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Improve SEO Book - the ebook format and sending updates via email have a lot of friction associated with them. Perhaps so much so that I should have realized it and changed my business model years ago. A partial list of that friction includes

• shipping questions (for an ebook)
• a text that takes a while to read
• a format that presumes you want to read the whole thing
• a text too large for most people to want to re-read the whole thing when it is updated
• requests for special addendums when updates are done, which would make the whole book structure quite pointless
• a text so large that it is hard to update
• refund requests within 3 minutes of purchases by people who bought it with intent to steal it
• people trying to sell it on eBay or on their websites
• a lowered perception of value due to using a format that is often associated with scams

There are many ways I can add value to SEO Book and enhance value transfer to customers if I turn the purchase process into establishing a relationship. There needs to be more backend support for learning. With internet marketing getting more complex I need to make learning easier, more granular, and more interactive.

Treat SEO Book more like a business - I sorta stumbled into SEO, and honestly have not treated this site like a business like I should have. Over the years some of my mentors have given me many great tips that I was too lazy or scared to listen to at the time. After seeing one of my favorite SEO sites go offline it makes me want to treat this site more like a business so I can still focus attention on it for years to come, even while some of my other projects have grown to be more profitable.

Make my other sites more like SEO Book - I have some other sites that do pretty well without adding much value to the web. At some level I feel there is a moral obligation to start adding value to markets as you extract profits. Plus, if relevancy algorithms moved away from links and domain trust many of those domains (as they sit today) would be screwed. I want to create more product and service oriented websites and be less reliant on advertising and affiliate based income streams.

Try to get at least 2 weeks away from the web - this will be mid year sometime with my wife, in a one month European honeymoon.

Read more away from the web - I always learn a lot from reading books, and I doubt I would miss much if I cut how much time I spent reading recycled online content.

Start working out more again - after losing a bunch of weight I gained it back due to stress from doing way too much stuff. I have eased up my work load and am chipping away at it.

Spend more time with my wife - given that we both work on the web we spend lots of time near each other, but far too much time working and not enough time playing.

Set a better examplewhat competitors do I want to put a lot more effort into creating things worth copying.

My wife and I do just about everything together, including...

• eating
• sleeping
• playing
• domaining
• site design
• content creation
• link building

and so I begged her to start blogging. She should be publishing her first post here in the next couple minutes. Please give her a friendly welcome. :)

Matt Cutts recently offered a public voting for my lynching, but we just talked things over, and there will be no lynching - at least not yet. I think Matt is a great guy, but his job is tough as a public face of THE company dominating the web.

It is easy to take a series of events as being personal, but sometimes they are just a series of events and no personal damage is meant, and/or the person doing the damage is an anonymous third party. Also, priorities and goals and reasoning inside a large company can seem vastly different than how they appear outside of the same company, especially when the company has 13,000 employees and keeps doubling in size about every other year.

I still believe that many of my Google criticisms and concerns are valid, but there is only so much Matt can do, and he is doing the best he feels he can, and probably far better than I could do if I had his job. The keyboard is mightier than the pen.

My flight leaves tonight to go get married. I will be back in the last week of October. I might post again before then, but I might not. I wish you well and will be back soon(ish).

BTW, Compete.com search analytics launches tomorrow. It is exceptionally affordable for its value. Be sure to check it out.

I am looking to hire someone to create a few Google Gadgets for the the iGoogle homepage. If you are good at that sort of stuff please contact me. My email address is seobook@gmail.com.

That is the reason I can think of to describe this flatering posts, which explains why Andy thinks this site became successful.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about SEO and SEM titled In Search of Traffic. I belive you have to be a subscriber to read the whole article, but there is a free podcast interview Kelly Spors did with me about keyword stuff available here, which I think is also available on iTunes.

I am going to Coachella today.
So I should not be around for a few days.
I will be around sometime Monday or Tuesday. Or maybe a few days later.
My girlfriend loves golf and they have lots of it in Palm Springs. The trip could get extended.
Hope to finish an underway ebook update shortly after I return.
Lots to think about and sort through with search result re-ranking, editorial algorithmic results, etc.
And hope I do not peel too bad from sunburn.
Nice to see user generated content getting more political.
Have fun. I will. :)
Aaron

So I am starting to be a bit more honest with myself about the lack of value of my current business model. My price point puts myself rather low on the value chain. As the field of SEO has grown and my share of voice has grown I have attracted far too many wankers.

Drowning in a sea of email. Hundreds of them. Blah. Elite Retreat conference today and tomorrow. Deeper I will submerge into the depths of endless email. Hope I reply soon...

I took a while to post this because the AdWords data was too small of a sample set to trust as meaningful data, but from affiliate sales I now can say that the new SEO Book salesletter is a big success. Affilate conversion rates are up, last month I paid out twice as many affiliates as any prior month, and this month looks like it will be beating last month.

Here is the new sales letter and the old sales letter. You can read about the changes Brian Clark made here. I will soon do multivariant testing to further improve the salesletter and sales process.

It is kinda weird when you build a decent amount of authority from scratch because eventually people start treating your errors much differently.

Jonathan Leger tomorrow will be hosting a chat with me on his site at 3pm Eastern and noon Pacific time. Feel free to stop by if you would like to say hi.

What is the best way to let them know?

I recently had an editor go through SEO Book and clean up my grammar. If you are a grammar Nazi my book is probably as good as it will ever be today ;)

So we finished up at Elite Retreat yesterday. It was a bunch of fun and I think it went amazingly well. Today I am flying out at 6 AM, and thus am sleeping on the plane flight (twice in 4 days). I am moving into my new place today, and will be trying to be as lazy as possible for the rest of the year, so this blog may go without any new posts.

So there is a blog meme about learning things about bloggers. I was tagged by Dean, Jeremy, and Stuntdubl.

Here are 5 things you may not have known about me:

I am going to be chatting with Greg Niland today on Good Karma about SEO and other fun stuff at 4PM Eastern.

Please tune in, and if you have something you would like to hear us discuss, mention it below and I will see if we can chat about it.

Here is your chance to roast me. :)

I just did a pretty big update to SEO Book, and am having a guy who goes by the nickname the grammar hammer edit my ebook at the moment. What parts of it could use some improvement?

I hate when technology or forms of communication break or are unreliable...yet as I try to do more faster it keeps happening more and more. Maybe it is just operator error.

I feel a bit guilty about blogging with a bit less passion recently, and perhaps coming off as a bit infomercially, but that is largely a function of me taking on far too many things at once while also changing my life REALLY fast.

So I need to rewrite my ebook and finish writing another website this weekend and throughout next week.

When I started this site I never imagined that it would get as much traffic as it does. When I first wrote my ebook I never imagined customers would buy as many of them as they have. When I placed the consulting button ad on my site I never imagined that I would average over 1 a day. But recently I have been wrong many times over ;)

So I am going to Europe for a couple weeks. Most of the time in Amsterdam. Which should be fun.

I am going to try to stay off the web for two weeks. Start your blog spam scripts. Or hopefully, please don't!

I believe that at 4PM Eastern today I am going to be talking on GoodROI's Good Karma webmaster radio show.

Not sure what all we will talk about just yet, but hopefully it is a bunch of fun.

So, tommorrow I have an appointment to go over my taxes. I haven't started putting them all together yet, so I may not be blogging much today or tomorrow ;)

I make most of my profits from this site, but in many ways this site has thrust so much opportunity on me that it is mind boggling. In the past I wasted many great opportunities by lying to myself about what I am good at and where I should focus my efforts.

Recently I decided to expand my business and web presence significantly beyond this site, realizing that I can't do everything I want to if I do it all on my own, and that having a vested interest in many other ideas will help me learn. The main desire to expand comes from wanting a broader knowledge base and experience base. While I could do really well by just focusing on this site I think the stuff I will learn from getting a much more broad experience set will increase my understanding of the web, marketing, and business in general.

Here are some of the cookie jars I have put my hands in over the past few months (most cookie jars involve at least 1 friend partnering):

• buying a few old websites (been doing this on my own, though got some cool ideas from chatting with Jim Boykin and Stuntdubl)

• creating lots of content for them (hired one friend to make some content, hired another friend to fix broken links and write content, and partnered with a friend for some of the other content)
• starting 2 content networks (this is going unfortunately slow, largely due to resource limits, especially when compared to the instant ROI provided by the older more established sites)
• buying Threadwatch and then taking DaveN on as a partner
• trying to learn affiliate marketing a bit more aggressively (while he doesn't talk too much about it in public, Andy Hagans is a bad ass at it for being somewhat new to that market)
• partnering with a friend to try to make a social network (I think I have a good idea with this, and a good viral marketing idea)
• partnering with a friend to try to make another network (this one is just a bit out there. I would be a minority stake holder in it. Am chatting with the majority guy to try to make it pretty innovative, but they are being a bit more traditional than my uber idealistic - and perhaps a bit flawed for being a bit too idealistic - original idea.)
• hiring a programmer - I think it would be cool to have a full time programmer to make lots of random fun or good ideas. I am sure eventually as I get further into the affiliate stuff he will help come up with some cool content ideas.
• ownership stake in 3 companies (one of which may already be in the hurt locker, but the second and third could not be looking any brighter)
• that second company has more potential profit in its first month than I made in all of 2004, largely because I joined up with an absolutely kick ass partner
• the third company could be much larger than the second
• working on some rather large client projects

So hopefully I will post saturday...think I am going to turn IM and email off so I can start on taxes ;)

The judge issued an order on my case today, thowing it out on grounds of personal jurisdiction, stating:

Defendant's blog site while interactive in the sense that it allows individuals to read and post comments on a forum, does not rise to the level of interactivity to tip the "sliding scale" in favor of personal jurisdiction [over a nonresident].

Our motion for summary judgement was moot since courts do not decide liability issues on cases they are not hearing.

The court gave the plaintiff 30 days to request leave to ammend the complaint. As I learn more so will you. Thanks to everyone who has helped me out so far.

Outside of Danny Sullivan few people have probably read and wrote about SEO as much as I have the past couple years, but I think I am going to tune it back a bit.

If you are not a real charity and desire my ebook (but not enough value to consider paying for it) I recommend grabbing a dated version of the ebook from a file sharing network.

This may sound a bit harsh, but I am trying to keep up my ability to support legit charities as long as I can...and for that to happen some things need to change.

My charity support is going to require more effort from the charities. In the past I have done lots of work trying to help anyone and everyone, but I need to take a little load off the inbox.

If I try to make myself freely available to everyone and they expect fast responses for me giving them my business model free then I am setting up a piss poor value proposition. There needs to be some effort put in on the end of the charity so that I am not a charity verification service and so they value what I am giving them.

Earlier today I got this gem of a comment:

neato...this bloggie is 2 years old today.

I recently spoke with the lawyer again about the evil / shoddy anti free speech lawsuit the fine folks at Traffic Power thrusted upon me.

About a month ago my lawyer filed a motion for summary judgement.

Stuff in the court system tends to drag out, but my lawyer said Traffic Power's response is at least a week late & he filed a reply of non oposition [doc] requestion that the motion be granted.

So recently I have been getting phone calls from someone saying they used to work with xyz-firm but are no longer associated, along with copies of cease and desist letters they sent to xyz-firm.

When the person contacted me, telling me they were trying to help me, I told them that if there is anything they felt they could do to help me they may as well make it public. It does no good to give me half information or one perspective of a murky story that I can pass along as hearsay.

I also have been getting investigative comments about how that person and their business is associated with xyz-firm. Although the most recent one I deleted because it is off topic. I may have to look and see if there are any others that need deleted.

Taking a longer glance at the whole situation this stuff may be at least a bit of a waste of time. Ultimately there is no way to be a clearing house of information about who you can't trust and why you can't trust them. Scammers and scam systems constantly evolve to find the shortest distance between you and your money.

We all make mistakes and we all learn. I once hired an SEO firm who told me to use hidden text and other shoddy techniques (copy your home page and change the filename to these words and cross link them back and forth with invisible small text using these words in the link text). At that point I asked that person what would stop me from automating it and doing it over and over or writing a program to do it. They did not reply. At the time the company that provided shoddy services to me was ranked in paid listings and organic search results for competitive phrases.

I think when you hire people to do technical stuff in nature you should ask questions or want to know why. Things change over time and sometimes people do things because it has always been that way. As you become more successful it is even easier to get away with doing things the way you used to and living by them, even if others would see different results trying to do the same thing. And it is harder to hold the passion in a topic and think of unique and useful things to say that have not yet been said, so we all recycle.

Sometimes I don't even agree with things I said in the past. And I think it should be that way. While sometimes I am a bit more thickheaded than I would like to view myself as being, I should learn from my mistakes. If you keep learning you make more and different mistakes, but hopefully better ones.

I think the aim in saying that xyz or yqp are deceptive might be a useful public service if it is true, but ultimately it makes little sense for me to try to keep up with zpw or whatever other fictitious companies come out. If consumers are lazy and do not investigate they deserve to waste their money as I once did. Maybe ritually burning x dollars is part of the learning process.

I don't think the aim should be why you can't trust others so much as why you hopefully can trust me. I think Andrew Goodman once said something about that in SEW forums...about the value of having a voice when most people try to hide.

When you are new and nameless there is little to no reason to avoid risk - after all you have got little to lose. Some of the stuff I did in the past I probably would not do today. And some of the stuff I do today I am certain I wouldn't do tomorrow.

A friend of mine pointed out that on the BBB Traffic Power page it states:

The Bureau has been unable to ascertain that the firm has a valid business license. Consumers who do business with an unlicensed firm do so at their own risk.

The company previously had a license, which was issued on February 19, 2003. The license became inactive as of April 30, 2004.

This Nevada Secretary of State page shows a revoked license for Traffic Power.

Is there a way of telling if they later got a different business license? If they don't have a valid business license, then how can they sue anyone under that business name?

Sorta started to make this post the other day and forgot to save it. I just wanted to say thanks again to Danny, Ian, and everyone else who has helped me with this lawsuit stuff. I have been getting a crash course in public relations.

Danny recently posted about the support Ian offered via SMA-NA, and how SEMPO decided they wanted to steer clear of it. ThreadWatch also recently commented on SEMPO's tone & position.

In related news, Red Herring posted an article about the legal challenges of blogging.

My lawyer recently answered the Traffic Power lawsuit [PDF]. No doubt some strong keyword density in that document :)

For those who want some background on the lawsuit check out this post, which highlights when they sued me and the lack of specifics in the lawsuit.

Initially when I was sued by Traffic Power I partnered up with the fine folks at Traffic Power Sucks and helped share their lawyer fees.

Some of my friends donated far more than I could have ever imagined, and said they wanted me to buy the best lawyer I could find. A friend of mine in the SEO space who is legally well connected recommended I go with Ariel Stern from Jones Vargas.

Ariel had the case moved from state court to federal district court. The case number in federal court is CV-S-05-1109-RLH-LRL, and the website is located at www.nvd.uscourts.gov. I believe interested parties can follow the case developments using the Pacer service, but will need an account to log in.

The legal support calls and emails back and forth are flowing nicely and all is well on that front. Some bits of the case are sorta like a holding pattern though. As I learn more I will share it, although there are some bits I have been told not to share until some time passes.

Thanks to everyone who donated.

A while back I bought a new computer and forgot to transfer all my RSS feeds over to the new one. Starting from scratch, what all cool feeds should I be reading?

Do you like any obscure hidden gems?

[Update: I believe my case is closed, and thus I am no longer accepting donations. Thanks to everyone who helped me. If you would like to support free speech online please donate to EFF or Public Citizen. Optionally you may also want to read the EFF Legal Guide for Bloggers, Chilling Effects or CyberSLAPP, all of which are great resources.]

So I got the agreement paperwork today for Traffic Power to drop the lawsuit. I am not sure what parts of it I can share, and need to talk with a lawyer about it on that front.

I am unsure how adequately I can guarantee I could comply with it, especially since I believe this offer widened up a bit from what was shared over the phone. Although I think that is somewhat common in legal proceedings, I am not really comfortable with the document as it appears right now.

The hundreds of blog comments, blog posts, emails, forum posts, phone calls, articles, and other forms of communications I have seen or heard tell me that this is an issue that many people care about across the web.

This suit is not about Traffic Power. This suit is not about this blog. This suit is more about free speech, which is the very fabric that holds the web and democracy together. An issue far more important than I could ever pretend to be.

If I do not face this suit, then it is easier for the next person to get trampled. After all the support people have offered I do not think it is the right decision to tuck tail and run, especially since I am still unaware of what specifically is wrong - and never once has there been an attempt to tell me.

Not that I am by any means rich, but I have a bit of money. I know legal stuff can get costly really quickly though. I have been offered some pro bono representation, but I can not guarantee that it will go through, and those lawyers also recommend I hire the services of a commercial lawyer from Las Vegas.

Some of the people who care about this case and want to help with it are better lawyers than money can buy, but I believe they may end up busy juggling other cases and this lawsuit may require a local lawyer as well, at least off the start.

The 20 days are passing quickly, so I have no time to waste. Tomorrow I will try to hire a lawyer (as I have already talked to a few, so I can't imagine it will be hard to get one of them to accept the case if I have enough money, which I think I should - at least to get started).

There are some people who have already helped me a bunch for free. There time and attention is worth money and their help was available only via donations from others.

I am not sure how much people will donate, but if direct donations exceed legal costs for the Traffic Power case the remainder of the donations will be sent to organizations such as EFF and Public Citizen.

If you have more web reach than money a brief mention of what is going on may help more than a direct monetary donation. I don't want people donating if they are in bad financial shape (as I suspect this suit will not ruin my finacial health, especially if a couple of my closer friends donate). I also do not want donations from people who only sorta care about the issue of free speech online.

My quality of life has been greatly enriched by feedback others have gave me, and I don't want that feedback to go away because people are afraid to speak their minds.

If you have some spare cash, and/ or your livelihood or quality of life depends on free speech online please consider donating directly to one of the above listed charities.

My internet connection was down for 4 or 5 days recently (due to a short in the line), and when I came back to it I did not feel that I missed that much (eek, what an underinspiring blogger).

It is kinda weird, because most any success I have ever had has came from the web, but sometimes I do not necissarily appreciate how fortunate I am, while other times I feel so lucky that I resist change at nearly any cost. Both of which are opposite extremes and probably a bit bad.

It is easy to think that what made you do well in the past will make you do well in the future, but that is not always true. While offline I did not go out link hunting, I created no new content, and did not post on any forums. Oddly enough my income was about the exact same as it was when I was online a bunch, which means that something outside of what I attributed my doing well for was causing my income.

Ultimately a lack of posting will lead to less visitors, a lower share of voice, and lower income, but sometimes it is worth changing things up a bit though. I think if I posted far less frequently and put far more thought into each word I would be more helpful to others and far better off myself.

At times I think I have gotten a bit ahead of myself, and realize that most any success I have had has come from friends my than myself. Recently I pissed one of them off really bad, and to her I say sorry.

I hope to be spending a bit less time on the web in the near future such that I am more efficient with the time that I do spend, and so I do not get stuck in ruts.

My customer of quality service has probably slid a bit recently due to downtime and deciding that I need to have a business model that makes sense. Some people send me like 40 emails that take a half hour each to answer, and that is a lot of work for one ebook purchase (although I am sure it leads to word of mouth marketing) but there has to be some balance to that.

I need to take time to re evaluate many of the things that I am doing such that I am not stuck in ruts and I need to make sure I do not piss off friends, because without them there really is little point to the web.

So some people at Threadwatch suggested that I made RSS updates to my ebook available. If I did that, what is the best way to add security to the update mini site, and should I enable comments on the updates?

A while back I got a cease and desist letter from Traffic Power, citing an obscure federal law about hacking information systems which seemed less than relevant to my websites.

The only way I could have complied with it is if I shut my site down and gave them contact information of everyone I have ever contacted. Since it was impossible to comply without destroying my business model and potentially getting my friends and customers spammed or cold called I asked a friend about the situation.

A well known friend (I am not sure if he wants to be identified, but he knows who he is and to him I say thanks) asked them some questions, like why there were no specifics in the letter, etc. and Traffic Power backed down from their cease and desist position.

I have been told that other people recently got similar letters and I am not too pleased with the bully activity. When are these people going to learn? The whole reason I took well to the web is that it allowed me to avoid that sort of crap.

Some other sites have already caved to pressures from Traffic Power, but it is not something I intend on doing anytime soon. A copy of the cease and desist letter which now hangs on my wall is posted in the extended portion of this entry.

I recently chatted with a friend about domain names. I ended up deleting about a dozen of my domains. I could probably delete another 50 to 80 more and still be fine. It is almost like an addiction buying those things, and they are so hard to let go.

I also renewed some of my domains for many years, which I think is probably a good call, especially since search engines may look at a longer domain registration as a greater commitment and reward it with a greater level of trust. Ever so slightly higher rankings can land a few more customers, and just one good one pays for a decade of domain registration.

Have you renewed your registrations on your best sites and do you find it hard to let go of a domain name?

Overture:
I am sure I am the guy in the glass house throwing stones here, but why is it that after you get to the bottom of your Overture add listings page the button right there is the opposite of what you just did.

Like if you make 50 different listings the button there would be for the create one ad for all keywords, and the regular continue link would be a little lower over on the other side of the page. Click the more conveniently located button and erase your work. Yippie!

There are many other factors that make using Overture a purely frustrating experience, but that was just one example.

MSN Small Business Directory:
I can't log into my damn account because my one stupid proprietary MicroSoft account does not match up with the other stupid proprietary MicroSoft account. They give me some bullshit options to create security keys and other security garbage.

• Why the hell did they give me one account if they already knew they wanted to migrate me over to their other dubious services?
• Why is the migration wizard such a hunk of crap?

• Why is the original SBD login stuff hidden away until after I tried my non matching Passport email account?
• Why do I have to fill out a ton of forms to send an email for a personalized response when they really ought to know that their migration wizard is a hunk of crap from the feedback many people have surely already gave them?

Passport.net = hunk of shit. As a bonus I like how it disables the back button.

Here is an example of the login experience:

• click the sign in button: nope. that's NOT your correct Passport details. Don't have a Passport account? try our supper cool migration wizard (and don't ask us why we wasted your time creating that other account. don't ask us why this process isn't seemless or automated).

• thrown off by the Passport stuff you can forget your login details, so you click the I can't remember my bCentral password button.
• that launches a help pop up with a couple options, namely:
  

  If you've lost or forgotten your bCentral password, go to the Password Retrieval Form, type your e-mail address, and then click the Submit button.

• click that link and you wind up here, where they say "Type your registered e-mail address and click SUBMIT once."
• they know they are migrating the account service over. at this point you have indicated that you do not know your password three times, so you enter your email information and think nothing of it. click submit.
• the next page gives me drop down form options, where I have to specify account type, product, and problem, and then give them my email and information AGAIN.

I just sent them this feedback:

Complete hunk of shit usability IMHO. Bad enough to write a blog post about. I hate your migration wizard and am unsure what account I signed up with. If most business had this type of usability and customer interaction they would go bankrupt.

So yesterday I posted about Corey Rudl dying, and a couple people sent me anonymous hate messages.

So I just got an affiliate commission notification for a piece of SEO software that I thought was cool about a year ago, but no longer think is that great.

So the question is, how do you go about maintaining older posts. Is it ok to delete or edit profitable posts if you feel that they undermine your current credibility? Should you edit them? Should you delete them? Even if you do prune the past you will likely miss a few posts. Should you feel guilty because someone bought bunk software? Should you not feel guilty since the person ignored the post was a year old? Should you feel guilty editing or deleting them as though you are hiding your past?

This also reminds me about handing out recommendations and testimonials. It can be a great link and reputation building activity, but after stuff ages and loses its value (as SEO software is known to do) it could likely wear your credibility thin to endorse too many products. Many people who are eager for testimonials are also greedy hucksters who will make sure you pay for your endorsements. As a web marketer my reputation is by far and away the most valuable thing I have.

I am not afraid to admit that I am sometimes wrong or make lots of mistakes, but it does make little sense to leave errors that could and should be easy to fix, right? I think the forward going answer is to always be cautious and forward looking with your endorsements.

Am in the UK now. A few observations:

• everyone uses the word "ish"

• NFFC was wearing an eSpotting looking shirt. Clearly a reason to like FWHT :)
• the Down Hall hotel is in a pretty cool remote setting
• JasonD likes the Gaping Void t shirts
• a bartender gave a mate 7-UP when they ordered a lemonade
• they have street signs that say Queing
• Gurtie does not like the nickname TheGurtster
• Z is for some reason zed in the UK
• Rumours have it DaveN was showing off his back end?
• my friend argued that they drive on the right side of the road, but clear as day it is the left side

Just got done doing another update of my ebook right before I left, and would think everyone is really really cool if I sell a bunch of them while I am gone. Of course, they may be cool anyway, but like peanut butter, SEO Book makes everything better. Buy the book. Wear a smile ;)

A major site is hiding a few ;) links. Tempted to gain the 50 - 100 links & readers I would have got from mentioning it, I bet on the side of good karma and sent them a kind email instead.

Hopefully they fix the issue before someone else posts on it, or I will be mad that I missed the scoop, and they still got screwed bad.

These hidden links could totally undermine the credibility of that site.

Parts 1 & 2

While those articles are not directly associated with SEO, I know many SEOs who:

• rarely sleep

• rarely exercise
• smoke & drink
• have lots of caffiene
• eat unhealthy
• are under heavy stress
• constantly multi task
• etc.

I don't think depression is just a physical or psychological issue, but is deeply intertwined. The articles focus more on the physical reenforcing aspects of severe depression.

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings
The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound
- America

Going to the desert for a couple days... should be back Tuesday :)

Thanks to Stoney for reviewing my ebook

Thanks to Fantomaster for his good posts in this thread.

< sorta off topic post >
Due to tax charges and technology investments Amazon reported quarterly results which the market generally thought sucked. This weighed down tech stocks.

Oil futures dropped based on increased US oil inventories & the Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah recent visit to President Bush’s Texas Ranch.

These two forces (Amazon & oil) moreless offset each other. Earlier today InfoSearch Media was up nearly 10% and is now up two cents on the day.

Earlier today DigitalGhost, one of their star researchers, announced his retirement from SEO:

I want to pursue pure research regarding etymology, LSI/LSA, philology, etc. Parallels can surely be drawn with regard to search tech I’m sure, but I want to pursue words. So, I’m leaving the SEO/SEM game.

I was not sure whether or not that means he is staying with InfoSearch Media, but NickW asked on his blog, and Digital Ghost already replied saying he is leaving them.

While I don't know enough about the stock market to compete in it on general stock buys, I am wondering if my tidbits of knowledge here and there can allow me to understand market forces within the SEO space better than the average investor?

insm.ob and thk are a couple SEO / SEM related stocks on the market. There are not many publicly traded SEO stocks, so it would not be that hard to keep up with them.

With the current market atmosphere of:

• mergers and acquisitions
  
• the falling dollar

• the uneven trade balance and huge federal debt
• the impending float of the Yuan
• many ad agencies behind the ball on search
• search engines crossing into traditional ad markets
• the rapid growth of search

I am sure this will be an interesting space in the financial markets for the next couple years.

Like people, companies are born and die. SEO is just manipulating information systems. The stock market is just a large information system. Stocks, options, futures, and shorts are just a bet for or against what people think will happen.

Insiders have the house advantage, but can traditional individual investors compete with the market? I think if you know a market well enough and can emotionally separate yourself from it then you can, not sure if I would be any good at that though.

Not sure if I will participate much in the market, but I do find it interesting that ISHM.ob has been up or at even the whole day on a relatively flat day when they just lost one of their star employees.

For some reason one of my hosts hides .htaccess files from FTP view. So when you go to add an .htaccess file you overwrite the hidden .htaccess file, and all is not well with MovableType. :(

MovableType tells you that you need to contact your host, since .htaccess is a host issue. Your host tells you that you should see the backup .htaccess file in your domain. Which is not true since they hide the .blah files.

Today has been lost in translation. But I do now know that

Options +ExecCGI
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl

is an important piece of Movable Type .htaccess code. So should customer support at Movable Type? And DreamHost should really tell you that the .blah files are hidden! Surprised I did not notice that until now.

None of the things posted in this post are news really, just all of them made me laugh or say WTF.

I have made a few, which have not sold many, & still might not be good at it yet ;) but I will eventually pick up graphics a bit better and am a huge fan of irony.

Recently WordPress got caught content spamming by using a hidden div. Their motto is "Code is Poetry," and that it is.

Anywho, here is the image from my first SEO related T Shirt, which you can buy from SEO Shop (with what the price is set at I do not think that I profit from sales, but if I do that would go to charity.)

I am not really a star per say (as I do not use the word blogosphere enough to be one), but I will be on the phone tomorrow at noon Central. The topic is SEO and local search. You can listen in too if you like.

This will be like the third audio recording thingie I have done in the last year. I think I am probably getting a bit better at them, though I do have a tendancy to talk a bit quick.

It is free to listen to if you want to.

Happy Easter all.

I just got back from eating way too much food :(

While digesting it...

I thought about looking up how to spell gluttony and noticed that Google only shows two ads for the proper spelling and no ads for glutony.

Overture only appears to have one ad.

Does this term have any value to various dieting products or services? Maybe. Maybe not.

Kinda weird to see the fact that almost nobody is currently testing the market though, eh?

The No S Diet is advertising on Google AdWords and looks cool.

Its kinda funny that the site does not have much of a business model since thier advice is free and

Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain "the solicitation of funds and do not display tax-exempt status".

Good Music:
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash - song #9 is amazing.

Uncyclopedia:
the free encyclopedia of politically incorrect non-information

Volcanos:
Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

Igloos:
Igloo Builders Guide

BlahCorp-Sucks.com:
Top Corporate Hate Web Sites

At the SES conference there are many parties. Yahoo! and Google both held parties which were rather open. I think some of my friends who did not even attend the conference were at the Yahoo! party and I guess Jason Briggs or someone like that was at the Google party.

Ask Jeeves held an invite only party.

MSN held a party where many people thought you only needed to have a conference badge to get in. You drive across town in a cab for 20 minutes to get turned away at the door.

With all the money MSN is spending on marketing it is rather stupid for them to turn people away. I am not ranting stating that I deserve a free party just that its bad marketing to turn people away like they did.

The parties are often as good as the conferences because on top of being able to do social networking you can learn a ton about how various people market their products and services.

This conference was awesome for meeting people. I can't even name all the people who I got to hang out with, but thanks to everyone for all the fun.

Arg, Warning, Self Promotional Post: !!!

I recently added affiliate software to my site which tracks sales through PayPal.

Join the affiliate program today and get a free $20 bonus credit.

More information in the extended entry...

So a friend of mine is building a tool which will likely be publically available for usage and it may run a thousand or few thousand queries a day. This tool may query some of the major search engines and may need to use some open HTTP proxies.

Does anyone know how he can gain access to reliable open HTTP proxies and if / what costs would be available?

Feel free to emails me seobook aT gmail DoT com if you do not want to post anything in the comments.

If and when he completes the tool I will mention its launch on this site :)

the employee blog
Google says shh to this blogger

Philosophers
condensed and abbridged for your pleasure...

People
oh lothesome me

Bandwidth
bandwidth limit exceeded at the 2005 bloggies site. some host looking for a hosted by link might have just struck gold? you gotta think thats a fairly strong site.

Cnet
NickW rants

Affiliates
a heated thread at threadwatch

SEO Blogs
we all say the same stuff... ;) Peter D has the scoop

Directories

• Danny Sullivan has a post about why they have lost some of their value

• NickW has a post about how bottom up classification systems are more valuable
• if you submit sites to a ton of directories you may find roboform saves you a few minutes

a dollar
actually a shocker, think its near its two month highs...goes off to quickly register many sites (using roboform) while the dollar has a better conversion rate

Generally not a cool thing to do, but this person deserves it.

Google Scrapper:
Chris Ridings on Daniel Brandt's scrapper...
Daniel Brandt states:

If the scraping is done properly, it is not worth Google's trouble to find you. Our source code separates the "fetch" portion of program, which is done by curl or wget, from the searcher interface and parsing of the fetched results. If the fetching is done by a server on a different Class C address from the website that shows the scraped results, there is little that Google can do to find the IP address that is responsible for the actual fetch.

and Chris states:

Conveniently forgetting that his hack of an application forgets to change the useragent of the request from the curl/wget defaults. Thereby leaving the fetch machines' ip addresses sitting ducks in those query logs that Brandt believes last an eternity.

Cooperative Ad Network to Adopt NoFollow Tag?
members at the Digital Point forums think not...two quotes sum it up:
"would that not defeat the object of having the links if the search engines ignored them?"
and
"Exactly, who'd actually use the Co-Op for anything other than IBLs?"

Testing out the NoFollow Tag:
White Hat Techniques are ethical whereas Black Hat Techniques are not <-- Alan Perkins talks rubbish.

While Reading Comics:
I read these comics so you don't have to

• the SEO firm who writes a white paper about SEO for a CMS that is paying bloggers to rant for them.

• a big business certain to view the blue screen a death.
• stuck in "professional" mode.
• the political talk show that Jon Stewart visits (that link is a clip of Jon's appearance on Crossfire, and now CNN is letting Tucker Carlson go)

This is a bit of an off topic / personal type post. I guess many of them are that way now, but you have been warned ;)

I was in and out around the end of the year and just finally got back home in a somewhat stable state today. It looks as though Google has finally updated toolbar PageRank again, and I have been reading bits about the horrible tsunami.

To try my best to help out, for the month of January I am going to send all my SEO Book sales income to help out with relief from the storm. I think Paypal eats about $2 out of each order, but other than that the remainder will go to help out Sarvodaya.

If you want to help out you can donate directly to any of the tsunami relief funds.

Moving:
So I moved hosts on my other site to Pair yesterday (lots of savvy webmasters have recommended them to me). While I was still uploading the site the DNS already propagated through to the new location. I had to learn how to play with some .htaccess fast ;)

Broken Links:
After I moved I checked my site using Xenu and found a ton of broken links I need to update. Some stuff doesn't make any sense, like the Virtual Library's contact us and registration pages no longer exist.

While on the Topic of Directories:
Free Christmas gifts...

I have been doing tons of directory submissions recently, and thus know many directory owners. The following directories are giving away listings to the first 3 people who leave a comment below. After you comment find your relevant categories and give me your info via email me at seobook [At} gmail dot com using "free directory submission" as the subject and I will submit your sites for you.*

• SevenSeek - John Scott's directory. He also has been thinking about eventually create a portal and search engine on that site.

• Web Atlas - Nandini Maheshwari's fairly new directory. I have been helping her build up some good link popularity, and Web Atlas provides mutliple deep links with each listing.
• Uncover the Net - Shawn Walter's somewhat new directory. I believe his directory has more pages in Google's cache than any other directory. He also recently create an affiliate program.
• Rubber Stamped - Peter Da Vanzo's brand spanking new directory. Peter is a bit of a link hound, so look for him to build some good link popularity on the quick.

* Please no lead generation, affiliate, pharmacy, porn, insurance, debt, or gambling type websites. If your website is making you thousands of dollars per day please do not submit via this offer. :)

Search Engine Marketing Awards:
I nominate ;)
plans are in the making
as are plans for the alternative awards

Click 3 Times:
AdSense publisher is frustrated by the concept of targeted leads

Keyword Difficulty Checker:
I think the best way to tell is to look at the search results and do extensive link analysis. Some may like to try out this free tool though.

New Shirt
So I got my super comfy new shirt in today from the SEO legends collection.

I am getting a bit out of hand with my search related shirt collection...I now have the Google space shirt, MSN, SEW, SEL, IHY (unoffical bootleg version from a defunct thread that was later pulled), BlowSearch, LinkAdage, and Patrick Gavin might be making me one too. My shirt collection is only lacking Yahoo! Search, Ask Jeeves / Teoma, and SEMPO-Tahoe (hopefully the SEMPO Tahoe shirt could be added to the SEO Legends collection soon).

Its disappointing that I don't have any search related pants, but I can't really see me trying to wear a pair of these.

A bit off topic, but I was just deleting a few of the entries brought in from a form box on one of my other sites and this is one of my all time favorite URLs:

http://www.accredited-non-fake-online-degree-mill.com

what is your favorite URL?

Also, while asking random questions... have you ever been cold called by a search engine?

Google for President:
Steven Berlin Johnson is probably one of my 3-4 favorite authors. He writes awesome books and lots of cool articles.

Not too long ago he wrote Google for President, which looked at how the presidential campaigns were missing the boat (no, not the swift one) on buying Google AdWords ads.

Participatory Democracy:
Democracy only works if you actively participate. Over the last two months I have been running a smallish campaign on Google AdWords for the presidential election. I wrote about my line of logic and my actions in a boringly named article Political Search Engine Marketing.

I do not care much for either canidate, but think now is a good time for change. Whether you think I am right or wrong it is a fact that our government, our society, and our world would be far better off if people questioned authority and spoke their mind a bit more often.

Anyone think Political SEM is going to get huge?
Just in case it does I registered the domain name. No intention of making a site for it anytime soon, but if I really start to dig politics it could be a fun way to get into some mischief. There are lots of other things I want to learn about too though :)

Other SEO / SEM Blogs Covering the Election ;)

• Peter D

• Search Engine Roundtable
• Traffick

A bunch of random forum news...

Next Friday I am going to raise the price of the SEO Book to $79. Explanation / reasoning in extended post entry if you are interested in that sort of stuff. I will continue to give my ebook away to qualifying charities and also to one winner from each of my weeklyish newsletters.

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.

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.

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.

draws the image of the words you search for using those words.

give Toogle a try.

Neato.

Some friday fun...

The "unethical" Black Hat SEO now has an "ethical" brother... White Hat SEO is now open for business.

Completely off topic, (not really any sort of SEO news) just a thanks to a few cool people
Recently some people have been giving my ebook cool reviews. I am somewhat new to the web and even flattered that some of these people would mention my book, but thanks to:

• Jarrod Hundt of Text Link Brokers;

• many wonderful people at SEW Forums; &
• & Dominic, especially for his big support of my fun little GOOG game, for which I am up to #5 now. the #1 / #2 site has links from Harvard law with GOOG in the anchor, so it might be a bit hard to take them out. Yahoo! Finance is right up there now too.

Sometimes I post random stuff, but it all has something to do with marketing.

Waste Paper Basketball Shoot

Addictively fun. If I were an interactive media designer I would create games like this to help build huge link equity into my site.

A link is nothing but a comment or remark. Be remarkable!