When I am working with a developer for the first time, I use the following rules and techniques as my ideal.  Every aspect of these rules that can be applied, or adapted as necessary based on technical or budgetary limitations, adds one more SEO element to the online catalog system.

OPTIMIZATION IN THE EXTREME

There are several recommendations I’ve listed here that you may find are “optimization in the extreme” or don’t fit with your personal view of what optimization really calls for.  In those situations, feel free to adapt what you want and leave the rest behind.

Also, there are many other aspects of the complete SEO process that applies to any site, eCommerce or otherwise which I have not included here, so it’s up to you to know or learn the broader SEO requirements that go beyond the scope of this article.

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1. ADVANCED HTML BASED NAVIGATION

Site Navigation for product Categories, Sub-Categories, and Products, as well as the links for each (and thus the resultant URL) should be dynamically generated rather than using graphic images.

MULTIPLE FIELDS

To get maximum value out of each Category or Sub-Category we need to have new fields in the CMS that allow us or the client to provide variations on naming that will then show up in different ways on the front end of the site.

Example:

CATEGORY URL

When they click on Banner Stands it might take them to that category page if it exists – if so, the URL would be:

http://www.ClientDomain.com/Trade-Show-Banner-Stands/

SUBCAT URL

If they click on the Sub-Category they would see:

http://www.ClientDomain.com/Trade-Show-Banner-Stands/Rotating-Banner-Stands/

PRODUCT URL

And if they click on the Product name it would take them to:

http://www.ClientDomain.com/Trade-Show-Banner-Stands/Rotating-Banner-Stands/Marquis-Banner-Stand

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2.  ECOMMERCE SECTION HEADER AND CONTENT

Because of the fiercely competitive nature of ecommerce, we need to go the extra mile in creating proper maximized Page Titles, Footers, Meta content and Page Content for each Cat, SubCat and Product.

To this end, we will need the ability in the CMS to add unique content for each of these three fields within each section.

CATEGORY SEO HEADERS

SUB-CATEGORY SEO HEADERS

PRODUCT DETAIL SEO HEADERS

ABOUT PRODUCT IMAGES

Sometimes an eCommerce system calls for multiple photos for any single product.  Because of this you’ll need to ensure that the content management system is adapted to allow a unique and appropriate Alternate Attribute for each product image posted.

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3. AUTOMATING 301 REDIRECTS

If any URL is dependent upon a site owner’s text entry, the system will need to automatically handle 301 redirects so that old URLs which are no longer valid, don’t end up becoming 404 not found pages.

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4.  AUTOMATING SITEMAP.XML GENERATION

When you have a dynamic web site, eCommerce or otherwise, if the site owner is able to add, modify and delete pages, or add, modify and delete categories, sub-categories and products, you’ll need to work with them ensure that the sitemap.xml file(s) is/are auto-updated.  This will need to happen either as soon as the content additions or deletions are generated, or on a set schedule.

You’ll also have to decide how many URLs the system should include in a single file before it automatically generates another one.  Just because you can include 50,000 URLs doesn’t mean you should.  Especially if the server the site is on is less than robust, or if the actual files are generated on the fly…

BEWARE – I’ve gone through this with a number of development companies.  Some of them get it and others “think” they do, only to have me find during testing that a sitemap.xml file either throws an error or is missing half the URLs, or has the incorrect version of some URLS included.

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5.  AUTOMATING CUSTOM DATA FEEDS

Depending on the client budget, you’ll want to consider whether the site should automatically generate custom data feed files for distribution of product data to 3^rd party shopping aggregation sites, such as Shopping.com or Google Base.  There are several other similar sites as well.  Each one to be considered will need to be checked to find out what the feed submission process will entail.  And you’ll then need to coordinate with the site’s developer to get the feed implemented for each one.

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6.  TESTING TESTING – IS THIS THING ON?

Just because I’ve outlined the most important ways to implement high value SEO for eCommerce does not mean that you can just pass this information to the developer and walk away.  You’ll need to be a participant in the process from start to finish, most especially when it comes to Quality Assurance testing BEFORE site launch and AFTER.

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen in the execution of this type of functionality is that developers leave out various tasks, or they make assumptions about what or how they should do the work, only to cause the end result to be a mess of invalid URLs, mis-interpreted placement on the front end, or duplicate content.  When that happens, it will be your responsibility to make note of the problems, and be able to explain why things need to be changed.

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THE BOTTOM LINE

So there you have it – the core tasking I include whenever I can in working with 3^rd party developers to help make an eCommerce site as optimized as possible.

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Alan Bleiweiss has been an Internet consultant since January 1995, and has been specializing in SEO since early 2001.  Some of his most notable clients include Weight Watchers International, Starkist Tuna, Fortunoffs, and Publishers Clearing House.  For more information contact Alan Bleiweiss at www.HeyDudeWheresMySite.com or visit Alan’s Blog at http://SearchMarketingWisdom.com

Six Rules for Custom eCommerce SEO is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Well, actually, we really didn’t have a choice at the time, we were in the Army.

Okay – we had a choice – but the consequences of not being in shape were a fairly good motivator.

On that particular day, I can recall everyone crowded around the starting line – a sea of olive green uniforms on a concrete road lined by a gaggle of trees on either side.   I don’t recall the time of day, except that it was pretty early in the morning.  (Lots of things happen early in the morning when you’re in the Army)…

When you’re in the Army, some people prefer to just be in the middle of the pack – not wanting to blaze trails (for fear of the concept that the people up front tend to get shot first).  Others really would rather be somewhere else, doing something else.  These people tend to end up at the rear of the pack.  Then there’s people like me.  – You will usually find us up front, doing what we think will give us a competitive advantage in the race – unafraid, because our minds are only on one thing in that moment – victory.

Now, I’m not so competitive or driven that I have that attitude in everything.  Believe me – I’m a lot less business-focused and a lot more life-balanced.  It’s just that when I decide to focus on a really succulent prize (like being able to say I was the fastest one in our Company that day), I can have a fairly intense focus. When it came to running, at least back in those days, I was truly passionate about the experience.  Not quite obsessed – heck – I never ever practiced on my own even.  Just passionate about the in-the-moment presence – like meditation in motion…

Except life isn’t always going to support us in our efforts, or make the task effortless.

In fact, on that warm sunny spring morning, life decided that, shortly after the start of the race, someone behind me would, themselves, be so determined to get where they were going that they only focused on the goal, and not their surroundings.

Because in that moment, I felt a foot stepping on one of my heels.   And then I felt the slow-motion sensation we all feel as we’re about to come crashing to the ground, helpless to do anything about it…

And come crashing down, I did!  down, onto that hard, pebble and grit strewn concrete road.   Hands flailing in front of me to instinctively break the fall – a true cave-man inborn survival reaction.  I could feel the burning sensation in the palms of my hands, the scraping of my elbows, and knees…  and at the same time, I also felt that sea of green wash over and around me, like waves crashing into the rocky shore.

Because my adrenaline had been so properly primed before the race however, once Newton’s law of motion had worked itself out, I didn’t just lay there, not even long enough to assess the damage.  Instead, I had an instantaneous vision of someone else, other than me, crossing that finish line first.  And I was pissed.

Fortunately, only a smidgen of my anger was directed at the unknown assailant.  Heck, I wasn’t able to picture a name or a face to target my wrath at.  All I knew was that someone did something – intentional or not, to knock me off my course, prevent me from reaching my goal, and all it did was cause me to double-up my determination, get up off the ground, and jump back into the race.

When adrenaline REALLY kicks in, like it did AFTER I had been knocked down, something clicks in the mind that causes the body to react and go into tunnel vision.  Kind of like – that cave man, when a big, bad dinosaur suddenly appears just behind him, already in attack mode, ready to eat lunch after not having any decent human flesh in days or weeks…

And that’s what happened to me in that moment.  Not because I was afraid I was going to die, but that someone else was going to achieve the goal that I had set out for myself!

And other than fleeting glimpses of others ahead or around me, or the twists and turns of the road as I would prepare for each next one in turn, I have no memory (nor did I later that day) of anything much else, because of that adrenaline induced tunnel vision…

Now, I’d like to be your hero here, and say that I won the race…

But that would be a bold-faced lie.  And while the Cancerian in me tends to express himself visually through a bold and emotive face, I would prefer to be honest and let you know that I actually came in second place that day…

Having had to catch up with the entire Company of 100 men and women.

And the only person who I wasn’t able to catch up to was the Company Executive Officer, a West Point graduate and former college athlete.

And he only beat me by about 30 seconds…

But the real kicker here, and the wrap-up on this prelude to success in SEO, is that after a few moments of exhilarating happiness of what I’d achieved that day, in spite of some snot-nosed low-life (yeah – at some point, even though the adrenaline, I had been able to muster up a re-visiting of the “incident”, and had, by then, formulated a belief that it was either intentional, or worse, that it was due to someone’s ignorance and lack of respect), that I had come back and nearly won the whole thing!  And in that moment, I felt completely joyous in coming in 2nd place.

Until I went off to sit on the curb, and catch my breath.

Because as soon as I sat down, I saw, and felt, my knees.  Both knees of my olive drab uniform were soaked through with blood.  And both knees of my 20-something year old body, were all-of-a-sudden, in serious pain! And my hands – OMG – the palms of my hands had little tiny pebbles and grit buried in them – and abraisions all up along both my fore-arms… and one of my elbows had enough flesh ripped away from it that the skin was kind of dangling…

HEY – come back – barfing, even just a little in your mouth,  is not an excuse from finishing this article!

And that brings us to modern day.  Alan as an SEO consultant.

One of the reasons I consistently get my client sites onto the first page of Google (or whatever your cup of search happens to be) organically is because of that same passion and determination.  Whether it’s after having been slammed into the concrete pavement by some black-hat SEO, or if it’s having to catch up to a sea of competitors with years of lead time, or having to counter the next “Vince” update.

That’s the beauty of our industry.

With enough time, leverage and client budgetary willingness, by applying best of breed SEO techniques, anyone can achieve high organic rankings.

Oh sure, you may not get your client into that coveted #1 organic slot for every keyword phrase.

But you can get them there for some if you’re determined enough.  And you can get a lot more of them somewhere on the first page of results.  And you will, if you consider how big a deal it is, be able to look at those achievements, and smile.

In spite of the bloodied knees you get along the way, or better, you’ll be able to smile KNOWING you got there even when some people played by different rules.

SEO Sometimes Takes Bloody Determination is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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I’m extremely pleased to announce that I was recently invited by Ann Smarty, Director of Media at Search Engine Journal to become a guest blogger at what I consider the premier SEO blog online.  And today my first article was published there.  It’s entitled “8 Key Points to Multiple Niche Sites and Controlling Back Links”. And in just a few hours since publishing, it’s gone hot at Sphinn…

Befitting a title that long, the article itself is a detailed guide for anyone considering whether they should split out at least some of their content onto multiple sites or not…

This is a big deal for me.  While I’ve been an industry professional for fourteen years, I’ve only recently been participating in my peer community, so I haven’t until now, had the recognition from within my industry that some of my peers have. Instead, I’ve been more focused on the day to day business of managing the search optimization of client web sites.  That Ann felt so highly of my industry knowledge, perspective and writing style is truly an honor I am proud of.  Search Engine Journal is one of the most read SEO blogs on the Internet, and one of the top ten marketing blogs in the AdAge Power 150.

While not all my articles will be as lengthy as this first one, I will always take this opportunity seriously and look forward to interacting with SEJ’s tens of thousands of loyal readers.

And without further fanfare, I invite you to read my article on tapping the power of multiple web sites for SEO.

My Search Engine Journal Debut is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Rather than trying to cover everything, I’ll focus specifically on one feature, the bing “Quick Preview” and the text that shows up for search results themselves. I’ll leave the rest of the reviewing to other bloggers or to a future article of my own.

BING SEARCH RESULTS – PAGE TITLE PROBLEM?

When I first did a search to see what pages come up for my name, I got mostly valid, current results.  But what struck me as odd was that the results weren’t displaying the page title for the first couple entries.

Note how the first two results just say “Alan Bleiweiss”?  Well the page title for my blog is really “Search Marketing Answers”… and for my company site, the home page title tag starts out with “Hey Dude Wheres My Site | Search Engine Optimization”…

I follow proper HTML syntax in my page titles, and most page titles show up properly for most of the results. But some of the other searches I did got similar results for sites I don’t own.  And for all of these, Google seems to have the proper page title displayed.  So what’s going on with Microsoft’s system?

BING QUICK PREVIEW FEATURE

When I first started playing with the results page, I discovered almost right away that when you roll your mouse over most search results, you see a thin line off to the right of that entry, with an orange dot in the middle of it.

As I rolled my mouse over that orange dot, a slick preview window opened up to reveal content directly from the site linked to off to the left.

While the initial text that’s shown for my pages is coming directly from the META Description tag, the info that shows up in the preview window is coming directly from the page’s content.

Now here’s where I think Google needs to sit up and pay attention.  For the first time in quite a while, I really think that Microsoft is actually delivering on a promise.  In this case, it’s the promise they’re making that bing isn’t a search engine, but instead, it’s a “decision engine”.

For those sites that they can do this with (not all sites allow replication of content), it’s going to help a lot of people make a more qualified decision on whether to click through to a site than they can now do at Google.  By providing the Meta Description AND the initial content that is actually on the page linked, Microsoft is giving us more information to process.

I like this feature a lot.  And quite frankly, it was a very pleasant surprise to see.

PAGE LINKS – NOT JUST FOR THE ELITE

I also found that for several entries in the results page, bing is also showing site links within that preview pane.  These aren’t just showing up for the top results either.  I found the same thing on results that were on the 2nd page as well.  They’re not showing for every entry, but this too goes beyond what Google is presently offering to their visitors.  Yet one more feature that may help Microsoft gain market share…

MICROSOFT IS LISTENING – SORT OF

When I tweeted my revelation tonight, I got a quick “thank you” response from “Betsy”, who was, at least at that moment, monitoring the @bing Twitter account.

While that too was a pleasant surprise, it was no surprise that Betsy ignored my first three tweets preceding my compliment.  And my tweets earlier today questioning bing’s potential for blurring the advertising and pure organic results also went unanswered.  Yet it’s nice to see that they’re eager to return the favor when the post is in their favor.

THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION

Well, in any case, we’re ultimately going to have to wait and see how this all unfolds.  Whether the site “Quick Preview” feature will be enough, or how the whole user experience goes is anybody’s guess at this early stage.  Yet I seriously believe that the potential does exist in Microsoft gaining market share, now that I’ve tasted the preview feature…

POST A COMMENT – SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

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Bing Search Engine Initial Review is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Tim Rutten, in his latest opinion piece at the LA Times, jumped on the bandwagon with the rest of the panic-stricken print media today calling for the Obama administration to turn a blind eye to the antitrust ambitions of that group of old-guard old-boys.  Since this is now a trend building great momentum, I felt compelled to chime in.  Not because I’m a journalist with a voice in the matter – in fact, I am not a journalist.  I am, instead, just another American citizen who happens to have been a visionary from the early days, when it comes to the Internet.  I am also a staunch supporter of all that is great in America, and oppose bully tactics on all fronts…

NOTE -Since there didn’t seem to be a way to do so directly at their site in any type of comment area, I’ve contacted Mr Rutten by email inviting his reply.  It would be nice to have a dialogue on the subject….

Mr. Rutten essentially regurgitates what several in his industry have been spewing lately. (How odd- a “journalist” who just repeats what all his buddies write)  That since print media is now obviously on a road to ruin, they should have the right to conspire, so that they may reap the financial reward that comes from monopolistic behavior, much like the oil cartels in how they manipulate the price of a barrel of oil.

At one point, he states:

“Readers — and democracy itself, which depends on a vigorously free and independent press — will be the ultimate losers.”

Well, Mr. Rutten’s article is an entertaining read.  That’s for sure. He and his colleagues have been using terminology and words that evoke fear, panic and a sense that America itself will die if they don’t get their way.  Kind of like the Republican Party did during the last election cycle.  And Dick Cheney is doing now. (though in my opinion, he’s doing that because he doesn’t want to go to jail, which is another story altogether…) (and no, I’m not a bleeding heart liberal.  I would have loved to have been able to vote for decorated war hero Colin Powell for president, because I feel he’s got the healthiest mix of views of just about anyone these days…)

Here’s where I have a problem with Mr Rutten’s whole premise.  (one mind you, that no major print media journalist has the guts to cover in depth because that would threaten their paychecks even if it would be true investigative journalism…)

First, the Internet has been around for a long time now.  Some of us recognized what it is and where it’s headed long ago.  I myself, on the very first day I was introduced to the world wide web in January of 1995, instantly understood the potential, and in that living room of a friend in Felton California that winter afternoon, knew that the Internet was the future, and in fact, my future.

Because I acted on that intuition, I’ve been an Internet professional ever since.  It’s been an amazing and wild ride.  Ups and downs have come in all sorts of ways.  And I know of what I speak when I mention things like “adapt and change with the times if you want to survive and hopefully thrive”.  It was because of that mentality that I was able to ride out the dot-com bust.  And it’s why I’ve continued to adapt and change how and what I do as an Internet professional all along.

Has it been an easy ride?  You tell me.

At my first financial peak, 1999, I brought in $139,000.  After the bust, in 2001, I brought in $12,000.  While that was extremely humbling,  it just drove me harder to find new ways to monetize my passion for the Internet.

Over these 14 plus years, I’ve had to learn HTML – versions 1, 2, 3, 4, and 4.1.  I’ve had to learn the essentials of Javascript, XML, ActionScript, Flash, Photoshop, FTP,  XHTML, CSS, ColdFusion, PHP, IIS, SEO, and SEM.  Over the years, I’ve had to become intimately knowledgeable on Email marketing, Spam prevention, Social Networking, affiliate networking, and of course, blogging.

Nobody forced me to learn any of that.  It’s been by my choice, gladly, because I have understood the concept “adapt or die”.

And the Internet has been my passion since the beginning.  I have no formal programming training, I didn’t graduate with any technology degree (in fact I have no college degree – I’ve been working out in the world since I was 17.  My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college, and my high school guidance counselor spent a grand total of 10 minutes with me my entire high school span, so I had nobody helping guide me back then).

Yet I’ve worked hard.  Very hard.  For many years.  Late into the night.

Because I embrace the Internet so completely, so thoroughly, I learned early on that if you truly want to succeed on the Internet, all you need to do is reach out to those who have come before you and succeeded in whatever path you are wanting to be on.  And they’ll gladly, freely share with you tips, suggestions, insights on what has and what has not worked for them.   They don’t conspire with you.  They teach you how to fish for yourself.

And most of what I have learned has come to me because I’ve found it freely, thank you very much, available online.  There to read, download, and learn from.

See, that’s the beauty and power of the web.  It’s the single most potent vehicle in the history of humankind as far as being able to empower humans who might not otherwise have been able to afford to pay for that empowerment.  People who want to learn just about anything, including how to adapt and change.

Oh yes – there are plenty of things we need to pay for online.  Essentially it’s got to do with superior quality, and more comprehensive content.  Heck, even Mr. Rutten admits that some entities like the Wall Street Journal have found ways to monetize very high quality deep content.  And to boot, he also refers to the fact that news media apparently raked in $447 million in online revenue last year.

What?  They made money online?  Hundreds of millions of dollars?

Yep.  Except that’s not nearly enough to help pay for the thousands of people who currently work in the print news industry.  They expect that they’ll need to make billions online if they are to survive the inevitable shift. And as of late, they’re working to get Google to pay for at least a big chunk of that.

Well that’s the rub Mr. Rutten.  Your industry failed to fully embrace the Internet more than a decade ago.  For the most part, your industry’s leaders have apparently been too myopic, or too arrogant or too lazy perhaps, to find a way to adapt even though the writing’s been on the wall for so many years.  And you still to this day, refuse to even consider that a dramatically smaller staffed group of niche market news outlets might in fact be both a much more focused and stellar bunch of journalists, let alone a dramatically much more highly profitable bunch.

No, heaven forbid tens of thousands should lose their income.  People who would, in that scenario, be obsolete.  Not needed.  Superfluous.  Actually, they wouldn’t – all anyone who loses their career in such a manner needs to do is learn to adapt and find new opportunities for themselves.  Is it painful?  Yes.  Does it take a huge toll on an individual or family?  Of course it does.  (See my experience from the year 2000 above). Yet due to the current financial crisis, people who, through no direct fault of their own, are having to do that right now – all across America, in all sectors.  But unlike them, your industry has gotten in this pickle through direct failure to take actionable steps based on sound business principles.

The bottom line here is this – deep-pocketed old-boy networks (wall-street, Detroit, and now print-media everywhere) find it easier to use fear-mongering and lawyers in suits when dealing with a potentially catastrophic event of their own making rather than the hard work and dedication it takes to adapt.  And since Congress (both parties thank you very much) consist of like minded people (read that – paid off under the table during their tenure in congress and as lobbyists afterward), we have a serious problem here people.

While I have no problem with individual news entities sharing their success stories with their peers, I have a serious problem when the entirety of the biggest players decides to get together so they can force that entire industry to stop giving news away in any form of any significance.  And I also think that how they do all they can to marginalize professional journalists who blog as independents is yet another major bully tactic to try and keep themselves relevant without adapting or embracing.

I encourage everyone who reads this to contact your members of Congress and express your outrage.  I did so yesterday – sent a  lengthy email out.  And I’d greatly appreciate you leaving a comment here – either letting me know how wrong I am or if you even agree a little… Because unlike the LA Time’s opinion column online, I believe it’s only proper to allow comments on an opinion piece article…  Call me crazy like that…

Why Newspapers Need To Fail is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #1.  FINDING PEOPLE TO FOLLOW ON TWITTER
You can go to Twitter when you’re signed in, and do a search for topics you might be interested in, and find people who are on twitter that discuss them.

For example, you could type in  prosperity   or   antioxidants   or   gratitude   or   photography

From there, you’ll get a very long list of recent tweets (a tweet is when you post something to Twitter)  from anyone who mentioned that word in it.  Clicking on their photo brings up their profile and all their recent tweets.  If you like what they post, you can choose to follow them.

(You can always choose to “unfollow” them later on if you want)

RATIO OF FOLLOWERS TO FOLLOWING

Some people only follow five people but have 50,000 followers themselves.  People like Oprah, Larry King, Ashton Kutcher…  At first I followed some people like that, because as an Internet Marketing professional I wanted to see how they were using Twitter.  What I found was that very few people in that category are worth following (at least by me anyhow) because they really are just using Twitter to get even more fans or publicity.  And that, to me, is just not something I care to pollute my life with.

At the same time though, if you really have something of value to contribute on Twitter, I don’t care how many people you are following or are following you.  I’ll follow you anyhow.

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #2.  BETTER MANAGEMENT

Managing your user experience is paramount to efficiency, enjoyment and quality of life in the Twitterverse.  Here’s just a couple tips on how to get a grasp of what could otherwise become a very overwhelming experience on Twitter.

TWITTER USER INTERFACE IMPROVED WITH TWEETDECK

I use TweetDeck – it’s a stand-alone program that is much better at being able to follow what people say, respond and participate than just using the Twitter web site.  With Tweetdeck, you don’t have to refresh your twitter page to get updates of when people you are following post their own tweets.  You can also set up new columns – to move your favorite tweeple (twitter people) over to.  That helps me a lot now that I am following over 500 people.  There are other solutions out there, TweetDeck just happens to be the one I prefer.

TWITTER FOLLOWER MANAGEMENT WITH TWEEPLER
Trying to evaluate whether someone that is following you is worthy of following (yes I evaluate each follower to see if I want to follow them!)  I have found Tweepler to be invaluable!  It’s not perfect, yet it’s light-years ahead of using the Twitter site method.  You can see everyone who is following you, every one from that list that you are following, and everyone from that list that you are not yet following.

You can quickly see their three most recent tweets, and their profile description.  If they have a link to their web site in their profile, you can click on it to get a better grasp of who they are.

Then at the click of a button, you can add them to who you are following, or you can move them to the side.  You can always come back to review the list and change things if you want.
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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #3.  SHORTEN YOUR TWEETS
First, it’s not polite to only tweet one way.  Or to only tweet links to your business web site or blog. Participate in the community aspects of Twitter – comment on other people’s tweets, add your own voice.  Some people tweet every single thing in their life while others only tweet about one topic.  That’s your call.   Yet when you tweet, sometimes it is a challenge to get all you want to communicate in 140 characters.  Here’s a couple tricks to fix that.

SHORTEN WORDS
Change the word “for” to  4   “you” becomes U  “and” becomes &  and so forth…

SHORTEN URLS
If you want to shorten a web site address, you can use a 3rd party tool like bit.ly or any one of several others available.   Personally I switched to bit.ly a while back after using SNURL because I found that after signing up, when I use the service to shorten a URL, it will keep track of how many people clicked on that shortened URL.  Not only how many people that saw my copy of it, but anyone else who has also found that shortened URL – either because someone forwarded mine to other people, or because the destination had already been processed by the bit.ly service previously.

Seeing these statistics help me determine which of my tweets with links in them are most effective or listened to.

An example of how this works would be where http://www.search-marketing-answers.com/blog/2009/05/16/competitive-insight-girl-scouts-and-hells-angels/

becomes http://bit.ly/tg27a

WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS
If you feel a tweet just can’t be completely shortened, go ahead and use two tweets.  Just be aware that too much of this can annoy people.  Then again, some people will unfollow you if you post more than five tweets a day.  Personally, I tweet anywhere from no tweets in three days up to 50 or more tweets if it’s a really amazing day.
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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #4.  REPLYING
If you want to reply to someone on Twitter  you use the @ symbol  so  @alanbleiweiss how are you?   will send the message “how are you” to me. Only reply to me if you think you have something of value to say.  Please don’t reply to every tweet I post in the hopes that I will follow you.  Yet if you have something to say that is in opposition to my views, please DO reply to me and you just may find that you become one of my favorite tweeple!

Note though – that if I tweet you three or four times and you don’t respond, I may choose to un-follow you.  No offense – I just think that it’s polite to acknowledge others most of the time.  Still though, I understand that sometimes it’s not all about me and I won’t automatically unfollow either though.

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #5.  RETWEETING
If you really like something that someone tweets, you can choose the “ReTweet” option (either manually copy and paste it to resend it out, or in TweetDeck, using the RT button next to their photo.  If you do it manually, it’s polite to put RT  username    in front of the tweet to let people know that you’re just forwarding something from someone else.   Doing so without giving credit is rude for sure.

If you go to RT someone it will automatically add your username in front of the tweet.  So sometimes, that makes the tweet too long (140 character max allowed).  When that happens, I sometimes shorten their tweet and change RT to (via)  so people know it’s been edited.
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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #6.  PRIVATE TWEETS
If you are following someone and IF they are following you also,  you can directly communicate with them privately.   You put a D  in front of their username but with a space  so   D alanbleiweiss  will send me a direct tweet if I am following you also.  (If you have TweetDeck Direct tweets show up in their own column and so do  replies)

CAVEAT Direct Tweeting is NOT a perfect system – once in a blue moon Twitter will accidentally send a direct Tweet out in the open.  And if you are typing fast and end up not having a blank space after the D and before a username, that tweet will go out into the open twitterverse!

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #7.  FINDING MORE PEOPLE ON TWITTER
Once you are following others, if a tweet they post includes @username of someone else on Twitter, that’s one way to discover other people who you might want to follow.

Also, as you surf the web, more and more people have icons or text  links to follow them on Twitter.  Clicking on that link or icon will take you to their Twitter page where you can choose to follow them or not.

You can also find even more people to follow by using services like Twellow (The Twitter Yellow Pages), or WeFollow.  And be sure to list yourself there as well, so other people can find you!

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #8.  #keyword
When you see a tweet with the pound sign (called the “hashtag“) in front of it, that’s a way that people can discuss common topics or events over an extended period of time, then someone else can do a search  for #whatever  and all the tweets that exist for that topic or word will be displayed.

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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #9.  #FollowFriday
This has become one of the more enjoyable hashtags – where if you like someone’s tweets enough, on Friday you can say #followfriday @alanbleiweiss

The problem with this was that many people got out of hand and would #followfriday six tweets in a row with eight usernames in each tweet.  Twitter recently made a change to their system so that if you are not following people that I include in my tweets, you wouldn’t see that tweet from me at all.  (And thus killed the #followfriday purpose).  There was huge uproar among the twitterverse and so they changed that back but it may only be temporary.

RECOMMENDATION
Many of us prefer to use #followfriday in a more elegant way so if I like you enough I will do something like:

#followfriday @yourusername  because they really have great insights on health and wellness

(essentially it’s a mini-testimonial for you)
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BEST TOP TWITTER TIP #10.  MORE TWITTER TIPS
Well, this IS a list of my top ten Twitter Tips, so I had to find a way to limit it to only ten tips on making Twitter a much more enjoyable and efficient place to communicate.  And that left me with the dilemma that if I could, I’d make it Alan’s top 100 Twitter tips.  But then it wouldn’t be a Top Ten list then would it?

So in keeping within my own article’s title, I now offer you a couple additional resources for further Twitter eduation:

BETTER FOLLOWING
http://www.twitip.com/how-to-be-a-better-follower/

MOBILE TWEETING
http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/04/16/20-ways-to-use-twitter-on-your-cell-phone-or-mobile-internet-device/

http://twitterhelp.blogspot.com/2008/05/twitter-via-mobile-web-mtwittercom.html

TWITTER HELP
http://help.twitter.com/portal

TWITTER SPAM REPORT

@spam Follow Twitter’s official spam profile and report Twitter spam via direct message (shortly after you follow them, they’ll follow you back.  Once that happens, you can D spam  to report spammers

The Best Top Ten Twitter Tips is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

Subscribe to my blog by RSS or Email

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If you hadn’t noticed, Google was down to upwards of 14% of it’s users at one point this week.

Yes – down - as in “very slow” for some, even “not working at all” for others.  Only for an hour mind you, yet down nonetheless.  They even blogged about it.  Given what we know about Google’s market share, that’s a LOT of people who lost their ability to search the only really good search engine on Earth.

And that prompted me to think once again (yes, I have a very bizarre way of connecting dots) about web analytics – the tracking and analyzing of site visitor information that is so important to my small and mid-size business clients…

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THE END IS NOT UPON US

Personally, I learned about the down-time thanks to an article by Jordan McCollum, who confirmed that the End Times weren’t actually upon us (yet).  See, I wasn’t directly affected.  Either because I was surfing elsewhere at the time, or I actually was at Google (probably looking to see where my mesothelioma law firm clients were in the SERPs for one of their key word phrases – yes I really do have a client in that arena) and in that moment, wasn’t one of the fourteen percent.  Heaven forbid.  I would have been extremely upset.

Well, not really – I get paid whether Google is down for an hour or not.  I am, after all, the owner of my own company.  And I ALWAYS pay myself for my time, regardless of circumstances outside my control. 

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MARKET SHARE OR SMOKE & MIRRORS?

Depending on who you believe, Google owns anywhere from  65%,  to more than 70% of all search on the web.  Andrew Lipsman over at comScore tried to explain the variations in these statistics earlier this year.  Of course, his spin attempted to put comScore in a good light as compared to the others.  Because it’s in his financial best interest to convince you that comScore is reliable, trustworthy and necessary.  Except the truth is they use old school statistic methods that come out of the Television marketing world.  Archaic.  Barely not really plausible even in the 20th century.

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I LAUGH IN THE FACE OF “FACTUAL” STATISTICS

Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m a statistics agnostic.  I used to be a crime statistician, and if it suits me, I can show you in five minutes how to turn soup into nuts, water into wine, and five visits into five thousand.  On digital paper at least.  So when it comes to statistics, I inherently know that you can’t take them at their face value.

Now, I don’t go around just mocking stats and web analytics companies.  I always put them in context, and fact check.  And use other information to help form business decisions.

However I firmly believe that when it comes to Competitive Insight, statistics are inherently a bear trap waiting for the unsuspecting camper to meander right into.  Especially when it comes to Internet analytics.

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GIRL SCOUTS AND HELLS ANGELS

For example – if a web site is in a truly niche market – let’s say they cater to Girl Scouts, hard core bikers, Gen Y, or hundreds or thousands of other niches, then it is most likely that solutions from comScore, Nielsen, HitWise, Alexa, Compete, and all the rest, are going to be completely misleading at best, and patently false at worst.

Why?  Because none of the players have any real grasp of those  user bases, or, in the case of “comparisons to your competition”, access to the real traffic statistics on those web sites.

Sure, Alexa may have slipped their toolbar onto the computers of a small number of unsuspecting Girl Scouts.

But a “few” is far from any kind of large enough share to be a valid basis for extrapolation.  And its’ more likely that the only reason those Girl Scouts have computers that got that Alexa ToolBar on them is because their older brother was probably surfing for illegal music downloads at some point. Or porn.  And the statistics from that household are then tainted, to say the least.

The point though, is that if the market focus of a web site is Girl Scouts, Panel based stat companies can’t possibly have enough Girl Scouts on their panel to give you real data to work with.

Calling All Volunteers

Exactly how many hard core, shiv carrying, barroom brawling bikers do you think voluntarily allow their computer to be loaded with a 3rd party user activity tracking solution from comScore or Nielsen?  Okay, so YOU may not cater to that crowd, but again, it’s illustrative of the diversity of markets served through the web.  And a perfect example for this article.

Hells Angels Disclaimer: If you know of any Hells Angels who are participants on the ComScore or Nielsen Net Ratings panels, please let me know and I will peacefully and most respectfully revise this article.  Or I’ll just call one of my friends from the Diablos and let them work it out with the Angels. 

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Commercial Break

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SMALLER SITES AND COMPETITIVE DECISIONS

In my example above, with say, Girl Scouts, there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of web sites – perfectly legitimate, professionally designed web sites, that cater to people in the Girl Scout demographic.  How well do sites like HitWise or Alexa provide insights into market reach for sites like those?  Not well at all.  Terribly in fact.  Beyond pitiful. And it’s even worse for specialty sites with that market focus.

Just to test and either validate or debunk my own theory, I ran a check on three web sites that fit this arena.

GirlScoutShop.org

This site, run by Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, sells uniforms, books, insignia, camping supplies and more.  They’re a legitimate web site selling authentic Girl Scout products.  A small site, for sure, yet if I want to market to Girl Scouts, and I want competitive insight into other web sites that cater to them and come up in the top five at google, they go on my list.

YouthLeadership.com

This site is not focused specifically on Girl Scouts as their market.  In fact, according to their web site, they are “An online information center for youth leadership education and development.”  Their market is Teachers, Parents, Kids and Teens.  A site that would make a perfectly fine destination for any up and coming Girl Scout looking to have a positive impact on the world.  Better still, with such a large scope, the site must have lots of visitor traffic data.

LearnAndServe.gov

According to their web site, Learn and Serve America supports and encourages service-learning throughout the United States, and enables over one million students to make meaningful contributions to their community while building their academic and civic skills.  Again, this is quite an appropriate web site suited for Girl Scouts.  And since it’s a U.S. Government site, surely there’s plenty of traffic.

Now, I picked these three not because any one of them might be just like your web site from a products or services perspective, but to illustrate a point.

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ALEXA IS WORTHLESS

While all three are appropriate for the Girl Scout market, checking on them statistically at Alexa is worthless.  Alexa shows NO statistics on any one of these sites.  As though they don’t even exist.  Or aren’t “worthy” of tracking. Because if they’re not in what Alexa deems the top 100,000 web sites (at least the top 100,000 that Alexa has statistics on), then you don’t get any info at all.

HOW FAR DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE DO WE HAVE TO GO?

Well heck.  In order to be Alexa’s top 100,000 sites you need to be pretty special.  How Special?  Let’s take a look.

One of our clients, Carlos Santana (maybe you’ve heard of him?) has a web site called Santana.com - a site that Alexa says is ranked number 219,860.  And that 0.00049% of all web users have visited the site in the past month.  And another client’s site, RedRocker.com (have you heard of Sammy Hagar?), doesn’t register on the charts at Alexa either.  (Sammy only got a paltry 0.00019% of the web’s users last month according to Alexa). SO even if you’re name is Carlos Santana or Sammy Hagar, you can’t even get comparative data of any significance from Alexa.  What a waste of time.

BUT LIKE I SAID

Like I said though – the basis for their statistics is massively flawed so even when someone comes to me and says “We’re ranked #1 at Alexa in our market”,  I say “SO WHAT.”  What I care about is – do you come up higher than your competitors in Google organics?  What is your conversion rate for your PPC ads?  What’s your Return on Investment in your total Internet initiative? And anyone who wants to advertise on your site or invest in your company should be asking the same questions.  If they’re not, they’re participating in what I like to call the Statistics bubble.  (Think Mortgage Bubble, Internet 1999 bubble)

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COMPETE.COM IS BETTER?

Compete claims that their data is the only real and valid data because they have arrangements with the major service providers.  They’re supposedly given direct access to Internet Service Provider traffic information.

So okay – let’s find out.

I ran all three sites through the Compete.com system.  Amazingly, what I found were apparently  numbers.  YouthLeadership.com supposedly had 549 unique visitors in April, LearnAndServe.gov had over 15,000, and GirlScoutShop.org was reported to have had 12,973.  Well the problem with these numbers is that I’ve done a number of tests over the past couple years with sites like this.  While I don’t have access to the actual server logs or analytics reports for any of these examples, I do have such access for over five hundred web sites – clients I have served.

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But wait.

How trustworthy are the Compete.com numbers?

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WAX APPLES VS EDIBLE APPLES

Well for RedRocker.com, Compete reports that in April, they had 38,387 total visitors and 18,413 of those were unique.  Well, according to Google Analytics, they had 68,946 total visits, and of those, 37,194 were unique.  And from my previous article, while we know Google Analytics is flawed, if anything, they UNDER-report visits.

So the next time someone tells you to check out Compete.com, tell them I said to take a bite out of that wax apple and let me know how it tastes.

And Suggest they install Google Analytics.  For Free.

For all it’s flaws, you get much more reliable information on your own site than any panel based extrapolation.  And if you think you can learn about your competition from any of those companies or Compete.com, fuggedaboutit.  (HEY – I lived in Brooklyn before moving to California)

And if one of those “panel based” statistic providers tries to sell you their products, or worse, someone insists on making a business decision based on statistics from one of those “We really don’t have access to real statistics, but we have access to the big ISP servers so TRUST US” companies (like Compete.com), please don’t believe them.  PLEASE.

Seriously.

I beg you.

And for the record, Hells Angel Photo copyright 2008 Alan Bleiweiss. (Do you really want to know the story behind that?)

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What do you think? Am I off my rocker? Or do you have similar experiences?

Competitive Insight, Girl Scouts and Hells Angels is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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BACKGROUND

Before I wrote the last article, I hadn’t ever gotten more than 30 or 40 views a day for any of my previous articles. Yeah, I know – lame huh?  Well before now I hadn’t really done anything to focus on becoming widely read within our industry.   Both because I don’t write a new blog article every day like many of my peers, and also because the primary audience for my articles has, at least until now, been my already existing clients and prospective clients who have already contacted me. (How odd – to actually want to offer knowledge and insights to my own client base – such a unique concept yeah?)

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EXPONENTIAL JUMP IN VIEWERS

With the posting of this latest article, I saw a huge shift in my readership.  Every day since the article was posted, I’ve had an average of 300 viewers, with a peak of over 500 a couple days after it went up. Okay, so that’s still a sliver of a fraction of a tiny portion of the traffic that SEO stars get.  Yet it’s a ten-fold daily vierwship increase, all as a result of one article.On a realy major topic that I don’t think gets enough attention.

Now, I don’t expect that I’ll have that many people read every article I post, and it may even be a one-time fluke.  Yet I’ve also doubled my subscribers and greatly appreciate that fact.

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GREAT FEEDBACK AND A “DUCK AND COVER” COMMENT

Since I posted the article, a number of people have contacted me by email, direct Tweets through my new Twitter account, and in person. 

People have been telling me that they really appreciate my investigative skills related to SEO.  Honestly people – any truly seasoned SEO consultant can and probably does, do this kind of digging. And now that I’m showing you the steps I take, you can too.  So no big deal okay?

Others have made note of the humorous way in which I wrote the article, (apparently I’m a barrel of laughs sometimes) and that it’s great to know that many of us in the SEO arena are willing to work on policing our own industry.

Every one have been positive, until the latest comment which was both complimentary and a warning to watch my back. Say what? Here’s the comment:

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THE COMPLIMENTARY WARNING NOTICE

Hey Alan,

This is good stuff!

Good find and good call out.  But be careful – this is the stompernet guy.  He’s pretty popular and may not be too happy about this.

One last consideration – there is a chance that he is being linked to in this way without his knowledge but understanding the circumstances, this is pretty unlikely at this point.

Gennady Lager, Director of SEO
SendTraffic, a division of Atrinsic

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Well Gennady, thanks for that feedback.  And point taken regarding the “chance” that he is being linked to without his knowledge.  If it turns out that Brad is just a poor victim of some other 3rd party conspiracy to bury hidden links back to little .ico files on his server and that’s the cause of all this mess, then heck, I’ll be happy to retract.  Except…

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THE COURT OF ALAN IS NOW IN SESSION

Until proven otherwise, Brad is presumed guilty until proven innocent. (hey, I’m not the US court system here people okay? I rely heavily on my intuitive take and since this is my blog, that’s how I play it until shown otherwise.)

Now – about the warning – I had, in my original review and investigation, come across references to Stompernet.  Yet I hadn’t looked farther into that angle until now.  My initial research led me to see how Brad is, in fact, connected to Stompernet.  Yet I’d never heard of them before.  (Hey, there’s a million people and thousands of companies out there promoting SEO solutions and I’m generally too busy to bother checking them all out ya know?)

But when I got this comment today, I figured I’d better follow up – to see what all the concern was. Like – will a million raging stompernet fans suddenly try and swamp my server out of anger? Come beating down my door, pitch-forks in hand?  Who are these loyal protectors of all that is right and grand about stompernet that I need to be afraid of?

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THE INVESTIGATION BEGINS

When I did my initial search at Google for the all  powerful stompernet, the first two paid ads mentioned “Stompernet Scam“  in their title.

Stompernet Scam?

So why would any legitimate Internet Marketing offer have any paid ads that associate the offer with a scam?

I mean, I’ve never seen that come up for just about any white-hat, or truly free-from-controversy Internet Marketing business.  At least not until today.

Okay – so maybe it’s not Stompernet’s fault.  Maybe the ones running those controversial paid ads are the scum of the earth, and they’re just using really low-life advertising methods to steal prospective customers away from Stompernet.  Could very well be.

Or they’re doing it to give Stompernet a bad rep.

I won’t know because I won’t click on paid ads just because they’re up on top.  I’d rather do my own legwork.  It is more fair to do so yes?

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Step 1 – Review the main site offerings

On first view, the Stompernet site offers a 22 minute video from Andy Jenkins, Brad’s partner and co-founder of Stompernet.  My initial impression is that Andy’s an honest, friendly kind of a guy.  Well damn.  If Brad’s using methods that I think at the very least, give a black eye to his otherwise legitimate SEO face, then what’s Andy doing in business with him?  Could Andy have been fooled all these years?

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SO FAR, SO LEGIT

Andy presents the strategy he says doubled his visitor traffic through organic methods.

Oh fun – I feel a fork in the road ahead!

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So I watched the video.  And to Andy’s credit, he did lay out pretty standard legitimate optimization methods and tactics in a really clear, concise and well presented video.  That gave me pause, simply because it means that Stompernet isn’t necessarily a scam at all.  It now appears they are a legitimate Internet Marketing company offering real white-hat SEO solutions to their viewers and followers.

RED HERRING OR RED FLAG?

Andy mentions in the video that what he’s about to show is different than anything Stompernet has ever communicated previously. So what’s up with that?  (see below for more on that one).

STEP 2 THE BACK-LINK CHECK

More than 2200 back-links.  Many in fact, related to the site he’s discussing in the video.  That’s good legitimate SEO. So on that note, I applaud Andy for using white-hat methods.

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But with over 2200 links, I figured I better look at several of those.  Well, it appears that a great deal of the links come from link exchanges with other, similar sites.  That’s important because sites with related content that exchange links provide more value than sites linking that have no related content.

Again, that APPEARS to be good SEO.

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STRIKE ONE AGAINST ANDY

Then, as I continue to scan links, I start seeing what are considered truly butt-ugly links.  I’m talking about links coming from sites that have the sole purpose to leech off the legitimate web.  Scum suckers.

EXAMPLE 1 GAMBLING ON LINKS FROM CASINO RELATED SITES

Some of those links come from Red Flag sites, or at the very least, sites I consider questionable as to reputation, and linking methods.   One for example, is a site called “Casino Review Pages” ( a site that sets my McAfee SiteAdvisor plug-in ablaze in warnings).

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STRIKE TWO AGAINST ANDY

Another, turns out to be a shell site that apparently Andy himself (or maybe it was Brad?) set up a few years ago called the “Yahoo Store Builder”, a site that will show you “How To Create A Profitable e-Commerce Store”.  Seems legit yes?

HA! Gotcha!

The page that links back to Andy’s prized possession eComerce site?   It’s a not even a main page on the site, or even an old-school “Links” page. but instead, it’s a Disclaimer page.

At first I couldn’t find the link.  So I went into View Source mode, and searched for A2Armory, the site Andy is pushing as having obtained high ranking through White-Hat methods in his latest video.  Here’s what I found:

See how there are a slew of 1 pixel high links on the page?  Going to both a2Armory and other sites owned by Andy. Or Brad.  Or both…

So Okay – these are not hidden – but why didn’t I see them on the disclaimer page?  Because they’re so tiny, and the color is designed to not catch your attention, that’s why.

At the extreme bottom of the “Legal Disclaimer” page, there are several 1 pixel high links that are “almost” invisible, but not quite.

So you tell me – is this legitimate link building?  If so, why are those links buried in almost invisible size and color, and on the bottom of a LEGAL DISCLAIMER page?

Do I really have to tell you?  Okay fine.  Because this is one of the sneakiest and most underhanded without being completely black-hat methods that exist on earth.  DUH.

• How many people read a disclaimer page on a site that screams – MAKE MONEY THE EASY WAY?
• How many people who read really long disclaimer pages will even bother to notice, let alone, care about, tiny 1 pixel almost hidden links that are buried below a Copyright line?
• It’s one thing to put a lighter shade link on the bottom of pages for aesthetic reasons. It’s another to do so at this extreme level and only on an otherwise ignored page.  How many other sites do you do that on Andy?

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ANDY, YOU DISAPPOINT ME

Like I said from the beginning of my evaluation, Andy offers some truly legitimate SEO tactics.  Ones that I recommend to my clients all the time.  But then, just like Brad, he went and polluted all that good stuff with this nonsense.  What a shame.

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Now – back to this whole “Stompernet Scam issue.  If Stompernet is a scam, is it because other people have uncovered the shady gray hat methods that Andy uses or the black hat methods Brad does?  Or is it something else?

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BACK TO GOOGLE AND STRIKE THREE

[thank God I have ADHD - all this bouncing back and forth really would annoy most people, and that's why I think people like Brad and Andy get away with it and never change their ways, even when doing so would only improve their reputation]

Back to Google to see what that’s all about…

In that search for Stompernet, I read through many of the reviews, discussions and comments made by people where the words Stompernet and Scam appear on the same page.  They go back a few years.  Something about a loss-leader “Try it for just $1″ offer to recieve “the instant you’re going to be rich overnight thanks to our secret sauce” kind of bullshit that so many hacks offer out there you’d want to puke from all the smell of bullshit…

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SPEND A DOLLAR, LOOSE $798

It turns out that there was a problem for some people who ran out of that first 30 day trial period before they could fully evaluate the claims made, and who subsequently got slammed for $$$. I found more than one that claimed when that 30 day trial ended, they got hit with a $798 charge to their credit card and that would be the fee they’d be automatically billed every month they remained in the program.

(Just do a search for Stompernet Scam on Google and you can weed through the plethora of sites, complaints and groaning).

Others complained that the trial version didn’t give access to the full advanced info, so people couldn’t really evaluate whether this was worth the investment or just fluff…

At least some of the people who tried this offering were of the “Make Millions Online” mentality.  Well good on them for that.  But only if they intended (or still intend) to make their money through legitimate business methods not using underhanded ballot-box stuffing SEO tactics, and where they provide real above-board value to their customers.  Otherwise, I hope they get sucker-punched into reality real quick.  thank you very much.

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BUT WAIT -THERE’s MORE

Stompernet is so much more than what the “scam” claims make it out to be.  It turns out they’ve got a whole system, with offers for “Ninja Ad Words” “SMARTS” reports, “SIMPLE” (that’s the program you get for a buck folks!), the Freeline report (Hey, that’s one of Brad’s – good to know this isn’t all about Andy!) and a whole lot more.

With that $800 a month, heck, you even get access to their “Faculty”.  LOL Faculty?  { pause while I puke }

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THE GURU BANDWAGON TO MAKING GURUS WEALTHY

Look, the whole Stompernet thing can be summed up like this. If you are GULLIBLE enough to fall for this crap, sure, spend $800 a month for the rest of your life.  Spend countless hours becoming indoctrinated into the Stompernet Universe (yes that’s one of their catch-phrases offerings too), and follow their methods.

It’s really no different than Russ Whitney in the “Become a Quadrillionairre by buying Real Estate with no money” market, Laurel Langemeier in the “pay off your debt to become a Gagillionaire” arena, and countless other Gurus who want to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge so that you can walk across it.

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WAIT.

Did I just type what I think I did?

You mean, They want to sell me the rights to walk across a bridge that I can walk across for free? ?
Holy Crap!  I did!

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See, the truth is, if you follow the vast swath of SEO experts, and Affiliate Marketing experts who use WHite Hat SEO methods, and take just a bit of time to learn as you go, you can learn how to do ANYTHING these cretons teach you, without having to pay for it.  And you can do it without risking having Google slam you out of the index.  And thus you can actually have a GOOD reputation, and not be seen as others as the scum of the earth.

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EXISTING BUSINESS OWNERS NEED NOT APPLY

If you are a business owner who wants to get high rankings on the search engines without having to do all that heavy lifting yourself, sure you’ll probably need to pay someone to do that for you.  With Brad and Andy, you get to pay them the same amount of money, or more, ongoing, forever, and they give you the privelidge to do all the lifting for yourself.  Isn’t that nice of them?

And oh yes – it means that you’ll have to give up actually running your business -sell your storefront, and become willing to sit in front of your computer being the geek you were never meant to be.  Just so Andy and Brad can continue to live the high life.

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A WORD ABOUT AMWAY

What? You didn’t really think I’d write this article, come to the conclusion that Andy and Brad are ripoff Gurus and NOT Mention Amway, did you?  HA!

Look – Amway is great if you’re willing to treat it like a real legitimate business – go around and find stores to sell your products, or open your own store.  But if you’re of the Quixtar mentality, that all you have to do is get ten friends who will themselves then get ten friends and so on, logic,  well here’s some statistics to wake your pretty little head up.

Last year, Amway started bragging in advertisements that they brought in about $3,000,000,000 in revenue in the past year.  And that they boast over one million “Independent Business Owners” (little marching ants gathering friends to gather more friends).  Well let’s do the math.  One million generate three billion.  Uh, that’s a whopping $3,000 in TOTAL SALES per business owner per year.

If you are capable of grasping what that means, God bless you.  If not, it means that as an Independent business owner, your personal income from that is about enough to pay for your weekly latte’ and a couple movies a month.

Exept not even that.  Because that’s the AVERAGE.  There are a handful of people at the top who make hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have put in a lot of years gathering worker-ants in their “down-line”.  Which means that a whole lot of people generate less than $3,000 a year in revenue for the company.  And THOSE people earn about enough to pay for one or two of the books or motivational CDs Amway sells you to motivate you into getting more worker ants…

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So now that my rant is done, I’m choosing to take the position that Andy and Brad are people you don’t want to do business with, unless you’re into thinking you too can become wealthy by doing unscrupulous things.  If that’s the case, have fun.  Enjoy.  Go in peace.  Already.

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And one final note about that warning from Gennady.

If, for some reason, you have the ability to prove any claims made here to be false, please provide them to me and I will gladly retract.

Should any of Andy or Brad’s minions wish to do me harm, I offer that you will not want to test my skill or tenacity at ruining any fun, pleasure or satisfaction you think you might get.

Deceptive SEO Tactics – The Case of the $798 SEO Guru is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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HELP!

If you find this article interesting, helpful, or problematic, please leave a comment!  I can only improve my blog by getting feedback from my readers!

And don’t forget to subscribe – either by RSS feed, or signing up to receive my blog updates by email!

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THE DECEPTIVE CASE OF THE COOLEST GUY ON THE INTERNET

Today I was introduced to the coolest guy on the Internet.  In fact, it appears there are several people who claim that they are the coolest guy.  At least when it comes to anyone on the Internet…

So how do I know the guy I was introduced to is really the bona fide real deal coolest guy on the Internet?

Actually, he started following me on Twitter tonight.  Then almost right away I got a direct tweet.  In it he said:

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And sure enough, at that moment, the first result at Google for the phrase “coolest guy on the internet” was for Brad’s page.

Now, I really found this cool.  Maybe even the COOLEST.

Except my name is Alan Bleiweiss and I always thought that I am the coolest guy on the Internet.

No, seriously – I don’t think I am- in fact, there are probably millions of guys cooler.  But I get paid really good money from legitimate business clients to be able to get them onto the first page of Google and because I care about their reputation, and don’t want them to ever get banned from Google, I follow white hat SEO methods.

And part of my work involves digging up the truth when my clients see an email (and now apparently Direct Tweets) offering what sounds too good to be true.  Now THAT is cool.  I love this aspect of my work because I’m really inquisitive.  In fact, at one time about 20 years ago, I was in the credit collections business and got really good at skip-tracing people who were scammers.  And before that I was in the Army, in the Military Police, and I was in charge of crime prevention for the 3rd Infantry Division, and before that, for Fort Meade Maryland (hint -where the NSA is).

So I guess sniffing out BS and preventing my clients from being ripped off is in my blood.

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Anyhow, back to Brad.

Below Brad’s listing, I saw a slew of other wanna be sites.

All of them claim the “Coolest Guy On The Internet” moniker one way or another.

Well what’s going on here? I wondered…

And pretty quick (within about one second) I ventured to guess that there must have been or is currently, a “Coolest Guy” competition, specifically as it relates to that phrase (on the internet).

So how did he get to the top?

If it’s legitimate, my hat’s off to Brad.  After all, his Twitter profile shows that he’s a free-wheeling world-traveling kind of a guy- one who is on top of the world and not only that, but he’s out there wanting to help you achieve the kind of goals he has!  For Free!

(Oh boy – another red flag to me.  “Free”.

So I checked his main site out. The one that comes up on the top of Google.

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THE ANALYSIS BEGINS

And if you check his site, or the Google results for it, you’ll see that he hasn’t expended any tremendous on-site optimization for the phrase Coolest Guy On The Internet.  It’s not in his home page’s title, and it’s not in the meta description he uses for his home page.  It’s not repeated over and over throughout the content.

And it’s not in his domain name, as so many of the other “wanna-be” coolest guys have done as you can see either.

It’s not a full phrase in his home page’s content, or inside any alternate attribute field, or as part of any link labels either.

The closest he gets is reference / linking to the “‘2nd Coolest Guy On The Planet”.  and he has a blog article with the title “Coolest Heisman Trophy Winner On The Planet” as well.

But guess what – if you do a site: for his site on Google’ you’ll see that he has over 2500 pages on the site.

Now that’s cool.  I love the Internet – it really is the coolest, and this is one reason.  I can have as many pages of content on my site as I want.  And I can link them all together in a web (uh, that’s why they call it the world wide web Alan).

But here’s the really coolest thing about the Internet these days when it comes to marketing, SEO and Google.  The more high quality pages you have on your site, and the more you tie them all together with a cohesive linking strategy, and when you do the right thing to get them listed on the first page of Google, you build a tremendous amount of weight value to every page, and to every phrase that you might come up for, even if you skip some of the more “routine” optimization tips and techniques.

I know this because I am the coolest guy on the Internet regarding SEO.

Then there’s about 208 links that Google recognizes point to his site.  It takes some fairly decent pages that link back to your site to garner being able to show up for a link: test at Google.  Brad gets some of these because he maintains a number of sites.  So he can cross-link from one to the other.  I do the same for my own business, as well as many of my top tier clients.  It’s part of a good overall white hat SEO fundamentals regimen.

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DIGGING FURTHER

Then it was off to Yahoo.  anyone who is as cool as I am when it comes to SEO knows that if you go to Yahoo and do that link: test, (making sure to change the settings to “except this site”, you can find how many links, good, bad or ugly, there may really be that point to someone’s site.  So what did I find?  There are over 17,000 links back to his site!

This guy may or may not be the coolest guy on the Internet.  Either way, he sure has something going on when it comes to building content and back-links!

But wait – there’s more!  It turns out that if you change the Yahoo Site Explorer settings from the default “show links only to this URL” to “Entire Site”, you find there are over 24,000 links.

DUDE that’s awesome.

But is it?

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THIS IS WHERE I REALLY GOT SUSPICIOUS

So I scrolled through those links and started digging.  One of the sites that was listed was a POKER site.  Ut Oh.

Dude, if by now, I’m not smelling a scam, then I must be dead.

So I clicked through.  Nowhere on the page that was visible was anything to do with his site. So what gives?

This is when it’s time to go to VIEW SOURCE.  Then do a FIND within the source for the web address that this site is supposedly pointing to.

Sure enough – SCAM!

There’s a “LINK REL” line in that code – pointing to a .ico file that’s on his site using the HREF method.  And it’s buried above the BODY of the page in the head area.

So as far as I am concerned, this is a complete scam method of getting links.

And while I respect the depth and volume of content on his sites themselves, I look at how he got to the first page of the web for a ridiculously generic phrase that a bunch of people are competing for in some sort of competition.

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Brad’s Hidden Link Business Model = Deceptive SEO

Why this is most sad is because Brad bills himself as an SEO expert. If he pulls this crap on his client sites, he’s setting them up for serious problems.  And he’s deceiving them at best, committing fraud at worst.  While I don’t like the notion of having regulatory bodies dictate what constitutes SEO, especially given how SEO is always changing, and government bodies are really bad at even grasping the digital world, if we can’t find a way to call slugs like this out or do a better job at helping to inform the unsuspecting client, I don’t see how some headline-seeking suit isn’t going to one day want to take up that very cause…

For now though, if you are a business owner who has been pitched by the likes of Brad,  if you ever want to know whether someone is selling you a bridge to nowhere, or if you think “it’s too good to be true”, please – either do the footwork to dig, or just contact me- and I’ll be happy to dig for you.

But whatever you do, if you refuse to accept that REAL SEO, the kind that is sure NOT to eventually bite you in the rear, takes time, and on-site optimization, and LEGITIMATE links back to your site from LEGITIMATE high value sources, well then you’re on your own.

It’s sad in this case, because Brad really does have a foudation of fundamentally sound SEO methods going for him.  But then he pollutes his trustworthiness by pulling this nonsense.

Too bad.

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UPDATE

One hour after his first direct Tweet, I got yet one more of these from Brad.  Apparently he’s got an automated direct Tweet blaster and THAT just killed any hopes that Brad might be a good guy.  I have now blocked Brad.

And I sent a direct Tweet to Twitter @spam

And one final thing.

Within 20 minutes of my writing my blog article, where I only used good white hat methods, it was already showing up on the first page of google for over a dozen short phrases such as:

uncover SEO scams ( 2nd position just below Google’s page)

how to uncover SEO scams (top position)

deceptive SEO tactics (top position)

And I didn’t have to get a single fraudulent link.

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Update 4/25/09 – Spam Report Filed With Google

I realized just tonight that I had forgotten one of the most simple things that we can do when we find such deceptive SEO practices – report the problem to Google through their Spam reporting link in the Google Webmaster Tools program.  So I just filled out the form.  Let’s see what happens.

Deceptive SEO Tactics And How to Uncover Them is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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Wait – if you are about to put this away thinking it’s some kind of fruity new-age blah blah, it’s really not.  It’s a philosophy employed by the most successful people in the world.  And it’s not any MLM or get rich quick concept either… It’s the real deal in business.

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So how is it that now, in this economy, I get more clients, achieve more goals and enjoy a happier life?   One factor is recognizing / knowing what I am meant to be doing / what my company is really best suited to do.

The more I understand and accept that I and my company can’t / shouldn’t be all things to all people in all situations, the more I am willing to both rely on collaboration with others, and the more I am unwilling to compromise who I am or what my company’s best strengths are.

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FEAR BASED CHOICES

Over the years, there have been many times when business was slow, for whatever reason (sometimes all the marketing in the world isn’t necessarily enough, sometimes the economy has tanked), I would often take on clients primarily because of the fear of not having enough cash flow to operate.

We’d do work that we are competent at, yet a lot of that would be work that we are “just” competent at, not work that we are superior to the competition at.  And even when it was work that we shine in, trouble would still ensue due to that client’s needy nature or panic based participation.

Setting The Stage For Problems

The first problem this causes is that many of those clients end up being one or more of the following:

• Overly needy
• Drama queen types
• Disrespectful of our value

As a caveat I will say that because I’m human, and have been around for a number of decades, I’ve had my own moments where each of these has come out – so at the very least, I can understand some of the possible causes of these behaviors.  Personally though, I’ve also learned that business needs to be business, not personal, at least to the degree of my not acting like one of these:

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The Overly needy Client

Some people get into business and get over their head. Others start out great but due to whatever circumstance, reach a point where they’re on the fast track to collapse.  In either situation, some people panic and as a result, will become overly needy – it’s a human condition yet it most definitely seeps into their way of doing business.  Typical examples include calling sixteen times a day, or sending dozens of requests by email in a single day.

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The Drama queen Client

Some people when they are facing a crisis (in business or otherwise) will become at least partially blinded by their own worries or fears that they assume the worst case scenario has become real, or they leap to conclusions of doom at the drop of a hat.  Examples of this are – assuming minor delays mean the project is at a dead end, or that unanticipated 3rd party factors mean unavoidable catastrophe

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The Unappreciative Client

If I compromise my company’s rates, or go way beyond the project scope because I feel sorry for someone, the usual outcome is that consciously or subconsciously, some of these will turn into business Divas.  “What do you mean you’re charging me for our phone calls” (uh – because you’ve kept me on the phone for two hours a day for the past week even though I provided all the information you asked for in the email I sent twice). Or “How could it possibly take fifty hours to get my two page web site onto the first page of Google for sixty five phrases? – Just this morning another company sent me an email saying they could put my site on Google for $1 a year…”)

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THE DISRUPTIVE RESULT

Taking on such work compromises my own space in the business world and thus inner chaos ensues.  (Get flooded with enough instances from the above list, and eventually it throws off your focus – becomes a gnawing distraction and otherwise disrupts the rest of your work day).  Or worse – if an employee gets put in the middle, and if that employee wants to try and do the right thing, the client will more often than not take advantage of that employee.  And the next thing you know,  the project scope has been blown right out of the water.

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TO THINE OWN SELF (BEST SKILLS) BE TRUE

So what’s the answer?  The more I refuse to take on clients based on fear, the more I trust that there is enough business  available from clients who aren’t in one of the above categories, and where the work we do take on is more in alignment.

Even in this economy (see my “Perspective on the current economy” on my personal blog), as long as I stay true to my beliefs, and our strengths, the more we get to do what we are best at (and thus we enjoy our work more),  the less we expend countless hours trying to help save the world one needy client at a time, and projects are completed in a much smoother fashion in less time.  So we’re available to take on more clients.

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THE CLIENT EVANGELIST RIPPLE EFFECT

Because we only now take on clients who really appreciate and value our work (before hiring us, during the project and long after)- that kind of client will inevitably become our next evangelist.  What more could you ask for as an outcome than that?  They end up referring others who are of the same ilk, and we get more business.

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THE GIVE-BACK BONUS

The more I stay away from “trouble” clients, regardless of the reason, the more free I am to take on non-profit clients of MY choosing at a major discount or even pro bono.  And they become evangelists for us as well.

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So the cut-to-the-chase philosophy is if I refuse to make fear based choices, my business is much healthier for it, and I am as well.

Business Success In A Down Economy – To Thine Own Self Be True is a post from: Search Marketing Wisdom All content copyright Alan Bleiweiss unless otherwise attributed by me in the article.

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