Search Marketing with ventureN

As a webmaster I find myself in search of a logo for many new projects (obviously not this site). I consider myself a technical person who doesn’t have a great sense of design. I can look at a logo, or a site, and I generally know when something doesn’t look right, or doesn’t look as professional as it should. A designer, on the other hand, can look at that same logo or site and start off with comments regarding the amount of white space here, the gradient there, etc.

If you are like me, you should like this site. I have no affiliation whatsoever, I just think that they provide a terrific service at a very reasonable price ($125-$150). The site is www.designoutpost.com. The design process happens in a forum after you post your project. It is very different than the traditional design process where you are working one on one with a graphic designer. There are a group of designers who are trying to earn the project. Again, unlike other design services, the project isn’t earned until the work is virtually complete.

Read through some of the threads and you will see that the designers take in the feedback and usually come back with sommething good. Since there is more than one designer, you will see a slightly different take on the feedback which results in a better design. I have even seen projects where the client asks everyone to start fresh after a week of revisions. Not bad for <$200.

I have used eLance.com and a couple of independent designers in the past but in those cases it is someone like me, looking at proofs and trying to tell the designer what to do when I am not really sure why things don’t look right. The design outpost site has everything in public view.

Take a look through some of the current and completed projects to get a sense of the level of work. For those Jason Calacanis follwers (or haters), you can view one of his projects (luxist.com)

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If you have been a skype user for any period of time, you might be a little set in your ways. Personally, I use skype as a chat client and recently added a Skype in number as a secondary office phone. There are some great handsets so that you don’t have to use a headset and be tethered to your computer.

There are many things that Skype can do that you might not be aware of. The people over at voip-news.com have compiled a list of 25 great Skype hacks. Before you start, you should download the latest version of Skype. My favorites from the list are: Read the rest of this entry »

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Google holds enough information to game the financial markets like we have never seen before. The search data alone provides a treasure trove of information when extracted and analyzed properly.

As John Battelle put it, the search engines, Google in particular, hold the “Database of Intentions“.

The Database of Intentions is simply this: The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture. And it has the potential to be abused in equally extraordinary fashion.

This data holds a great deal of value for any number of reasons. The holder of this data could use the aggregate the data to build a financial model like we have never seen. Let’s watch the returns on that Google cash hoard to see if perhaps they are using it. Wouldn’t you? It isn’t illegal. Think about it. As an investor, what has value to you? INFORMATION. Obviously, GOOG has some pretty smart people working there. If you were to build a financial model, and then incorporate the one thing that no one else has, do you think you could achieve a pretty good return? Bet you could.

Who, within the search companies, has access to this data? Is it nameless, faceless? Tie it to an IP. Oh wait, an IP from a large M&A (Mergers and Aquisitions) firm. An IP from a large investment banking firm. Link up the search data from those two users and guess who is buying who? Heck, you don’t even need personalized search enabled to come up with that one, hostnames are just fine.

I know that this sounds very big brother, but it really isn’t. It isn’t even insider information. It is not illegal. In fact, it is a brilliant way to return the most value to your shareholders and organize the world’s information at the same time.

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Google announced in their blog that personalized results would now be active for all users when they are signed in to any Google service. I don’t necessarily like this feature, for an SEO, but for the general user population, it probably has a lot of benefit. My own engine.

As an SEO, will you now have to profile a particular user group the way an advertiser traditionally does? Will this segment the market. Perhaps. Only time will tell.

Business Idea: Who wants to create a database of user profiles. Real people who share the personalized results with you. Infosearch, you interested? Someone with a lot of users who can be segmented. This would provide a flavor or results that wouldn’t be easy to recreate.

I wish that Google would provide a way, other than logging out of your account, to disable the personalized results feature. Perhaps if I am clicking through to page 2, they are providing a poor result set and should ask if I would like to disable personal search.

What a treasure trove of information Google now has. They are tying a users intentions with an actual user. A name a face, a credit card (with Google Checkout), documents, Email, etc. You get the picture.

Big brother? I know that they intend to “do good”, but let’s hope every single person who has access to that data is just as well intentioned.

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For those of you who have always wanted Google to open up their back link check (example “link:www.example.com”), the time has come. Well, sort of. Google isn’t going to display every single backlink to your site, but they are at least getting better. This is especially helpful since the last update to the links that could be viewed using the “link” command dropped dramatically. Some were complaining that it was 1/10th of the previous data. Depending on the quality of the links, that was sometimes the case, sometimes even less than that number.

Read more about the backlink update here: Google back link update

The new tool is found within Google Webmaster Central and can only be viewed by the site owner (in theory). Remember the little issue that Google had when they released sitemaps? I have faith that GOOG will be able to keep this one secure. In fact, I like the fact that this will be a private tool. When you put a lot of effort into building some nice links, you hate to simply give that list of sites to a competitor (Are you listening YHOO and MSN?).

I wonder if there will be a day when Google doesn’t display any link information to the public. Can you think of a reason why they should or shouldn’t?

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Are you a fan of WebmasterRadio.fm, but you don’t seem to find the time to listen the way that you would like to?  Well, how about a desktop player that incorporates the live stream along with the IRC chat room and event photos.  If you hear the hosts talk about what people are discussing in the chat room and aren’t sure what they are referring to, now you will.

You can download the Webmaster Radio Podcast Communicator

It is a relatively small application (1.1meg) and I haven’t noticed any issues or conflicts to date.   Enjoy.

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Did you know that you could backorder a domain name? If someone lets their domain expire, you can place a backorder giving you the opportunity to own the name if it expires.

A friend contacted me today about a site (forum) that he visits often. The domain was not renewed and is currently in pending-delete status. When this is the case, the current owner is essentially give a grace period to renew his/her domain name. If they do not, the domain will be up for grabs at the end of the pending delete period. The date is known and is generally 30 days after the domain expiration date.

If you are looking to grab a domain, you can try the following services. Of course, there are more, but these are the two that I use.

• Pool.com
  
• Snapnames.com

Unfortunately, you don’t automatically receive all of the value that the domain had prior to expiration. When a domain expires, a lot of the value is lost in the eyes of the search engines (backlinks). However, if you are buying because there are links that are probably delivering traffic, this could be a decent path to take.

If you are someone who feels that all of the good domain names are taken, sign up for a keyword alert from some of the backorder services.  They will e-mail you a list of expiring domains containing your root keyword.  You will be surprised at what you will see.

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There is a nice thread running at WebmasterWorld.com (started by user: Fribble) regarding the signs of a poor quality site. There are a number of people who are chiming in on the topic all with valid points. There are some very obvious signs, but also some items which might surprise you. Do you have a privacy policy? Some feel it is a must, others, not so much.

If you don’t get to the thread (link below) I would add the comment regarding validating your HTML. If your page doesn’t validate, you might have trouble with your site being crawled.

As of 1/27/2007 the list compiled by Fribble stood as:

• Reciprocal link request pages coupled with existing reciprocal links to non-relevant sites.Thanks thecoalman
  
• No Privacy policy. (Debatable) (site-dependent?) (jdMorgan:The standard URL for your compact privacy policy is: /w3c/p3p.xml )
  
• Outdated copyright date or last modified date visible on the pages. (Debatable)
  
• error pages that don’t send 404 headers or send content regardless of the page requested/querystring entered.
  
• Massive numbers of incoming links from link farms.
  
• dead/404ing links.
  
• High link churn.
  
• No published contact address, email address or phone number. (Debatable) (site-dependent?)
  
• A high bounce rate (surfers clicking back on their browser and selecting another search result).
  
• Too much duplicate content.
  
• Whois info for the domain which is the same as other domains previously penalized or banned. (Could also be true of adsense publisher/affiliate ID’s and other identifiable footprints)
  
• Use of/links to affiliate programs that are known scams
  
• Domains previously used for spam or that are blacklisted.
  
• excessively long URI’s/URL’s (query strings or folder and file names)
  
• A high percentage of affiliate links vs regular outbound links.
  
• No / very few outbound links (depending on the site’s type/niche).
  
• No / very few inbound links (depending on the site’s type/niche).
  
• All inbound links are to homepage only (Debatable)(Site Dependant?)
  
• Outbound links to questionable/spammy/crap sites.
  
• [Matt Probert]The inappropriate or gratuitous use of profanity
  
• Too many spelling errors.
  
• Contains unrelated subjects (ex: a site that reviews toys and tries to sell insurance or viagra).
  
• Lack of interest from social bookmarking sites.
  
• MySQL or PHP errors in the pages
  
• [tedster]No real menu or information architecture — just a laundry list of links going on down the page.
  
• [abbeyvet]relatively short pages/articles containing unnaturally high keyword density for their topic - almost always contain within them 2 or more large adsense or other advertising units.
  
• [steveb]Adsense
  
• [steveb]More than 25% links from blogs
  
• [steveb]No links to the site from any domain in the top 100 for a query where the page ranks in the top 20 for that query
  
• [mattg3]Small font size text framed by ads. Or big adsense blocks. I avoid them cause I am sue my users think too they are cr@p. Just disregard the heatmap.
  
• [buckworks]The drop list for the user to select their credit card expiry date still includes last year.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3233693.htm

Join the discussion and throw your two cents in. If you are new to Webmaster World, you will be happy that you discovered the site.

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Looks like I have some mad Alexa traffic juice working. Want me to pour some on your site?

Just kidding. If you pay a lot of attention to your Alexa ranking, stop right now! A middling site will probably rank somewhere between 250,000 and 2,000,000. The traffic could be very close between the 250k site and the 2mil site. Once you get into the lower number/higher traffic Alexa ranking, the traffic stats are more difficult to skew (below 100,000 as a general rule). Most people will tell you that your Alexa ranking doesn’t matter. For the most part, I agree.

Seriously, about that Alexa juice that I have… I have done some work over the past couple of weeks on a brand new domain. This domain (1 page right now) has gone from an Alexa ranking of approximately 2,000,000 to about 750,000 in about a week. It is not linked anywhere, there is 1 page to be crawled, and there is nothing social hapening. It appears to be coming from my visits alone (testing designs) and is probably due to a Firefox tool that I use. If anyone has enough interest in juicing their own stats, let me know and I will research the root cause further.

Some might ask “why would you want a boost of your Alexa ranking?”. Well, it is mainly about perception. When you are talking to a potential partner, or being looked at for various other link ups, it is possible that the other party will do a little homework and possibly take this into account. I can assure you that I receive many more calls when working on a domain that was just outside of 10,000 than I do with a domain having traffic ranking around 300,000. A higher ranking might make a potential affiliate partner, or business partner more interested in doing business with you.

If this matters to you, let me know. I will provide 2 ways to boost your ranking. To get a real large boost, you will need to spend a few bucks, but if it matters to you the opportunity does exist.

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