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

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.
I am usually all for selling stuff as cheap as possible, but I would like to continue to improve my ebook, and the time I spend reading and compiling data is a large portion of my life. There is a ton of value in that.

By leaving a low price on my ebook it makes some people assume it has a low value, which is absolutely not true. I work a ton to keep that ebook up to date and even go to many of the conferences that sometimes cost thousands of dollars to attend.

I still could improve the grammer in it some and I want to work to make it better and better. I want to keep learning and hopefully be able to pass on better and better knowledge. I could try to continue to sell it for $40 forever, but I do not think the sales will dip that much if I charge more, and if I charge more I will be able to invest more into it.

I also will still give away a free copy of my ebook to qualifying charities and am also giving away a free copy of my ebook in each of my free weeklyish newsletters from now on.

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.

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

give Toogle a try.

Neato.

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.