a small SEO firm to provide nice formated white labeled reports to their clients and for consultants to use the reports and data for tracking and to make strategic and tactical decisions. In this post we’ll be taking a look at link management, link research and reporting.

Link Research and Link Management

There are a lot of tools here so I’ll hit a few, you can see who links to you and monitor if the link changes or goes inactive. You can use it to explore the links of other websites. You can use it to scan for potential link partners based on keywords. Using that information you can start contacting site owners for links, and if everyone uses the screen shown below you can make sure you don’t send duplicate requests, or keep requesting links from the same sources over again and again.

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Call for spam reports in five languages

May 5, 2010

in Google/SEO

I recently returned from a vacation to Japan, Hong Kong, and Thailand. It was a ton of fun and I hope to blog about it at some point — each country was of course unique and each offered different, wonderful experiences. From the cherry blossoms and the kindness shown to me by my colleagues at the Google Tokyo office in Japan, to the hustle and bustle and skyscrapers of Hong Kong, to the beautiful landscapes, people (and elephants!) of Thailand, I relished every minute. The trip also redoubled my interest in webspam in world-wide languages.

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Site review for Google I/O attendees

May 12, 2010

in Google/SEO

If you’re attending Google I/O next week then you might enjoy the SEO site review session that we’ll be doing. If you’ll be attending Google I/O, you can now submit your website for review. I’ll also include the form below:

Added 5/20/2010: The site review is today and we’ve already gotten over 500 sites submitted, so I’m removing the form submission.

By the way, if you’re attending Google I/O you’ll probably want to install the very spiff Android app for it. You can search for

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Submit video questions for May 2010

May 14, 2010

in Google/SEO

It’s that time! On Monday morning I’ll record some new videos. I created a Google Moderator page where you can post questions or suggestions and vote topics up and down. I won’t be able to answer every single question, but I’ll tackle several popular ones plus a few of the more interesting questions. Please submit questions that lots of people would be interested in, not just a question about your specific site.

Just a reminder: please leave your question on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When you leave a question on the moderator page, people can vote for the questions and I can see which questions people are most interested in.

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Live-blogging (okay live-waving) Day 1 of Google I/O Keynote

May 19, 2010

in Google/SEO

Okay, I’m going to try live-blogging the keynote of Google I/O, but I’m doing it with a twist. I’m going to try live-blogging in Google Wave with some other folks.

Watch the live-stream video at http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers by the way.

Lots of folks will be live-blogging or waving. Here is a different live wave with Gina Trapani, Kevin Marks, Leo Laporte, and Adam Pash, for example.

Danny Sullivan will be live-blogging the keynote over on Search Engine Land. I believe that Tom Krazit is live-blogging the keynote for CNET too.

Here goes my live-wave:

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Live-buzzing Day 2 of the Google I/O keynote

May 20, 2010

in Android, Google/SEO

Okay, today I’m going to try something different again. I’m going to try live-buzzing the keynote of Day 2 of Google I/O. You can follow the live-buzz right here.

I’m going to update the buzz as news comes out; if you’re following on the web instead of on Buzz, you might need to hit reload to see updates.

Watch the live-stream video at http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleDevelopers by the way.

Check out other live-blogging from:
- Engadget
- Search Engine Land
- A live-wave from Lifehacker
- New York Times
- Wall Street Journal

I believe it should be fine to say that I think you’ll like the speed and polish of Froyo.

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A few thoughts on SSL Search

May 23, 2010

in Google/SEO

I’m incredibly happy that Google has added the option to search over SSL by going to https://www.google.com/ — note the “s” in “https.” I’m writing this blog post in a hotel right now because I’m in Europe for a week doing a series of tech talks, but I could just as easily be working down at local Dublin cafe with an open WiFi hotspot. In both cases, I might want to do a private search that the hotel or local cafe can’t see. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection provides an encrypted tunnel between my browser and Google, so other people can’t sniff what I’m searching for.

I believe encrypted search is an important option for Google searchers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked for secure search in the past (see this post from 2009), and I credit them for helping to put this on Google’s radar. Another inspiration that helped to spark this project was Cory Doctorow’s book “Little Brother.” It was one of my favorite books of 2008 and while I won’t go into the book’s plot here, it’s a quick, fun read. “Little Brother” also makes a compelling case for encrypting HTTP traffic on the web.

Some people don’t yet fully understand how SSL search works. I saw one commenter say “If they still pass in the search parameters in the URL (Get), what’s the point? People can still see what you queried, if they made them “post” messages it might actually do something.” It’s important to realize that even though you as a surfer can see the query in the url, the sites between your browser and Google can’t. Google OS demonstrated that by sniffing a regular HTTP query and an HTTPS query in Wireshark to show that the query can’t be seen going over the wire.

Thanks to all the people at Google who did the all the hard work and heavy lifting to deliver this. One of the main engineers behind the effort was Evan Roseman, a member of the webspam team who you might have met at previous search conferences. In fact, Evan was originally scheduled to be on our site review session at Google I/O this past Thursday, but we decided that launching SSL search took priority.

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Help me pick my new 30 day challenge

June 1, 2010

in 30 days

Okay, I’ve finished roughly a year of 30 day challenges, and now I’d like your help picking new ideas. So far, I’ve done:
- 30 days with no TV (May)
- 30 days of 10,000 steps each day (June)
- 30 days biking into work (July)
- reading 15 books in 30 days (I only made it to 12) (August)
I took September off. I had a bunch of work I had to focus on.
- 30 days with no Microsoft software or operating systems (October)
- 30 days without Robert Scoble (November). I like Robert a lot; this was kind of a no-op/easy 30 day challenge to force me to find additional people that I’m interested in online.
- 30 days with no caffeine (December)
- 30 days with no Twitter or FriendFeed (January)
- 30 days with no iPhone (February)
- 30 days with no sugar (March). That was hard. My wife and I did this one together and it was the roughest.
- 30 days without replying to external email (April). This one was hard and I wasn’t perfect, but I got in much better balance on time spent on email.
- 30 days with no Facebook (May). This one was another easy one for me. I never used Facebook that much in the first place.

So what should I do now? So far I’m playing with two ideas:
- no email after 10 p.m. Email remains the biggest part of my life where I lack balance, and I still need to get it more under control.
- read 50 pages a day. This is one that my wife has been doing, and she’s been enjoying it.

Other possibilities include:
- 30 days as a vegetarian.
- read the Bible (or the Qur’an) in 30 days. I’ve never read either all the way through.
- 30 days of trying to learn to play guitar.
- meditate 10-15 minutes a day for 30 days.
- try one new thing a day for 30 days.
- draw something everyday for 30 days.
- try polyphasic sleep for 30 days.
- go 30 days spending as little money as possible.
- learn as much of a new language as possible in 30 days.
- 30 days to get my finances in order (I haven’t really paid attention to financial stuff as much as I should).
- try to write a novel/book in 30 days.
- write down one thing I’m thankful for each day for 30 days.

Okay, those are a few that I’ve come up with. Tell me your suggestions and then I might put up a poll to let people vote.

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SEO Advice: Make a web page for each store location

June 3, 2010

in Google/SEO

If your company has a bunch of store locations, please don’t hide that information behind a search form or a POST. If you want your store pages to be found, it’s best to have a unique, easily crawlable url for each store. Ideally, you would also create an HTML sitemap that points to the web pages for your stores (and each web page should have a unique url). If you have a relatively small number of stores, you could have a single page that links to all your stores. If you have a lot of stores, you could have a web page for each (say) state that links to all stores in that state.

Here’s a concrete example. I’m a big fan of Pinkberry because I love frozen yogurt: both the delicious treat and the new version of Android.

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SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010

June 4, 2010

in Google/SEO, Movies/Videos

A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live:

The video is about an hour long, but I hope it’s a pretty good use of your time if you’re interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!

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Give Buzz another look

June 13, 2010

in Google/SEO

Have you given Buzz a try recently? Robert Scoble just asked if it was time to reconsider Buzz. Coincidentally I said almost the same thing in a question and answer session with Danny Sullivan last week at the SMX Advanced search conference.

I’ll repeat what I said last week. Do you remember when you first started on Twitter, and you didn’t know quite what to do with it? Who do I follow? What do I say? I didn’t really “get” Twitter for months. But as I found interesting people to follow and got the hang of it, I began to see the appeal of Twitter and started using it more often. I’ve noticed Buzz is tracing that same trajectory for me: an initial burst, followed by a bit of a slump, and then a steady climb as I found people that make Buzz interesting.

Buzz fits nicely between tweeting and blogging. Twitter is perfect when you want to share a link or a single crystalized idea. But Twitter isn’t as strong for group discussion or expressing medium- to long-form ideas. At the same time, blogging is great when you want a permalinked url that will stand the test of time, but it can be a real pain to write a blog post. I always feel like I have to polish my blog posts and it seems to take me at least an hour to write a blog post no matter what I say.

Buzz has the casual feel of Twitter, but you can dive into a topic pretty deeply. Buzz is easier than a blog post, but can look almost as polished. I find Buzz especially good for asking opinions, because the signal-to-noise ratio is (at least right now) quite high. I think Buzz is incredibly strong for internal company discussions too, so I’m looking forward to Buzz rolling into Google Apps.

If you haven’t checked out Buzz, or haven’t checked it out recently, you might want to . You can follow me on Buzz if you’re interested; we’re having a nice discussion about favorite Chrome extensions right now.

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The Power of the Hash # in SEO

Jul 172009published by Hannah in SEO with 17 Comments

Early this month I promised a post detailing the uses of the # in SEO. Here it is.

As I have mentioned before the hash is often overlooked, if at all used, by SEOs. A very unfortunate thing because it can not only help solve duplicate content issues but help you consolidate the link juice from all the URLs with duplicate content. How is this possible?

According to Randfish’s whiteboard Friday videos

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Microsoft-Yahoo Tie Search Tie Up

Jul 302009published by Gary in SEO with 5 Comments

Earlier this year there was a lot of talk about a possible Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo. As we very well know the deal did not push through. This time we can be sure that Microsoft is a lot happier having finally inked an important deal with Yahoo.

Microsoft and Yahoo have signed a 10-year agreement stating that Yahoo will be using Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine. In turn Yahoo will be the one taking care of the search advertisements appearing next to the Bing results both for Microsoft and Yahoo.

This is big news indeed because Yahoo Search will no longer be as we know it. The partnership is obviously strategically advantageous to both since they still lag behind the search giant Google. Microsoft did see an increase in market share when they rolled out Bing but ended up making a dent not on Google’s market share but on Yahoo’s. With Yahoo Search’s users migrating to Microsoft it is clear why Yahoo would want to use Bing to power their own engine. As for Microsoft this is a good sign that , as Nick Wingfield of Wall Street Journal put it, the tide is finally turning and

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Bing Ignoring Instructions Not to Index Pages

Aug 92009published by Hannah in SEO with 4 Comments

Bing has been having problems with its indexing. Just recently Brett Yount, Program Manager of Bing Webmaster Center has responded to some complaints of incidences where MSNbot disregarded specific instructions not to index certain pages.

According to mckenzie MSNbot did not follow the Disallow instruction in his robots.txt file. Another user, jiosis, complained that MSNBot ignored the robots tag where he used the NoIndex/NoFollow attribute.

The good news is that Brett Yount says that they are already working on the problem although as of the moment it will be a good idea for everyone to start checking whether pages you want to stay hidden are being indexed by Bing or not. If you encounter the same problem there is no need to fill out a content removal request since, as Brett Yount says, it is a problem on Bing’s side. All you need to do is email Brett Yount at bwmc

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Observations on Google Caffeine

the next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

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Ranking in Google News

Search Engines with 1 Comment

If you are aiming to rank in Google News but doing exactly the same thing you do in your ordinary websites then you are likely wasting your effort in link building. The reason for this is that for Google News there’s a different emphasis on the importance of factors.

One of the most significant difference in the ranking factors between Google News and Google Web is that pagerank is not as important in Google News. The reason for this is that due to the nature of news stories what is most important is of course the freshness and relevance of the content.

In Google News the robots crawl and find news articles in a matter of minutes and then comeback to check for updates approximately 12 hours later. What this means is that the number of back links is rightfully not deemed to be that important since there will be very few, if any, back links generated within that timeframe.

So what are the things you can do for your news articles to rank well in Google News?

1.Pick a story that you know is of interest to a wide audience. The reason for this is that Google News ranks news articles in two ways. First is the story ranking wherein they group together stories and figure out which stories are of greater interest. Obviously bigger stories will rank better than small stories (even if written and optimized well) since the articles belonging to the

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Google News Rank Boosters

SEO Tips with 4 Comments

Last time I gave some tips on how to rank better in Google News. Today I’ll be giving some more tips that are still straight from Google Developer Programs Tech Lead, Maile Ohye.

According to Ms Ohye some of the best practices you should adopt include:

Keeping the article body intact

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Google Social Search

Oct 292009published by Gary in Search Engines with 2 Comments

Google launched its this week. The new product is still in its experimental phase so you will need to log in to your Google account to sign up for the experiment as well as see the social search results.

So what is exactly and how does it work?

is simply a way to see

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Social Search and SEO

SEO Tips with 15 Comments

So how is the social search engine relevant to SEO?

It is obviously important because we see how more and more each day search is turning into something more personal as search engines seek ways to improve the relevance of search results. What this means is that we (SEOs) should encourage clients to improve their online network and to start seriously considering or putting more effort in the social media efforts.

Here are a few tips on what you should immediately do to get the most of Google Social Search (remember this may be in experimental mode now but you want to reap the benefits even before it’s fully released):

Get a Google Account and update your public Google profile

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PPC Management Software and Tips

Nov 102009published by Gary in Pay-Per-Click with 3 Comments

One of the best ways to drive interested visitors to your site is through pay per click (PPC) advertising. It is common sense that if you provide someone who is looking for a specific product with a link to that product they will buy it instead of just getting more information about it.

Though, when you make a mistake with your PPC campaign it can cost you a great deal. If you are new to the game you may forget to do several important things. For one, you may not remember to place a cap on your daily bids. Even PPC veterans with high traffic campaigns sometimes have lapses in judgment that result in untargeted clicks which do not convert.

Monitoring your click-through-rates (CTR) and conversion data is a necessity once your campaign gets established, after which you can adjust your things accordingly. This is where PPC bid management comes into play.

If you use an automated bid management system which both analyzes your conversion data and CTR you can reduce the amount of time and effort you need to dedicate to your campaigns. This means that you can react much quicker to campaign fluctuations because they are identified sooner. But when looking for a good automated system you need to remember that often times you get what you pay for.

As a pay per click advertiser you need to consider four things when choosing a bid management system:

The number of keywords you are currently bidding on.The size of your budget.Is the system going to do a better job managing your budget across all your campaigns?The number of campaign that are currently being managed.If you take all these into consideration you can probably find a very good automated bid manager on the market. One such system is Acquisio Search. Acquisio Search is a custom pay per click software system that is capable of monitoring your keywords, flagging those that need to be paused, and automatically emailing you about keywords that have poor Quality Scores.

If you are still a PPC rookie then you probably have a much smaller number of active campaigns. Shoemoney Tools or BidMax offer more affordable solutions. Both of these tools are well suited for running a smaller campaign and are intuitive in how they function, making them perfect for someone new to PPC.

As much help as a PPC tool is they are still not as useful as regular, hands-on maintenance. Software can only interpret data in certain ways, requiring a human to properly understand the numbers and information. Constant scrutiny is required in order to get the best possible performance from your PPC campaign. Still, as your campaign becomes bigger and the scale or budgets increase, an automated bidding system becomes an invaluable tool for PPC advertisers.

Popularity: 56%

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Introducing Open Site Explorer

SEO Tools with 8 Comments

I attended SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) webinar last Thursday, January 28, and learned some things on how to make the most of the new link analysis tool.

If you’ve been using Linkscape you’re probably pretty happy with the functionalities that the service brings. At first glance it might seem that another link analysis tool would just be redundant and, for the most part, that is actually true. However there are some things that Open Site Explorer can give that Linkscape doesn’t really do and vice versa. In the future though Rand said that OSE and Linkscape will probably become integrated with one becoming the premium version.

One of the major difference is the number of links available per report: shows up to 10,000 links in OSE and 3,000 links in Linkscape. Note though that unless you are a SEOmoz Pro member you will only be shown details of 5 links in OSE and none in Linkscape. However, you do see the other important metrics such as overall page authority, domain authority, number of linking root domains, and total number of links including those that are “no followed”. These data are things you need to know where you stand in your link building effort, but it’s really the other data that gives you more actionable items.

According to Rand some of the things you can do with the data given by OSE include finding the following:

302 pages - What you can do is turn them into 301s404 pages - You have to options for these pages: either put content in those pages or redirect them.Inbound links with low quality anchor text - Contact the owner of the linking page and ask them to change the anchor text to something you prefer.Links to competitors’ error pages - Don’t forget to analyze your competitors’ links. Do the same thing as #3 but make sure you explain to the person you are contacting to link to YOUR page, explain how linking to an error page can hurt them, and give your preferred anchor text. This isn’t really unethical since the link was pointing to an empty error page anyway.Links to old/poor pages - Redirect these links to newer pages that offer fresh and/or more relevant content.

One other thing that Rand suggested that stood out for me was in answer to a question by one of the participants. (Sorry I wasn’t able to take note of the person’s name. If you attended the same webinar and know, do let me know.) The question was: How can we use OSE to determine what to charge our clients?

Rand suggested that you simply check out the domain and page authority of your client’s page as well as the number of links. Then you check out your client’s competitors’ pages and compare the data, after which you can do a guestimate of how much effort you need to put into link building as well as how long it will take to creep up on the competitors in search rankings.

Popularity: 40%

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Interview of Tedster from WebmasterWorld

Apr
06

If you have been in the SEO field for any serious length of time you have probably come across (and benefited from) some of Tedster's work - either directly, or indirectly from others who have repackaged his contributions as their own. He is perhaps a bit modest, but there are few people in the industry as universally well respected as he is. I have been meaning to interview him for a while now, and he is going to be speaking at Pubcon South on April 14th in Dallas, so I figured now was as good a time as any :)

How long have you been an SEO, and how did you get into the field?

I started building websites in 1995 and the word SEO hadn't been invented. I came from a background in retail marketing, rather than technology or graphic design. So my orientation wasn't just "have I have built a good site?", but also "are enough people finding my site?"

The best method for bringing in traffic seemed to be the search engines, so I began discussing this kind of marketing with other people I found who had the same focus. Ah, the good old days, right? We were so basic and innocently focused, you know?

If you could list a few key documents that helped you develop your understanding of search, which would be the most important ones?

Here are a few documents that acted as major watersheds for me:

1989: Scott Deerwester - Latent Semantic Analysis (Patent)1997: Jon Kleinberg - HITS Algorithm (PDF)1998: Page & Brin - PageRank (Patent)2003: Microsoft - VIPS: A Vision-based Page Segmentation Algorithm (PDF)2004: Yahoo - Combating Web Spam with TrustRank (PDF)2005: Google - Information retrieval based on historical data (Patent)2006: Google - Phrase-Based Indexing (Patent)2008: Google - Interleaving Search Results (Patent)

Is PageRank still crucial? Or have other things replaced it in terms of importance?

What PageRank is measuring (or attempting to measure) is still very critical

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DIY SEO Software Reviews

Is DIY SEO any good? Does it work?

When I got to look at DIY SEO my first thought was: good structure & layout, lets see what is under the hood. But then after opening up the hood I found a car with no engine.

On a score of usability I would give the site a 9 or a 10, but in terms of utility it would be lucky to score as high as a 2 or a 3.

Google AdWords: The Cheapest SEM Strategy for Small & Local Businesses

Maybe there are some small businesses out there who are content being obscure, or who only want to rank for their own business name plus maybe 1 or 2 longtail keywords. But for those businesses I suggest bypassing SEO and buying a few Google AdWords ads.

Low traffic keywords are typically cheap to buy search ads on - because you only pay by the click. If few people are searching for something then there will be few clicks to buy. Not only are such markets small, but due to their small size they are also heavily fragmented, making the AdWords traffic even cheaper.If few people are searching for your brand then you can likely spend $25 a month on AdWords and ignore learning SEO.A Legitimate SEO Strategy Requires Investment

With a paid search campaign, you can use Google AdWords to instantly buy search traffic and gain new customers. SEO is a drawn out strategy & typically requires a much deeper initial investment.

There is little value in investing in SEO unless your goal is to dominate your market, and there is sufficient market scale to justify investing thousands of Dollars (and far more when you consider the value of your time). After all, a single link from Business.com or the Yahoo! Directory will run you $299, and 2 links hardly makes for an effective SEO strategy - but they will set you back $600 a year.

And you don't get those links any cheaper just because your business is small. ;)

Why Does DIY SEO Offer Such a Weak SEO Solution?

When looking at DIY SEO it took me a while to think it through, because I kept thinking "something is missing." Why did they raise funding to build THAT? But then I thought it through. DIY SEO was designed by marketers looking to sell something that would be easy to sell at scale - it was not created out of passion to solve a real problem with the desire to help make a difference in people's lives.

The difference is not subtle.

After all, Andy is the guy who had time to build out hundreds of thin affiliate sites, while being too lazy (and lacking the concern needed) to fix his SEO blog for months while it installed malware on anyone who visited his site. That blog had the tagline Livin' the dream, but that is for him though...you can live with malware. He doesn't care.

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Are Content Mills the Future of Online Publishing? What Comes Next?

Apr
07

Aaron's discussed content mills in his interview with Tedster yesterday.

What is a content mill?

A content mill is a site that publishes cheap content. The content is either user-contributed, paid, or a mix of the two. The term content mill is obviously pejorative, the implication being that the content is only published to pump content into search engines, and is typically of low value in terms of quality.

The problem is that some sites that publish cheap content may well provide value, but it depends who is reading it. For example, a forum might be considered a content mill, as it contains cheap, user-generated content of little value to a disinterested visitor, or a forum might be a valuable, regularly updated resource provided by a community of enthusiasts!

Depends who you ask.

As Aaron says, content mills are all the rage in 2010. Let's take a closer look.

Why Are SEOs Interested In Content Mills?

This idea is nothing new. It's actually white-hat SEO strategy, and has been used for years.

Research keywordsWrite content about those keywordsPublish content and attempt to rank that content in search engine resultsRepeat

If you can publish a page at a lower cost than your advertising return, then you simply repeat the process over and over, and you're golden. Think Adsense, affiliate, and similar means to monetize pages. Take a look at Demand Media.

The Problem With Content Mills

One of the problems with content mills is that in an attempt to drive the production cost of content below the predicted return, some site owners are producing garbage content, usually by facilitating free contributions from users.

At the low end, Q&A sites proliferate wherein people ask questions and a community of people with opinions, informed or otherwise, provide their two cents worth. Unfortunately, many of the answers are worth somewhat less than two cents, resulting in pages of little or no value to an end reader. I'm sure you've seen such pages, as such pages often rank well in search engines if they are published on a domain with sufficient authority.

Some sites, like Mahalo, not only automate their page creation, but the use that automated page to generate automate related question pages as well. The rabbit hole has no bottom!

At the other end of the spectrum, we have sites that publish higher-cost, well researched content sourced from paid writers. A traditional publishing model, in other words. Generally speaking, such pages are of higher value to end user, but the problem is that the search engines can't appear to tell the difference between these pages and the junk opinion pages. If the content mill has sufficient authority, then the junk gets promoted.

And there are many examples in between, of course.

As Tedster mentioned, "the problem here is that every provider of freelance content is NOT providing junk - though some are. As far as I know, there is no current semantic processing that can sort out the two. It's tough to see how this could be quickly and effectively reined in, at least not by algorithm. I assume that this kind of empty filler content is not very useful for visitors

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Beauty is Rare - Elusive so it Can be Easily Sold

Apr
08

A couple years ago my wife and I had our big wedding in the Philippines (we even had the mayor of Manila show up). She was so beautiful that day. And lucky for me she is just as beautiful when she wakes up each day. :D

But she can be hard on herself and if she gains a single pound she worries. Truth is I am the chubby one who needs to drop weight.

Beauty (and the perception of it) is a wonder commodity to sell because there is no limit. Almost everyone could be in better shape or be stronger or eat healthier or not have this or that birthmark or the odd finger that bends backwards.

We are imperfect beings by our very nature.

We get sick.

We break.

And we all fight the battle of aging one day at a time - every single day!

But no matter where you go, whatever is rare is typically considered desirable & beautiful. This is not done as an accident, but as a way to generate profits. If the human condition is flawed (and can't be fixed) then the person selling a bogus solution to that problem is going to make a lot more money than a person who sells something which is actually attainable.

And so we live in a world where we treat symptoms, rather than problems. Anything to make the numbers look good and make the sale. From there you are on your own! If you feel bad, we can give you more drugs!

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Paid Content: the New Paid Link

Apr
12 Paid Links Are Spam

Buying links is considered spammy by Google because it is a ranking short cut which subverts search relevancy algorithms.

And so Google considers it a black hat SEO practice.

Links are somewhat hard to scale because (outside of those who create a network of spam) it is time intensive to find the right sites, negotiate a price, and then ensure appropriate placement. It requires interacting with many webmasters & going through a lot of rejections to get a few yes responses. Due to scale limitations, paid links typically only exert a slight influence on core industry keywords and common variations, limiting any potential relevancy damage.

Further, when a person buys a link, the relevancy is almost always guaranteed (as one would go broke fast if they rented links targeting irrelevant keywords).

Even still, Google hates paid links because they can lower result diversity & bias the organic search results away from being informational and towards being commercial (which in turn means that Google AdWords ads get fewer clicks).

Policing Paid Links

To make link building efforts easier to police, Google created nofollow, which aimed to disrupt the flow of link equity across certain links. Initially the alleged purpose was blocking comment spam. And then after it was in place, comment spam never went away, but the role of rel

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Interview With Anita Campbell in ~ 1 Hour :)

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Posted in: interviews

by Aaron Wall

Your Thoughts?

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Clicky Web Analytics Interview

Apr
13

The field of web analytics is filled with free options, self hosted options, open-source products, expensive options, and affordable paid solutions. If you are looking for an affordable, feature-rich, and easy to use web analytics package you may want to check out Clicky.

Clicky is real time as well, which is a feature even some of the more popular services do not have. You can find a comparison between Clicky and their competitors right on their home page. Currently you can go back 6 months in the interface so you'll want to make copies of your data every few months or so.

Recently we interviewed Sean and Noah over at GetClicky.Com. Clicky is pretty popular with the members here and it's a great alternative to Google Analytics.

Sean and Noah were kind enough to answer some questions about their business model, future plans, and the rich feature set within their product.

1. Is selling the company in your future plans? If so, how would data be protected in such a case. As an example Tracking202 sold out to Bloosky and that concerned many affiliates. Do you plan on selling a version of the software which can be hosted locally on the users own server to get around worries associated with you possibly selling the service someday?

Selling the company is never out of the question; however, it would be inane and arrogant to plan solely for such an exit. We enjoy building Clicky and interacting with the Clicky community, and new owners usually have new agendas. Therefore, we prefer to keep Clicky rather than sell it. But if we did sell it, we would only do so under the condition that nothing changes for existing users. We do not have any plans to offer a self hosted option.

2. Do your sell the data at all? How secure is the data? Some of our members pointed out that Clicky doesn't have an about us page and Roxr's site is thin on the "who you are" details. In dealing with certain search engines, a few folks in the SEO field like to carry around a tinfoil hat or 3. Could you tell us a bit more about your company, infrastructure, etc?

Under no circumstances do we sell our customers' data. Data is stored locally and only accessed by its respective owners. Our privacy policy states this and we abide wholly to this unsigned "contract". We have never had any unauthorized access to customer data. We provide SSL login and encourage customers to use this feature.

Your members are correct; we don't mention the "people" behind Clicky. However, once a user registers for Clicky, he will shortly discover we are at his disposal. We usually respond to emails in the same day; we collaborate with our users through our forums and blog; phone support is offered to our white label clients; and Sean and I are always a tweet away.

Sean -

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Google SERP CTR Data by Search Rank

Apr
15

Generally I have not been a huge fan of registering all your websites with Google (profiling risks, etc.), but they keep using the carrot nicely to lead me astray. :D ... So much so that I want to find a Googler and give them a hug.

Google recently decided to share some more data in their webmaster tools. And for many webmasters the data is enough to make it worth registering (at least 1 website)!

AOL Click Data

When speaking of keyword search volume beakdown data people have typically shared information from the leaked AOL search data.

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Does Marketing Make You Cynical?

Apr
16

A common practice in the marketing space is for people to diminish what you do, state that it is below them, help rebrand your stuff in a negative light, and then at some point in the future basically clone the idea (maybe with a few new features, maybe not) and then push their clone job aggressively as though it is revolutionary.

Another shady practice is when you ask people for advice and they say "no don't do that" and then as soon as they hang up the phone they send off emails to their workers telling them to do that which they told you was a bad idea.

I don't think that the average person or the average marketer is inherently sleazy. But I think when you look at the people who are the most successful certainly a larger than average percent of them engaged in shady behavior at some point.

To keep building yield and returns at some point short cuts start to look appealing. And so you get

the word of mouth marketing organization sending out brazen spam - and being proud of it automated ad networks designed to maximize yield without concern for what they are pushing - even if they categorize some of the offers as "get rich quick" scams a search service which wraps its ads around tons of pirated copyright content - paying thieves to steal it & trying to force more of the copyright content online

None of the above is a cynical take or an opinion at this point. That was simply a list of 3 stated facts.

Create a large enough organization with enough people and you can always make something shady seem like it was due to the efforts of a rogue individual, rather than as company policy. A key to doing this effectively within a large organization is to publish public thoughts that are the exact opposite of your internal business practices.

The word "propaganda" was a bad word, as that is what the Germans were using, so Edward Bernays had to give it another name - public relations.

Recently the Google public policy blog published a post titled Celebrating Copyright. Around the same time Viacom leaked the following internal Google document

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Who Are The Top 10 SEOs in the World?

Apr
20

A lot of people who are well known as SEOs spend too much time on self promotion and not enough time on business development. BTW I would classify myself as being in that camp, though I have been slowly migrating since meeting my wife ;)

So much of SEO stuff is sorta ego in place of performance IMHO. And the problem when you hire top SEOs is that even if they have a strong brand and do great work on their own sites, the market pricing for services tends to be so dysfunctionally under-priced that...

it is mostly an exercise in back patting to even do any client services after you have a good amount of capital, cashflow, and leverage onlineeven if you think you are hiring one of the best SEOs you still rarely get to work with them because the people who are out there being really well known are by and large lead generation tools for the company, and the bigger the company is the more likely you are to have an intern servicing your account

Getting serious cashflow out of servicing the SEO market is akin to squeezing water out of a rock, especially when compared against running your own websites.

To me, the measure of an SEO's success is not in their knowledge, but in their ability to leverage their knowledge to build cashflow. I know money isn't everything, but we live in a world where the algorithms grow more complex every day. So each day you are working for less than your market value is a day closer you are to being broke!

Spamming and jamming can get you some paydays, but its not easy to

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Google Engineers Offering Free Course in Black PR

Apr
26

Has a competitor launched a new feature that concerns you? If so, how do you react?

Google, well known for their public relations expertise, does not like the idea of Facebook creating an (eventual) distributed ad network based on demographics data. In spite of Google personalizing search by default (without asking), Google opting you into behavioral targeting (without asking), & automatically opting you into Google Buzz (without asking), suddenly they are a company concerned with the privacy of people on

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Update Rank Checker

May
11

We updated rank checker this morning - sortable columns, faster code, works with the new Google SERPs, etc. If you are one of the dozens of people who filled out a support ticket and didn't get a reply...always check to see if updates are available before filling out a support ticket. And even then we probably don't need support tickets, because it rarely takes us more than a day to update our plug-ins as Google changes.

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Posted in: seo tools

by Aaron Wall

Your Thoughts?

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Advanced Web Ranking Review

May
12

Advanced Web Ranking (further referenced as AWR) is a fairly robust website rank checking product which is recommended by lots and lots of people in our forums. There are many rank checking tools on the market, some worthy of mention and many not (although some of that is just do to feature overlap). AWR is one of the more full featured ones out there.

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How to Fix the Broken Link Graph

May
17

When Teoma launched in 2002 GoogleGuy made the following comment:

"I just have one question. Are the Overture results on top an April Fool's Day joke, or is that for real? ;) "

Since then Google has put ads above their organic search results, done selective self-serving within their "organic" results, and built a business that is pulling in over $20 billion a year. It turns out aggressively carpet-bombing the web with ads is no joke. :D

But the net effect of that success is that many people know the value of links. SEO is a zero sum game, and so if you don't engage in heavy self promotion you will remain obscure on Google's linkless internet:

no one links honestly any more.all links are suspect.no one links freely any more.those that do link freely are considered naive. page rank is specifically worth money. links are currency. articles that once contained great links - no longer link to story targets.

On the web ideas (and business models) spread quickly. So as companies learn that Google encourages and pays you to pollute the web with garbage that is what many people will do. Google goes so far as to explicitly state what not to do, and many people view that as a checklist of opportunities, as it wouldn't be on that list unless it worked. ;)

The lack of community and camaraderie within the SEO industry both remarkable & unsurprising give that the SEO industry is a bit of a canary in the coal mine in terms of adopting new best practices (or worst practices, in some cases).

At the lower end of the market people are operating like robots, mechanically spamming in a way that sure feels like crapping on the virtual living room floors in established public forums.Just yesterday I read a blog post listing me amongst a list of resources where everything recommended had a link - except for our site. The lack of link was so bizarrely out of place that they literally had to explain why they didn't link to our site. Crazy stuff, especially from an SEO "professional" who claims to like and value your work!As attention becomes more scarce, many people are willing to do anything to get a bit of it.

Meanwhile Google has no issues funding that very "linkless" web pollution by paying the likes of Demand Media to syndicate their ads, and encourage the use of rel

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And So The Margins Race Toward Zero

Yahoo! Video

The backfill content business model has had a great run over the past 5 years, but with today's announcement of Yahoo! acquiring Associated Content, it certainly feels like it is getting toward the beginning of the end for that model for most folks.

Demand Media has grown eHow aggressively & struck partnerships with the likes of USA Today, and has recently been in the news about looking to do an

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Wordstream PPC and SEO Tool Review

Wordstream is a suite of online marketing tools which cover Keyword Research and Management for PPC and SEO Campaigns. They also offer a Firefox plug-in which we'll cover in a bit. Wordstream gives you access to three free tools:

Free Keyword Niche FinderFree Keyword Suggestion ToolFree Keyword Grouper

While there are many free and paid keyword tools on the market Wordstream does offer more in the way of integration with industry leading products like Google AdWords and Google Analytics. Recently Wordstream earned the Editor's Pick award in the Google Analytics Application Gallery:

Google Marketplace Award

Wordstream's keyword data is produced via "blended" data which they acquire from multiple sources. The discuss their data sources on the FAQ section of the Free Keyword Tool. It's important to note that they do not simply pull keyword data from Google like many other "keyword research" tools do.

Both PPC and SEO campaigns can fall victim to poor organization which leads to poor site or campaign architecture which eventually leads to poor results as data becomes more and more difficult to accurately manage. Wordstream aims to aid in your keyword research, PPC campaign management, and SEO execution.

Free Tools Free Keyword Niche Finder

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Strategizer Review, Wordtracker's New Tool

Join Upgrade Blog Tools Forum Training Videos Aff About Support « Wordstream PPC and SEO Tool Review
Recent Interviews »

Strategizer Review, Wordtracker's New Tool May
21

Wordtracker continues to add value beyond their position as a well-respected keyword research tool provider.

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Recent Interviews

May
27

I was recently talking to my buddy Chris from Warlock Media, and he mentioned a blog post where he wrote "There are more sharks and less fish these days and the trend looks to continue for many years to come." I think as winners accumulate capital and markets consolidate being involved as a person well known in online marketing will become less enjoyable. I explained some of my thoughts on that front in the most recent Ruud questions interview.

This is part of the reason I love the publisher model so much more than the consultant model. Our SEO Book customers are great, but we have to sort through a lot of hate from the bottom 90% to attract a lot of the top 10%ers. My wife is a top 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%er, and we recently did an interview with Boardroom Couple.

And here is yet another interview. :)

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Posted in: interviews

by Aaron Wall

Your Thoughts?

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Google Still Busy Killing Off the Link Graph, One Link at a Time

May
27

Now that big media practices keyword stuffing, engage in link selling, are invested in SEO start ups, and are selling SEO services perhaps they won't publish ill-informed pablum when writing about SEO. :D

Don't hold your breath waiting on that, but...

Now that newspapers are looking to sell SEO services, Google is rumored to be out and about asking them to remove links:

We understand that newspapers are currently being contacted by Google and being asked to remove links (especially those placed after the articles have been written

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The Hidden Risk of Trusting Link Building Networks

May
28

Yesterday someone emailed me this quote

"People that pay for things never complain. It's the guy you give something to that you can't please."

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TV is the New Mobile

Jun
01

When Google enters a field sometimes they do so quietly, but when they decide they want to own something there is nothing quiet about their approach. They are not content to pick one niche and one model (the way that Netflix does):

Google keeps fighting on multiple fronts. Like boxing a glacier, over time they just wear the market down.

Google wants to turn Youtube watchers into mindless drones who are spared the expense of thought:

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Keyword List Comparison Tool

Jun
04

This video is a review of one of our online SEO tools - the , which makes it easy to compare up to 10 keyword lists against each other. This can be used to help determine the quality of keyword data sources, to pool data into a handy unified list, or to help understand the overlap in keyword strategy from competing sites when using competitive research tools.

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Posted in: seo tools

by Aaron Wall

Your Thoughts?

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New Google AdWords Training Course

Jun
07

Back when I got into SEO part of the reason I wasn't too into PPC back then was because I had limited cash, but another big reason I wasn't big on it was because it seemed so simple and boring. Over the past couple years that has changed a lot!

Today Google AdWords is far more complex than SEO was in 2003.

With that complexity there are additional opportunities for some & additional expenses for others. But keeping up with all the changes is easily a full time job.

Noticing that trend, and seeing stuff like the below image, I thought it made sense to try to create something great servicing the AdWords / PPC market.


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Google Maps Devours Second Click

Jun
08

In the past when I claimed that the Google Maps insertion in organic search results wasn't more organic search but rather a Google promotion, I was met with skepticism by some, who argued that Google Maps was just another flavor of organic search and visitors would still be able to go to the end ranked website.

If you search for something on Google and click on one of the end URLs you can still visit them, but Google made one step in the opposite direction today. If you click on the map now the Google Maps section lists a bunch of places on the maps, rather than giving you the URLs. You then have to click onto one of the locations to see it on the map and open a pop up area which contains information including the URL. More clicks to do the same thing.

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BlueGlass LA

Jun
08

I spoke to Loren from Search Engine Journal today and he mentioned a conference he is helping put together in Los Angeles.

The conference is .

It's on July 19/20 in LA. The speaker line up is pretty awesome and takes a business / start up approach on top of the killer search & social media tactics he will be reviewing. Tickets are only $495, and he has put together a 15% discount for SEObook readers/members. It's seobook

SEJ is also running a contest to give away a free pass. Many years ago I got my start in going to SEO conferences at the 2003 Boston SES conference by Danny giving me a free pass for help packing the schwag bags. And on the last day of the conference it snowed and snowed & was a scary snowy drive home. Years later I got to pass the free pass favor onto Patrick (who now has a great view).

If you have any questions about the conference, you can comment below and Loren will catch them.

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Posted in: conferences

by Aaron Wall

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How To Price

Ever wondered your SEO services? Your products? Have you set your prices at a point where you can get the best possible returns?

Pricing seems simple, but there's a bit of an art to getting it right.

In this article we'll take a look at different ways to price, a few strategies to use, and why you might want to avoid charging everyone the same price.

Why Pricing Strategy Matters

Obviously, if we get our pricing wrong, we'll miss out on business.

In order to increase profits, we could devise new services and products. However, by adjusting our existing pricing strategy on goods or services we already provide, we can squeeze out extra revenue with little effort.

To get greater returns from pricing, companies typically find ways to charge different prices to different customers.

Cost Plus Pricing

Cost-plus pricing is a common pricing method. Pricing of a good or service is determined by working out the total production cost, then add a profit margin. There's nothing wrong with this method - cost-plus pricing is widely used - however it does present a few problems.

One problem is that cost-plus pricing doesn't take into account the role of competitors. If we offer a SEO service at $15,000, arrived at by the cost-plus method, but our competitors offer the same service for $10,000 then our pricing clearly won't work. We must price in accordance with the market.

Cost-plus pricing doesn't take into account fluctuating demand. If demand for your products/services suddenly goes through the roof - say because you've been interviewed on nationwide television - they become scarce, and price should rise to reflect this scarcity.

Another problem is that it doesn't take value, as perceived by the customer, into account.

Imagine that you've created a widget that enables a machine to work at twice the output it did before. The value to the customer is considerable, as they can now double their output with little extra investment. The total cost of building the widget may be low. Cost-plus pricing would typically underprice such a widget. Value based pricing would charge in line with the total value it creates for the customer i.e. the increased value of their output.

In terms of SEO, are you charging enough for your services if you charge a few thousand dollars, whilst your clients make millions? Thinking of pricing in terms of value provided to your customer is a key to increasing profits.

Let's look at a method to accurately calculate a price for your goods or services.

Pricing Calculator

In the The Art Of Pricing, you can find the following method for setting prices.

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