SEO Companies Resorting to Cold Calling

I just had an SEO company cold call me on the phone this afternoon, trying to sell me their SEO service. Are times so bad for the SEOs that they have to resort to cold calling for prospects?

I thought Congress passed a law that made it illegal to conduct commercial phone solicitation? The "Do Not Call Registry"? I added my phone number to that.

If you've followed this blog, you'll know that my view of SEO companies is rather low. I know there are some ethical ones out there, but from what I can see, the bulk of them, maybe 99%, are snake oil salesmen, promising to cure your Google ailments, but only taking your money and not improving your traffic flow.

All of them publish blogs that disseminate unsubstantiated SEO tips for the purpose of making themselves sound authoritative, hoping to lure in potential customers. That information goes around the Internet and creates a lot of confusion, making SEO sound far more complicated than it really is.

Now that at least one SEO company is cold calling publishers on the phone, it lowers my respect for SEOs even more.

Here's how the conversation went with this SEO company...

SEO: Hello Mr. Johnson, I'm looking for the owner of Biker News Online.

Me: That's us.

SEO: We identified several keywords and phrases that your website should be optimized for, and your website is not ranking high for these words at all. Are you aware of that?

Me: I think you identified the wrong keywords. We identified specific keywords that will bring in specific audiences, and you'll find that we actually do rank very high for those.

SEO: Ok, I see. But the keywords we've identified are a part of your target audience...

Me: (breaking in), But I don't think you understand the target audience we're going after.

SEO: Well, that's what I want to talk to you about. We can run an analysis on your website to show you what keywords target which audiences, and how your website ranks with those keywords. Then we submit your site to various directories that match that audience...

Me: (breaking in) Well that doesn't sound like anything I need to be involved in, so I welcome you to analyze my website, and submit it to anyplace you'd like. You don't need me to do that.

SEO: Well actually, there is a fee of $9.95...

Me: (breaking in) Well I'm not interested in paying any money.

SEO: Ok, that's what I thought.

So be prepared all you publishers and affiliate marketers. Here come the SEO cold callers.  ✓

Using Google AdManager For AdSense

As I continue to run Google AdManager on a handful of my blogs, one thing is becoming apparent to me, if you already display Google AdSense ads, you may as well run it through Google AdManager.

Google AdManager is an advertising management system. For small publishers like myself, think of it as a glorified banner rotation script. It's a small piece of javascript code you paste into your pages, and it rotates banners.

Google lets people use its AdManager for free because it will set AdSense as a default ad. You can set anything as a default actually, but it just gives you the option to choose AdSense.

So, think of it as a way to show AdSense ads, but utilizing a different script, one that lets you swap out ads quickly and easily, turn them on or off, or give one higher priority than the other. You can even show banner ads to those visitors from the UK, and then show AdSense to visitors from USA (if you wanted to).

You can still modify the AdSense colors within AdManager; AdManager has its own interface for that. You can load in all the AdSense channels you created on your AdSense account, or let AdManager create its own channels.

AdManager also gives you performance reports for the ad spaces you've defined, and even displays AdSense reports.

The biggest reason why you'd use AdManager to display AdSense ads, is so that you can quickly and easily remove the AdSense ads in favor for another ad. Otherwise, you might have to replace the code in your template, or replace the code in some other script you're using.

The second reason is because AdManager will provide AdSense earnings reports within AdManager. In fact, you'll be able to see the AdManager performance through AdSense's reports as well.

A third reason is that AdManager also gives you the option to let AdWords buyers buy ads specifically on your website. That is, AdManager provides a connection to AdWords. AdWords users can see the ad spaces you set up on your site, and lets them place paying ads on your pages. You can turn this on or off.

And for affiliate marketers, you can also do text links, because the creative interface in AdManager supports HTML and javascript.

One negative I can say about AdManager is that it's not easy to learn. It will take some time to understand it. AdManager provides several online videos and tutorials.

But if you're already running AdSense ads on your site, I recommend instead doing it through AdManager. The end result is that you'll still have AdSense ads showing on your site, you'll just be in a better position to rotate in other ads, etc.  ✓

Website Design vs Website Publishing

When people ask me what I do for a living, I usually say, "website publishing". But yet, they always misunderstand that.

Instead, they take that to mean I build websites for clients.

I don't do that at all. Website publishing means publishing content on a website. I tell people it's similar to a magazine publisher, where they publish several different magazines, each focusing on different topics, and they make money selling advertising space. I do the same thing, but on websites instead of paper.

Website design is when you build sites for clients.

But it's not like I've never built sites for clients. I built a site for a local charitable group, who've since disbanded. And I built a site for a local biker bar, which I still maintain. But I built them for free, and hosted them for free. I told them I'd build a simple website, and that I wouldn't be able to provide much support. They were fine with that. The traffic was light enough that it didn't cost my server any significant bandwidth.

Just today, I got a phone call from a gal wanting a website built for her business. She was referred to me by a mutual friend. This friend thought I did website design. In these times, I don't like turning down potential money, so I kept the door open. I explained to this person that my primary business is in publishing, not design. But, I'm still capable of designing sites and hosting them.

She went on to say that she talked to another website design person who quoted her a price of $70.00 an hour. I took that to mean website design time only, and did not include hosting. But she felt that was a very high price.

Since I don't make website design my primary business, I don't have a rate card. I didn't know what to tell her on that. But she said she would send me details on what she wanted, and would wait to hear back from me. I in turn referred her to one of my websites, and said she could look at it and get an idea of what she could expect from me.

If you're an affiliate marketer, blogger, or publisher like me, who never pursued the website design business, perhaps we ought to prepare ourselves in case someone asks about it. How much should you charge? How much support will come bundled into that fee? How much hosting is bundled into that, or do you charge separately for hosting? How much to charge for additional support? What is your expertise in HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, or platforms like Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, etc.?

I always knew I could fall back on website design should my publishing business fall apart. But I know other people who do website design, and the thing that overwhelms them is support. They have so many clients, and all throughout the day they get calls from them wanting something changed or added. It's always a bunch of nickel & dime stuff. I didn't want to have client calls coming in at all hours of the day. That's one reason why I liked publishing instead, you get very few client calls.

But again, in these hard times, I don't like turning down money.  ✓

Twitter Still Hasn't Gained Traction

Twitterholic still shows me as having the most Twitter followers among users claiming Menifee, CA as their hometown.

And I only have something like 106 followers as of this writing.

Is that a reflection of Twitter, or a reflection of Menifee?

Menifee is still a small town by Southern California standards. Estimates put the population between 60,000 to 70,000 people. But before concluding that Menifee is too small to make a mark on the Twittersphere, consider that Facebook has a very popular following here in town. Most of the households on my block are on Facebook and we've all friended each other there.

People just don't understand Twitter.

I attended a "Tweetup" yesterday, organized by Kerilyn LaFournaise, a gal who markets herself as a social media consultant. There were about seven of us in attendance besides her.

She asked how many of us had MySpace accounts. We all raised our hands. She asked how many of us had Facebook accounts. Five of us raised our hands. Then she asked how many had Twitter accounts. My hand was the only hand raised.

We were all business people in one regard or another. Either we owned businesses or we were in the business of doing business, like banking, payroll, et al. Yet we were all in attendance to learn how Twitter could help someone with their business or to do business.

Yet they couldn't grasp the value of social marketing. Kerilyn to liken tweeting with attending a chamber mixer, which I thought was a great way to put it. But I still saw puzzled looks. I think they were wondering, "Well why should I tweet when I can meet people in person at a mixer?"

I think people understand Facebook because the social network in which you exist is closed. That is, your status updates are only seen by the people in your network. That gives you a sense of being in a fun circle of friends.

But everything in Twitter is wide open. While your tweets will be seen by your followers, they can actually be seen by the entire Twittersphere. It's just that your followers are more likely to see your tweets than others.

The fact that a circle of friends isn't really defined in Twitter is why average folks don't understand it. They think it's fine to tell their circle of friends that they're enjoying an awesome California roll right now, but they don't understand why you'd tell the whole world that.

People don't feel comfortable about opening their lives up to such great publicity.

As I said, Menifee is still a small town by Southern California standards. People here tend to see each other quite often, just by going to the grocery store, or standing in line at the bank. In a small town you don't need Twitter.

In a big city like Los Angeles for example, you have a lot of anonymity due to sheer size of population. In that scenario, Twitter helps you be seen.

In Menifee, people have little trouble being seen. If anything you need more privacy.

And that's why Twitter will never gain the following that Facebook has.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Getting Indexed by Google Fast

I read some articles recently about the fastest way to get your new website indexed into Google, or how to get it indexed most thoroughly.

I think the fastest way to get indexed into Google is to do nothing.

Google is just so good at finding new websites, you really don't have to do anything to get found. The Google guys are so anxious to stay one step ahead of the competition, that they've thought of everything possible to discover new websites, and new webpages.

Whether you like it or not, if you launch a website, Google is going to find it. It's just not true that you can launch a website and have Google never ever know about it. It's just not true.

Regarding the Google site map, I don't feel they're necessary, unless you want to prevent Google from indexing something. Google is pretty aggressive in finding every page on your website, it just isn't necessary. Again, if Google wants to be the most comprehensive search engine anywhere, they'll definitely crawl every page on your site.

They say that Site Maps are necessary for database sites where much of the content is accessed through search queries. But I've found that it's more efficient to build a script that creates a Table of Contents of every record in the database. Even with hundreds of thousands of records, Google still crawls every single one. I know this from having designed CousinConnect, and CousinConnect doesn't utilize Site Maps, yet Google crawled every single database record.

SEO Experts Spoiling the Broth

They say that too many cooks spoil the broth, and I think a similar analogy exists here. There are so many people proclaiming themselves to be SEO experts, and every one of them has a blog, and every one of them has to find something unique to say. As a result, they've convinced the general populace that SEO is SO difficult, that you have to hire an SEO consultant.

They do this to justify their trade.

The same is true with Twitter. These days, everyone wants to be a Twitter expert, and so each "expert" has to find something unique to write about, and in the end all it does is confuse people into thinking that Twitter is far more complicated than it really is.

And so when SEO experts tell you that you have to create a site map to ensure your site is thoroughly indexed, it's baloney. Google is automatically going to crawl every single page of your site whether you like it or not.

Google Site Maps was created so that you can control what pages you want Google to crawl, and how often. It was not created to guarantee it will crawl everything.

I previously expressed my disdain for so many self-proclaimed SEO experts zealously trying to find a new angle to report on, all in the quest to justify their existence. Instead they did nothing but scare people into believing something that just isn't true.

As a result, people have made SEO out to be something more complicated than it really is.

I've been in this business for 12 years now. I used to optimize for Inktomi when it was the dominant search engine, and then for Alta Vista, and now Google. I've seen it all. There is no magic bullet, no hidden secrets. Everything has been vetted out, and remedies created. It's now all based on creating quality websites.

Google wants to show quality websites in its listings, that's why it works so hard to find them. You can't build a piece of junk, and assume there's a special trick to getting it listed high in the rankings.

If someone tells you that you have to create Site Maps, or there's a special way to get indexed fast, it's just baloney, period.  ✓

Using Common Sense SEO Practice

The practice of SEO is a never-ending process of testing, measuring, and reading what other people are saying.

But what about using common sense?

I like to think that Google wants to rank highly of those websites that publish fresh content, consistently, on a daily or weekly basis. But it's not always true. There are websites that get the #1 listing for short-tail keywords that seemingly are never updated.

But let's assume for this discussion that content freshness is a key factor towards moving up in the rankings. What are the signs of a website that is fresh, active, and "alive"?

• Adding new content


• Adding new navigation pages, site map


• Redesigning the look of the site


• Fixing broken links


• Rewriting existing content (eg. fixing spelling/grammar errors)


• Moving the site to a new server


• Buying keywords on AdWords



• People posting comments to your blog


• Other websites adding links to your site


• Google users clicking on your AdWords

The first seven bullet points are things that you as a website owner can control, while the last three points are those that you don't control.

I'm not saying that Google considers all of these factors, I'm just saying that it seems sensible these are characteristics of a website that's fresh and active.

For example, if your website has a lot of broken links, it suggests that you're not interested in keeping it current. To me, that says your website is not as authoritative as it could be. If a competing website in your genre has all links working, doesn't that website deserve extra page rank value over yours?

I started this article by saying that SEO is a practice of testing and measuring. We can never know the specifics of Google's search algorithm, but we can second-guess it, and then put those ideas to test. And that starts with using common sense.  ✓

Commission Junction SmartZones - Do They Work?

I'm assuming you're already familiar with the SmartZones in Commission Junction. In short, it's a way to build a banner rotation script for merchants on Commission Junction.

So do they work?

In terms of earning revenue, not very well.


After having used SmartZones for some years now, experimenting with text links, banners, for several of my sites, and for several of my merchants, they just don't make any money, or they make very little money.

If you mix links for several merchants, all you're doing is watering down the potential EPC, to the point where it's almost impossible to earn anything.

The reason why is that by running multiple merchants on a single SmartZone script, you're dividing up your total audience to the point where a fraction of your visitors will see the best performing link.

For example, if you have 5 different merchants running in your SmartZone script, then 1/5th of your visitors will see one merchant, another 1/5th will see a different merchant, etc...

Moreover, not all of your visitors will share the same interests. If you're publishing a digital camera blog, a portion will want to buy a digital camera, another portion only wants to know what's new and cool, another portion wants to learn how to use their camera, and another portion wants to know where to get the best deals. If you rotate links from five different merchants, then 75% of your visitors will see links that don't interest them.

Instead, just permanently fix links from all of your merchants down the side of the page, and don't rotate them. That way, all of your visitors will see a merchant link that will interest them.

Running banners on a rotation script is typically what you'd do for CPM campaigns, where you're paid for displaying an ad. It makes sense to use a rotation script so that you're exhausting advertiser impressions quickly as possible.

But when monetization is based on a revenue share (earning a commission), rotating banners means reducing the number of times your visitors see your best performing banner.

You're actually just better off not using SmartZones, or any rotation script to randomly display ads paid on a revenue share. Find your best performing link, and keep it on the site, in the same place, all the time, to maximize sales potential.

If you really want to use SmartZones, then create a separate SmartZone for each merchant, where one SmartZone serves only one merchant. If you have five merchants for your digital camera blog, then create five SmartZones, one for each. Then paste all five SmartZone codes on the same page. That way, all of your different types of visitors will see a merchant link that interests them.

If you insist on having multiple merchants rotating in one rotation script, then utilize CPM campaigns. I guarantee they'll pay better in the long run, than if you were to rotate revenue share ads.

The only rotation script I would recommend for revenue share ads, is one that lets you target specific ads to specific pages. Don't just randomly show revenue share ads on any page.  ✓

How Blogger Can Be Like Twitter

Seems like what social media experts are saying the most about Twitter is that it's "real time".

Actually, the truth is that it's more usable.

Blogging is just as much real time as Twitter, in the sense that each blog post is published as the writer wrote it. That is, the content a writer writes is fresh the moment he/she clicked on the "publish" button. That's just as true with Twitter or Blogger.

What social media folks are really trying to say is that Twitter encourages people to write quickly, instead of taking 60 minutes to write a full blog post. But really, Blogger can do just as well. Perhaps it's just that folks don't know how to use Blogger all that well.

• Twitter has a search engine that lets you search tweets
• Blogger also has a search engine that lets you search Blogger blogs



• Twitter keeps messages short and concise, limiting you to 140 characters
• Blogger will also let you write short and concise posts, and will accept 140 characters or less (or more if you want).



• Twitter lets you post tweets using your handheld (iPhone, Blackberry, et al)
• Blogger lets you compose and publish posts using your handheld by composing an e-mail that you set up for your blog, which Blogger publishes immediately.



• Twitter lets you post photos from your handheld
• Blogger lets you post photos from your handheld, using the same e-mail function noted above



• Twitter lets you create RSS feeds of any Twitter search query
• Blogger also lets you create RSS feeds of any Blogsearch query



• Twitter lets you "friend" with other Twitter users, and you can see all your friends tweets in one place
• Blogger also lets you "friend" other blogs, and lets you see the updates on your Blogger homepage



• Twitter will let you reply to other people's tweets
• Blogger will let you post comments on other people's blogs

If anything truly makes Twitter different than Blogger it's that there are so many Twitter tools and apps out there. Blogger doesn't quite have the same third party support, with the exception of Blogger Gadgets that you can add to your blog.

Twitter is not more real time than Blogger, it's that Twitter has so many users posting tweets of news events.

Somehow, somewhere, no figured out that they could use Blogger for the same thing. But if you were to go back to the early 2000s, when Blogger first went live, and look at those blogs, you'll see the same kind of Twitterish content.

In fact, the very first blogger was someone who just posted links with short messages of his web travels. It was his "web log". The folks who created Blogger, simply created a tool that let other people do the same thing.

Over the years, as blogging grew more sophisticated, blog content became more creative, and more commercial. That in turn, encouraged people to take 60 minutes or more just to compose something.

The 140 character constraint in Twitter encourages people to be quick.

Just an FYI, I timed myself writing this blog post, and I took 27 minutes.  ✓

Twitter versus Facebook

"Help! My wife is addicted to Facebook, and she can't get up!"

The past few months since I introduced her to Facebook, she's been hooked. She sits on the sofa with her laptop, the television turned on, with her Blackberry and remote control by her side, and a tall glass of iced tea, and sits there all morning, all afternoon, all night long.

The reason why are all the games on Facebook. Stuff like Mafia Wars, Sorority, Bejeweled, et al. There's about 20 games that she actively plays.

She has partnered up with the neighboring wives on our block. There's like four or five wives on our street and they all play against each other, or with each other, on Facebook.

Facebook is the king of stickiness.

Twitter, on the other hand, is for geeks.

That is, geeks like me, Internet professionals, who want to communicate and follow those who have good ideas, and can share some cool links.

Facebook is for the general populace, while Twitter still seems to serve the hard core net geeks.

But, it's all changing. Twitter is quickly gaining acceptance into the general populace, and soon it too will be integrated into online gaming, online dating, etc., etc., etc.

While my wife is seemingly hooked on Facebook, at least she's not complaining about being bored.

In a way, it's cheaper for husbands like me, because she's not spending all my money at the shopping mall.  ✓

I Hate Browser Plugins

Today I ran across a couple of instances where a website required a browser plugin.

The first one was for a QuickTime plugin, the second one was for Flash plugin.

Why do web designers need to show such glitzy stuff?

I guess I'm a bit of a renaissance man in this sense. I like simplicity. I like things to load quickly, display quickly. I'm not so much impressed with fancy design, as I am with quality content that's easy to read, and easy to find.

When I see this stuff on my browser, asking me to download a plugin, the first thing I think of is, "How cheesy! Whoever designed this site actually thinks they're sophisticated"...


Well, I'm rebelling against the onslaught of browser plugins. I refuse to install them. If you can't design something to render in IE or Firefox without the use of a plugin, then you're obviously not thinking about usability.

Remember all those sites years ago that would publish a little blurb that said, "Best Viewed on IE at 800x600"? And didn't you think that was stupid too?

That plugin message is kinda saying the same stupid thing.

I remember back when Google was just starting gain traction. At that time, all it had was its search engine. And everyone loved it claiming that it was more accurate than Alta Vista, and Inktomi. Remember those two?

But I think the real reason why people liked it was because it was so simple. Google's home page was so easy. The search results was so simple. And it was fast, blazingly fast. Honestly, I don't think people cared about how accurate it was, they just loved the usability.

These days, it seems people want their websites to look sharp, beautiful, like the office of a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Whatever happened to the small town family doctor, the guy who actually knew you, and was always curious to know what you've been up to?

Those days of the Internet seem to be gone. Back when content was real. Today, content is a commodity. They still say that content is king, but in truth, the content is always the afterthought. It's how professional your website looks, it's if you have an "Inc." after your name, it's if you're on the A-list. That's what seems to sell now.

Here's the sad reality: People actually think your content is more trustworthy if the website it's published on looks professional and sharp.

To prove that, think about how people judge other people, by their character, or their looks? I think if you relate that to content, you'll agree with what I'm saying.

So if I can say something about browser plugins, it's to avoid designing stuff that requires them. I don't want to download plugin-after-plugin just so that I can view your website the way you want me to view it. I just want to see the content.

As an affiliate marketer, and a publisher, I want to make sure my website visitors feel encouraged to peruse my pages, and build links to my sites from their blogs, forums, and tweets. Make it as easy as possible for them to do so.  ✓