You want a lofty goal - try being the worlds 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 aint a bad deal...even if it is a little cheesy ]
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…
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]
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 TVs with three channels to choose from (although in this case one of the channels is much bigger than the other two).
Now lets 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 arent 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 doesnt mean that we like it - and it does not mean that we dont care.
As search marketers we are not willing to live with click fraud - we just have no other choice but to live with it.
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.
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, Matts post discusses how to rank for “long-tail” keyword queries - an area where our affiliates tend to operate.
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 wont 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.
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.
Contrary to the illustration above, this whole blogging thing is supposed to be about the conversation (although the occasional squeal o swine aint 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 lets get conversation going.
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.
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.
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.
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 ™, but for our striking good looks? (I mean cmon - 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?
Here is some of the footage I captured at the 2006 Search Engine Strategies Conference and Google Dance. Its got everything from Googles CEO, to fighting robots, to “green screen” special effects.
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.
In todays pay-per-click (ppc) environment, its 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.
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 platforms 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-tos 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:
Are you tired of opening images in PhotoShop to determine the color code? Well, Ive 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 well put you in touch with the man that doesnt know the word “impossible”.
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 cmon, 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?
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.]
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.
That was a little fin fact from Yahoos 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).
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.
Alright! So we have had some response from affiliates who are going to be at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, which starts on Aug 7th (Monday). If you still havent told us you will be there, please do - Mike and I are getting in late on Sunday night.
It is my hope to do some blogging from the conference and share some info with anyone who didnt make it. I also am going to try to shoot some video of the GooglePlex and the SES conference itself. Wish me luck, as I am sure the GoogleGuards will try to take my GoogleCam.
In all my years of search marketing (old man James speaking), I have been to a few different conferences and SES is by far my favorite. If you can make it, do.
Check out all the information on Search Engine Strategies here.
Let me know if you are going to try to sign up - I can give you a discount code to save you 20%
[Also - Commission Junction University is coming up in September. Let me know if you are going to it. I will be speaking there on using blogs to develop better publisher relations. Good stuff.]
If you are like most people in the mid 30s up crowd you have a zillion CDs laying around and they get scratched and over time die just like records did. We here at InsureMe sympathize with your plight and now offer you the cure.
We have had our PPC tracking capabilities available for InsureMe affiliates for about a month now and the results have been amazing (if I do say so myself). We have watched some of our affiliates conversion rateS improve dramatically from implementing script tracking on their Google, Yahoo, and MSN accounts. We also have been reaping the rewards in through our internal PPC campaigns - improving conversion and reducing cost.
For those of you who dont know, we have added the ability for you to enter your AdWords, Yahoo! conversion tracking, and MSN conversion tracking scripts to our conversion page. Using this conversion information you will be able see keyword-by-keyword conversion rates in your PPC accounts. This means you will be able to increase bids on high conversion words and reduce bids or delete non-converting keywords. If you are tracking what I am saying you should be very excited. Why?
The end result of you setting up conversion tracking will be more efficient and profitable PPC accounts. And that means more money for you to recreate, eat, buy electronics, buy more Precious Moments “statues” on eBay (statues, not figurines), etc.
And guess what? The process to set up conversion tracking shouldnt take you more than a few minutes. You can email April (ahartmeister@insureme.com) or call her (800-467-8736 ext. 6120) and she can run you through the process. You will be happy you did.
So, in closing PLEASE USE CONVERSION TRACKING! PRETTY PLEASE. CREAM AND SUGAR, ETC.
]
I picked up on a story from the Market Watch site titled “
I am not sure how many of you out there are going to be attending 
Happy Friday Folks!
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) (
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).
We have had our PPC tracking capabilities available for InsureMe affiliates for about a month now and the results have been amazing (if I do say so myself). We have watched some of our affiliates conversion rateS improve dramatically from implementing script tracking on their Google, Yahoo, and MSN accounts. We also have been reaping the rewards in through our internal PPC campaigns - improving conversion and reducing cost.