Ok. So SEO has progressed into a big money industry. One thing I’ve seen during my relatively short(comparatively) existance in the industry is a seen a transition from manual work, to outsourcing, to now smaller corporations springing up that are essentially an outsourcing frontend. Companies that may(for example) have a massive site network that you order outsourced posts from, companies that have built in article creation queues, companies that offer blog commenting and directory submission. All of this has greatly improved the efficiency with which one can operate. All of these are steps towards automation in an odd way. A “set it and forget it” that still involves humans. Today we’re going to cover how to take that, and turn it into something even more automated by consolidating these services into our own backend to create mini-sites.
Introduction
This entry is going to be in context of “mini sites” (as people have expressed a fair amount of interest in those), and creating a mini-site factory. For the SEO that may not be able to create additional sites(due to contracts and whatnot), simply remove the tactics you cannot use and you’ve still got a great linkbuilding and content generation setup.
It’s been noted many times that often the most effective SEO is that which rides the line of blackhat(read: automation) but still stays within the white/grayhat realm(read:semi-automation).
What is Our Goal for Our Mini Sites
Our goal is to have them each be in a subniche of the same niche, and use them to help promote our primary domain. They have enough content to be a defensible site, and enough links to provide some juice linking back to our primary domain. So we need to get 3 things handled. The template for the new sites, content for the new sites, and the linkbuilding for the new sites. Keep in mind these are not explicitely designed to rank themselves.
The Site Factory
The Template - This gets much easier if you’re using a consistant CMS like wordpress. Either way, it’s the major disconnect in the entire process, and something best handled by either yourself, or someone in a position of trust. It’s essentially downloading templates that would look acceptable for your niche, removing those damnable footer links, and loading them into a template folder. Do a lot in the first place. As this is the most hands-on part of the process(excluding domain purchases), it’s something we want to get out of the way early.
The Content Building - Keywords here is “backend” and “outsourcing”.
Get yourself a reliably good writer. All of this becomes about 20x more difficult if you have to review posts before they go live, and essentially removes the entire point of this entire entry.
Create yourself a lovely backend. Your entire input: domain, list of topics. This displays to your article writer. They have a place to paste each article and select the proper site. When all articles for the site are completed, it’s not too hard to set something up to automatically paypal them and record the transaction
The actual post of the information is easiest with Wordpress. You can just tie in your writer’s backend to the blogs with XMLRPC, and easily post straight from their console(even though they don’t need to know your password
If you’re not using the blog format, it’s pretty easy to rig up a fake one. Have the entry insert into a database, then just have the articles section pull from that database based on an ID in the URL (like ?articleid=4 would be SELECT article FROM articles WHERE articleid=4 LIMIT 1)
The Link Building - Ok. You need 2 things for this to work. Reliable junk link methods(directories, commeting, etc), and reliable workers. Depending on your trust level for the workers this can change drastically.
Add the site to the link building queue as soon as they paypal to pay the article writer goes out. It’s moved another step down the assembly line.
Automatic Scripts -No, not link spam. Automatic directory submission is a fun one here. Anything you can do to build fast links automatically is golden so long as you aren’t going to have to monitor for bans because of the method.
Directing the Outsourced - So you’ve got your outsourced link building guys. How to give them the jobs?
Just Viewing the Job Queue - All they see is the site in question. You rely on them to go out and actually build the links. The upside of this is that it’s really easy. They just check into the queue every day or so, do the work, then go about their business. The downside is just that you have no way to verify their work.
View the Specific URLs - They see the URLs of the directories and blogs you want comments dropped at. The downside is if you don’t especially trust your workers they can run off and sell the list to other places. Also, it’s hard for outsourced workers to do this quickly.
The Complete Backend - If you have someone doing something like blog comments, and you’re paranoid about them running off with your do-follow list or directory list, you can relatively easily create a backend that displays the post and the comment box, or just the forms to submit your site. The downside of this is it doesn’t handle different CMS’s or different anti-spam mods.
The Big Picture
You are now doing very little for site production. Mini sites are getting pumped out for the cost of the domain ($6.00 let’s say), $10-25 for articles, and $10-20 for some basic promotion. So on the cheap end these sites could potentially be manufactured for about $26.00. Maybe $40 for a more significant site. It’s a permanent backlink, and can draw in/direct traffic itself within it’s niche.
Your job? Pick domain, pick keywords, pick article subjects. Not a bad gig, huh?
If you want the per-site cost to go down, you can pretty easily create fewer sites, but add more content to each (this lowers the overall needed promotion to give it some link juice).
No site is going to be able to be 100% supported by these in the form I described, but throwing in some decent cross linking and a few more original tricks, and they can give you some decent traffic and even better link juice.
Important: The function of this system relies HEAVILY on how reliable the people doing the work are. You need people that you know are going to check the queue, and that you know will do the work without you having to police them.
-XMCP
PS: I think I’m going to start posting more, and just rotating what I post about. If there’s an SEO related post one day, the next post will likely be PPC/industry news/a rant. I may eventually decided on 3 or so categories that get rotated in, but for now I’m just going to have fun with it.
August 30, 2009
The Super Linkable (and Defensible) Site Elements
Hey there.
Finally got a few ideas down for entries, been a bit slow getting them out of the box. I went to the Scary SEO conference in October though, and it really got me thinking again(been so insanely busy lately I’ve hardly had time to just sit and think). So today we’re going to cover site structures/elements, and how to arrange them to milk the internet for as many links as possible using them. This is going to be a surprisingly whitehat post methinks, but I’ll add in some odd tricks to fill my shady quota. Massive thanks to Jeff Quipp for getting me to take Web 2.0 seriously.
The Concept
No matter how pretty your commercial site is, people are not going to be inclined to do that true *organic* link that we so desire. By building out non-commercial(read: Web 2.0) aspects of it, we can increase the likelihood of links. With a little bit of thought, we can use those to funnel their respective link juice into our mothership(commercial) site. There’s also a few off-site sites that we can build that would survive nearly any manual review, but can overtime get some decent power behind them.
The Commercial Site
Ok. So purchased links to commercial sites always stand out because in reality, people don’t find a miscellanious productX store to link to when they mention productX. So what we’re going to do is keep the homepage to having strictly defensible links. Links that are not questionable, (rarely if ever) purchased, and are just generally high quality. We’re setting it up this way because we’re not trying to drive the homepage up with external links: of all the pages on a site it has probably the least amount of plausible deniability. For it think high quality directories, press releases/media mentions(if possible), perhaps a few discussions of it around misc. related messageboards, nothing heavy duty at all.
The Articles
A few basic articles linked to from the homepage/menu constantly. These are going to be targetted to top search terms, generally answering a specific question. Think of them as the sub-keywords we’re going after. More content on these is better, since we’re going to be driving a substantial amount of our link juice to these at the expense of a lot of other pages(so we want to get some serious longtail action going). Get your
The Blog
That’s right folks. The articles aren’t the end of the content nightmare. The blog is going to be the primary source of links. That said, we’re going to keep it relatively weak itself. It can be used to weigh in on controversy, or if you have a commercial-friendly niche, can be used for linkbait. Sound boring? Not done yet.
Strip down the theme so it has as few internal links as possible. Essentially a link to the blog homepage, some nofollowed categories, then the “Articles” mentioned above, and of course your home page. Outbound links are acceptable, but this is going to try and horde and target the link juice flow internally, using as little nofollow as possible hopefully. This means “next/previous post”, etc all is a no go. Obviously you do have to factor in (bleh) user experience, but try and maintain a simple blog structure if possible. Any post that wishes to survive and rank can do so on it’s own.
Optionally, you can have the blog show a couple “hot” entries or something like that, if you want to cash in on some current controversy within the topic.
The Gallery
People like pictures. Basic fact, true, and can be applied anywhere. Screw flickr, put your own gallery on your own domain, and take the link juice yourself. Don’t disable hotlinking, and watermark the images. Prepare for some serious bandwidth damage, but it’s worth it. Social icons, pre-prepared text to link and display the image(both html/bbcode), the works. Don’t just throw any old images up here. If you don’t have any of your own and don’t mind scraping, do so(be prepared to take down images if requested though: it will happen).
Most niches have a weakness for some kind of image. Stoner/Marijuana sites for example, will almost always have a image gallery(sometimes with voting) for different buds/plants. The ever-dirty “Make Money Online” niche seems to have a check fetish. You get the idea. This is another section of the site that is driving juice, not trying to rank itself(though image search can be fan-tastic when properly handled).
If you’re really feeling masochistic(this requires real administration) you can even set up an image host for others in your niche(Niche-flickr kind of). Just make sure you actually watch what’s going up there to an extent. Spam e-mailers and kiddy porn junkies do so love free image hosts.
The Software/Scripts
This is one of the largely overlooked elements in link building.The application doesn’t even have to be good. It can be random and pointless even. Why? Because you can still get accepted on a bunch of different download sites, and you get links. The more platforms you port it to, the more places you can submit it to, and the more links you get. Think about it. You write a piece of software, and pay a bit of cash to get a PC/Mac/Linux version, an IPhone version, a php version, maybe even a stripped down open source version.
That opens up a bunch of different niche sites you could never get a link from otherwise, that will gladly(and normally freely) give you a link simply for a piece of software. Sticking to the iBeer example(linked to as “random and pointless”), it has managed to get over 2000 links and it’s only available on the iPhone. Or for a more useful script, the SEOBook keyword tool, which has over 3000 links now. Just make sure there’s some reason to link to your actual site, and not just the executable. FAQs, installation guides, anything like that is tremendously useful.
The Off-Site Linkbait Blog
Having issues with linkbait due to a blatantly commercial domain? Pick up a new, non-commercial domain for it. 301 redirect it after a given amount of time to a page on your real site, with the content still in place. SearchEnginePeople has a redirect plugin for wordpress that can let you schedule when it’s time to redirect each post over.
The Employee (Fake or Real) Blog
If you have employees, get them set up with personal blogs. If not, make fake employees and just pay someone to update the blogs. These don’t have to pass much juice(it’s hard to get links into them) but can be used as links that are normally above question. Put them on different IPs if possible.
Adding a Bit of Shadiness
The real beauty of all these different features is that they get so much more latitude than a flat commercial homepage in terms of the links they can get.
Linkbait for example, can be dropped in dozens of places under different names or through different associates and it looks like a legitimate viral effect.
Imagehosts and gallerys can both be watermarked and used by paid posters in different forums(find people actually interested in the topic; not a clueless pro-poster). The image provides the hotlink, the watermark gets the site name out.
Ok. So no, I’m not going soft on everyone (I surprised myself as I typed the words “user experience”), but more and more the trick is becoming how to look like the cleanest site in a niche, while putting in the minimum amount of time. The elements I’ve described above get much more latitude, and can have nearly any BH tactic you want(except perhaps cloaking) applied to them in an intelligent way, and they will survive much longer than any other method I’ve seen so far.
-XMCP
Finally got a few ideas down for entries, been a bit slow getting them out of the box. I went to the Scary SEO conference in October though, and it really got me thinking again(been so insanely busy lately I’ve hardly had time to just sit and think). So today we’re going to cover site structures/elements, and how to arrange them to milk the internet for as many links as possible using them. This is going to be a surprisingly whitehat post methinks, but I’ll add in some odd tricks to fill my shady quota. Massive thanks to Jeff Quipp for getting me to take Web 2.0 seriously.
The Concept
No matter how pretty your commercial site is, people are not going to be inclined to do that true *organic* link that we so desire. By building out non-commercial(read: Web 2.0) aspects of it, we can increase the likelihood of links. With a little bit of thought, we can use those to funnel their respective link juice into our mothership(commercial) site. There’s also a few off-site sites that we can build that would survive nearly any manual review, but can overtime get some decent power behind them.
The Commercial Site
Ok. So purchased links to commercial sites always stand out because in reality, people don’t find a miscellanious productX store to link to when they mention productX. So what we’re going to do is keep the homepage to having strictly defensible links. Links that are not questionable, (rarely if ever) purchased, and are just generally high quality. We’re setting it up this way because we’re not trying to drive the homepage up with external links: of all the pages on a site it has probably the least amount of plausible deniability. For it think high quality directories, press releases/media mentions(if possible), perhaps a few discussions of it around misc. related messageboards, nothing heavy duty at all.
The Articles
A few basic articles linked to from the homepage/menu constantly. These are going to be targetted to top search terms, generally answering a specific question. Think of them as the sub-keywords we’re going after. More content on these is better, since we’re going to be driving a substantial amount of our link juice to these at the expense of a lot of other pages(so we want to get some serious longtail action going). Get your
The Blog
That’s right folks. The articles aren’t the end of the content nightmare. The blog is going to be the primary source of links. That said, we’re going to keep it relatively weak itself. It can be used to weigh in on controversy, or if you have a commercial-friendly niche, can be used for linkbait. Sound boring? Not done yet.
Strip down the theme so it has as few internal links as possible. Essentially a link to the blog homepage, some nofollowed categories, then the “Articles” mentioned above, and of course your home page. Outbound links are acceptable, but this is going to try and horde and target the link juice flow internally, using as little nofollow as possible hopefully. This means “next/previous post”, etc all is a no go. Obviously you do have to factor in (bleh) user experience, but try and maintain a simple blog structure if possible. Any post that wishes to survive and rank can do so on it’s own.
Optionally, you can have the blog show a couple “hot” entries or something like that, if you want to cash in on some current controversy within the topic.
The Gallery
People like pictures. Basic fact, true, and can be applied anywhere. Screw flickr, put your own gallery on your own domain, and take the link juice yourself. Don’t disable hotlinking, and watermark the images. Prepare for some serious bandwidth damage, but it’s worth it. Social icons, pre-prepared text to link and display the image(both html/bbcode), the works. Don’t just throw any old images up here. If you don’t have any of your own and don’t mind scraping, do so(be prepared to take down images if requested though: it will happen).
Most niches have a weakness for some kind of image. Stoner/Marijuana sites for example, will almost always have a image gallery(sometimes with voting) for different buds/plants. The ever-dirty “Make Money Online” niche seems to have a check fetish. You get the idea. This is another section of the site that is driving juice, not trying to rank itself(though image search can be fan-tastic when properly handled).
If you’re really feeling masochistic(this requires real administration) you can even set up an image host for others in your niche(Niche-flickr kind of). Just make sure you actually watch what’s going up there to an extent. Spam e-mailers and kiddy porn junkies do so love free image hosts.
The Software/Scripts
This is one of the largely overlooked elements in link building.The application doesn’t even have to be good. It can be random and pointless even. Why? Because you can still get accepted on a bunch of different download sites, and you get links. The more platforms you port it to, the more places you can submit it to, and the more links you get. Think about it. You write a piece of software, and pay a bit of cash to get a PC/Mac/Linux version, an IPhone version, a php version, maybe even a stripped down open source version.
That opens up a bunch of different niche sites you could never get a link from otherwise, that will gladly(and normally freely) give you a link simply for a piece of software. Sticking to the iBeer example(linked to as “random and pointless”), it has managed to get over 2000 links and it’s only available on the iPhone. Or for a more useful script, the SEOBook keyword tool, which has over 3000 links now. Just make sure there’s some reason to link to your actual site, and not just the executable. FAQs, installation guides, anything like that is tremendously useful.
The Off-Site Linkbait Blog
Having issues with linkbait due to a blatantly commercial domain? Pick up a new, non-commercial domain for it. 301 redirect it after a given amount of time to a page on your real site, with the content still in place. SearchEnginePeople has a redirect plugin for wordpress that can let you schedule when it’s time to redirect each post over.
The Employee (Fake or Real) Blog
If you have employees, get them set up with personal blogs. If not, make fake employees and just pay someone to update the blogs. These don’t have to pass much juice(it’s hard to get links into them) but can be used as links that are normally above question. Put them on different IPs if possible.
Adding a Bit of Shadiness
The real beauty of all these different features is that they get so much more latitude than a flat commercial homepage in terms of the links they can get.
Linkbait for example, can be dropped in dozens of places under different names or through different associates and it looks like a legitimate viral effect.
Imagehosts and gallerys can both be watermarked and used by paid posters in different forums(find people actually interested in the topic; not a clueless pro-poster). The image provides the hotlink, the watermark gets the site name out.
Ok. So no, I’m not going soft on everyone (I surprised myself as I typed the words “user experience”), but more and more the trick is becoming how to look like the cleanest site in a niche, while putting in the minimum amount of time. The elements I’ve described above get much more latitude, and can have nearly any BH tactic you want(except perhaps cloaking) applied to them in an intelligent way, and they will survive much longer than any other method I’ve seen so far.
-XMCP
The Election Algorithm and Black PR
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved elections. I get as tired of the repetitive commercials as fast as anyone, but looking at anything on the broad scale is not only interesting to me as a marketer, but also as an SEO. I’m going to try and keep this as balanced as I can. I obviously have my own biases, but whenever I mention one campaign doing something, I’ll try and find a similar example from the other. Lord knows they’re all guilty to some extent.
The Black PR Machine
Think of the american people as links, and the whole thing breaks down perfectly like an algorithm, and the ‘big players’ and news hubs ironically like a blackhat setup. The methods (both) campaigns used directly and indirectly to spread black PR was absolutely fascinating, and not dissimilar to the processes used to attract legitimate links via less legitimate ones to overall build authority in (at least my version of) internet marketing. Each side had their ‘blackhat’ (non-reliable) sites. For the dems this would be dailykos, for the republicans freerepublic and the drudge report. These take snippets of other media(like a scraper), then spin them to their respective bias. All are note legitimate enough themselves to gain attention of truly mainstream media, or be cited in any significant publication.
So what do they do? Launder the information. If you can take the political message pushed out by one of the propaganda sites, and get it to be rapidly picked up by sites that lean towards the same bias(but not as extreme), it generates a buzz not only amongst the supporting sites, but creates conflict amongst the partisan sites on the other side of the political spectrum. From the moment this conflict is created, it’s given credibility. Newspapers and stations(generally) want to avoid stories that have only one visible side(whether they represent both is a crapshoot) because anything else reeks of a stealthy PR release. So having successfully spread the concept from extreme to (more) moderate sources, it spreads into the mainstream. Fantastic, eh?
Why does it have to be so involved? It’s because the candidates themselves don’t want to have their own names tied to the dirty message. For example(for better or worse is your opinion) you’ll notice a lot of the comments that Palin was saying(socialist, terrorist, marxist, etc) were more or less restricted from John McCain’s speeches. This also happened at the same time as her “going rogue”. See the subtle disconnection that relieves him of responsibility for her? She’s “going rogue”, not relaying “his message”, even though that message happens to benefit him.
To be fair, the same thing was done by the democrats, but with them it was done through more substantial blogger/youth support; an excellent means for spreading a message disconnected from the candidate themselves. And much less traceable. So it’s tricky to find a comparison here.
Similar things happen in the SEO world constantly. We are taking the buzz we can build up through our own tightly connected networks of friends and sites, and attempting to get that buzz spread into the mainstream. Chances are news direct from our site(essentially a press release) won’t have an impact, and neither will sites too closely tied to ours(implied bias). But as that message/link spreads further and further from our niche, it becomes more credible and accepted.
Now to the offline world of elections. They’re getting efficient: breaking down the demographics of their potential voters(a niche), finding out if they have a chance to control that demographic(ranking), and then attempt to saturate it with branding. Prime examples of this are Obama taking out advertisements in popular video games. The youth demographic was identified as a group that has a lot of pull on the internet, interested, and easier to convert than their older counterparts. So they were targetted hard. Fun fact: For 18-25 year old males on facebook there was always at least 1 Barack Obama ad in the top 3 most common ads, and another 2 not far behind.
So looking at that from an SEO perspective, we’ll think of each demographic of voters as a niche to control, and each vote as a link. On an individual basis, each niche must be built up to have any substantial affects. For example: all the video game and facebook ads in the world won’t reach a substantial amount of senior citizens. So they must be approached in a different way, but feeding back into the same concept.
The Niche Breakup
I like to think of the election demographic breakdown as an attempt to recreate wikipedia, but with linkbait. The whole(or 51%) must be interested in the same platform(wikipedia). Now considering peoples different biases and the different emphasis they place on different things, this must be done by altering the message to each group(like a landing page that changes based on referring keyword).
Each demographic in each region gets an assigned significance. For example, Barack Obama went hard after the youth vote, taking out ads in major video games, several ads on facebook for the male demographic, and a variety of other means. This is because part of Barack’s strategy was saturation of media and control of message. The youth/bloggers are harder to control, but also have enough of a degree of seperation from the campaign that it is not necessarilly held responsible for their actions. This creates the demand and market for the mainstream media to cash in on. With the constant buzz surrounding the candidate, it makes sense to them to run stories about him.
McCain on the other hand had a difficult task. He had to deliver different messages to different demographics. He had to take the religious conservative and appease them(hence the introduction of Palin), and not scare off the centrists/independents. By largely keeping Palin off of media aside from places that appealed to her niche demographic (think Fox News and more southern sources) he was more able to send an economic message to the less religious areas without interference. Note that towards the end of the campaign that last part did change.
To me, this obviously speaks heavily to PPC and traditional banner buys, but beyond that is absolutely fascinating to look at from as a linkbait scheme. It’s using the same resources to convey different messages from different sources that benefit the same (central) source. Almost like a site network? Related Site/CandidateA pushes view X to control demographic Y, then funnels it’s power back into the money site/campaign. At the same time, Related Site/VP Candidate pushes view Z to an entirely different demographic, but benefiting the same money site. Absolutely fantastic.
The Authority Sites
As with SEO, your power and ultimately your authority is determined largely by your acceptance level by the power players in that industry. Instead of buying links, support is bought via pandering and promises. But the support from that person isn’t the big deal. The support from the visitors/supporters of the supporter is the significance. They have the ability to fuel the black PR mentioned at the beginning of this entry via essentially untraceable means. This was actually used by Rev. Falwell against McCain when he ran against Bush in the primaries the first time around. Remember the ‘illegitimate black baby’ rumor? That was orchestrated by Falwell(who supported Bush) and disseminated through his ranks as a whisper campaign. The same thing was done this time around with Obama being muslim.
So once again, how to apply this to SEO? Well, first pick apart the definition of “authority”. An authority link for these purposes is not just a powerful link, but rather a powerful link that controls a niche. The higher visibility of your link within a certain demographic is worth more than it’s weight in the algorithm(or an endorsement on paper). It’s the reach it gives you, and your ability to use it to pull more power into your site.
Bringing it All Together as an SEO/Marketing Campaign
Ok. So we obviously don’t have quite the audience of a candidate, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can learn a lot from how they run their campaigns.
So the first thing of theirs I’d hit on as significant is how to create your own citations. You put something up on a blog or on a site and are looking to try and get that message out. The first thing to look at would be the other sites that would agree/disagree with your idea/product/buzz, and find out which ones are most closely connected/more referenced by less niche and more mainstream media. These are going to be the goal. Saturating or getting mentioned in these sites is the best bet to get propelled into the mainstream. Find out the sites they mention closest to your own, and start advertising. Links, guest posts, whatever. Anything to get recognized by those that agree with you that are closest to the goal.
Another thing I would get out of this is the benefit of anonymity. The ability to have sockpuppets, or closely controlled “media” outlets. The ability to start e-mail chainletters that are seen by millions, but never have a tie back to any entity. The ability to control not only the message, but the source. Source is everything.
Hopefully I’ve managed to keep my own bias out of this(I’m a lib), but it’s pretty tricky to do.
-XMCP
PS: Am I correct to assume there’s a market here? You don’t generally see black PR companies in the yellow pages.
The Black PR Machine
Think of the american people as links, and the whole thing breaks down perfectly like an algorithm, and the ‘big players’ and news hubs ironically like a blackhat setup. The methods (both) campaigns used directly and indirectly to spread black PR was absolutely fascinating, and not dissimilar to the processes used to attract legitimate links via less legitimate ones to overall build authority in (at least my version of) internet marketing. Each side had their ‘blackhat’ (non-reliable) sites. For the dems this would be dailykos, for the republicans freerepublic and the drudge report. These take snippets of other media(like a scraper), then spin them to their respective bias. All are note legitimate enough themselves to gain attention of truly mainstream media, or be cited in any significant publication.
So what do they do? Launder the information. If you can take the political message pushed out by one of the propaganda sites, and get it to be rapidly picked up by sites that lean towards the same bias(but not as extreme), it generates a buzz not only amongst the supporting sites, but creates conflict amongst the partisan sites on the other side of the political spectrum. From the moment this conflict is created, it’s given credibility. Newspapers and stations(generally) want to avoid stories that have only one visible side(whether they represent both is a crapshoot) because anything else reeks of a stealthy PR release. So having successfully spread the concept from extreme to (more) moderate sources, it spreads into the mainstream. Fantastic, eh?
Why does it have to be so involved? It’s because the candidates themselves don’t want to have their own names tied to the dirty message. For example(for better or worse is your opinion) you’ll notice a lot of the comments that Palin was saying(socialist, terrorist, marxist, etc) were more or less restricted from John McCain’s speeches. This also happened at the same time as her “going rogue”. See the subtle disconnection that relieves him of responsibility for her? She’s “going rogue”, not relaying “his message”, even though that message happens to benefit him.
To be fair, the same thing was done by the democrats, but with them it was done through more substantial blogger/youth support; an excellent means for spreading a message disconnected from the candidate themselves. And much less traceable. So it’s tricky to find a comparison here.
Similar things happen in the SEO world constantly. We are taking the buzz we can build up through our own tightly connected networks of friends and sites, and attempting to get that buzz spread into the mainstream. Chances are news direct from our site(essentially a press release) won’t have an impact, and neither will sites too closely tied to ours(implied bias). But as that message/link spreads further and further from our niche, it becomes more credible and accepted.
Now to the offline world of elections. They’re getting efficient: breaking down the demographics of their potential voters(a niche), finding out if they have a chance to control that demographic(ranking), and then attempt to saturate it with branding. Prime examples of this are Obama taking out advertisements in popular video games. The youth demographic was identified as a group that has a lot of pull on the internet, interested, and easier to convert than their older counterparts. So they were targetted hard. Fun fact: For 18-25 year old males on facebook there was always at least 1 Barack Obama ad in the top 3 most common ads, and another 2 not far behind.
So looking at that from an SEO perspective, we’ll think of each demographic of voters as a niche to control, and each vote as a link. On an individual basis, each niche must be built up to have any substantial affects. For example: all the video game and facebook ads in the world won’t reach a substantial amount of senior citizens. So they must be approached in a different way, but feeding back into the same concept.
The Niche Breakup
I like to think of the election demographic breakdown as an attempt to recreate wikipedia, but with linkbait. The whole(or 51%) must be interested in the same platform(wikipedia). Now considering peoples different biases and the different emphasis they place on different things, this must be done by altering the message to each group(like a landing page that changes based on referring keyword).
Each demographic in each region gets an assigned significance. For example, Barack Obama went hard after the youth vote, taking out ads in major video games, several ads on facebook for the male demographic, and a variety of other means. This is because part of Barack’s strategy was saturation of media and control of message. The youth/bloggers are harder to control, but also have enough of a degree of seperation from the campaign that it is not necessarilly held responsible for their actions. This creates the demand and market for the mainstream media to cash in on. With the constant buzz surrounding the candidate, it makes sense to them to run stories about him.
McCain on the other hand had a difficult task. He had to deliver different messages to different demographics. He had to take the religious conservative and appease them(hence the introduction of Palin), and not scare off the centrists/independents. By largely keeping Palin off of media aside from places that appealed to her niche demographic (think Fox News and more southern sources) he was more able to send an economic message to the less religious areas without interference. Note that towards the end of the campaign that last part did change.
To me, this obviously speaks heavily to PPC and traditional banner buys, but beyond that is absolutely fascinating to look at from as a linkbait scheme. It’s using the same resources to convey different messages from different sources that benefit the same (central) source. Almost like a site network? Related Site/CandidateA pushes view X to control demographic Y, then funnels it’s power back into the money site/campaign. At the same time, Related Site/VP Candidate pushes view Z to an entirely different demographic, but benefiting the same money site. Absolutely fantastic.
The Authority Sites
As with SEO, your power and ultimately your authority is determined largely by your acceptance level by the power players in that industry. Instead of buying links, support is bought via pandering and promises. But the support from that person isn’t the big deal. The support from the visitors/supporters of the supporter is the significance. They have the ability to fuel the black PR mentioned at the beginning of this entry via essentially untraceable means. This was actually used by Rev. Falwell against McCain when he ran against Bush in the primaries the first time around. Remember the ‘illegitimate black baby’ rumor? That was orchestrated by Falwell(who supported Bush) and disseminated through his ranks as a whisper campaign. The same thing was done this time around with Obama being muslim.
So once again, how to apply this to SEO? Well, first pick apart the definition of “authority”. An authority link for these purposes is not just a powerful link, but rather a powerful link that controls a niche. The higher visibility of your link within a certain demographic is worth more than it’s weight in the algorithm(or an endorsement on paper). It’s the reach it gives you, and your ability to use it to pull more power into your site.
Bringing it All Together as an SEO/Marketing Campaign
Ok. So we obviously don’t have quite the audience of a candidate, but that doesn’t change the fact that we can learn a lot from how they run their campaigns.
So the first thing of theirs I’d hit on as significant is how to create your own citations. You put something up on a blog or on a site and are looking to try and get that message out. The first thing to look at would be the other sites that would agree/disagree with your idea/product/buzz, and find out which ones are most closely connected/more referenced by less niche and more mainstream media. These are going to be the goal. Saturating or getting mentioned in these sites is the best bet to get propelled into the mainstream. Find out the sites they mention closest to your own, and start advertising. Links, guest posts, whatever. Anything to get recognized by those that agree with you that are closest to the goal.
Another thing I would get out of this is the benefit of anonymity. The ability to have sockpuppets, or closely controlled “media” outlets. The ability to start e-mail chainletters that are seen by millions, but never have a tie back to any entity. The ability to control not only the message, but the source. Source is everything.
Hopefully I’ve managed to keep my own bias out of this(I’m a lib), but it’s pretty tricky to do.
-XMCP
PS: Am I correct to assume there’s a market here? You don’t generally see black PR companies in the yellow pages.
Link Spam - What and Where to Drop your Links
So I get a lot of questions about link spam, not surprisingly. It does require you to be careful in several different respects, one of which, I will cover today. Today I will be telling you the pros and cons of the different places to drop link spam. That’s right. Today is a day with a shady ass entry. Maybe 2. I’m feeling zesty.
If you don’t know HOW to drop link spam, I reccomend you take a look at my article on XRumer; by far the most popular link spamming software out there. I will add in however, that rumor has it, the ruskies will be bringing us a new product in the next month, freshly translated into english, that may serve as some long overdue competition.
But without further ado, here’s the list.
Message Boards - I have a love-hate relationship with Message Boards
Pros:
They’re MUCH more quickly indexed than things like guestbooks, and you can frequently get a temporary(or occasionally permanent) link with a lot more juice than anything else.
There’s a lot more activity on these than blogs, so it’s harder for admins to control. Creating a topic that no one would possibly be interested in can help, as is trying to formulate a generic message that applies universally.
Cons
Forum admins are completely fucking insane. Many bans that occur are not the result of competitors, or of Google’s algorithm picking them out, but rather by really fucking pissed off forum admins. Chances are, if you’re hitting up a list of over 50k forums, at least one admin will get pissed off enough to try and hunt your site down.
Google frowns upon lots of temporary links. If they find all your links quickly, chances are they’ll be a bit pissy when half of those get deleted by zealous admins.
Spamming forums makes it impossible to guage how many links to drop, since you can never be sure how many will stick. Too many, and Google might spank your ass all over the place. Too few, and it wasnt worth the time and risk.
Forums that don’t allow BBCode dirty up the results for your keywords, making it hard to scrape again. There have been occasions where I end up scraping linkspam I let out in the past.
XRumer is slow as balls at posting in these. It has to register, verify accounts, login, and post. That’s a LOT of steps. In some cases, over 7-8 page loads, and at least 3 post requests. That takes time.
GuestBooks -Not good for ranking, good for indexing
Pros
Guestbooks have little, if any fallout from administrators.
Easy to mine, easy to spam, high-ish success rate.
Frequently allow HTML
Rarely rank high enough to dirty up serp results
Lightning fast to spam
There’s MILLIONS of them out there.
Cons
A lot of false positives
Serve as what is essentially a GLARING spam alert. Come on now, how many legitimate sites drop links in some guestbook from 1994?
If they can be spammed, they have been spammed. A lot. Theres been some I’ve tried to visit where any browser I use actually LOCKS UP from the sheer amount of data on the page.
Many cannot pass PR
Many require admin approval from admins that have not logged in in years
Too many damn types of software, none being overwhelmingly popular. Takes a long time to footprint
Blogs - Oh god, the no-follows.
Pros
So many, that a lot are not sarurated with spam
Have about a million different footprints
You do not need to drop a link in the content, since your “name” itself is linked. Makes creating inconspicuous links easier.
Dropping one proper, innocent link, makes it easy to drop links in the future if you use the same information. Once you get admin approval, you’re good to go.
Admins are not quite as contemptuous as a lot of forum admins, especially since many that would actually give a rip have anti-spam software, so they will hardly even see your link to track it down.
Easy to identify admins checking your link, so they can be redirected.
Cons
Anti-spam plugins. You need clean IP addresses, all the time, and that’s hard to achieve.
Admins are more tech saavy then guestbook/forum admins, so can frequently identify spam better.
The VAST majority of links are no-followed. Like 99%. They can help for anchor text, but very little for ranking. This does significant damage.
If you’re like me, and try to filter out your messageboard/guestbook/blog traffic, blogs are MUCH harder to footprint by referrer, so you can tell when/if to block them.
Shoutboxes, Galleries, and other Custom Rigs
Pros
You can sometimes find software with very little anti-spam protection, and bypass it.
Many are not saturated by link spam.
There’s a almost infinite number of pieces of software out there you can hit. If one tightens up, hey, you can just find another.
Really, this is the best way.
Cons
Harder to find the software, harder to footprint.
Other blackhats might see your tricks, and emulate it
Many of these require custom software to be written. It’s well worth it in most cases.
Hitting these too hard can lead the coders of the software to update it, making it harder to hit int he future.
Lower in quantity than almost any other link spam possibility.
If you don’t know HOW to drop link spam, I reccomend you take a look at my article on XRumer; by far the most popular link spamming software out there. I will add in however, that rumor has it, the ruskies will be bringing us a new product in the next month, freshly translated into english, that may serve as some long overdue competition.
But without further ado, here’s the list.
Message Boards - I have a love-hate relationship with Message Boards
Pros:
They’re MUCH more quickly indexed than things like guestbooks, and you can frequently get a temporary(or occasionally permanent) link with a lot more juice than anything else.
There’s a lot more activity on these than blogs, so it’s harder for admins to control. Creating a topic that no one would possibly be interested in can help, as is trying to formulate a generic message that applies universally.
Cons
Forum admins are completely fucking insane. Many bans that occur are not the result of competitors, or of Google’s algorithm picking them out, but rather by really fucking pissed off forum admins. Chances are, if you’re hitting up a list of over 50k forums, at least one admin will get pissed off enough to try and hunt your site down.
Google frowns upon lots of temporary links. If they find all your links quickly, chances are they’ll be a bit pissy when half of those get deleted by zealous admins.
Spamming forums makes it impossible to guage how many links to drop, since you can never be sure how many will stick. Too many, and Google might spank your ass all over the place. Too few, and it wasnt worth the time and risk.
Forums that don’t allow BBCode dirty up the results for your keywords, making it hard to scrape again. There have been occasions where I end up scraping linkspam I let out in the past.
XRumer is slow as balls at posting in these. It has to register, verify accounts, login, and post. That’s a LOT of steps. In some cases, over 7-8 page loads, and at least 3 post requests. That takes time.
GuestBooks -Not good for ranking, good for indexing
Pros
Guestbooks have little, if any fallout from administrators.
Easy to mine, easy to spam, high-ish success rate.
Frequently allow HTML
Rarely rank high enough to dirty up serp results
Lightning fast to spam
There’s MILLIONS of them out there.
Cons
A lot of false positives
Serve as what is essentially a GLARING spam alert. Come on now, how many legitimate sites drop links in some guestbook from 1994?
If they can be spammed, they have been spammed. A lot. Theres been some I’ve tried to visit where any browser I use actually LOCKS UP from the sheer amount of data on the page.
Many cannot pass PR
Many require admin approval from admins that have not logged in in years
Too many damn types of software, none being overwhelmingly popular. Takes a long time to footprint
Blogs - Oh god, the no-follows.
Pros
So many, that a lot are not sarurated with spam
Have about a million different footprints
You do not need to drop a link in the content, since your “name” itself is linked. Makes creating inconspicuous links easier.
Dropping one proper, innocent link, makes it easy to drop links in the future if you use the same information. Once you get admin approval, you’re good to go.
Admins are not quite as contemptuous as a lot of forum admins, especially since many that would actually give a rip have anti-spam software, so they will hardly even see your link to track it down.
Easy to identify admins checking your link, so they can be redirected.
Cons
Anti-spam plugins. You need clean IP addresses, all the time, and that’s hard to achieve.
Admins are more tech saavy then guestbook/forum admins, so can frequently identify spam better.
The VAST majority of links are no-followed. Like 99%. They can help for anchor text, but very little for ranking. This does significant damage.
If you’re like me, and try to filter out your messageboard/guestbook/blog traffic, blogs are MUCH harder to footprint by referrer, so you can tell when/if to block them.
Shoutboxes, Galleries, and other Custom Rigs
Pros
You can sometimes find software with very little anti-spam protection, and bypass it.
Many are not saturated by link spam.
There’s a almost infinite number of pieces of software out there you can hit. If one tightens up, hey, you can just find another.
Really, this is the best way.
Cons
Harder to find the software, harder to footprint.
Other blackhats might see your tricks, and emulate it
Many of these require custom software to be written. It’s well worth it in most cases.
Hitting these too hard can lead the coders of the software to update it, making it harder to hit int he future.
Lower in quantity than almost any other link spam possibility.
Understanding The Basics of System Exploitation
There is no concept more central to blackhat SEO than system exploitation. A lot of this cannot be taught. However, I’m still going to attempt to explain the basics of why this important, the goals of exploitation(aside from money), and perhaps a basic idea or two on how to look for your loopholes. That’s right folks. This is entry is the essence of shady.
And yes, it bears a bit of a resemblance to a previous entry we had on finding search engine rules, but I really wanted to expand on that entry more.
Why is System Exploitation so Important Online?
The quick answer to this is that the internet is a system made up of millions of smaller systems. To understand how these interact, or better yet, to control how certain aspects interact, is to gain the ability to control it. Obviously, no one person can control the entire thing, but one man can greatly influence little corners of it. From the largest search engine, to the tiniest social news site, the entire internet interacts.
How to Test the Bounds of Any Quantity-Based System
There’s a pretty basic method to test the boundaries of almost any system. Take any variable you want to test, and run it to the extreme. For example, there’s a reason most blackhats worth the keyboard they type on can whitehat with the best of ‘em. Any problem in a blackhat site, due to the sheer volume(speed, links, pages, etc), is amplified 100 fold. So any issue you have, becomes ridiculously apparent.
The same concept can be cross-applied to any section of the internet. For example, I broke the captcha to a popular social bookmarking service. When I broke it, I generated some 400 accounts off the bat through various IPs. Note that this is MANY more accounts than needed for my goal. I wrote a quick-rig CuRL script to add a URL with shuffling descriptions titles. It did not take long to notice that it took very little time for my site to get banned from their setup. Ok. So fresh domain, fresh accounts, fresh IPs, and then drop down the speed/quantity. Rinse, lather, and repeat, until you’re either successful, or if you never are, examine the possibility they’re nailing the IPs as being proxies. By starting out at an extreme(not so extreme as to alert people to your intentions), it’s much easier to determine what you can, and can’t do within the system.
Testing Non Quantity-Based Bounds within a System
If the internet was only a quantity based system, we’d all be wealthy by now. And while 99% of it is reducible to just that, that remaining 1% is a bitch. People often give the internet too much credit for being *POOF* magical. Remember when testing a system, that there is only so much information a website has to work with when evaluating us(excluding quantity based limits as said above). Now, the downside is a lot of friggin information. I’ll list some stuff that they have access to try and make this point clear. But I’m not going to list it all, so don’t nag me about it. This list only contains what they get access to as soon upon page load, and information that it is completely unavoidable to not give to them.
IP Address
Physical Location(Country/City)
Is your country/proxy’s
country natural for
that site’s traffic?
Previous Actions on that IP
Various Cookies
Time Delay Between Page Loads
Browser
Referrer(Not to be overlooked)
Ability to Process Javascript
Any accounts/associated creation dates on that site
In addition to this, there’s a variety of more specific ones. Whether or not you’re using a proxy for example. Whether your “browser” calls images. All of these things factor in, and must be controlled. You want to fit in with the norm as much as possible. For this, pay special attention to the rates at which things happen on the site. Pageloads, votes, anything like that.
Non-Boundary Based Exploitation
This is where we start to run into sketchy ground that I must be careful about. I’m not going to teach you how to hack here kids. Jail is no fun for you, and loses me a potential RSS subscriber. Nobody wins. But think about it this way. Up until this point, everything I’ve covered is teaching you how to play within the bounds of the rules. A good non-boundary based exploitation will leave the bounds altogether.
Just look at it like this: If I were a coder, how would I have done XYZ(try and get as close to how the targeted performed XYZ as you can), and then sit there for a bit and punch holes in your own idea. I find that thinking of it as if you’re the one creating the system removes a lot of the mystery that we tend to see around others code, and leads to a deeper understanding of the code itself.
What is the Goal of a Successful Run at Exploitation?
Ultimately, they all have the same goal. To not be detected. If what you’re doing was not detected in any way, then you have a reusable tactic in your arsenal of hacks. Don’t abuse it. For example, if someone could(and I would bet a LOT of money someone can) run something up the front page of Digg, they would not do so with “Buy Viagra”. They would find things that debatably could have gotten up on it’s own under proper circumstance. If someone figures out what they did, it will be fixed, and then it’s worthless. That’s right. You need quality spam. Which of course, begs the question of it is still spam then….oh well. That’s for a different entry.
I’m sure I’ll take some crap for this entry. But whatever. It’s a reality of blackhat today. Deal.
-XMCP
And yes, it bears a bit of a resemblance to a previous entry we had on finding search engine rules, but I really wanted to expand on that entry more.
Why is System Exploitation so Important Online?
The quick answer to this is that the internet is a system made up of millions of smaller systems. To understand how these interact, or better yet, to control how certain aspects interact, is to gain the ability to control it. Obviously, no one person can control the entire thing, but one man can greatly influence little corners of it. From the largest search engine, to the tiniest social news site, the entire internet interacts.
How to Test the Bounds of Any Quantity-Based System
There’s a pretty basic method to test the boundaries of almost any system. Take any variable you want to test, and run it to the extreme. For example, there’s a reason most blackhats worth the keyboard they type on can whitehat with the best of ‘em. Any problem in a blackhat site, due to the sheer volume(speed, links, pages, etc), is amplified 100 fold. So any issue you have, becomes ridiculously apparent.
The same concept can be cross-applied to any section of the internet. For example, I broke the captcha to a popular social bookmarking service. When I broke it, I generated some 400 accounts off the bat through various IPs. Note that this is MANY more accounts than needed for my goal. I wrote a quick-rig CuRL script to add a URL with shuffling descriptions titles. It did not take long to notice that it took very little time for my site to get banned from their setup. Ok. So fresh domain, fresh accounts, fresh IPs, and then drop down the speed/quantity. Rinse, lather, and repeat, until you’re either successful, or if you never are, examine the possibility they’re nailing the IPs as being proxies. By starting out at an extreme(not so extreme as to alert people to your intentions), it’s much easier to determine what you can, and can’t do within the system.
Testing Non Quantity-Based Bounds within a System
If the internet was only a quantity based system, we’d all be wealthy by now. And while 99% of it is reducible to just that, that remaining 1% is a bitch. People often give the internet too much credit for being *POOF* magical. Remember when testing a system, that there is only so much information a website has to work with when evaluating us(excluding quantity based limits as said above). Now, the downside is a lot of friggin information. I’ll list some stuff that they have access to try and make this point clear. But I’m not going to list it all, so don’t nag me about it. This list only contains what they get access to as soon upon page load, and information that it is completely unavoidable to not give to them.
IP Address
Physical Location(Country/City)
Is your country/proxy’s
country natural for
that site’s traffic?
Previous Actions on that IP
Various Cookies
Time Delay Between Page Loads
Browser
Referrer(Not to be overlooked)
Ability to Process Javascript
Any accounts/associated creation dates on that site
In addition to this, there’s a variety of more specific ones. Whether or not you’re using a proxy for example. Whether your “browser” calls images. All of these things factor in, and must be controlled. You want to fit in with the norm as much as possible. For this, pay special attention to the rates at which things happen on the site. Pageloads, votes, anything like that.
Non-Boundary Based Exploitation
This is where we start to run into sketchy ground that I must be careful about. I’m not going to teach you how to hack here kids. Jail is no fun for you, and loses me a potential RSS subscriber. Nobody wins. But think about it this way. Up until this point, everything I’ve covered is teaching you how to play within the bounds of the rules. A good non-boundary based exploitation will leave the bounds altogether.
Just look at it like this: If I were a coder, how would I have done XYZ(try and get as close to how the targeted performed XYZ as you can), and then sit there for a bit and punch holes in your own idea. I find that thinking of it as if you’re the one creating the system removes a lot of the mystery that we tend to see around others code, and leads to a deeper understanding of the code itself.
What is the Goal of a Successful Run at Exploitation?
Ultimately, they all have the same goal. To not be detected. If what you’re doing was not detected in any way, then you have a reusable tactic in your arsenal of hacks. Don’t abuse it. For example, if someone could(and I would bet a LOT of money someone can) run something up the front page of Digg, they would not do so with “Buy Viagra”. They would find things that debatably could have gotten up on it’s own under proper circumstance. If someone figures out what they did, it will be fixed, and then it’s worthless. That’s right. You need quality spam. Which of course, begs the question of it is still spam then….oh well. That’s for a different entry.
I’m sure I’ll take some crap for this entry. But whatever. It’s a reality of blackhat today. Deal.
-XMCP
The Most Important Marketing Lesson You’ll Ever Learn: Roll Your Own
Today we’re going to discuss a philosophy that is repeated throughout the halls of syndk8, and other blackhat forums everywhere. It applies to blackhats, whitehats, grayhats, and every other hat you can imagine.
It is a philosophy called “Roll Your Own”
Now, we’re not talking about marijuana, cigarettes, or cigars. We’re talking about software, ideas, concepts, and everything else related to this job we all so love.
If you read nothing else in this entry, read the introduction, and the conclusion. They are probably the most important lessons you could take away from any post I have ever made here.
Introduction
True SEO skill will not be gained at a conference, on a blog, at a conference, on a forum, or for the love of god not in an e-book(although SEOBook is a good starter in SEO, 99% of ebooks are utter shit).
Real SEO skill is gotten by absorbing what you can through those better than yourself, truly learning the thought processes behind it, and making it your own. No one ever got rich by doing the same thing as everyone else. It’s all originality, quick thinking, and staying one mental leap ahead of that guy everyone else is copying. Don’t go looking for someone to hand you success on a silver platter; it’s not going to happen.
Why I Run My Blog the Way I Do
You’ll notice on this blog, I rarely give out complete code samples or full tools. There is a reason for this. I want my readership to grow. Not in numbers, but in skill. If I hand you tools, and hand you code, it’s as if I’m handing you the answers to a math test you have to take. It’s easy, yes. But do you really gain anything from it? You gain a little. A grade, or a tool to use. But 6 months from now, that will be inconsequential. If, on the other hand, I can show you the concepts behind the tool or strategy, and you play with it, create, and make your own, you have gained infinitely more.
Why Else Is Rolling Your Own That Much Better?
If Software is Publicly Released, Then the Playing Field Becomes Level
You do not want a level playing field. You want to have the upper hand. There are very few pieces of software ever worth buying for this reason. SEO is a smaller world than you would think. Any market gets saturated, and does so quickly. Beyond that, anyone who can come up with truly innovative software is probably smart enough to realize they can make more by using it, rather than selling it for $10 on DigitalPoint. There are few exceptions.
To this day, the only SEO software I have personally purchased was XRumer.
The only other software I would consider purchasing is SpiderSpy, by Fantomaster.
The only other software in my library that I did not write myself, I got for free so that I could review it. It’s quite good, you’ll be hearing about it soon.
But even as I have these pieces of software, I do not look at them as a solution to a problem. I look at them as research into a problem. XRumer is fantastic. It taught me what a true link spammer looks like. It can break captchas like I will probably never be able. But I’m building off this knowledge, making it my own. For the software I’m reviewing? It’s teaching me too. And soon I will make it better.
The Market Evolves, Will Your Ideas and Software?
Software - Every piece of SEO software, especially blackhat software, will become outdated. It will get filtered, and become useless. How sure are you that the author of your software will keep it up to date? What if there’s nothing he can do? Do you have access to the code?
Ideas - By the time you hear about something on a forum or a blog[excepting my own, of course], chances are that it’s already on it’s way out. MySpace spam is a prime example. And guess what? It evolved. A few evolved with it. THESE were the people who got their ideas from themselves, and not an e-book. They may have heard about it on a forum or something, but I guarantee you they did not follow the so-called “guru’s” steps exactly as he put them out there. They made it better. They decided they were going to try and put that guru out of business.
In SEO, All Concepts are Inter-Related
In SEO, there are is a web of logical concepts. Understanding one gives way to another. Once you understand anchor text, you start to understand more about duplicate content filters and link velocity. Once you understand link spamming, you understand link periodocity, and high quality vs. low quality links. Once you start to understand Blogging, you begin to understand viral marketing and social news. Once you understand those, how blog farms function begins to become more apparent.
Everything is related. And skipping over one of those because you had some software pre-made for you creates a gap that makes it impossible to grasp later concepts that are essential to put you over the edge.
A good real life example of this was made clear to me awhile ago by 5ubliminal. When I began programming, I was in the 5th grade or so and attempting to learn exclusively from books. No Php.net function list. No Java API. Just books. And you know what? I honestly never learned Regular Expressions until recently. Because I took the easy way out, and did not rely on my own curiosity and intuition enough, I had a gaping hole in my knowledge.
Should I have read those books? Yes. In the same way I hope you continue reading this blog. But I should’ve allowed myself to explore and experiment more, not binding myself to them.
It is a philosophy called “Roll Your Own”
Now, we’re not talking about marijuana, cigarettes, or cigars. We’re talking about software, ideas, concepts, and everything else related to this job we all so love.
If you read nothing else in this entry, read the introduction, and the conclusion. They are probably the most important lessons you could take away from any post I have ever made here.
Introduction
True SEO skill will not be gained at a conference, on a blog, at a conference, on a forum, or for the love of god not in an e-book(although SEOBook is a good starter in SEO, 99% of ebooks are utter shit).
Real SEO skill is gotten by absorbing what you can through those better than yourself, truly learning the thought processes behind it, and making it your own. No one ever got rich by doing the same thing as everyone else. It’s all originality, quick thinking, and staying one mental leap ahead of that guy everyone else is copying. Don’t go looking for someone to hand you success on a silver platter; it’s not going to happen.
Why I Run My Blog the Way I Do
You’ll notice on this blog, I rarely give out complete code samples or full tools. There is a reason for this. I want my readership to grow. Not in numbers, but in skill. If I hand you tools, and hand you code, it’s as if I’m handing you the answers to a math test you have to take. It’s easy, yes. But do you really gain anything from it? You gain a little. A grade, or a tool to use. But 6 months from now, that will be inconsequential. If, on the other hand, I can show you the concepts behind the tool or strategy, and you play with it, create, and make your own, you have gained infinitely more.
Why Else Is Rolling Your Own That Much Better?
If Software is Publicly Released, Then the Playing Field Becomes Level
You do not want a level playing field. You want to have the upper hand. There are very few pieces of software ever worth buying for this reason. SEO is a smaller world than you would think. Any market gets saturated, and does so quickly. Beyond that, anyone who can come up with truly innovative software is probably smart enough to realize they can make more by using it, rather than selling it for $10 on DigitalPoint. There are few exceptions.
To this day, the only SEO software I have personally purchased was XRumer.
The only other software I would consider purchasing is SpiderSpy, by Fantomaster.
The only other software in my library that I did not write myself, I got for free so that I could review it. It’s quite good, you’ll be hearing about it soon.
But even as I have these pieces of software, I do not look at them as a solution to a problem. I look at them as research into a problem. XRumer is fantastic. It taught me what a true link spammer looks like. It can break captchas like I will probably never be able. But I’m building off this knowledge, making it my own. For the software I’m reviewing? It’s teaching me too. And soon I will make it better.
The Market Evolves, Will Your Ideas and Software?
Software - Every piece of SEO software, especially blackhat software, will become outdated. It will get filtered, and become useless. How sure are you that the author of your software will keep it up to date? What if there’s nothing he can do? Do you have access to the code?
Ideas - By the time you hear about something on a forum or a blog[excepting my own, of course], chances are that it’s already on it’s way out. MySpace spam is a prime example. And guess what? It evolved. A few evolved with it. THESE were the people who got their ideas from themselves, and not an e-book. They may have heard about it on a forum or something, but I guarantee you they did not follow the so-called “guru’s” steps exactly as he put them out there. They made it better. They decided they were going to try and put that guru out of business.
In SEO, All Concepts are Inter-Related
In SEO, there are is a web of logical concepts. Understanding one gives way to another. Once you understand anchor text, you start to understand more about duplicate content filters and link velocity. Once you understand link spamming, you understand link periodocity, and high quality vs. low quality links. Once you start to understand Blogging, you begin to understand viral marketing and social news. Once you understand those, how blog farms function begins to become more apparent.
Everything is related. And skipping over one of those because you had some software pre-made for you creates a gap that makes it impossible to grasp later concepts that are essential to put you over the edge.
A good real life example of this was made clear to me awhile ago by 5ubliminal. When I began programming, I was in the 5th grade or so and attempting to learn exclusively from books. No Php.net function list. No Java API. Just books. And you know what? I honestly never learned Regular Expressions until recently. Because I took the easy way out, and did not rely on my own curiosity and intuition enough, I had a gaping hole in my knowledge.
Should I have read those books? Yes. In the same way I hope you continue reading this blog. But I should’ve allowed myself to explore and experiment more, not binding myself to them.
August 26, 2009
Google’s User Data Empire
I’ve been holding off on doing this entry for a bit, but with the introduction of SearchWiki their aims are so clear to me, I just can’t hold off anymore. Google’s problems over the past 2 years have been the result of an algorithm overly based on links. They’ve finally hit their wall. With the latest batch of link buying platforms, their options for truly detecting it are dying out. One can call Google many things, but ignorant of the marketplace and SEOs is not one of those things. So they needed a response. Their response? User data. Lots of fucking user data.
I know I’ve covered a similar topic before(how Google is essentially creating it’s own internet), but I wanted to do one specifically on user data.
The Basic Layout of the Google User Data Empire
Google Adsense - Google adsense has the unique ability to track without fear of repurcussion. Why? Because any data they send back can be used and archived in their eternal battle against click fraud. This means they transmit everything from screen resolution to ability/version of flash(things that arguably have nothing to do with click fraud). Either way, it’s a window they have into millions and millions of hits on the internet daily. It’s targetted towards informational sites though, and not commercial sites(Google’s true interest).
Google Analytics - This is Google’s window into non informational sites. It tracks an absolutely obscene amount of user data(actually, more than you can see/use in their analytics panel). Without this, they’d have no window into sale based sites that would give the competition traffic if they ran adsense. Webmasters flock to this tool, not realizing the danger of feeding Google all that information. Here’s a hint: it tracks conversion rates. Now, Google is currently taking anywhere from 2-5x the amount of adsense revenue they’re giving to the website owner, which means if you do PPC you’re more or less at their mercy for how much you’re paying per click. Them knowing how much you’re making per click via their conversion tracking could (in theory) allow them to adjust your PPC expenses up, while still remaining profitable. But once again, the real gold here is the ability to track the users.
Google Chrome - Google Chrome is an interesting creation. Google is a public company. That means they cannot create something like chrome without a significant financial reason. The trick is they’re already propping up firefox via $59.5-70 million a year in donations(85% of Firefox’s revenue) to keep them as the default search. $70 million is jack shit to Google, so they definitely wouldn’t create Chrome simply to save on that, and they’re already getting the ad revenue from firefox searches so that itself doesn’t make sense. So why would they create Chrome?
Unique Identifier - Chrome generates a unique id whether or not you agree to send your data to Google. If you agree to send it, this ID gets trasmitted. So what does that do? It makes it so they can identify you regardless of where your computer is, and regardless of cookies. It’s truly the perfect information gatherer.
[Partially] Closed Source - I’m no open source junkie, but let’s not kid ourselves. The one primary difference between Firefox and Chrome is that Chrome is closed source. It’s based off of Chromium, a BSD licensed piece of software. BSD license means you don’t have to open source your modification on their code(unlike the GPL). This means one has to run a sniffer to see the data Chrome is sending out; you can’t simply open the source code. While initial versions don’t send out an excessive amount of data, I’m willing to bet user adoption will change that.
Typing Tracking - I just sniffed a Chrome request(opted in to trasmit data). The page I was going to was complete blank except for a fake 404 error. Magically, it created 2 requests to Google. One was a “google suggest” style query(which means yes, Google suggest is used for tracking). The other was a curious query, as it trasmitted events(used generic names so I dont know what each stood for), a unique ID, and interestingly enough a variable called “rep”, presumably implying a user reputation level. A single type in of a domain created 3 of these “events”. I wonder what they are.
Google Checkout - One of a few ways Google is moving to be able to identify real people. That is to say it’s a way to be able to tie an IP and a cookie/username to a real, 100% legit name. This is worth more than most could ever imagine. Not only is that person identified as someone with a credit card, but the billing address itself gives you a region the person is from, and a probable demographic. Also used to tie back to a real identity is the much debated Google Health, which can store medical information on an individual.
Google Toolbar - Fantastic for identifying webmasters, the Google toolbar is among the most powerful methods of getting user data. How long do you think it will be before they turn users into unknowing cloaking checkers(click search results, omgz this pagerank request isn’t for the right domain)? Every single webpage you access, private or not, gets sent to Google for their page rank check.
Google Android - The one set of data they couldn’t access properly before. Phone habits. Note how agressively they’ve pursued the cell phone market(IPhone anyone?)
SearchWiki - Google’s latest addition to let you reorganize the search results. They say the data is used only for the user that changes it. Fun fact? That makes no sense. Google already has bookmarks, and if you are logged in and click “Web History”(and are opted in) it will show you the searches you’ve made and the results you’ve clicked. So their is absolutely no reason for the creation of this other than to alter search results, and more importantly gauge user’s reactions to commercial vs. informational sites.
Other Obvious Sources - Gmail(your contacts, your interests), the actual search results, and many more.
Google justifies all of this on the idea that a lot of other companies have been gathering this data for some time. But there’s a difference. Those companies only had data from one source at a time. For Google, it’s different. Their specialty is organizing information. They have access to more avenues for userdata than any other company in the history of the world, and the ability to connect every aspect of every person’s life. Log into gmail on android? Congrats, your phone number can now be tied to your IP home IP. Don’t search using Google? Between adsense and analytics, you’ve probably got a 35-50% chance of sending data to Google anyways with every page load. Did you buy something through an ad served by Google? With conversion tracking, they know you bought, and can tie that back to everything else.
Why I’m Scared as a User
I’m really beginning to get scared here. Even ignoring Google’s less than benevolent intentions, can anyone imagine a data breach? No company is truly secure. 4 years ago the entire member database of the largest porn network on the planet was available(including passwords) for 1 grand. over 500,000 records. There have been data breaches at pharmaceutical companies, leaking millions customer records, down to the pill they took and when the prescription was up. Government servers get compromised, credit bureaus get compromised. So why would Google be any different?
Why I’m Scared as a Webmaster
Google has an interesting issue. They have more userdata than they can allow adwords advertisers to target. This is an absolutely insane amount of information. So they’re left with 3 options.
Enter the CPA Market - With their Google Affiliate Network, this seems like a likely path. Imagine a massive in house program that can get clicks for dirt cheap(remember, Google takes a HUGE cut out of adsense revenue. Surrendering that they can afford conversion rates that would make normal PPCers cringe).
Not Use the Data - Google is a publically traded company. Their responsibility is to stock holders. So regardless of how warm and fuzzy they act to the internet community at large, this option is not viable. Their privacy policies contradict the filth they spew towards the consumer about how the data will and won’t be used. And guess which one is legally the reality? The privacy policy. They’re using the data folks.
Take Control from Advertisers - They can’t let me target based on all the data they have, so the alternative is to make the decisions for me based on what they think is best. Well, sort of. Remember that Google automatically optimizes not for conversions, but for click through and profit on their end.
I don’t understand how prominent geeks normally so paranoid over spyware and whatnot can ignore Google. They function on a higher level than any spyware company in history, and do it all by winking at the webmaster community and acting like they’ll look out for us. “Do No Evil” is the motto of a private company. Not a public company. It’s the antithesis of the free market economy. What is good for the consumer is not good for the company, and that is especially true with an advertising company that has access to so much data.
Until next time,
XMCP
PS: Edited the entry to indicate that chrome is partially closed source. Though the open source aspects are chromium for the most part. To clarify, here’s a line from Chrome’s TOS: 10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing.
I know I’ve covered a similar topic before(how Google is essentially creating it’s own internet), but I wanted to do one specifically on user data.
The Basic Layout of the Google User Data Empire
Google Adsense - Google adsense has the unique ability to track without fear of repurcussion. Why? Because any data they send back can be used and archived in their eternal battle against click fraud. This means they transmit everything from screen resolution to ability/version of flash(things that arguably have nothing to do with click fraud). Either way, it’s a window they have into millions and millions of hits on the internet daily. It’s targetted towards informational sites though, and not commercial sites(Google’s true interest).
Google Analytics - This is Google’s window into non informational sites. It tracks an absolutely obscene amount of user data(actually, more than you can see/use in their analytics panel). Without this, they’d have no window into sale based sites that would give the competition traffic if they ran adsense. Webmasters flock to this tool, not realizing the danger of feeding Google all that information. Here’s a hint: it tracks conversion rates. Now, Google is currently taking anywhere from 2-5x the amount of adsense revenue they’re giving to the website owner, which means if you do PPC you’re more or less at their mercy for how much you’re paying per click. Them knowing how much you’re making per click via their conversion tracking could (in theory) allow them to adjust your PPC expenses up, while still remaining profitable. But once again, the real gold here is the ability to track the users.
Google Chrome - Google Chrome is an interesting creation. Google is a public company. That means they cannot create something like chrome without a significant financial reason. The trick is they’re already propping up firefox via $59.5-70 million a year in donations(85% of Firefox’s revenue) to keep them as the default search. $70 million is jack shit to Google, so they definitely wouldn’t create Chrome simply to save on that, and they’re already getting the ad revenue from firefox searches so that itself doesn’t make sense. So why would they create Chrome?
Unique Identifier - Chrome generates a unique id whether or not you agree to send your data to Google. If you agree to send it, this ID gets trasmitted. So what does that do? It makes it so they can identify you regardless of where your computer is, and regardless of cookies. It’s truly the perfect information gatherer.
[Partially] Closed Source - I’m no open source junkie, but let’s not kid ourselves. The one primary difference between Firefox and Chrome is that Chrome is closed source. It’s based off of Chromium, a BSD licensed piece of software. BSD license means you don’t have to open source your modification on their code(unlike the GPL). This means one has to run a sniffer to see the data Chrome is sending out; you can’t simply open the source code. While initial versions don’t send out an excessive amount of data, I’m willing to bet user adoption will change that.
Typing Tracking - I just sniffed a Chrome request(opted in to trasmit data). The page I was going to was complete blank except for a fake 404 error. Magically, it created 2 requests to Google. One was a “google suggest” style query(which means yes, Google suggest is used for tracking). The other was a curious query, as it trasmitted events(used generic names so I dont know what each stood for), a unique ID, and interestingly enough a variable called “rep”, presumably implying a user reputation level. A single type in of a domain created 3 of these “events”. I wonder what they are.
Google Checkout - One of a few ways Google is moving to be able to identify real people. That is to say it’s a way to be able to tie an IP and a cookie/username to a real, 100% legit name. This is worth more than most could ever imagine. Not only is that person identified as someone with a credit card, but the billing address itself gives you a region the person is from, and a probable demographic. Also used to tie back to a real identity is the much debated Google Health, which can store medical information on an individual.
Google Toolbar - Fantastic for identifying webmasters, the Google toolbar is among the most powerful methods of getting user data. How long do you think it will be before they turn users into unknowing cloaking checkers(click search results, omgz this pagerank request isn’t for the right domain)? Every single webpage you access, private or not, gets sent to Google for their page rank check.
Google Android - The one set of data they couldn’t access properly before. Phone habits. Note how agressively they’ve pursued the cell phone market(IPhone anyone?)
SearchWiki - Google’s latest addition to let you reorganize the search results. They say the data is used only for the user that changes it. Fun fact? That makes no sense. Google already has bookmarks, and if you are logged in and click “Web History”(and are opted in) it will show you the searches you’ve made and the results you’ve clicked. So their is absolutely no reason for the creation of this other than to alter search results, and more importantly gauge user’s reactions to commercial vs. informational sites.
Other Obvious Sources - Gmail(your contacts, your interests), the actual search results, and many more.
Google justifies all of this on the idea that a lot of other companies have been gathering this data for some time. But there’s a difference. Those companies only had data from one source at a time. For Google, it’s different. Their specialty is organizing information. They have access to more avenues for userdata than any other company in the history of the world, and the ability to connect every aspect of every person’s life. Log into gmail on android? Congrats, your phone number can now be tied to your IP home IP. Don’t search using Google? Between adsense and analytics, you’ve probably got a 35-50% chance of sending data to Google anyways with every page load. Did you buy something through an ad served by Google? With conversion tracking, they know you bought, and can tie that back to everything else.
Why I’m Scared as a User
I’m really beginning to get scared here. Even ignoring Google’s less than benevolent intentions, can anyone imagine a data breach? No company is truly secure. 4 years ago the entire member database of the largest porn network on the planet was available(including passwords) for 1 grand. over 500,000 records. There have been data breaches at pharmaceutical companies, leaking millions customer records, down to the pill they took and when the prescription was up. Government servers get compromised, credit bureaus get compromised. So why would Google be any different?
Why I’m Scared as a Webmaster
Google has an interesting issue. They have more userdata than they can allow adwords advertisers to target. This is an absolutely insane amount of information. So they’re left with 3 options.
Enter the CPA Market - With their Google Affiliate Network, this seems like a likely path. Imagine a massive in house program that can get clicks for dirt cheap(remember, Google takes a HUGE cut out of adsense revenue. Surrendering that they can afford conversion rates that would make normal PPCers cringe).
Not Use the Data - Google is a publically traded company. Their responsibility is to stock holders. So regardless of how warm and fuzzy they act to the internet community at large, this option is not viable. Their privacy policies contradict the filth they spew towards the consumer about how the data will and won’t be used. And guess which one is legally the reality? The privacy policy. They’re using the data folks.
Take Control from Advertisers - They can’t let me target based on all the data they have, so the alternative is to make the decisions for me based on what they think is best. Well, sort of. Remember that Google automatically optimizes not for conversions, but for click through and profit on their end.
I don’t understand how prominent geeks normally so paranoid over spyware and whatnot can ignore Google. They function on a higher level than any spyware company in history, and do it all by winking at the webmaster community and acting like they’ll look out for us. “Do No Evil” is the motto of a private company. Not a public company. It’s the antithesis of the free market economy. What is good for the consumer is not good for the company, and that is especially true with an advertising company that has access to so much data.
Until next time,
XMCP
PS: Edited the entry to indicate that chrome is partially closed source. Though the open source aspects are chromium for the most part. To clarify, here’s a line from Chrome’s TOS: 10.2 You may not (and you may not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract the source code of the Software or any part thereof, unless this is expressly permitted or required by law, or unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google, in writing.
The Top 10 Signs Your Market is About to Be Saturated
A lot of people, myself included, have, on occasion, perhaps been a bit (cough)aggressive about marketing. This is all well and good, and perhaps is what seperates those who make real cash from those gathering up their adsense pennies. However, eventually those tricks start to spread, and then…market saturation.
You’ll notice I never tell people specifics on here. That’s for a reason. I hate people that take a market that is easy to saturate, and then shove up a “How to” that makes it worthless for all involved. Including those who pioneered the tactic(Hint: The blogger almost never pioneered it)
Without Further Delay, here is the 3rd Post for the Day(aren’t you lucky I hate studying?);
The Top Ten Signs Your Market is Oversaturated
10) Your PPC ads go from pennies per click, to something involving a comma.
9) You see a “punch the hated object here” about it.
8 ) You find someone selling an e-book about the technique (god I hate ebooks)
7) That e-book somehow finds it’s way onto DigialPoint, complete with edited “Acount Statement”
6) You see me cussing at people on DigitalPoint about it.
5) Wherever you’re marketing updates their filters specifically to block you.
4) Legal threats start appearing on the interweb…
3) Shoemoney or BluehatSEO makes a post about it(Oh God. It’s almost worthless at this point)
2) You start to deeply consider an offshore bank account.
And the number 1 way to tell your market is saturated….
1) Your trick starts appearing on EDU sites that also mysteriously hawk Viagra!
I have watched this happen perhaps too many times. Let’s all shed a tear.
Now move on, and find that next trick!
You’ll notice I never tell people specifics on here. That’s for a reason. I hate people that take a market that is easy to saturate, and then shove up a “How to” that makes it worthless for all involved. Including those who pioneered the tactic(Hint: The blogger almost never pioneered it)
Without Further Delay, here is the 3rd Post for the Day(aren’t you lucky I hate studying?);
The Top Ten Signs Your Market is Oversaturated
10) Your PPC ads go from pennies per click, to something involving a comma.
9) You see a “punch the hated object here” about it.
8 ) You find someone selling an e-book about the technique (god I hate ebooks)
7) That e-book somehow finds it’s way onto DigialPoint, complete with edited “Acount Statement”
6) You see me cussing at people on DigitalPoint about it.
5) Wherever you’re marketing updates their filters specifically to block you.
4) Legal threats start appearing on the interweb…
3) Shoemoney or BluehatSEO makes a post about it(Oh God. It’s almost worthless at this point)
2) You start to deeply consider an offshore bank account.
And the number 1 way to tell your market is saturated….
1) Your trick starts appearing on EDU sites that also mysteriously hawk Viagra!
I have watched this happen perhaps too many times. Let’s all shed a tear.
Now move on, and find that next trick!
August 25, 2009
How Do Different Internet Marketing Skills Cross Over?
I was talking to a few buddies that work in different aspects of internet marketing, and started debating with myself how much different skills within internet marketing cross over. For example, is it easier to become a mailer after excelling at PPC? Is it easier to do good at PPC after excelling at SEO? I’ve done all 3 now(though I’m still learning PPC), so I figure I can speak about this relatively accurately.
My Conclusion? Absolutely.
Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over
I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.
Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.
Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.
Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.
So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?
E-Mail Marketing
Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.
Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.
Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.
Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.
SEO
Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.
Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.
Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.
PPC Marketing
Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.
Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.
Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.
With All That Said…
I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.
Still Pondering,
XMCP
My Conclusion? Absolutely.
Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over
I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.
Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.
Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.
Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.
So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?
E-Mail Marketing
Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.
Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.
Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.
Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.
SEO
Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.
Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.
Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.
PPC Marketing
Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.
Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.
Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.
With All That Said…
I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.
Still Pondering,
XMCP
E-Mail Marketing Precautions and Tips
So you’ve got an e-mail list. Your sites have been slowly gathering the list for months, and you’re ready to market it. What should you do?
Getting Your E-mails
Do not Mine the Internet for E-mails. They’re crap, illegal, and will get you blacklisted so fast it will make your head spin.
Under no conditions do you ever BUY an e-mail list. Yeah, they say it’s not gotten from web crawlers, but e-mail list sellers are scammers 95% of the time. They generate new dates and information for the e-mails.
You can test for this, by matching the state to the given IP address for the customer. A IP to Location database is available somewhere out there, and a quick fix can be found here.
You can verify non yahoo/hotmail/msn e-mails. The smaller the better.
Connect to the mail server, and emulate a SMTP connection(docs online for that, lookup SMTP through telnet), and try an obviously non-existant e-mail address. When you enter the RECPTO address as this, and it should give you an error. If not, it’s a catch all.
If it was NOT a catch all, try the e-mail address up until that RECPTO command. If no error, the e-mail is valid. Do this with at least 10 from the sample. This gives you an idea of how many are valid, without sending an actual e-mail.
Beware the cheap, massive Co-Reg feeds. They are filled with spam traps first of all, which we’ll get to later. But secondly, real, illegal spammers use those, and completely max out any marketing capacity they once had. There’s only 3 or so co-reg feeds that are available on the net, so write off any promise that it’s “unique”.
Hosting
Get it okayed with your server administrator. Or better yet, PAY someone to do it. It’s worth it.
Note that your hosting will take the same, if not more heat than the servers sending the e-mail. Get hosting okayed as well as the mailing servers.
Do not buy servers from individuals. Use companies. Individuals often to not understand what they’re being asked, or are unreliable, or are shady as shit. Oftentimes, they also use compromised servers.
Beware of anyone claiming to have rotating, unlimited IPs. This is probably botnet hosting/mailing, and you do NOT want a piece of that. No matter how enticing it might sound.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Spamhaus Scorned
These guys are the enemies of people with a LOT of money, including the russian mob. They do not play games. They do not care about you. They do not accept excuses.
I have known of situations where they SBL(a death sentence) blocked 5 entire net ranges owned by a hosting company with a flawless record. And not because of “spamming” per se, but because of a messed up configuration for a message that was meant to be CAN-SPAM compliant(legal). They would not unblock the ranges, or authorize the data center to come back up, until they had information on who sent the legit-ish e-mails in question.
Since they refuse to do anything without having information on those in question, keep track of who you do business with. Who you rent servers from(Resellers). Who you bought the e-mail lists from. Things of that nature. If you’re sending for a client, make sure to have their real name/phone/address on hand.
Do not bother rambling about them being vigilantes. Do not bother mentioning they have no right to block your servers or shut down their datacenters. Should they be able to? No. Can they? Yes. Deal with it.
Read up on the CAN-SPAM act, if you’re in the United States or not. Being CAN-SPAM compliant is your only chance, since traditional spamming is not easy, and you probably lack the resources. Oh yeah, and it’s polluting the net. Even if you are CAN-SPAM compliant, most anti-spammers will not be ok with it.
Send out only offers directly relevant to the offer you got their e-mails from. Sending out common offers will result in problems. Many problems. You want to seperate yourself from the spam that barrages their inbox.
Use completely, 100% solid and seperate hosting from your normal hosting. If something goes awry, like a misconfiguration, you do not want your normal site going doing. Anti-spammers lately concentrate on eliminating hosting and DNS servers, almost moreso than the sending servers. Providers react swiftly to an Spamhaus request
Check, double check, re-check your settings. Make sure your stuff is setup properly. If you are not 100% compliant, or make one single mistake, You Will be Shut Down
Show these guys respect. If they find a problem with your marketing, try and fix it. Do whatever you can.
Avoid Mailing Servers in: Russia, Brazil, Korea, China, or really any Asian Country
Most of these are blackholed by common service providers. KoreaNet and ChinaNet especially.
Getting your Mail Inboxed
Look into whitelisting. Earthlink, Aol, and I believe Yahoo offer whitelisting services. Guard this with your life.
Have multiple IPs. Preferably on different 255 blocks. All major e-mail providers now employ graylisting, which will allow you to send perhaps, 250 e-mails per IP that will hit inbox. After that, they’re spam boxed, or delayed on delivery until the users classify them as spam or ham.
Rotate redirect domains as well(as long as this is CAN-SPAM compliant, I believe it is). Whether it’s spam or not, it’s ridiculously easy to get on the SURBL blacklist, which will make it impossible to hit inbox. Also, once again, large provider graylist domains.
Search for the company’s name online. Figure out if it really hit inbox. Also, make sure to search NANAE for any reactions to the company. Although, be aware, these guys hate pretty much all internet marketing, so you’ll never see a glowing endorsement. Best case scenario, the company is not mentioned. Also search for the owners name.
Do not troll. Do not piss these guys off. They will destroy you from within.
Ignore Jamie Bailey(aka Lamie). Everyone else does.
Check the company’s IP blocks. Figure out where they’re blacklisted. DnsStuff.com has a badass RBL check.
Ignore the APEWS list. It’s worthless, and no one uses it.
Use the customer’s name somewhere in the e-mail. It’s reassuring. Remind them of who you are, who you represent. And of course, as with all CAN-SPAM compliant e-mails, give a physical address.
Keeping your List So Fresh and So Clean
Process your Remove List. Every single day. Have it be instantaneous if possible.
Remove small domains, that are also catch-all. They’re likely used to inflate a list’s size, or are spam-traps that your list guy screwed you over with. You do not want them.
Let it Go! An old e-mail list is likely to get you complaints. Kill it off if necessary.
Talk To your Fellow SEOs
Many whitehats have experience, and can make reccomendations
Many blackhats have spewed their share of mail, first hand. Very usefu
Do Not Abuse Your List
Do not send out unrelated offers.
Do not send out mail every day.
Do not use obnoxious or misleading subjects
Finally, the #1 Most-Important-You-Should-Never-Forget-This-Rule Rule
Never, Ever, Ever Use Your Home Computer For Anything! Leave it to the pros, or get yourself some dedicated servers.
There is not room for argument here. You do not have room to be shady or original. Prepare to play by the rules, or spend a lot of money, and risk a lot of legal problems, to play by your own. These are your options.
I don’t do this anymore, but I thought I’d spread some knowledge about how to pull it off. Stay legal, and have fun.
Getting Your E-mails
Do not Mine the Internet for E-mails. They’re crap, illegal, and will get you blacklisted so fast it will make your head spin.
Under no conditions do you ever BUY an e-mail list. Yeah, they say it’s not gotten from web crawlers, but e-mail list sellers are scammers 95% of the time. They generate new dates and information for the e-mails.
You can test for this, by matching the state to the given IP address for the customer. A IP to Location database is available somewhere out there, and a quick fix can be found here.
You can verify non yahoo/hotmail/msn e-mails. The smaller the better.
Connect to the mail server, and emulate a SMTP connection(docs online for that, lookup SMTP through telnet), and try an obviously non-existant e-mail address. When you enter the RECPTO address as this, and it should give you an error. If not, it’s a catch all.
If it was NOT a catch all, try the e-mail address up until that RECPTO command. If no error, the e-mail is valid. Do this with at least 10 from the sample. This gives you an idea of how many are valid, without sending an actual e-mail.
Beware the cheap, massive Co-Reg feeds. They are filled with spam traps first of all, which we’ll get to later. But secondly, real, illegal spammers use those, and completely max out any marketing capacity they once had. There’s only 3 or so co-reg feeds that are available on the net, so write off any promise that it’s “unique”.
Hosting
Get it okayed with your server administrator. Or better yet, PAY someone to do it. It’s worth it.
Note that your hosting will take the same, if not more heat than the servers sending the e-mail. Get hosting okayed as well as the mailing servers.
Do not buy servers from individuals. Use companies. Individuals often to not understand what they’re being asked, or are unreliable, or are shady as shit. Oftentimes, they also use compromised servers.
Beware of anyone claiming to have rotating, unlimited IPs. This is probably botnet hosting/mailing, and you do NOT want a piece of that. No matter how enticing it might sound.
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Spamhaus Scorned
These guys are the enemies of people with a LOT of money, including the russian mob. They do not play games. They do not care about you. They do not accept excuses.
I have known of situations where they SBL(a death sentence) blocked 5 entire net ranges owned by a hosting company with a flawless record. And not because of “spamming” per se, but because of a messed up configuration for a message that was meant to be CAN-SPAM compliant(legal). They would not unblock the ranges, or authorize the data center to come back up, until they had information on who sent the legit-ish e-mails in question.
Since they refuse to do anything without having information on those in question, keep track of who you do business with. Who you rent servers from(Resellers). Who you bought the e-mail lists from. Things of that nature. If you’re sending for a client, make sure to have their real name/phone/address on hand.
Do not bother rambling about them being vigilantes. Do not bother mentioning they have no right to block your servers or shut down their datacenters. Should they be able to? No. Can they? Yes. Deal with it.
Read up on the CAN-SPAM act, if you’re in the United States or not. Being CAN-SPAM compliant is your only chance, since traditional spamming is not easy, and you probably lack the resources. Oh yeah, and it’s polluting the net. Even if you are CAN-SPAM compliant, most anti-spammers will not be ok with it.
Send out only offers directly relevant to the offer you got their e-mails from. Sending out common offers will result in problems. Many problems. You want to seperate yourself from the spam that barrages their inbox.
Use completely, 100% solid and seperate hosting from your normal hosting. If something goes awry, like a misconfiguration, you do not want your normal site going doing. Anti-spammers lately concentrate on eliminating hosting and DNS servers, almost moreso than the sending servers. Providers react swiftly to an Spamhaus request
Check, double check, re-check your settings. Make sure your stuff is setup properly. If you are not 100% compliant, or make one single mistake, You Will be Shut Down
Show these guys respect. If they find a problem with your marketing, try and fix it. Do whatever you can.
Avoid Mailing Servers in: Russia, Brazil, Korea, China, or really any Asian Country
Most of these are blackholed by common service providers. KoreaNet and ChinaNet especially.
Getting your Mail Inboxed
Look into whitelisting. Earthlink, Aol, and I believe Yahoo offer whitelisting services. Guard this with your life.
Have multiple IPs. Preferably on different 255 blocks. All major e-mail providers now employ graylisting, which will allow you to send perhaps, 250 e-mails per IP that will hit inbox. After that, they’re spam boxed, or delayed on delivery until the users classify them as spam or ham.
Rotate redirect domains as well(as long as this is CAN-SPAM compliant, I believe it is). Whether it’s spam or not, it’s ridiculously easy to get on the SURBL blacklist, which will make it impossible to hit inbox. Also, once again, large provider graylist domains.
Search for the company’s name online. Figure out if it really hit inbox. Also, make sure to search NANAE for any reactions to the company. Although, be aware, these guys hate pretty much all internet marketing, so you’ll never see a glowing endorsement. Best case scenario, the company is not mentioned. Also search for the owners name.
Do not troll. Do not piss these guys off. They will destroy you from within.
Ignore Jamie Bailey(aka Lamie). Everyone else does.
Check the company’s IP blocks. Figure out where they’re blacklisted. DnsStuff.com has a badass RBL check.
Ignore the APEWS list. It’s worthless, and no one uses it.
Use the customer’s name somewhere in the e-mail. It’s reassuring. Remind them of who you are, who you represent. And of course, as with all CAN-SPAM compliant e-mails, give a physical address.
Keeping your List So Fresh and So Clean
Process your Remove List. Every single day. Have it be instantaneous if possible.
Remove small domains, that are also catch-all. They’re likely used to inflate a list’s size, or are spam-traps that your list guy screwed you over with. You do not want them.
Let it Go! An old e-mail list is likely to get you complaints. Kill it off if necessary.
Talk To your Fellow SEOs
Many whitehats have experience, and can make reccomendations
Many blackhats have spewed their share of mail, first hand. Very usefu
Do Not Abuse Your List
Do not send out unrelated offers.
Do not send out mail every day.
Do not use obnoxious or misleading subjects
Finally, the #1 Most-Important-You-Should-Never-Forget-This-Rule Rule
Never, Ever, Ever Use Your Home Computer For Anything! Leave it to the pros, or get yourself some dedicated servers.
There is not room for argument here. You do not have room to be shady or original. Prepare to play by the rules, or spend a lot of money, and risk a lot of legal problems, to play by your own. These are your options.
I don’t do this anymore, but I thought I’d spread some knowledge about how to pull it off. Stay legal, and have fun.
How Do Different Internet Marketing Skills Cross Over?
I was talking to a few buddies that work in different aspects of internet marketing, and started debating with myself how much different skills within internet marketing cross over. For example, is it easier to become a mailer after excelling at PPC? Is it easier to do good at PPC after excelling at SEO? I’ve done all 3 now(though I’m still learning PPC), so I figure I can speak about this relatively accurately.
My Conclusion? Absolutely.
Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over
I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.
Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.
Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.
Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.
So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?
E-Mail Marketing
Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.
Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.
Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.
Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.
SEO
Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.
Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.
Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.
PPC Marketing
Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.
Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.
Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.
With All That Said…
I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.
Still Pondering,
XMCP
My Conclusion? Absolutely.
Internet Marketing(As I see it) Gets Broken Down into 3 Skills that Cross Over
I will cover these specific to each niche later in the entry. Presumably, skills with similar rankings will have a high ability to crossover.
Technology - If you don’t know a mouse from a router, you’re going to have some problems.
Social/Marketing - Understanding how people work, and what will trigger the buy.
Risk Management - Each type of advertising has it’s own risks associated with it. Knowing and being able to properly assess these is absolutely essential.
So Which Types of Marketing Require Which Traits?
E-Mail Marketing
Whether or not we like to admit it, email marketing is in many ways the granddaddy of internet marketing(in my opinion). It can have almost disgusting profit margins when everything is running properly, but can reduce to large losses just as quickly. So why the grand daddy? It cuts Google out of the equation.
Technology: 10/10 - Whitelists, domain keys, spam reports, large IP blocks, honey pots, catch-all accounts, SpamAssassin, internal blacklists, dynamic IPs, external blacklists. If you don’t have an incredible understanding of how the internet operates on these complicated levels, you’re a lost cause as an e-mail marketer. You’re trying to design campaigns to fullfill all of the [often contradictory] requirements that millions of domains have to hit inbox. One SBL listing? You’re done.
Social/Marketing: 5/10 - Reaching millions+ people, you don’t need a perfect message. Will it convert better with a perfect message and extraordinary call to action? Yeah. But appearing in the inbox in millions of accounts, you’re going to get some income. Think. If viagra spammers(non-compliant) can get sales using gibberish as a sales pitch, then a less than perfect one is fine.
Risk Management: 10/10 - This only gets a 10/10 because I can’t give it an 11/10. There’s dozens of external blacklists, and even more internal. Getting listed on the wrong one can bring your income to a halt. And beyond that, no matter what Wired and everyone else says, e-mailing compliant (or even moreso non-compliant) have massive expenses. Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget about upstream/downstream/affiliate network/merchant/credit card processing/mailing server/upstream provider/web hosting server/dns server complaints.
SEO
Technology: 7/10 - This can go up or down depending on what shade of gray hat you are. But you need to have a good understanding of the Google algorithm, and their capabilities. This takes research and time. Most people never do end up having a real understanding of it.
Social: 8/10 - Even ignore the entire super-massive “social” aspect of SEO, marketing through SEO has a unique place because often your traffic is looking for information, not a sale. It’s unavoidable, regardless of which terms you target. But a mixture of that and the social/web2.0 internet makes for a high reliance on socialness.
Risk: 5/10 - Is there risk? Yeah. Google can change their minds about a tactic in an instant, or bust paid links. But first, this is lowered by many people working on a consultant basis. Second is the fact that you can enter into longtails with absolutely no risk. No extra cost for that. If you’re paying for links, you can up this number though. Those are a pretty substantial investment.
PPC Marketing
Technology: 6/10 - Rigorous keyword tracking is the primary reason for this number. Without tracking(as I’m quickly finding out) you’re pretty dead from the start. Beyond that, coding split tests, and a decent understanding with quality score(which is more or less SEO) give this a substantial reliance on technology. But a lot do get by without it.
Social/Marketing: 9/10 - You’re paying per click. A lot. A campaign can go thousands into the red before it profits. Indeed, this is expected in many cases. So if you don’t have finely honed ads(we’re talking GORGEOUS ads) chances are you’re screwed. Because someone else in your niche WILL find a better ad.
Risk: 8/10 - Most niches I’ve found(even mid-level competition) want $1.00-$2.00 per click. Many want more. With that kind of investment, and sometimes under a 10% profit margin(sometimes much more, depends on the campaign), even small things can cause tremendous issues. A new competitor, a scam report ranking, or even bad luck can kill you. Also, let’s take a look at this. For a sale, you’re relying on normally 3 different servers. If your server, the affiliate tracking network server, or the provider server is having problems, you can run a huge expense up in no time at all. Also, with many campaigns to monitor, sometimes things can take a turn for the worst, and you may not notice. But one highly performing campaign can make up for that.
With All That Said…
I find that the most common crossover is SEO->PPC->E-mail Marketing. Which would suggest that despite all of this, risk exists as the primary factor in determining what progression people take. Note that I’m not suggesting any more of these are more or less complex than the others. It’s just the path that people seem to be taking.
Still Pondering,
XMCP
Marketing’s Hidden Beast: CPA Traffic
Briefly, some site news. You NO LONGER HAVE TO REGISTER TO POST. Yahoo is deferring my server’s e-mails, and I’m refusing to deal with it.
Now, The Article!
Ever had a site you just couldn’t monetize? Users just don’t have credit cards, or won’t buy? Adsense isn’t the only way to swing a sale. CPA offers (Cost per Action) are the most constantly underappreciated type of internet promotion ever. I personally have made around $600 from them one day while I did my laundry(using a technique I will not share here). However, I will share some tactics to help you promote using CPA. Bear in mind for all of these, kids and teens are the best audience.
First, Where can I find a good CPA Program?
Right Here. They accept most webmasters(which some don’t), give you a manager who is always on AIM(aol instant messenger) ready to talk to you or help you out, have high payouts, and don’t ban affiliates easily. Also, they support can-spam compliant e-mail promotion. Definitely the best, in my opinion. I reccomend y’all sign up.
Second, What is CPA?
CPA consists mostly of pay-per-signup offers. Normally no exchange of money between the user and the offer are needed. Some only require a zip code, some only require an e-mail address, some require those, plus a name/address. Typical payout for a E-mail/Zip submit is $1.00-3.50. For easy traffic you can’t do jack with, that’s a lot of money.
Offers are typically “Win a free expensive product here” or “Which is better? ThingX or ThingY”
This whole thing is going to be kind of basic, but a lot of people have not at all heard of CPA, or never tried it, so consider it a primer.
Now, onto marketing ideas, and general tips.
How to Promote(The Basics):
Selling software? Put it on the installer set to show while the app is installing. Leave it at that though. Most places will not accept spyware/adware traffic.
Got an opt-in e-mail list? Append a link to the offer on the bottom. Many offers can be e-mailed. Be careful though, you don’t want to bring complaints.
Got a message board? Ads on message boards convert like ass. Put a banner on the side, and you’ll get a hell of a lot more probably. Target your offer to your audience, not the payout.
Run a download site? Put them up as a nag screen before the person can download the software. You’ll get a surprising return.
Build a seperate cloaking site, then chuck the users over to the CPA with some bullshit article too. This works veryyyy nice.
PPC Offers! This is the most common method, and works well. Use a variety of PPC places. Google works great, but bids are high. Check out ask jeeves and the like. Buy up long tail keywords RELATED to your topic. Let’s say you have one asking “Should OJ Simpson’s Book be Published?” Buy up keywords related to victims, participants, lawyers, quotes, questions, things most people have no interest in bidding on.
Tips
Read #5. This details how to select your keywords
TARGETTING IS EVERYTHING. Don’t buy junk traffic.
Don’t be misleading. You’re paying for this traffic, so you want it to be quality. You need a high CTR.
Assume to start a 1:10 sign-up ratio for people going to your offer. Try and break even at first, then adjust your totals later.
There’s lot’s of CPA programs out there, but this one is my favorite.
Now, The Article!
Ever had a site you just couldn’t monetize? Users just don’t have credit cards, or won’t buy? Adsense isn’t the only way to swing a sale. CPA offers (Cost per Action) are the most constantly underappreciated type of internet promotion ever. I personally have made around $600 from them one day while I did my laundry(using a technique I will not share here). However, I will share some tactics to help you promote using CPA. Bear in mind for all of these, kids and teens are the best audience.
First, Where can I find a good CPA Program?
Right Here. They accept most webmasters(which some don’t), give you a manager who is always on AIM(aol instant messenger) ready to talk to you or help you out, have high payouts, and don’t ban affiliates easily. Also, they support can-spam compliant e-mail promotion. Definitely the best, in my opinion. I reccomend y’all sign up.
Second, What is CPA?
CPA consists mostly of pay-per-signup offers. Normally no exchange of money between the user and the offer are needed. Some only require a zip code, some only require an e-mail address, some require those, plus a name/address. Typical payout for a E-mail/Zip submit is $1.00-3.50. For easy traffic you can’t do jack with, that’s a lot of money.
Offers are typically “Win a free expensive product here” or “Which is better? ThingX or ThingY”
This whole thing is going to be kind of basic, but a lot of people have not at all heard of CPA, or never tried it, so consider it a primer.
Now, onto marketing ideas, and general tips.
How to Promote(The Basics):
Selling software? Put it on the installer set to show while the app is installing. Leave it at that though. Most places will not accept spyware/adware traffic.
Got an opt-in e-mail list? Append a link to the offer on the bottom. Many offers can be e-mailed. Be careful though, you don’t want to bring complaints.
Got a message board? Ads on message boards convert like ass. Put a banner on the side, and you’ll get a hell of a lot more probably. Target your offer to your audience, not the payout.
Run a download site? Put them up as a nag screen before the person can download the software. You’ll get a surprising return.
Build a seperate cloaking site, then chuck the users over to the CPA with some bullshit article too. This works veryyyy nice.
PPC Offers! This is the most common method, and works well. Use a variety of PPC places. Google works great, but bids are high. Check out ask jeeves and the like. Buy up long tail keywords RELATED to your topic. Let’s say you have one asking “Should OJ Simpson’s Book be Published?” Buy up keywords related to victims, participants, lawyers, quotes, questions, things most people have no interest in bidding on.
Tips
Read #5. This details how to select your keywords
TARGETTING IS EVERYTHING. Don’t buy junk traffic.
Don’t be misleading. You’re paying for this traffic, so you want it to be quality. You need a high CTR.
Assume to start a 1:10 sign-up ratio for people going to your offer. Try and break even at first, then adjust your totals later.
There’s lot’s of CPA programs out there, but this one is my favorite.
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