You want a lofty goal - try being the world's largest website. That is Eric Frey, of the Nantucket Freys, has set out to do. Check out the press release here.

Selling pages for a dollar, eh? Sounds a little like IsReallyAwesome.com - where InsureMe has been recognized as, well, really awesome. Only cost us $5 to be really awesome too...wish it was like that in high school...

[Hint: $5 for an inbound link ain't a bad deal...even if it is a little cheesy :) ]

Posted by James Omdahl at 05:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What do you suppose the "father" of what is now the Internet of the masses thinks of this Web Too Dot Oh thing? For a glimpse, take a read:

Tim Berners Lee Aint So Hot on Web 2.0

Keep on.

Posted by James Harvey at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am so glad I work for a company with ethics, sound morals, and just plain decent people everywhere. When I read something like:

RadioShack Fires 400 by Email

it makes my blood boil and gives me a moment of pause to consider how good we all have it here.

I for one will not be spending a dime at RS.

Keep on.

Posted by James Harvey at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are in the search engine optimization game you should take a few minutes and read this thread - Outsource Link Building? - over at Search Engine Watch. All of the heavy hitters are coming out of the woodwork to weigh in, including Eric Ward - the man who was an SEO for Amazon.com back in the early days.

Great information. Great opinions. Great to know we are not the only ones with questions about link development...

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, it is true - Danny Sullivan, the man behind Search Engine Watch and the Search Engine Strategies conference series, has parted ways with his employer Incisive Media. On December 1st, Danny will become a free agent, taking his great dedication to the search industry and his reputation away from the businesses he started 10 years ago.

So pour out some of your beverage for our departing homie.

Make sure you keep up with the shock, horror, and reality of the situation. It will be interesting to see what Danny does next...

[UPDATE: Danny talks about his options for future gigs]

[Bonus] Reuters picks out some great photos to go with their stories...

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I picked up on a story from the Market Watch site titled "Search Advertisers Willing to Live with Click Fraud" written by Ben Chamy. The gist of the story is that most search marketers shrug off the cost of click fraud as a cost of doing business, and as long as they are profitable, they consider click fraud to be a nuisance, but not much more.

I think the article does reflect many of the feelings search advertisers have about click fraud, but it does leave out the most important reason we put up with it - and being "willing" has nothing to do with it.

Quite simply, if a search marketer decides not to advertise with Google, they are effectively losing their ability to reach over half of the search market. And that is something that no one is willing to do.

I would liken the search landscape to the world before cable TV. Search advertising right now is like the old days when everyone in the United States had TV's with three channels to choose from (although in this case one of the channels is much bigger than the other two).

Now let's say that in the three channel world you wanted to buy TV advertisements to get the widest reach possible. If that were the case you would need to be on all three channels, right? Well, search advertising is basically a three channel world as well...and if you aren't on the biggest of the three, you are missing out on a lot of traffic.

I guess what I am trying to say is this - search advertisers put up with a lot of things like click fraud (poor user interface on Yahoo and MSN and terrible customer service at Google come to mind) but no matter what abuse we take we cannot afford to lose the traffic we get from the big three. So we write it off as a cost of doing business. It doesn't mean that we like it - and it does not mean that we don't care.

As search marketers we are not willing to live with click fraud - we just have no other choice but to live with it.

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, it looks like IE 7 is about done. Microsoft has release a "Release Candidate" for IE 7 which means IE 6, the current dominate browser, is in a near death state. Release Candidates are usually very close, if not the actual product which will be released.

Read about it and download it here.

IE is dead, long live IE.

Keep on ...

Posted by James Harvey at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a recent post titled "SEO Advice: Writing useful articles that readers will love" Matt Cutts talks about his use of on-page SEO techniques to rank one of his posts in a niche market.

Why does this matter? First off, Matt is one few people in the world who has a pretty good understanding of many of the elements of the Google ranking algorithm (Google pays him to know) - so when he is talking about SEO, we should pay attention. Secondly, Matt's post discusses how to rank for "long-tail" keyword queries - an area where our affiliates tend to operate.

Many people are starting to doubt the importance of on-page content in the Google algorithm. With one of the accidental experiments (read - mistake) we conducted here at InsureMe, we found that a dramatic change/reduction in content on one of our important pages made little to no difference in our Google rankings. This could have been a fluke, but I have a feeling that the importance of on-page content for a competitive keyword isn't all that important. My impression is that as the more links it takes to get to the number one position for a keyword, the less important content becomes in the overall ranking algorithm. I also think that competitive keywords on Google require a good amount of positive age related elements such as a domain's age, the age of links, the age of pages linking to you, etc.

However, when you are talking about a less competitive, or niche term - I think that Matt and I would agree that content can play a big role in your page's ranking. (I should point out that even in a competitive keyword space it is important to have as many factors working in your favor as possible, so quality content should be a part of your optimization plan).

In Matt's example, he describes the reasons behind why he created a blog post about changing the default printer for FireFox on Linux. Matt did a Google search and did not find any good/relevant result for his query. With that, Matt knew he had found a niche area where he could provide content that would drive traffic to his site. With that knowledge, he deliberately created a blog post that used things like an optimized post title and carefully selected keywords to increase the chances that he would show up for his query. Also, Matt made sure that he used different variation of the keywords throughout the article to makes sure he would have a good chance of showing up if someone didn't type his exact query. Also, and most importantly, Matt created a quality article that would help people who happened upon his post.

Matt also give this interesting hint when it comes to optimizing a page in a niche space:

I'm targeting a long-tail concept where someone will be typing several words, so I'm probably in a space where on-page keywords are enough to rank pretty well. I don't need anchor-text for "linux default printer" or similar phrases; in the on-page space, I'd recommend thinking more about words and variants (the "long-tail") and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases.

Near the end of the post Matt gives this advice:

But the larger point is that if you put in time and research to produce or to synthesize original content, think hard about what niches to target. My advice is not to start with an article about porn/pills/casinos/mortgages-it's better to start with a smaller niche. If you become known as an expert on (say) configuring Linux or hacking gadgets, you could build that out with things like forums to create even more useful content. Look for a progression of niches so that you start out small or very specific, but you can build your way up to a big, important area over time.

Good advice from the search community's most famous spam cop.

Today ask yourself this - "what niche market can I create content for that will help people and make me some money?' By finding an open niche you have the chance of becoming the first, and in turn, trusted source for that niche...and in the information age trust = dollars.

Posted by James Omdahl at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am not sure how many of you out there are going to be attending Commission Junction University (CJU) in Santa Barbara, but for those of you who are, make sure you drop us a line. Mike, April and I will be out for the conference and would like to meet up with any of our trusty affiliates or even just readers of the InsureMe Affiliate Blog.

For those who have not heard of CJU, allow me to share some information about the conference:

• CJU is held at the beautiful Fess Parker Resort which is basically on the beach in Santa Barbara


• CJU is scheduled to have sessions on a variety of topics, from the importance of building strong relationships in the online world to designing effective landing pages to networking in a virtual community


• CJU, despite its name, is nothing like college (for some that is welcome news, others not so much)


• CJU provides a great opportunity to meet other affiliates and learn about affiliate program offered through the CJ network


• CJU registration is pretty darn cheap ($595) - and that is a good thing because your plane ticket won't be :)


• I am going to be speaking a CJU this year, so if you have ever wanted to ridicule me or throw produce in my direction, this is your big chance!

So anyway, send me an email if you are interested in meeting up at CJU.

See you in Santa Barbara!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, do you really love me? My phone says you do ... but it also says I am in love with me. Wait, maybe there is something to this.

No, this is not SEO news but too good not to pass on. One Korean service now offers voice analysis services, thru your mobile phone, to verify if your SiG-O really loves you ... or is just setting you up for the painful, yet inevitable, slide into divorce court, home eviction, skid row, therapy, and ... sorry, flashback there. No, I am not a bitter divorced man. Well, yes I am but that is a topic for another post.

Read about the "fun" service here.

Keep on ... except to divorce court.

Posted by James Harvey at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Contrary to the illustration above, this whole blogging thing is supposed to be about the conversation (although the occasional squeal o' swine ain't bad)...the conversation between passionate people from all over the planet. The conversation is what makes blogging worthwhile for bloggers (comments make us go crazy). And while much of the conversation that the blog sparks usually seems to happen offline, I would love to see what kind of conversation we can start here on the blog.

So in the spirit of conversation I added the "Questions, Tips, Suggestions, etc." button to the main navigation today. It is my hope that you, fair reader, will join the conversation by clicking on the question mark and emailing us tips, news, questions, rumors, suggestions or whatever you think other affiliate marketers will benefit from. When we get them we will do our best to take that information and get it out on the blog where everyone can see it. We will also give credit where credit is due (which might even mean a link to your website or blog).

With your help, we can make this blog a better resource for everyone - so drop us a line and let's get conversation going.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And you thought you had a lot of stuff. When was the last time you lost an entire country? Has been a while for me. For Google. it is a recent occurence.

Read about it here.

The trials the rich and famous go thru ... yes? But, as Mel once said "It is good to be the king". Points for who knows what movie that is from.

Keep on.

Posted by James Harvey at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of our kind affiliates has asked me to keep an eye out for older insurance domains that are for sale. We are talking about domains that were registered a few years back and that are clean (no past problem with the search engines). Sites with good backlinks would be more valuable that those without, but our affiliate will take a peek at whatever you have.

If you have any domains like this that you are trying to sell, or you know anyone who is selling a domain like this, send me an email and let me know. I will try to get you in touch with the buyer.

Have a good Monday!

Posted by James Omdahl at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Google is getting a little worried about "Googling" being to online search as Kleenex is to facial tissues.

Pandia Search Engine News reports that Google has asked media outlets to stop using Google as a verb it order to protect their brand.

See the story here.

If only we had that kind of problem here. How cool would it be if "InsureMeing" was synonymous with looking for insurance quotes online?

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I ran across this thread over at the Search Engine Watch Forums this morning.

Interesting stuff - it discusses the site WashingtonPost.com and its ability to pass link juice through links using the "onclick" attribute. Matt Cutts pops in and comments on the use of "onclick" in links and how the behavior is different from a straight link.

Also, there is mention of Google taking away the ability of websites to pass link juice if they are caught for selling links. Newspaper sites and college sites seem to be high on the list of sites tagged as link sellers.

While this has been speculated for a while, it gives anyone who is buying links for link popularity a reason to reconsider their monthly spend.

Enjoy...

Posted by James Omdahl at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's official ...

If you are not of this world ... and you know who you are ... you favor Firefox over Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Read about it here.

I have personally favored Firefox for some time now and depending upon who you ask, my Mississippi (Ms-ippi) roots qualify me for alien status.

Keep on ...

Posted by James Harvey at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy Friday Folks!

You know, most every day I wonder - "when are we men of the SEO business going to get the respect we deserve...not for our crazy SEO Skillz (tm), but for our striking good looks? (I mean c'mon - look at that fella to the right. Sexy, no?)

Well folks, I need wonder no more, because the Men of SEO Blog finally gives some recognition to the remarkable good looks of all us gents in the SEO biz.

From Matt Cutts, to Rand Fishkin to Barry Schwartz - all of the greats are listed. (Although, it seems like you need a goatee to be listed for some reason)

Gentlemen, be glad...ladies, be prepared. The Men of SEO blog will change your life...or at least your afternoon.

So a challenge to the SEO community...where is the Women of SEO blog? I know someone wants to give the guys a run for their money? I mean, some of the most talented SEO minds are women...so where is their blog?

Posted by James Omdahl at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here is some of the footage I captured at the 2006 Search Engine Strategies Conference and Google Dance. It's got everything from Google's CEO, to fighting robots, to "green screen" special effects.

Enjoy!

Posted by James Omdahl at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I am not even going to pretend I understand this stuff. But for those of you who are interested in the math side of how search algorithms work, The "Dr. of SEO," Dr. E. Garcia has released some new information on The Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) (paper 1, paper 2).

Also, make sure you surf around his site to see all of the other super-brainy things the Dr. has written about.

Posted by James Omdahl at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In today's pay-per-click (ppc) environment, it's important to spend some time working the tail. This means finding and adding words to your ppc account that require very low bids.

Recently, I stumbled upon this online thesaurus , which I think will prove useful. For example, bidding on the phrase "cheap health insurance" seems like a really good idea. Chances are 300+ people have also thought it was a good idea. By using the thesaurus to find synonyms for cheap, you can find potential alternatives for this adjective. The synonym result can then give you more adjectives to run through the thesaurus.

Thinking out of the box and following the trail to the end of the tail will help you prevail.

Posted by Mike Sajdak at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We got an email today from the Checkmate v. Yahoo! Class Action Settlement letting us know our rights in the latest round of click fraud settlements.

Since I am not an expert on law, I will just point you over to the class action suit website.

Speaking of click fraud, who sent in their info for the Google click fraud lawsuit? Anyone holding out?

Posted by James Omdahl at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yahoo sponsored a lunch-and-learn type session at Search Engine Strategies San Jose where they revealed a demo of the new "Panama" ad platform. My overall impression is that it is Google AdWords in a snazzier outfit, but the snazzy stuff is noteworthy, so here is a summary of my notes from the session.

First off, the new platform's interface (we will call it Panama for ease of typing) can be customized to from basic to complex - so you can make the platform fit your needs - a big improvement.

The folks over at Yahoo! have also decided to change the focus/mindset when they were designing Panama. Here are the from-to's they presented:

From search listing focused to marketing focused
From auction focused to managing objective focused
From early adopter focused to multiple segment focused
From quality through manual review to quality through technology

Panama will also bring a change of terminology...here is that list:

From "keywords" to "targets"
From "creative" to "rich media"
From "calls to action" to "phone calls"? (not sure if this is right...just copying my notes here.)

The next part of the presentation ran us through the 5 steps of campaign creation in Panama. Here they are:

1. Set a Geographic Target - state and DMA based. Has a very cool graphical interface that shows you where on the map your selected area is.
2. Create an AdGroup - you heard it right, they are calling them AdGroups. This is also where you set sponsored and content match.
3. Choose Your Keywords - Panama provides tools that will crawl you landing page and suggest keywords. Also it uses a collaborative filter to easily create keyword lists.
4. Pricing - here is where you set your cost-per-click. The cool part of this is a bar graph with a slider that lets you see what happens to your volume as your bid goes up. I am not really sure how this fits with the click-through-rate part of the model.
5. Create an Ad - This part looks the same but you can do A/B testing, which is awesome.

After those steps you review everything (twice) and then you make it live. It is a very good looking interface, and as long as it works consistently, it will be an improvement.

There is also a new control panel dashboard - this will provide you with customizable alerts (think - if my position for this keyword goes below 5, alert me).

Also notable is the ability to set a CPA through the system - this will help control your bids to reach your cost-per-acquisition goals...very cool.

It does sound like there will be some rough edges in the transfer from DTC to Panama. It sounds like any ad with custom copy (a best practice) will be migrated into its own AdGroup. What does that mean? In a large Panama account you might end up with hundreds of AdGroups...ouch.

The timeline is to get the interface out in Q4 and the CTR part of the model out in Q1 (possibly Q4).

Anyway, that is a rough overview. If you have questions, please post a comment and I will tell you what I know.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Are you tired of opening images in PhotoShop to determine the color code? Well, I've got some good news.
Firefox now has an add-on that will allow you to simply click the eyedropper in the bottom left corner of your browser and then click anywhere on the screen to instantly reveal the color code of anything on your web page.

Yes, I know, this is huge. Justin showed me this tool and it changed my life. Speaking of Justin, this is someone that can do anything for your site. Let us know if you have contract work and we'll put you in touch with the man that doesn't know the word "impossible".

Posted by Mike Sajdak at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

While I was at the Search Engine Strategies conference I really spent a lot of my time in the social networking/viral/Web 2.0 related sessions as opposed to the SEO (although I did hit the link building sessions) and PPC (only made it to one sessions).

I did this because I have a lot of interest in the whole social networks/viral/Web 2.0 thing and because I think, at least from an SEO standpoint, social networking/viral/Web 2.0 is going to be a key part of the link building process as the search algorithms become more and more advanced. I mean c'mon, eventually we have to face the fact that the best way to get a link is to earn it (not buy it or reciprocate it), and things like blogs, videos and tight social networks get people links.

And hey, I like links.

[Side note - notorious SEO guru and admitted spammer, Dave Naylor, was sitting in the front row of the "Social Search: Up Close with Yahoo" session - which leads me to believe that there are some good SEO exploits in the social search world - end of side note]

So I thought I would share a bit of knowledge that I picked up in one of the social search sessions - Digg is your friend.

It turns out that one of the greatest ways to get a ton of people to visit your blog is to get "dug" on Digg. What is Digg you ask?

Let's let the Diggers explain:

Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.

So there you go - it might make more sense if you go to the Digg site and check it out for yourself. The Digg Spy is a really cool way to see Digg in action (and watch a good example of active social networks).

As you can see at the bottom of this blog post, we have added Digg icons so our readers can "digg" our content if they like it. By getting dugg our content gets onto the Digg network and gives us a wider audience. If the dugg post is a good one, we will hopefully make it to the front page of digg. And then, well, we should get a ton of visitors, get famous, make a jillion dollars, etc.

Sounds easy, eh?

Well, not really. You have a lot of competition - but that is what it is all about in affiliate marketing, right? Digg provides a great way to get your info in front of a lot of people - especially if you are out there creating interesting and valuable content (never a bad idea).

For the technicalities on adding Digg tags, I would use this resource.

So to sum it all up, Digg is cool. Digg might get you new links to your blog. And Digg can make you more popular than Santa.

Oh yeah, if you liked this post help a fella out and Digg us below :) Thanks!

[Update - the Digg Swarm and Digg Stack are very crazy and very cool - make sure you take a look.]

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Affiliate 001 does his thing at the Google Dance at the GooglePlex (headquarters).

Looks like there is some GoogleAngst.

Google.

Posted by James Omdahl at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Back from SES - got a lot of things to write about and do. Here is one I am checking off the list...

Please note that we know this is:

a) Cheezy
b) Low-budget
c) Cheezy

So there is no need to tell us that. But if you are feeling so kind, send this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90bMd413vS4 to everyone you know who is guilty of forwarding silly email stuff.

Thanks!

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

That was a little fin fact from Yahoo's Tim Meyer here at the SES conference. Also, he said that people are not really using natural language to search since they have had a poor experience in the past.

What does this all mean? Basically, the long tail is going to get longer as people and search engines get used to working together. Big implications for you as an affiliate marketer.

Alright - off to the next session. I would be blogging more but for some reason there is no wireless access in the conference rooms (in the middle of Silicon Valley no less).

Posted by James Omdahl at 02:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So we have devised a little game for the SES conference.

We created some "Session from Hell" blog cards to hand out around the SES conference. The idea is for SES attendees to take the cards and hand them to people who look bored, hungover, tired or whatever. And while boredom is not usually a big factor at SES, hangovers and sleepiness certainly are.

This is what the front side looks like (back side has some text). If you get one, make sure you pass it on to the next person who is snoozin' because they have had too much of the ol' Google Juice :)

Also, make sure you leave a comment letting us know you got one. Viral silliness, etc.

Posted by James Omdahl at 04:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)