I am a Book Junkie:
My cost of living is generally dirt cheap other than an odd obsession with books. I have book cases full of books (only had about 10 - 20 a year or so ago) and buy them way faster than I read them. Recently I have been trying to read many books to reverse that trend.

Competitive Analysis:
I have been reading a good number about SEO and related topics to see how everyone else writes them, if there are certain graphics I should add, etc.

When I initially wrote my ebook I used no graphics at all because I did not want to create a fluffy image book. As time has passed I have been adding some grahics, as they can be useful and help explain some things better than words.

I keep reading lots of books on marketing and web related stuff because you only need to learn a few things for a book to pay for itself.

Marketing a Book:
A while ago Boris Morokovich offered me a free copy of his Pay Per Click Marketing Search Engine Handbook and I have yet had a chance to read it. He just emailed me again to mention his book, so I glanced through it and am writing my thoughts.

At a glance it looks like it is well written and has some good information about the various engines, history of ppc marketing, ppc & branding, contextual advertising, click fraud, roi tracking, ppc tools and the like.

Again, I have only glanced at it for a few minutes, but a few things I did not like:

• The general overall view looks solid. Covers lots of stuff.

• Uses affiliate links. Fine to do that on your site, but I don't like the idea of doing that in a book that is for sale. I used to do that, and did not let it effect my reviews of products, but as I increased the price of my book and it got broader distribution I realized it was not going to be a wise idea to have some people think the book is there to get upsells.
• Along the lines with using those affiliate links, I thought the book could of - and should have - given far more coverage to Google and Overture, instead of giving similar review sizes to Google AdWords and PageSeeker, which were both part of the top 10 search engines. To me, Google AdWords and Overture are their own group, and then second tier starts after that. PageSeeker might be like 3rd or 4th tier IMHO.
• I would have also liked lots of information about creating useful profitable campaigns on Google and Overture before even thinking of trying any of the smaller engines.
• The reviews are short (about 1 page) and list pros and cons and. The cons many times did not state what some of the more important cons were. Examples:
  • If an engine has little to no traffic, then that is a con that should be stated. Don't give an Alexa ranking and expect me to know their level and quality of traffic from that. I mean, I launched a 6 page site about a month ago (spending under $1,000 building it and its tools, and $0 on marketing) which has a better Alexa ranking than some of the reviewed PPC search engines.

  • Why isn't there a mention of poor traffic quality in the LookSmart review? To leave that type of information out and place an affiliate link next to the reviews put the authenticity of the reviews in question.
• Opinionated reviews are usually worth far more than factual sounding reviews that do not give in depth information about personal experience. Quality customer service does not matter if they get no traffic and have garbage traffic quality. Good or bad ROI and net profits, as personally experienced, should be listed in most of the reviews.

RustyBrick reviewed this book a while ago. Peter who appears to be blogging regularly again yeah! recently did a short review too.

Report:
State of Search Marketing 2004 - not sure if I linked to that yet. Thanks to AussieWebmaster for reminding me about it.

Cash Keywords:
has a blog. Fantomaster has hundreds on his list now.

Keyword Ranking Performance:
new free tool from St0ney which weights your percent distribution from your rankings on the top search engines. Would also be cool to link off to pages which showed:

• keywords vs the buying cycle

• how longer queries typically convert better
• reference that many searches are unique

Rumours Confirmed:
there are Borgs at Google.

Should write a press release about Google not being about to control their search index, and nefarious webmasters hijacking other sites to remove them from the search index. Why?

Currently the ball is in Google's court, with SEO being branded as spam and scum of the web.

If someone could push the idea that Google could not even control their own index, or how to rate their own site, then perhaps they could somehow shift the frame, saying that Google does not know how to control their index and needs the help of good SEOs to improve their search relevancy.

They should reference:

• Google's general denial of the hijacking problem

• GoogleGuy's comment about how the sites that get screwed are of low quality
• a screenshot of Google's search for AdSense, showing another site ranking #1.

Search engines have yet to be seriously challenged about:

• censoring results without notification, and accepting ads from merchants they would otherwise censor

• freely using webmaster content, and knowingly publishing false or deceptive helpful webmaster information to those same webmasters
• click fraud
• consumer confidence in search relevancy

Most consumers do not realize how search results are manipulated, and most don't even know where the ads are.

It would be cool to see an SEO more daring or less lazy than me use this opportunity to toot their own horn and talk about how they help Google solve a problem it hasn't fully figured out yet - relevancy.

It would certainly be cheap marketing if you get national media coverage with the current feeding frenzy for Google's stock.

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.

To give a hint of what is going on, in an internal message I intercepted

At the suggestion of Mike xxxxxxxx at xxxxxxx Website Development, I've used the CSS attribute "display:none"

The message continues:

This trick is, I'm told by Mike, who knows more about SEO than most, is search engine friendly.

Mike should be drug out in the street and shot. Not only for providing such bad advice, but for assuring them that its search engine friendly.

Chatting with Todd, he said:

you'll be reincarnated as an eagle rather than a hunk of donkey dung
damn...those links are workin' well too
did you check the rankings on some of those?

I sent them an email and Todd said:

nice....you will make a wonderful eagle;)
at least you can know you gave them a chance
it is a good story
but it is also enough to destroy an entire organization
who is probably 99% good

Will let you know how it goes.

A while ago I wrote a bit about TrustRank after reading the PDF about it.

It is fairly easy to understand many of the concepts of it (like attenuating a possitive trust score or offsetting the effects of link spam with a negative trust score), but it is even easier to understand them if you visualize the concept of trust attenuation.

Most sites are not exceptionally compelling, so there are usually not many legitimate hubs in any industry, but many sites are glorified link farms which will not pass any positive trust value.

For a while I helped promote many directories, but many of the new ones on the market have little to no legitimate value, and some of the links from them may even have negative value.

I just wrote an article called TrustRank & the Company You Keep, in which I made this graphic explaining the concept of AntiTrust (yet another SEO phrase I made up hehehe).

The red X's represent things that should be, but are not there.

Yes, I know, the drop shadow is too dark, my web designer friend already yelled at me for that. Other than that, I hope the image clearly demonstrates the concept I was trying to get across.

Other than drop shadow remarks, please leave comments on the article and image below.