They have existed for at least 8 months now but there doesn’t seem to be any good documentation on how to get them. Considering it’s really a rather simple thing I thought I’d write a little how-to tutorial.

The “Jump To” link appears where one would normally expect the Meta Description to appear in the Google Search Results. This is a Jump To link in case you haven’t seen one before.

If you have a double listing, Jump-To links only seem to appear in the first result. This could be coincidence but it seems consistent.

How to get Jump To Links:

Jump To links are basically links within a page to another section on the same page.

Whenever you insert a <a name=”objectname”></a> you can link to that object with an <a href=”#objectname”>Anchor Text</a>

For example I will use three H3 headings and I will assign each a name.

Jump To Links

The code for this h3 heading is <h3><a name=”JumpToLinks”></a>Jump To Links</h3>

Google Jump To

The code for this h3 heading is <h3><a name=”GoogleJumpTo”></a>Google Jump To</h3>

SERP Jump To

The code for this h3 heading is <h3><a name=”SERPJumpTo”></a>SERP Jump To</h3>

Now I can link to each of these within the current page (try it)
Jump To Links (Code is <a href=”#JumpToLinks”>Jump To Links</a>)
Google Jump To (Code is <a href=”#GoogleJumpTo”>Google Jump To</a>
SERP Jump To (Code is <a href=”#SERPJumpTo”>SERP Jump To</a>)

Because I’ve now got links pointing to sections within the page, Google should show a Jump To link in the search results.

Conversion of jump-to links is also worth discussing – in some cases you are directing someone to a point way down the page. If this is the case you need to ensure you are showing conversion attributes no matter where they are. A simple solution is to use a Fixed Position Div displaying contact details, or a shopping cart, etc. this will float up and down the page as a user scrolls.

In terms of converting a Google search into a click, these jump-to links are relatively new and most people haven’t seen much of them yet. As a result currently the CTR of a search listing which includes a jump to link is measurably higher.

Do Jump To Links have any impact on SEO results? Not that I’ve been able to measure, but it stands to reason that if you are optimising one page for multiple keywords Jump To links may have a positive effect on your rankings.

I got a fantastic message today from a good friend in the US – We first started working together quite a few years ago when we were both in fledgling business ventures.

Me: “How’s Business”
Her: “Good, a little too good!”

That’s what I like to hear!

I’ve given her a lot of my own business over the years, and I’ve provided her with a lot of other peoples business too. In many cases I’ve helped her squeeze higher profit margins and sometimes still a commission for me. For the most part I’m referring other business friends to her on a “mates rates, no commission” basis.

We spoke at length about expanding her business – which she did by 45,000% in the space of a few months. We’ve maintained a great relationship.

I pay her immediately, I keep trying to find her more work, and in exchange she prioritizes my work and keeps my prices at rock bottom. This is invaluable in my business and helps me get higher profit margins while still undercutting the competition.

This is the story of one person – but I’ve got relationships with lots of similar business people who started off where I did, as a fledgling. To date, without exception, the businesses within my network who’ve embraced the concept and shared leads, services and resources, have grown substantially and profitably.

The point of this post is absolutely not to boast about this – more I’m describing a concept that I feel is extremely beneficial for business startups.

If fledgling startups work together generously, each will inevitable help the others succeed, thereby succeeding themselves.

In my opinion Greed is the biggest barrier to a successful business.

• Paying yourself loads
• Paying sales staff nothing with unattainable commissions structures
• Driving down suppliers on price to a point of silliness
• Being paranoid with ideas
• Trying to charge stupid profit margins
• Demanding commission on every referral
• Getting more at the expense of your integrity

Don’t do it – it’ll be your own demise.

If you share my philosophies on business lets speak soon because I’m looking forward to joining you for an evening barbecue on your yacht in the Mediterranean.

Just 2 short years ago the “Google Sandbox” was all the rage – people feared it and its ability to take your semi-successful website and pound it into the deep dark depths of Google rankings. SEO companies forged their sales pitches around being able to get results while avoiding the sandbox.

In late 2008 I recall experiencing some sandboxing (only on test projects) – nothing major, but still clear signs that I needed to slow a few SEO campaigns down a little. I feel the best way I’ve learned such effective SEO is by pushing the boundaries continually. Finding the limits and then taking a small step back. But since late 2008 I haven’t managed to find the line which causes a site to be sandboxed anymore.

Interestingly this seems to correlate with Google’s move towards “Live Search” – and could be explained by a refined news algorithm that might trigger an improvement in your rankings temporarily, rather than a sandbox algorithm which distrusts large volumes of link acquisition.

So I thought I’d test the limits of link building for myself with an admittedly reckless link building campaign to a brand new website.

10,000 links within one hour, to a brand new domain name and website. And then nothing further. If that isn’t begging for sandboxing, I don’t know what is.

This site is actually doing unexpectedly well 2 months down the line, having received no additional attention. 70 uniques per day in the property market (a very competitive market in other words.)

So the other day I took a calculated risk and tried dumping 10,000 links on a money site that already held the #1 position for its keyword, currently receiving 400 uniques per day from that keyword alone. Within 3 days the site had a double listing, and generally saw a ranking improvement across the board.

Which leads me to conclude… sandbox? What sandbox?

I think its fair to say the most commonly used SEO plugin for wordpress is the All in One SEO Pack written by “HallsOfMontezuma” – it been downloaded over 5,000,000 times from wordpress.org, and no doubt its also been used countless times by wordpress installers. I’ve probably used it a few thousand times, having only downloaded it four or five times.

Grab a copy here – but read this post first.

So its fair to say the All in One SEO Pack plugin is a bit of an industry standard.

But what if I said using the All in One SEO Pack with default settings was actually SEO suicide? “Hello, what? How dare he!”

SEO Guru’s swear by it, SEO Companies swear by it. Which makes them all idiots!

The problem is summed up with this simple picture.

By default, your category pages are “no-index” and your archive pages are “no-index”

All in One SEO Pack is trying to solve the problem of duplicate content. That is, a post will appear in a category page, as well as an archive page and once on each tags page. But the content on these pages will only be duplicated if there is only one post per category, per archive or per tag. If there is more than one post, the content on that page is unique to other pages, even if large chunks duplicate elsewhere.

Even if the category only contains one post for instance, it still links to the original location of the unique content.

But the All in One SEO Pack (with default settings) creates two problems – first of all it massively reduces the crawl path to older posts, to the point where a major proportion are de-indexed and lost.

If you need to click on more than 3 links to find any post, chances are Google won’t bother indexing that post. (obviously this isn’t the case for massive authority sites) – so by destroying the category and archive crawl paths, Google’s only option is to crawl through tags (often only the top 25 or so are displayed) and then crawl through pagination.

So if a post doesn’t share a common tag, or if enough new posts are added, the post effectively ceases to exist.

Categories aren’t a perfect solution, because you may push any post onto the fourth page of posts in that category, but at least there is a shorter crawl path to every post.

Archives help fill the hole by creating a crawl path into the past.

While its still not a perfect solution, by using all three methods (Tags, Categories and Archives) you massively increase the chance any particular post can be found at a shallow crawl depth.

The other problem introduced by the All in One SEO Pack for wordpress is potential link juice loss. If you link to a page on your own site, which you then instruct Google not to index, chances are that link juice is lost. I don’t care to attempt to prove it, but it is logical, and it’s also congruent with my experience.

The solution couldn’t be any more simple – simply un-check those two check boxes. I’ll eat my hat if you experience anything other than positive results.

Something is dire in an industry with so many big egos, but where issues like this still go unpublished.

A fairly recent update to Google webmaster tools allows us to see click through rates for our pages. This seemed to excite the SEO community in that it’s the first data available that gives us Googles real CTR figures for the top 10 results.

The past CTR figures came from AOL search data from 2006, not even Google. The top position got something like 42% of all clicks, and the second position receiving about 11%…

Regardless of what CTR figures Google is giving us, it doesn’t matter. In December 2009 I wrote an SEO guide for 2010, and in it I wrote about “user experience as an SEO metric” – One thing I did neglect to cover was organic results click through rates effecting SEO.

Since Google knows what your click through rates are, do you think they might decide this info is relevant to SEO rankings?

Google struggles to provide the best SEO results based on mechanical metrics – SEO’s have historically enjoyed exploiting these technical aspects of SEO to great gain. It makes complete sense that Google listens to its searchers.

It stands to reason that a person who searched for phrase X and clicked on site Y made a conscious assessment of the results and decided site Y was the most relevant for phrase X.

The only real way to meddle with this metric (other than page titles and meta descriptions) is mass, automated, searching and clicking. Not impossible, but a new kind of spam maybe?

Google also recently said Meta Descriptions don’t really factor into the SEO metrics Google uses to rank sites, and instead suggested you use these to sell the click – putting two and two together, no a meta description might no longer be a technical SEO metric, but it modifies user experience and hence, potentially also your rankings.

Why has the SEO community focused so hard on the data, and not the implications? SEO is still far too much about ego, and not about logic.

British politics – what an intolerable faf! And the result is “The Apples and Oranges Coalition…”

My understanding of politics is limited and always has been – In Australia, where voting is compulsory, I never registered to vote and escaped the bother of walking to the poll booth a few hundred meters up the road. It’s only since I married a Brit that I’ve been exposed to British politics, and it’s only due to the ridiculousness of it all that I’m perking up and paying attention.

Apparently I could have voted, as a commonwealth citizen resident in the UK, but only discovered this on election day – a little bit late.

For the sake of my own understanding, I’ve dissected the names of the parties joined in coalition to garner a greater understanding of their general views and disparities.

Conservativism: “is a political and social philosophy that says that traditional institutions work best and society should avoid radical change” – I loath and detest conservatives. Women’s rights, gay rights, racial equality, etc… all hindered by conservatives.

Liberalism: “The belief of the importance of liberty and equality” – In Australia the Liberals are essentially the right wing conservatives, so it’s a bit of a mental exercise to give the Lib Dem’s a chance as a relatively left wing party. Interestingly enough, Liberalism is pro-equality, whereas conservatives are against change, including equality…

Democratic: “rule of the people or rule by many” – Considering Britain is apparently a democracy this ingredient is slightly mute. “We are all democrats” they would say…

One thing which has always done my head in about American politics is how left wing voters need to compromise in order to minimize damage – needing to vote for the best of the worst, the lesser of two evils.

On the 1st of November in 2004 Michael Moore wrote a letter to his list titled “One Day Left”. In the 2004 election left wing voters favoured Ralph Nader, but because everybody wanted Bush out so badly, even Nader’s own party told people to vote for Kerry.

“Ralph’s own party, the Green Party, would not endorse his run this year. That’s because those of us who want to build a third party in this country know that the only way to do this is to build bridges with those who believe in the issues Nader believes in. But not one of those people will sacrifice the chance to remove George W. Bush from the White House on Tuesday. The choice here is clear: do we join with our friends, or do we piss on them?”

The implication here is that by voting for Nader it reduces the chance to elect the lesser of two evils. Something is wrong in an electoral system where you have to vote for someone other than your primary choice for fear of undermining your “lesser of two evils”.

Just days prior to the general election, the Labour party in some constituencies was urging its voters to vote Liberal Democrats… to reduce the chance that the conservatives would win those seats. This sounds very similar to circumstances in the US.

Something is also wrong in an electoral system where a party can gain 23% of the total votes, but only 8.7% of seats in parliament – This doesn’t represent the publics choices.

Further, had Labour and the Lib Dems formed a coalition, with 52% of the total vote they still wouldn’t (according to British politics) hold a majority. Odd!

Something is also very wrong when just two parties get 99.01% of the total vote! This was the situation in the US in 2004, and there was no opportunity for a third party to join the fray. While this isn’t the case in the UK, simply due to the fact that you vote for your local candidate rather than a head figure, the inherent problems remain.

The fair and logical solution is preferential voting – “a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank a list or group of candidates in order of preference”

And this is how it works: “First, all the number ‘1’ votes are counted for each candidate. If a candidate gets more than 50% of the formal first preference votes then they are immediately elected.

If still no candidate has an absolute majority, again the remaining candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and these votes are transferred. This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes cast and is declared ‘elected’.”

The benefit here is that voters can vote for their primary choice, and then vote for their “lesser of two evils” with their second preference. Smaller parties and independent candidates now get a really honest chance to be elected, and voters don’t concede their need and right to both vote for their first choice, but also to cover their backs with a solid second choice.

Liberal Democrats voters are more likely to preference the labour party than they are conservatives, and if just the liberal democrats votes had been preferences, labour would have had the victory.

If labours votes in losing electorates were preferenced, the liberal democrats would have won twice as many seats.

The moronic british national party are more likely to preference the conservatives, but they get so few (ignorant) voters, they really aren’t worth considering.

As an example – in Dudley South where the conservatives won with 43.1% of the vote, labour scored 33% and the liberal democrats took 15.7% - It’s fair to guess the lib dem voters would rather Labour remain in power than the conservatives take the seat, and would more than likely preference labour – giving labour 48.7% of the votes. Split the 8.2% of UKIP votes down the middle, and Labour wins that seat!

This isn’t an isolated example, in fact it was the first conservatives seat I looked at. A more interesting seat is the Bridgwater & West Somerset constituency – where preferential voting would yield much much closer figures.

But moving on from electoral process – Liberal Democrats voters have been quite disappointed with their choice of coalition, but I think they’ve done something rather sneaky. They’ve turned their 57 seats into disproportionate power in government. Forcing a deal with the conservatives that is far less conservative than the English peoples would have had to put up with otherwise.

Would a lib-dem-labour coalition have been more appropriate? Their policies are more equal, but I think Nick Clegg simply used his bargaining position between the two parties to get the best deal for his and his parties voters.

Nick Clegg at question time will be interesting, answering questions from a lib dem perspective on behalf of the Apples and Oranges Coalition.

Its bizarre, its interesting, it British politics.

Keyword research is an absolutely critical pre-requisite before attempting to tackle a market online. There is a lot of work involved with starting an new online business, and it would be a real pity to do all this work only to discover the market you worked so hard to capture, is dead.

Many people are discovering just that…

The traffic figures provided by Google’s keyword tool are a massive over-estimation of the traffic volume you could ever expect to receive. A common misconception is that you may get about 40% of that traffic if you rank in the first position for that keyword – but having achieved many of these #1 rankings, I’ve noticed just how grossly over-estimated this can be.

Broad Match is the first way you can massively over-estimate potential. In my experience the broad match traffic numbers for a top level keyword represent every single search within the entire market, including related terms. You may have noticed similar terms report exactly the same traffic figures, even when logic suggests the search volumes would be very different.

And this is why I’ve started checking traffic potential using only exact match.
Here is a broad match result….

And here is the exact match result… 6% of the traffic numbers listed above…

But if you are experienced and you only check exact match traffic figures, you will know that even then, traffic figures are still over-estimated.

In my experience, more often than not, a #1 listing will only get 5-10% of the exact match traffic reported by the Keyword tool.

Potentially this means you could be over-estimating the size of a market by 100x… that’s quite a big deal!

Also explain this one – the SKTool shows different traffic figures to the Keyword Tool…..

Keyword Tool:

SKTool:

In theory the SKTool should show higher search volume than an exact match on the Keyword Tool - but the Keyword Tool is showing twice as many searches!!!

Where does the over-estimation come from, and what about the inconsistencies? I mean, this is Google, and Google has complete access to the exact accurate figures…

I’ve got a speculative theory that is based only on logic and nothing more…

Potentially the Keyword Tool, which is targeted at Adwords Advertisers, shows both search traffic as well as traffic to… wait for it… websites which contain Adsense, as well as searches on search partners…

Now doesn’t that just make a lot more sense?

And all this, is why I’ll tackle hundreds of keywords at a time rather than worry about trying to rank for a few “high traffic” keywords. Not only do you avoid disappointment, but you also build a much more stable and sustainable traffic source.

This is the best comment I’ve ever had on my blog - it seriously made me giggle. I’m re-posting it as a dedicated blog post to give it the exposure it deserves. Many folk in Internet Marketing profess to exercise NLP in their copy writing etc… good luck to them, but in my opinion they aren’t doing their intelligence, conversions or reputation any favours.

The comment was posted on an article I wrote 7 Months ago called NLP is Fart - needless to say I think NLP is Bullshit… Does NLP Work? I say no…

Commenter “Dr Manipulator” seems to agree - just with the added bonus being from an educated stand point of professional perspective…

I’m not going to write any more - I’m just trying to steal Dr Manipulators limelight…

Enjoy!

Hello all,

I have a hard time with NLP and I have TRIED my best to keep my mind open. Now it’s closed… NLP is for those who want to follow others, and cannot lead their own life, they can not think of things outside of what others are telling them is cool. They are manipulated.

The best point that Vince has made, that rates NLP up into the Fullest Extend of Bullshit Law, is that it uses bullshit words to describe what they are describing. Look at this…

Neuro = brain processing information - information from sub consciousness, feeling, desires, fears.

Linguistic = Communicating that information through words

Programming = means to manipulate something, change it

By name NLP means I can change my sub conscious, my feelings, and my fears, by speaking different words.
Ok so here is the problem. This is the same as suppressing my feeling, fears, desires. I am not expressing them, so I must just be pushing them down further. So I am basically creating neurosis in myself by just ignoring my real feelings and desires etc etc.

So then next – what in the hell does nuero linguistic programming (i.e. Self Inflected Neurosis, SIN? Haha) have to do with mirroring another person’s non-verbal behavior. It means that you are so busy looking for my movements that you are not really listening to what I am saying.

So you suck as a coach if you can’t even truly hear what I am saying I need help with. You’re trying to make me feel that you are connected to me…but you are not because you are not understanding me, because your too busy looking at my tits…or my eyes…or whatever.

And calling Vince out on his ability to do web marketing is bullshit also. He is expressing an opinion, he has good points, it’s confusing. Even the damn creators are confused on what it is. I read their first book, it’s a little confusing….refers to basic psychology, then everything after that was spread out over many people’s opinions. Like a bunch of dogs jumping on a pile of catfish…whatever that means.

Anyone who believes NLP is helping them, needs to keep an open mind to the possibility that this is just a manipulation tactic that people are over using, over claiming, and being over confident in.

I am a Licensed Psychologist, I would never manipulate someone to ignore their feelings, and if you look at NLP closer than you are, you will see that is what it does.

NLP IS 125% BULLSHIT, the 25% is for all you claiming it’s real.

I did a little test recently with the new facebook fan pages…

Basically in the recent change, instead of needing to become a fan, all you need to do is “Like” something posted by the facebook page… very sneaky little change…

So I was wondering – since this is such a fresh and relatively unknown change, could I prompt users to “Like” something more consistently?

By adding phrases such as “Do you like it?” and “Thumbs up or thumbs down?” – I’m consistently getting 400% more interactions, which = 400% more exposure.

A quick and snappy post – but hopefully one you will find quite fruitful

Quite a few people just received an email from me, the title read: “What is your web effect [NAME]?” – and yes – unfortunately it said exactly that. I’d intended for [NAME] to be replaced with the recipient’s name, sadly that didn’t happen.

Let me wind the story back for a minute – This is something I’ve been contemplating for a while, but I’ve never sat down to actually try to find a solution – how can I email everyone that’s ever made a comment on my blog?

I’ve been collecting email addresses of people that connected with the content on my blog enough to gave their details freely, and added their comments on an article I’ve written. Some of these people might be interested in future articles, and from a marketing perspective it would be great if I could email these people regularly.

I wanted to email people who have commented on my wordpress blog in the past, and I wanted a plugin to handle my email lists.

The solution came from an obscure wordpress plugin called Contact Commenters - it’s so obscure it’s only ever been downloaded 1,695 times! – This, compared to the All in One SEO Pack which has been downloaded 4.8 million times in total, and already 3,480 times just today!

The download and install is the same as any other wordpress plugin – download, unzip, and upload into the wp-content/plugins directory. Activate the plugin from the plugins page in your wordpress admin… voila….

In the tools menu you’ll see a Contact Commenter’s sub-menu - it takes you to this page:

As you can see in the image above, Contact Commenters wordpress plugin allows you several list options:

1 – Email all commenter’s
2 – Email all commenter’s who haven’t been active in the past 7 days
3 – Email all commenter’s who commented within a date range
4 – Email everyone who commented on a post
5 – Email your top 10 commenter’s from the past X days
6 – Email all new commenter’s from the past X days
7 – Email up to 5 email addresses you enter manually

That’s pretty comprehensive if you ask me – and kinda cool! Emailing new commenter’s is a great way to welcome people to your blog and introduce them to your other content. Emailing inactive commenters is a great way to bring people back to your blog, and emailing everyone who commented on a particular post lets you notify people of updates or related posts.

All very cool!

Clicking through to Step 2 Contact Commenter’s Plugin allows you to remove people from your list and compose your email.

I sent an email to a selection of 135 commenter’s – I tried to make the most of the [NAME] tag, which will be replaced by the commenters name, in both the email title and email body – I later discovered this was only replaced with the commenter’s name in the email body – possibly a simple oversight but one which resulted in 135 people receiving very obviously impersonal emails from me – sorry about that…

You can send unique emails to all people, or you can BCC everyone to the same email – for deliverability purposes I chose to email everyone individually.

I clicked “Send Mails” and the waited…

It took about 3 minutes for the page to finish loading – it would have been nice to receive a notification letting me know all emails had been sent – but apparently they were anyway.

Within seconds I had an email in my inbox from myself – as you can see the [NAME] tag wasn’t replaced in the title, but it was replaced in the email body.

All in all I would recommend this plugin – use it judiciously and don’t spam your readers, but also make the most of the tools at your disposal.

The Contact Commenters Plugin for Wordpress is a new alternative to auto-responder list building that come with some extra barriers to list building. I also recommend adding a little line into the theme code below the comment form “We may send you emails once in a while, by submitting your comment you consent to receive these emails” – it shouldn’t be necessary but better safe than sorry

UPDATE:

I’ve just had an email from Ajith - the developer of the Contact Commenters plugin:

Vince,

I appreciate your review and feedback. I have extended the [NAME] tag support for subject line as well.

Best Regards,
Ajith Edassery

Awesome!

I use Google Alerts to track link building campaigns – since I’m only interested in links that have actually been indexed by Google (because if they aren’t indexed, how will they have any effect on my SEO campaigns?) I use comprehensive and live Google alerts to track those links as they are indexed.

But Google’s comprehensive alerts aren’t so comprehensive, as I’ve discovered. It seems only about 60% of pages that should trigger an alert, actually trigger an alert.

A tad frustration but really no big deal.

So the purpose of this blog post is two fold – first of all to share with you how I track link building campaigns with Google alerts, and secondly to point out that Comprehensive Google Alerts are not actually 100% comprehensive.

To get fully comprehensive lists of all indexed references to your trigger word (unique keyword you use to trigger google alerts) – try doing a search in google listing on results form the last 24 hours (or week, if you don’t check daily)

-Where do we aim?
-How do we know what to aim for?
-What do you need to do to make money online?

Measure your own web effect and find out.

How many pages do you view per month?

I probably view around 12,000 pages per month, and that’s working online 8 hours a day.

How much do you spend online per month (not including PPC)?

I spend a lot more online than the average person, but an average person might spend between $500 and $1000 per month.

With those figures we can calculate how much our clicks are worth.

How much are your clicks worth?

Based on the above figures, if I spent the same amount online as an average person, and I viewed 12,000 pages per month, each of my clicks is worth about 4-8 cents.

A great target is to simply neutralize your web effect. Click as many clicks as you receive. Spend as many dollars as you earn.

What is your goal? How much do you want to earn?

An average person might be hoping to earn $2000/month before quitting their full-time job. With that in mind, he/she would need to be generating between 25,000 and 50,000 unique visitors per month to websites they own.

If every time you click on another web page you also write four words to publish on a site of your own, you will be able to generate this amount of traffic in short order.

Beat your own web effect!

When you cross that line, and you are receiving more traffic than you create, you become a positive contributor to the internet. Beating your own web effect is the first step to full time online income.

In the comments tell me – are you web effect neutral?

This post is primarily for people who have invested, through me, in high page rank domain names. One investor got 3 PR5 domains for $516, and another investor got 2 PR5 domains for $340 – but now that they have these domains, how best should they make use of them?

Each domain was set up so that they could have a maximum of 7 site wide links – this is to make sure the links have solid SEO power and aren’t substantially diluted.

I recommend placing only top keywords in site wide links - keywords like “Home Loans” or “House in London” – This is because these keywords are the most competitive, and required the most SEO to rank.

Then investors are able to login to wordpress and write blog posts on the high page rank domain names. I recommend they write at least one blog post every day on each website, and include one link to a less competitive keyword in each post. Keywords such as “Interest Only Home Loans” and “Four Bedroom House in London” – you can choose these keywords by looking at your Google analytics and finding any keywords which are ranked low on the first page, or on the second page of results.

Keywords used in blog posts should vary daily – you can link to pages that aren’t indexed or your under-performing pages.

Another great use for these blog posts, is to get a double listing in the top ten results. You achieve this by SEO’ing two pages for the same keyword.

If you use your high PR sites closely following this guide, you will turn even a single PR5 site into a formidable SEO weapon.

Its a question that’s regularly asked, and with more and more articles about page rank, if its worthwhile or not, I thought I should weigh in and also tell you how to increase page rank.

Before I answer the question “How to increase page rank” – I’m getting on my soap box for a minute to discuss what is page rank, and does it matter?

Does Page Rank Matter?

SEOMoz did a (ahem, self serving) Page Rank Spearman Correlation… essentially Page Rank did statistically weight in to search rankings, just it isn’t the single most authoritative metric… which we already knew.

I was surprised SEOMoz concluded that this meant page-rank had very little at all to do with search rankings.

Au Contraire!!!

Potentially Googles Algorithm doesn’t allow any single metric to be the definitive reason for rankings, but we already guessed as much. Potentially no single metric is allowed to account for more than 25% of a pages ranking… that would make sense.

The number of backlinks (as reported by Yahoo) was apparently more influential on rankings than Page Rank – We already know backlinks are very important to rank for a term, but consider also that backlink counts will correlate with page rank to some degree…

While you shouldn’t get fixated on pagerank and pagerank alone, increasing your page rank is an important part of SEO.

So how do you actually increase your page rank?

The easiest way is… to get a link from a page with higher pagerank than your own… It is that simple… almost…

If you get a link from a page with a high page rank, but which is also linking out to lots of other websites, you probably won’t seen an increase in pagerank.

If your link on the website with higher pagerank than your own includes the no-follow tag, it definitely won’t help you get a higher page rank.

The easiest way I’ve found for how to increase page rank is to make friends with people on blogger.com. Lots of blogger profiles have high page ranks (PR6+) and people are more than willing to give you a link if you give them one in exchange.

This is an Internet Marketing blog – and if you want to make a huge amount online, very quickly, this is a pretty sweet business model. If you have morals on the other hand, you might be less inclined to give this model a go. For the sake of education, and because it’s a rather interesting case study, I’m going to give you my opinion in this mad bid review.

In my opinion… Online Penny Auctions – such as the ones on MadBid.com – prey on ignorance. Bidding in these auctions is gambling, at best, and that’s only if you actually understand what’s going on.

While at first getting a Macbook Air for £26 might sound like a steal, things are not as they seem. Strictly speaking it’s not theft, but …in my opinion… it’s not far off. Unfortunately it’s actually the bidder getting screwed, and the auction house getting the bloody good deal.

The Model:

1. To place a bid on an auction you need to buy bidding credits. These will cost you between 75p and £1.50 each, depending on how many you buy.

2. When you place a bid, the price of the auction goes up by 1p (this has cost you one bidding credit)

3. When a new bid is placed, the auction countdown re-sets.

The Result:

Essentially all Mad Bid are doing, it revaluing the currency to make the deal sound better than it is. £1.50 is suddenly 1p, 15000% deflation!!! And every bidder is paying for the item regardless of whether or not they win.

Even if you win, you still need to pay whatever the auction price has risen to!

The sales pitch is absolutely golden:

Audi A3 for £514.63

£50 Asda voucher for £0.91

iPhone 3GS 32GB for £9.67

These are actual prices of auctions still taking place on mad bids, review these prices with the re-valued currency in mind and things aren’t looking so peachy.

Audi A3 (RRP £16,320) for between £38,597.25 and £77,194.50

£50 Asda voucher for between £68.25 and £136.50

iPhone 3GS 32GB (RRP £538) for between £725.25 and £1450.5

Why aren’t online penny auctions like Mad Bid reviewed by the same people responsible for regulating gambling? The opportunity for false bidding is rife, and the chances of winning are tiny!

The chances of winning with each bid are: (End Price x 100) to 1. If the end price is £56.60, each bid has a 1 in 5660 chance of winning. You’d be better off at a poker machine…

In theory Mad Bid could:

1. Fake bid if the auction hasn’t hit ROI yet

2. Fake bid to perpetuate auctions into peak bidding times… but wait, they don’t have to…

One thing that really pissed me off about this business model is that auctions don’t stop if the bidding time expires without somebody winning. The Audi A3 auction had been paused for several hours when I woke up this morning… While its understandable from the business’ perspective, it completely shits on the bidders.

And another thing that pisses me off, is that the last person to part with their bid, effectively winning the auction, still has to pay the bloody auction price.

The conclusion of this Mad Bid Review is entirely my opinion… and in my opinion Mad Bid Auctions, and penny auctions like them, are scams! They should be regulated at the very least, and the cost of bids should be reflected in the auction prices more accurately.

Bill hicks says to his audience “By the way if anybody here is in Advertising or Marketing… Kill yourself!”

Amusingly, retrospectively, Mark Attwood used to pull this anecdote out at the internet marketing seminars we did. Life can be so ironic… (Take note, this sentence is also here for SEO purposes… SEO Karma? Also amusing… and quite a cool concept…)

But I think we can do a bit of caring sharing internet marketing… and actually… to our benefit… Here’s three ways how…

Affiliate Links

Declare your affiliate links and provide an alternative non-affiliate link. – like I have in my Domain Samurai Review and DomainFace Review – (Take note, some more healthy on-page SEO with good internal linking…)

If anybody follows Jason Moffatt (and his (apparently not) self appointed alias “Profit Moffatt”), he actually inspired me to first start declaring my affiliate links and providing non-affiliate alternatives… He was just such a bloody rowdy salesman, and then he’d dump an affiliate link in your face…

And every single time I saw his affiliate links I thought “Right, so everything else Jason said, was bullshit… He’s just trying to earn a desperate buck.”

I didn’t trust the things Jason Moffatt was telling me about, and actively distrusted them. If you don’t follow Jason, I won’t recommend him - his email subscription form is on his homepage http://www.jasonmoffatt.com

So from then on, I declared my affiliate links on my website, and I gave people the option to click on a non-affiliate link. I only write genuine reviews, and I would prefer people take me seriously than earn a buck. My integrity is worth more than any affiliate link.

Remember how I said caring sharing Internet Marketing works in our favour? (I hope this doesn’t cheapen the motives behind it, but here goes…)

400% increase in CTR, and then a further 400% increase in conversion to sales… 16X more sales…. by providing a non-affiliate link option!!! The boys at Market Samurai and Domain Samurai noticed a similar thing when they declared an affiliate link…

Guest Blog Posts

I wrote about guest blog posts literally half an hour ago … By letting people write guest blog posts on your site, in exchange for guest blog posts on thiers, you become the central hub and authority in your niche – read the guest blog post strategy here.

Do-Follow commenting

Since I’ve got nothing to lose by removing the no-follow attribute from comments on my blog – I’ve installed the do-follow plugin for wordpress. When you comment on my blog you receive link juice, and I receive a little bit of extra content. Further, I build a larger audience of repeat visitors because they are invested in my website. Cool…

Get the do-follow plugin for wordpress here.

There are ethical and moral ways to earn money online (notice I said “earn” – not “make”) – stop trying to screw people and be genuine! [Most] Humans are instinctively aware of deception and falsehoods.

Do you want to write a guest post on my blog? And gain a link back to your blog? Well you can, just read on…

I was emailing one the guys that took up the Domain Name Investment opportunity just now. A really nice guy called Sam, and I also sent him a string of advice on how he could turn his Adsense only business into a much more substantial income. Believe me, Sam is an Adsense GOD! His Adsense income exceeds 90% of internet marketers total earnings.

There’s a little snippet of the email I thought would be great advice for a larger audience, so I’ve pasted it here.

“You can also start talking to people who own other related websites and [you can] offer to do a “free guest blog post” or article. [You need to] make personal relationships with the owners of these websites and [also] let them do guest blog posts on your site.

Internet Marketers can be quite cagey about letting other people do guest blog posts [on their site] because you are promoting people other than yourself, but just remember this - If you are the only [one] doing it, you become the central person, the common denominator, the hub of the network… that’s a very powerful position to be in. AND - they are adding new content to your site for free… cool! ”

Hypothetically if you exchanged posts with 10 other websites….
- You pass some of your traffic and SEO juice in 10 different directions
- You trade 10 articles for 10 articles (Fair?)
- Those 10 websites pass you some of their traffic and SEO juice…

Even if you are the biggest player in your market, by organizing your peers and competitors in a ring around you, you become the authority, both in the eyes of Google, but also in the eyes of your competitors and your target audience.

The result is increase SEO exposure and traffic – sweet.

Don’t be worried about helping competitors rank in the serps – for ever link your competitor gains, you gain 10 (in the hypothetical example above)

It’s the caring sharing approach to Internet Marketing – A concept that is about as common as Rocking-Horse Poo.

Now if you want to exchange a guest blog post with me, send me an email via the contact form.

Peace!

Twitter announced they were going to offer promoted tweets as a way to earn some money (finally) – but its not going to work…

Most people use twitter via a client, which is the reason twitter needed to take the “Promoted Tweets” route rather than just displaying advertising on twitters web console. And here-in lies the problem… Twitter isn’t, and can’t be, Google.

Twitter will need to distribute these promoted tweets by one of the following methods:

- Unsolicited – You receive a tweet from somebody you aren’t following, either in your twitter feed, or as a direct message.

Or

-You will receive a message @’ed at you.

Or

-Twitter promoted tweets will be placed in preferential positions on twitter search pages

I doubt the second option is viable, since the senders twitter page would be spammed with @ messages. If they try to be clever, its not hard to cross reference an @ message you receive with the senders page to see if it actually exists. So we’ll cross that one off the list.

Displaying tweets in a promoted position on the twitter search pages poses a few problems. First of all the traffic will be comparatively tiny, and this whole advertising plan won’t make much dosh. Secondly the people searching on twitter are searching for tweets, and if they were searching for any kind of products or services they would use Google. And thirdly, the clients will be able to filter these promoted items, rendering them useless.

The unsolicited tweets might seem like the best option, but again, a twitter client can easily cross reference the list of people it follows, to the tweets being received… The traffic might be initially massive, but the twitter clients will send twitter promoted tweets to the grave.

Apparently twitter has chosen to display promoted tweets in the search results… but this is just the beginning. Watch this space…

There is a really big barrier to entry when it comes to buying GREAT domains. I’m doing things the vast majority of people just can’t do… I’ve written proprietary domaining software which I only use in-house, and I’ve been building SEO networks for about six years. There are huge barriers to finding the best domains, and there is a bunch of experience and knowledge required to make the most of them.

I’m bidding for too many high page rank domain names – My credit cards are maxed and I just keep finding more top-notch domains to buy. I’m currently bidding on Fifty Seven PR5+ domain names

I’m buying PR5’s for $150-$300, and PR6’s for less than $1000 – I’m snatching up PR4’s for less than $70, and I’m grabbing PR3’s for registration fees alone.

I’ve got fantastic domains coming out of my ears!!!

My process includes buying a PR5 domain, and then building a site which will turn around 3000 visitors per month (average), within six months. These sites are valuable without traffic, but generating traffic turns them into high value and highly sought after assets.

So here’s my proposition:

I will…

• Find the domains,
• Bid for the domains,
• Purchase the domains,
• Manage the name servers,
• Host the websites and pay for hosting,
• Setup auto-blogging on the domains,
• Pay for all software subscriptions needed,
• Sanitize the blog themes,
• Track and Optimise the sites

All you need to do is sponsor the domain purchases. If you have a preference of topic we can accommodate that.

The deal goes like this – I will place up to 2 links in the blog roll of each site, and I will periodically add links from within articles. I will place Adsense on the sites to cover all future domain renewal costs and hosting costs (SEO Hosting is expensive! $5 per month, per site!)

You get up to 5 blog roll links, and you can post whatever content you want, linking to wherever you want. You can also edit auto-posted content to include links to your own sites.

Its like the old days of Search Engine Trust, but without the risk, with no recurring costs, and with complete control.

We will run the sites like this for a minimum of six months, and then if you would like, we can organise to list the domains and sites on Flippa. If you don’t want to sell the sites, that’s completely up to you. If we do sell them, you get the initial purchase price back instantly, and we split the profit 50/50.

The opportunity here is two-fold…

Huge SEO Power -

If you need SEO power, these sites are absolute rocket fuel. A lot of the secret to my past successes comes from this very strategy

Flipping for profit -

In the Domain Samurai Review & Domain Face Review post - “Entrepreneur Solo” commented:

Good point about the opportunity that is buying and then selling on Flippa. I have already done this a couple of times and it works well.

If we are buying a PR5 domain for $300, and listing it for sale in 6 months, most will command bids above $500. If we add traffic (and Adsense revenue too, remember) – the auction value of these domains goes up big style! So even if you don’t need the SEO power (we can work out a deal here on the re-sale value) – buying domains, building sites and flipping them, is rather profitable.

If you are interested send me a message (via my contact form) and tell me how much you would like to invest in domains. At this stage I’m looking at a minimum of one PR5 per investor, which means you need to commit at least $300 to the deal. More often than not I can get a PR5 for less than $300 and naturally you will only pay the cost of the domain, not more.

That’s the deal, take it or leave it ☺

p.s. Obviously I can’t guarantee profits, or that sites will maintain page rank, but I will use all of my experience and knowledge to ensure we buy the best and do the best with them.

<h2>Update</h2>

I’ve already got investors for 13 PR5+ domains. Get yours!

Are you advertising on the Adwords content network?

When you advertise on the content network your ads are displayed on the websites of independent publishers. The publisher places this “Adsense” on their site and earns a commission every time somebody clicks on those adverts.

But there is a VERY compelling reason not to advertise on the content network. It’s called “Click Fraud” and it’s quite profitable.

The economics of Click Fraud revolve around masses of cheap labour.

To commit click fraud successfully on any discernable scale and in a sustainable fashion you need a few ingredients. You need to have lots of natural browsing, and you need lots of different identities. Cheap labour is the answer to natural browsing, and private proxies provide the solution to different identities.

But the vast majority of click fraud comes from the third world – people who’s mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters only earn $1 per day. No joke, a teacher in Cambodia earns $30/month, as does a Policeman.

With an IP address costing about 4c per day, and a site costing 10c per day, a person in a third world country only needs to generate 5 clicks on their site each day to be earning a better than average wage. When its done on such a small scale it becomes impossible for Google to identify the click fraud. Spread those clicks over 12 sites, with 24 IP addresses, here’s the economics:

96c/day for Proxies
$1.20/day for Sites
Average CPC (Commission per click): 70c (if the site is about mortgages or loans, or leasing, 70c/click is an easy average)

24 clicks at 70c/click = $16.80

Or $14.64 profit per day… This person now earns fifteen times more than his/her peers. Believe me, a $400/month wage in most third world countries is HEFTY!

“Haven’t made your $1 online with the thirty day challange - try click fraud” but obviously, don’t!

Expand this model into a professional click fraud operation – but now you need to pay staff. A very good wage would be $2/day and let’s pretend we’ve hired 15 staff.

The profit per head of staff has dropped to $12.64, but our daily profit has risen to $189.60 – We have 360 IP addresses and 180 websites. $70,000/year income, not bad.

I’ve met individuals who earn their daily living with click fraud, and I’ve met a couple of people who operate click fraud sweat shops. It’s very profitable and very sustainable, and there isn’t anything Google can do about it. Occasionally a site or Adsense account gets banned, but the replacement cost is miniscule. The largest click fraud sweat shop I’ve visited hosted 180 staff on 24 hour shift rotations… it was pulling in over $5000/day profit. The guy running this sweat shop complained that too many of his staff left the business and set up their own little click fraud operations.

In this largest operation one IP address would be used to click on one advert on one set of sites, and would then be dumped for a replacement IP – this becomes absolutely impossible to track from Googles end.

The damage of Click Fraud extends beyond the earnings of those committing click fraud since a critical part of the natural browsing is to also click on other adverts on other sites. For every $1 earned through click fraud, about $5 will be spent on other adverts. The damage of the operation mentioned above would account for almost $1,000,000 per month of worthless click fraud.

And this is why it’s a stupid idea to consider advertising on the Adword’s content network – unless you have a philanthropic streak and you like supporting the third world, but this is a hard business case to justify to the board. If you are currently advertising on the content network there is very little doubt you are a victim of click fraud.

If you need help managing your Adwords to maximise return on investment, get in touch.

This is a genuine review, I’ve got a very good reason not to support Domain Face, but credit where credit is due. While writing this review I spoke to Nathan Ridley, the guy who wrote Domain Face, and Brent Hodgson, the face of the Noble Samurai team. Thanks to them I can give you some insights into the scale of the applications.

I’ve actually written my own expired domain checking tool, I’ve got a little screenshot below… It works, and it checks a few things Domain Samurai and Domain Face don’t check, but it definitely isn’t attractive. But my privately written software doesn’t measure up to Domain Face and Domain Samurai by a massive margin…

Partly because it’s butt ugly.

Data Confidence –

I checked over 100 domains and there were only two inconsistencies. My own tool has a higher rate of inconsistency, with one in twenty results being inconsistent. God knows why, but it goes to show the data is solid.

While doing this Domain Samurai review I found myself bidding on domains with complete confidence, not even cross checking the data. When I realised, it worried me slightly and I went back to check on all the domains I’d bid on – My confidence was strengthened when all were as expected.

The Fake PR warnings seem to be pretty bullet proof, which gives me further confidence in these tools

Database Size –

How many domains does Domain Face check? Over half a million! And it has full data for each. Also 3% of these domain names have a page rank of 1 or above. The daily domain turnover is between 15000 and 40000 domains. (That’s at least 450 new domains per day with a page rank of 1 or above – sweet!)

I’ve cross checked many of the competitors and none are listing more than 20% of the results Domain Face and Domain Samurai come up with, at best! In other words, Domain Face seems to have a database of Domains five times larger than any other expired domain checking tool.

Another little statistic… Every month – Domain Face gulps 300gb of data processing expired domain names.

Keyword to New Domain Search –

I was a little bit staggered by this feature when I started my Domain Samurai review. This feature is frightfully powerful…

By having the keyword in an exact match .com domain name, you essentially steal a top position in the search results. If you can find an exact match domain name which is un-registered and which has over 1000 searches per month, just by sticking an Adsense optimised blog on that domain name, it will pay for itself very quickly.

This is where huge power is derived from integrating Domain Face with Domain Samurai – the keyword research power from Market Samurai, mixed with the domain name trawling ability of Domain Face. Wow…

The result is a system which allows you to build a massive network of sites which each earn very good profits, and which give you a massive lump of SEO power should you choose to use it.

I found one the first time I tried… Apple Tart Recipe gets 1300 searches per month exact match… appletartrecipe.com is available to register… To me that’s a no-brainer (But I can’t be bothered right now and have bigger fish to fry, so I’m not registering it…)

Domains with existing Page Rank –

Very Very powerful tools of SEO destruction – a domain with existing PR is like a lethal weapon. My test strategy is to buy a series of PR4 domain names, set up Adsense optimised blogs on each, and wait for the traffic to turn into cash. I have very little doubt each could be driving 100 visitors per day (Its worked every single time in the past, with blogs with PR as low as 2) – and with a nice easy 5% CTR the ROI for each blog is about 1000%. Cool – plus, they are SEO link building mega powerhouses. A PR4 link is as powerful as about 25 PR1 links…

I bid on quite a number of PR4 domain names, at $69 each. I’ll update this post when I have success or failure. Also interesting, is that a PR4 domain name will sell on flippa.com for more than $300 fairly consistently, even without a website… So here is another little strategy… Buy a domain name with page rank, build a little website on it, sell it on flippa for 700% margin… sweet!

Check out this Domain Samurai search for “Wave” – showing a REAL PR5, a fake PR5 and PR4, and then some other results.

Speed –

Lightning quick – All the domain data is pre-processed on the server side, which means it loads in seconds, with all of the values right there! It couldn’t be any quicker.

The Competition –

Um, in this case, there pretty much isn’t any competition worth mentioning… None have the processing ability of Domain Face. Very few can give you PR and backlink numbers. And they are impossible to locate… try searching for one… they are pretty much hidden in the ether of the web.

Feature Request –

I’d like Domain Samurai to have a live re-check button – just to increase my confidence from 98% to 100%

Price –

Domain Samurai is FREE – download it free here!

To unlock the full functionality you do need a domain face account.

Domain Face is Free for 7 days through this link… Lifetime membership to Domain Face is $197, or one year’s access is $97. This is an affiliate link – if you want to thank me for an honest review, please use it. If you would rather have confidence in my review, this link isn’t an affiliate link.

As far as a Domain Face Review, or a Domain Samurai Review goes, you’ve seen a bit about what’s possible with these tools. This review was written pre-release, and most likely these tools will evolve massively, but this is my conclusion.

Domain Samurai is free – you can find exact match domains for keywords with traffic for FREE – that is BIG! download it free here!

Domain Face is CHEAP! – it allows you to find domains which would otherwise cost a small fortune. Get a free 7 day trial… I would recommend buying the lifetime membership and avoid any price increases with the addition of new features etc.

Update

I’ve had so much success with Domain Samurai and Domain Face I’ve maxed out my credit cards buying domains. Which has caused me to put up a domain name investment opportunity - I’m currently bidding on 57 PR5+ domain names, and I’ve managed to buy some whoppers. PR6’s for $174, PR5’s for as little as $59! Just go have a look on flippa to see how much people are selling PR5’s and PR6’s for… Lets just say these tools have launched me into ROI heaven!

I’ve barely read a Google white paper or patent, and in that regard I can’t mingle with SEO gurus the likes of Aaron Wall, Rand Fishkin, Leslie Rohde, Barry Schwartz, etc… I can’t talk about theoretical formula A, and equation B…

And I prefer it that way…

SEO is a simple concept, yet blowhard X will talk about method Y and the result is BS…

X+Y = BS

Many of the top SEO’s only implement the “Read And Regurgitate” techniques while others throw in a touch of the “Nobody knows for sure, so I’ll say something that sounds good” method….

Blowhard SEO’s use complex names to keep this simple art exclusive…

But really… This is SEO:

1. Make sure your pages are optimized as much as possible
2. Make sure your internal pages interlink intelligently
3. Build links with good anchor text, from good sources

BS Method A:

“Analyse your competitors backlinks, and copy them…”

NO! Spend your time getting the links you can get. There is more than one way to beat the competition, and there are a hell of a lot of other places where you can get links. Don’t waste your time doing things the hard way, since competitor backlink analysis is an imprecise art, especially since not every link is visible to you and you can’t get every single one anyway!

BS Method B:

Analyse your competitors keyword density, and copy them…

NO! Make sure the content on your page contains keywords while still making sense to the reader. Do not compromise user experience for keyword density, and don’t cut down density to match your competitors. In truth a 30% keyword density will work, and a 2% density will beat that 30% density with intelligent internal linking and backlink building.

BS Method C:

“Link baiting… Viral content… etc…”

NO! Its literally gambling… you spend money, and the results are completely unpredictable. Chances of going viral and you getting an ROI are miniscule.

BS Method D:

Focus on one keyword at a time…

NO! There are thousands of keywords that are relevant for every single one of your pages and your site will receive more traffic, sooner, by link building with variety. A good proportion of “bad” anchor text also helps you fly under the “SEO” radar.

BS Methods E:

Anything fancy pants…

NO! Google isn’t stupid, and fancy pants methods generally have some kind of footprint. No-Follow internal linking… with Javascript… or iFrames… or Flash… or Ninja Turtle Nunchaku Links! You just end up waving a big “I’m trying to game Google” flag…

But why listen to the guy who doesn’t read the white papers and get his physics professor buddies to explain the formulas?

I get results through implementation – they might not be the most elegant results, and I might over-run rather than nudge the tipping point gently, but I get results. If I don’t get a result, I keep adding pages and building links until I DO get a result – and anybody can do that! The rate of implementation (which you would have to do anyway) isn’t hindered by theorizing, analyzing and playing with myself…

I don’t read and regurgitate, I implement, implement, implement!

I don’t waste my time getting confused over unpublished formulas and algorithms, I just implement and track results…

Dear SEO’s – Stop faffing, and start DOING!

When it comes to SEO, you generally get a fair bit of warning if somebody begins to compete with you (or you should, if you have your systems in place) – A common myth in SEO is that you can no longer storm into a market.

While it may be true that SEO takes time, and this won’t change any time soon, it is possible to storm a market un-noticed.

Best illustrated with an example – and one I’m unfortunately not responsible for.

The story takes place in a market I’ve been competing in for almost two years – “Skip Hire” – one in which competition has been heating up dramatically since Mark Attwood began giving talks on the success of his online skip hire business (Which has since, ironically, gone into administration nearly £1,000,000 in the red.)

In the first viewable version of the political website promoting Anthony ‘Skip’ Scirroco for a position as the commissioner of public works in the united states, there is no reference to “skip hire” whatsoever. His website was Skip4DPW.com

Thank you Archive.org for giving us this awesome retrospective data from June 10th 08 http://skip4dpw.com/”http://web.archive.org/web/20080610011702/http://skip4dpw.com/

My research shows that in January 2008 “Skip” Scirroco had been appointed to the position for which he was petitioning with his website, which leads me to believe the website no longer held any value to Anthony Scirroco and the registration was let lapse.

A little over a month after the first viewable cache of the website, the next cache, which was taken on Jul 15th 08, shows that Anothony’s nickname seems to have grown a little. Now known as Anothony “Skip Hire” Scirroco… with five uses of the new term “Skip Hire” on the home page.

Another Archive.org piece of history from Jul 15th 08 http://web.archive.org/web/20080715124752/http://www.skip4dpw.com/

Around the same time I recall watching notifications popping up to let me know somebody was SEO’ing for the term “Skip Hire” – In retrospect it should have seemed too bizarre – a guy with the nick name “Skip Hire” – but the website was US targeted, seemed somewhat legit, and wasn’t ranking in my target markets.

But then a few months later, something happened…

On the 18th of July, 2009, the domain name Skip4DPW.co.uk was registered, and the old domain Skip4DPW.com was 301 redirected to this new domain name.

The effect?

The market is very competitive and since I’ve been responsible for a lot of the competition I know intimately how competitive it is. With that in mind, Skip4DPW.co.uk stormed the SEO listings and hit 6th place overnight – as was expected it did slide down since then, but still olds 8th position last time I checked.

So how can we translate this example into a strategy?

1. Buy a slightly ambiguous domain name in a foreign market (If your market is the US, buy a UK domain name, and vis-versa)
2. Build a website on that domain name with a misleading story to throw off your competition should they ever notice (most wont)
3. Build links to the diversion website with your keywords
4. Wait for a while (continue building links)
5. 301 redirect the old domain name to the new local domain name with a commercial website
6. Continue building links to the new domain name (which doesn’t appear to have happened with skip4dpw.co.uk

While this is an interesting strategy, it will only really be worthwhile in a market that is competitive and is likely to be tracking competition and reacting to threats. I may also be a good option if you don’t intend to compete within that market for 12+ months.

With that in mind I’ve been building a lot of stewing pot businesses, where I’ll build a website and begin link building, with a view to revisiting those sites a year or more down the line. Instead of making my presence known, maybe this strategy could prove to be a safer option?

Will it last? Sure, why not? Search Engines can’t begin punishing people for switching domain names, since so many companies build new websites on new domain names.

While I don’t know who was responsible for this masterful trickery, I have a few inklings and I would LOVE to chat to the perpetrator.

This isn’t a blog post I write happily – I’d intended to respectfully stay quiet and avoid bringing attention to my stressed relationship with Mark Attwood however since false information is being disseminated, I do need to tell my side of the story. I’ve been sitting on this post for quite a few weeks, I’ve given Mark many chances to make things right.

It goes to show all is not as it seems – we in the marketing game are very good at creating an image. It also goes to show how fickle personal relationships can be, and that for some people greed is a great evil driving force.

I’ve learnt a lot from what I’m about to write about – and a few of my biggest learning lessons are:

1. Promises and agreements mean nothing unless they are written down.
2. It’s all bullshit until the cheque hits the bank.
3. Beware of bullshitters, charisma isn’t integrity.

Some of the details in what I write are contested (as you can imagine) and I am writing from the best of my knowledge, however considering Mark Attwood’s legal prodigality, this writing is based on my perspective. I have good documentation for what I’ve written, but for the sake of covering my arse, this is based only on the best of my knowledge.

In an agreement with Mark Attwood and Kenny Goodman – then joint directors of Venturebase Ltd, it was agreed that I would receive 15% share of Venturebase Ltd in exchange for a £xx,xxx investment. I was young, optimistic and naive – also overly trusting apparently, and this investment was never formalised on paper because we were “too busy making money.” Rather I relied on trust, integrity, handshakes and gentleman’s agreements.

Having parted with that investment, and under this pretence of shares in Venturebase Ltd, I continued working with Mark Attwood. Following the demise of Top Triangle Ltd, I worked for a period of four months for both Venturebase Ltd and Perfect Associates Ltd (which bought Top Triangle Ltd out of pre-pack administration) without a wage. I’ve always focused on long-term value rather than short-term cash and I had visions of fantastic growth of the companies, so working for nothing and living off savings was a way to show my commitment.

Venturebase Ltd is the company under which Mark Attwood sells Internet Marketing services including seminars and consulting services. I’ve spoken at many of those seminars, and the Off-page SEO Services that Mark was offering, are my brainchild.

To date, I don’t believe I’ve received a single penny from Venturebase Ltd, be it in the form of a wage, or profit share.

All profits seemed to be swallowed by the Attwood’s lifestyle and debts. I supported them by not questioning this because I felt it was important that they were financially stable and I knew they had a lot of debts following TT Ltd’s collapse. Of course I’ve never been included in the finances of the business, so I’m unaware of exactly how much we made or where it went, but as a business without many expenses I can’t begin to imagine where more than £10,000/month could go. I’d been lead to believe that at the time I left, Venturebase Ltd was grossing £20,000/month.

Mark has told people that I’m crazy – that I wanted 50% of his business – that he fired me – etc… I’m a very level headed and reasonable person. I suspect he’s also been bullshitting the current managing director of Top Triangle Ltd regarding the promises and agreements he made with me.

I simply asked for my investment and shareholding to be formalised at which point Mark and Katy Attwood denied any knowledge of that investment, those agreements, and stated that our working relationship had become “untenable.” – go figure…

I found this exceedingly upsetting and left the office on November 12th in tears.

I’d thought I had a very close relationship with Mark Attwood and Katy Attwood – we’d spent many nights over more than a few bottles of wine. Mark had declared his brotherly love for me, and vice-versa. I’d supported Mark and Katy through the administration of TT Ltd and the subsequent fallout (financial problems, threats, etc) and I’d been very generous to them. I only took a wage when my own savings had run out, and that wage was absolutely minimal.

When I left the office on November 12th, I had less than £300 left in my bank account.

While my skills aren’t really employable, and while no employee works the 120 hours/week that I found myself working, my “wage” at £15k/year still falls short of the £45k+ positions I’ve been offered (and declined) since. That’s about £1.90/hour, before taking into consideration that I’d contributed more cash to that business than I’ve ever received in wage.

When it became apparent that the agreements of shares wouldn’t be honoured I presented endless alternatives of arrangements in which the working relationship could continue – including commissions and back pay. However generous those proposals were, not a single one was given any consideration.

Mark Attwood’s ego doesn’t leave any room for anybody else’s. In his mind I think he truly believes he is an “SEO Expert” – in truth the vast majority of SEO work done for both clients and in house projects (Top Skips, Top Toilets, Top Asbestos, Top Fence etc etc etc – full list on this page) over the past 18 months was devised and implemented by myself. I’d actually asked to be solely responsible for the SEO of those businesses in 2008, and that suggestion was agreed to by (then) directors Mark Attwood and Kenny Goodman.

Since November 12th I’ve had over half a dozen people approach me independently and without prompting say to me “but weren’t you the brains behind the operation?” – It was really nice to hear this from so many people at a time when I was feeling quite down about the whole thing. I always used to joke that I was the brains and Mark was the personality, but I’d never really given myself quite so much credit. I never had a problem with him claiming to be an SEO expert because somebody who is an SEO expert had always backed him up.

The image of the “Mark Attwood” brand was always Mark’s topskips story, backed up with a team of experts. This was the image I created and promoted, but following “The System” seminar in London, Mark’s ego (supported by Katy’s ignorance) had swollen to a point where it had become, and I quote, “The Mark Attwood Show”. Katy declared she owned “100% of (her) husband” and made it very clear she didn’t consider me to have any discernible expertise.
I wish the story remained this simple – unfortunately it gets worse.

On December 10th, my fiancée Vickie was sacked from her job doing the marketing for Sinks.co.uk, Venturebase Ltd’s biggest client. I know how good she is, and I also know Mark. I am left with very little doubt that Mark had strong influence over her sacking. While I understand this is simply speculation, I’ve made a rational assessment of the situation and it seems far too plausible. This is beyond horrendous and shows a deplorable malice.

The timing is appalling – Christmas is around the corner, then Vickie and I are having two wedding ceremonies (one in the UK, one in Australia) and we won’t be back until February. She isn’t able to find another job before we return and I’d walked away from “The Mark Attwood Show” unable to pay December’s rent, let alone fund two weddings, a four week holiday and a honeymoon.

(Since writing – We had a very lovely “white wedding” ceremony – We leave for our honeymoon tomorrow.)

Mark has been getting a lot of bad press – I had made it my business to manage Mark’s online profile/reputation and defend his integrity and knowledge.

But Mark is retorting the bad press on the one hand, and abusing a relationship and reneging on agreements on the other. It’s just asking for trouble.

Here’s a snippet from an email Mark sent to his list on December 16th:

“Katy’s going to kill me for sending this email, but…

I’ve been through shock, and then hurt in the past two months.

Now I’m pissed off…

Do you feel ripped off by me in any way?”

Mark – Yes I do!!! – and my dealings with you have been closer than pretty much anybody other than your wife. Not only do I feel ripped off – I feel used, abused and discarded. I feel you’ve taken advantage of a young optimistic entrepreneur and you’ve proven you just don’t care about anybody other than yourself.

Here’s a little list of articles critical of Mark.

• Here – the director of an Internet Marketing company calls Mark Attwood out. I defended Mark strongly – my first comment now seems oddly ironic.

• Here is an article posted on Rip Off Report about Mark Attwood

• Again, I defended him in a number of posts on the UK Business Forums First Post Second Post

Quoting myself “Also, when you get Mark, you don’t just get Mark, you get lots and lots of other peoples expertise, including my own. Mark isn’t a one man band, he’s a big personality with a big team.” – ok so when I said “Big Team” I was creating an image and exaggerating on the truth. The only person with any discernable SEO knowledge besides Mark Attwood, still involved with Venturebase Ltd, is a guy called Steve – A really top bloke, but he’s only been intensively involved with the Internet Marketing stuff for about 4 months – He’s learnt everything he knows from myself and Mark, and it’s fair to say his knowledge is, by his own admission, limited.

At a high profile Internet Marketing seminar in London run by Ken McCarthy, Mark was asked to give two presentations. In the first he told his story “I was a poet, then an actor, then a pilot, etc etc etc, topskips, etc etc etc” – Then I had prepared the second presentation, and also ended up presenting the content too. Listening back to the recording here’s how it starts – Mark: “So lets put the power point up please Vince… Take Over.” – and off I went…

Following this presentation I had suggested to Mark we buy a remote control buzzer which he could stick in his pocket, and when I could see he didn’t have an answer for a question I could “Buzz In” – I’m not joking!

I’ve had a very big part in building the “Mark Attwood” brand – I created the membership site and at the time of writing (December 17th) there has been no new content added for over a month and a half – even that last entry was written by myself on November 2nd.

I’ve since noticed Mark’s father-in-law writing about me on his blog, with a comment that I believe illustrates Mark’s general lack of respect and his false portrayal of our relationship.

“a chap called Vince Samios who is misplaced ambition personified, no doubt emanating from the fact that he is Australian. I thought that they were only good at cricket and serving penal servitude.”

In retrospect I’m amused by one of Marks “life lessons.” He’s said many times that he lives his life by a poem called “If” by Rudyard Kipling, and that humility is his greatest lesson.

Humility:
• “Someone who has humility is not proud and does not believe they are better than other people.”
• “a disposition to be humble; a lack of false pride”

I’ve always struggled to see Humility in Mark Attwood, and now more than ever.

In regards to my personal effect on Top Triangle Ltd – Mark’s claim to fame – here is a quick example of solid results.
• From 1,320 pages indexed on topskips.com, to 121,000
• From 240 pages indexed on toptoilets.com, to 7,900

Since my departure these numbers have plummeted to 10,700 and 5,520 respectively, in less than two months (at the time of writing)

I could rabbit on about various rankings etc, but these are two of the most profound and obvious public results. They affected the business in a big way and I believe the results I personally produced are the only reason that company is now profitable.

Naturally I expect you to come to your own conclusions – I’m not giving you any emotional drivel, I’m simply giving you what I believe to be the facts. Considering Mark Attwood’s propensity to go after anybody who comments about him negatively with legal hounds, I’ve checked my facts very carefully. I write to the best of my knowledge, and I’ve been careful to back up what I’ve written with documentation should Mark’s legal prodigality continue.

In regards to my relationship with Mark Attwood – He’s cut his nose off despite his face. I wish him the best of luck with his career, and I wish you the best of luck in your dealings with him.

Update: I’ve received lots of support, including the amusing image below - everything is going great with my new company, my new wife, and my new stress free life.

IC stands for “Indexed Content” – but does it matter?

In a word – yes!

But it isn’t the be all and end all in regards to competition research, and it’s a very hard metric to judge.

IC (number of indexed pages) only really begins to matter if the competing website is entirely about your niche subject.

More pages on a website means more chances to capture backlinks, and page rank. Based on googles original patents, every page creates a small amount of page rank. Both factors together result in more potential for authority, on a subject, for a website with an large number of pages.

Further - more pages means more chance for keywords to appear site wide, and more opportunity for a clever webmaster to do some clever internal linking (which can be powaaah-ful!)

Websites in the top 10 results with a high number of pages will either be general websites, or authority websites. General websites can be relatively easy to beat, where-as authority websites can be a nightmare.

Loading the IC figure seems to slow down Market Samurai a lot, and since it’s such a difficult metric to take into consideration, its probably best not to load this metric until you get down into the real nitty gritty.

There is still one metric bitterly missing from Market Samurai – Domain PR… the page rank of the home domain.

I’ve written more about this in the post “what is page rank“