Spaces on the Wall

SEO Roadmap

Keyword Discovery

It is vital to identify the most popular keyword phrases and then to evaluate whether you have a reasonable chance of achieving a top ten position on Google, Yahoo and MSN - if not move onto the next most popular keyword and know when to pick your battles.

1. Make a list of keywords phrases and the number of times they have been searched for using the Wordtracker Keyword Tool.
2. Put these in descending order, most important at the top.
3. Then research each keyword on Google, you are looking for the number of competing sites using the keyword in the title (use command allintitle:) and the number of backlinks each site has. This will give you indication on how difficult it would be to obtain a top 10 position.
4. If you think you can compete on the term keep it, if not delete and move onto the next most searched for term.
5. This should give you a list of top keywords you should target. I suggested he should have a target list of about 20-40 top keyword phrases.

On-page optimization

1. Add a keyword rich title tag to every page - The title tag is the single most important element on a webpage from a search engine’s point of view. Here are some vital tips for that perfect title tag.

• Make each title tag unique.
• Target no more than three phrases per title.
• Separate each phrase with a hyphen - or pipe |.
• The shorter the title tag the more “weight” each word will receive.
• Only include “keywords”, try not to using words like; the, and, etc.
• Try to keep the title tag shorter than 63 characters (including spaces) to get the best results.
• Put your main target phrase at the beginning of the title tag, ensuring maximum exposure.

2. Add well-written and motivating meta descriptions. Google gives very little weight to the contents of the meta description, so don’t write it for Google, write it for humans.
3. Add meta keywords. Again not given much important by search engines, because they have been abused in the past. However, they do no harm and can be used for adding misspellings, etc. But keep them short, no more than 5 words.

Link building Strategies

1. After looking at your competitor’s backlinks use a link command on yahoo “linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com”. Then set a target of at least 100 backlinks.
2. Send personalized email requests 1 by 1. Simply look at the backlinks of your top 15 competitors. Then email any suitable websites with a personalized email. Below is a sample email.

   ----------------------------------------------------

   Hi [FIRST NAME],

   I hope you are well.

   I stumbled upon your site today and would like to say that I found the link section very helpful.

   I do have a suggestion for your link section. [COMPANY] probably makes the best [PRODUCT] around. I brought one recently and can’t believe how good they are. [PRODUCTS] are so much better than it used to be, plus it [ADD FEATURE HERE].

   The site is [TARGET URL], check it out.

   Thank you for your time.

   Naveed.

   ----------------------------------------------------

3. Submit to quality paid directories A full list of the best web directories can be found here: http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html.

• http://dir.yahoo.com
• www.stpt.com/directory
• www.joeant.com
• www.ezilon.com
• www.botw.org
• www.elib.org
• http://directory.v7n.com
• www.rlrouse.com
• www.uncoverthenet.com
• www.abilogic.com
• www.sunsteam.com
• www.alivedirectory.com
• www.site-sift.com
• www.wowdirectory.com
• www.socengine.com
• www.octopedia.com

4. Submit to 350 free directories at http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php

5. Write and submit at least 6 articles to about 15 directory websites.

• www.Searchwarp.com
• www.buzzle.com
• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.articledashboard.com
• www.goarticles.com
• www.isnare.com
• www.Articlesender.com
• www.biz-whiz.com
• www.ideaviewer.com
• www.digg.com
• www.ezineplug.com
• www.articlebiz.com
• www.bigarticles.com
• www.articlealley.com
• www.articlehub.com

6. Submit one press release to sites like:

• www.pr.com
• www.prweb.com
• www.prnewswire.com
• www.i-newswire.com

Bid Management 101

BID MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE IS SEEN by many, at least at first sight, as the solution to all of their paid search management issues. As your paid search activities with Adwords, Yahoo Search and others increase, it is common to run into management issues with the number of phrases, along with such challenges as bidding in a competitive industry, and applying good return-on-investment tracking and methodologies. Ultimately manual management of campaigns becomes time consuming, confusing and leads to campaigns that are less effective than they should be.

For those considering bid management software, one analogy comes to mind. Many years ago when undertaking management training I was required to undertake a project management role for 3 months, so imagine my delight when I got my hands on a copy of MS Project and thought "Wow! This will be easy - the software will manage everything for me." Obviously, MS Project does not make you into a project manager, and it is equally true that bid management software does not make you into a Search Marketer; it just provides you will some advanced tools to take your search marketing to the next level.

For those not familiar with bid management I have outlined some of the key capabilities of modern bid management systems below. The capabilities discussed are primarily taken from www.keywordmax.com and www.atlasonepoint.com

Basic Settings

There are two basic settings in any bid management project. These are the maximum bid that the software should bid up to, and the optimum ranking/position that you would like to obtain for each keyword. In a simplistic model, the software will increase the bid periodically (a number of times per day) until either the optimum rank is achieved or the maximum bid is reached.

Position Bidding (not all possible in Adwords)

There are a number of more complex ways in which the desired rank can be determined. These include Bid Shadowing, where you specify a target URL (competitor) and set it to whether you would like to rank above or below them.

Because of the way the bidding system works, there are gaps in the amount each advertiser is paying per click. These can be detected by the software and your bid adjusted to take advantage of the savings the gap represents per click.

The final and most interesting form of position bidding is only for the most aggressive advertisers, but all of us need to be aware of it. It is called Bid Jamming, and works like this: There are 3 advertisers A, B & C. [A] sets max bid to $4.00, [B] to $1.00 and [C] to 20 cents. An advertiser only pays 1 cent more than the next person's max bid and so [A] pays $1.01 per click, and [B] pays $0.21. However if company B employed a Bid Jamming strategy they would increase their bid to $3.99 and company A would now be paying $4.00 per click! Company B still only pays 21 cents. Bid management software also provides Bid Jamming protection that minimises the effect of competitors trying to jam you!

Return Bidding

By placing tracking code on your site, you can use a number of outcome metrics to control how much you bid for specific keywords. At the simple end, you would track enquiries you receive and adjust bids automatically so you only pay $20 CPA (cost per acquisition).

At the other end of the scale, an e-commerce site offering a wide range of products would calculate the average margin or profit of each order and create rules to adjust bids on this basis. This allows bidding for high margin items that's more aggressive than bidding on low margin items. The impact on your bottom line can be dramatic.

Time Based Bidding

In many industries the conversion rates vary by time of day and day of week, and using bid management software to control bids and campaigns on a time basis is the only practical option. The easiest way to get started is to review your conversion rates by the hour to see if any variations are detectable. You may need to undertake a small data gathering project to get useful information.

Advanced Campaign Optimization

Many software providers are starting to bring out more advanced "learning" systems that automatically devise rule-based bidding strategies by analyzing a campaign's past performance. These systems do need sufficient amounts of volume and historical data as well as accurate keyword grouping to work well, but do offer interesting opportunities. 

The Waiting Game

The Toyota Prius has once again become a smoking hot commodity. The sales guys at the dealership tell me that when gas hit $3.25 a gallon about 9 months ago, there was a 60-90 day waiting period to get the 2008 Toyota Prius. Then when gas prices slipped back to around $3.15 a gallon, their lots were jam packed with Prius's. Now that oil has spiked to $3.77, they're back to 60-90 day back orders for the same exact product.

People's reactions change like the weather. I'm no different. Good thing I only have to wait 10 days!

Engagements Make You Do Funny Things

Gotcha suckaaa!

Getting Lighter

I got a pretty bad case of the flu this month and knocked me out for two whole weeks. I'm trying to pin point where this could have been contracted, but it's pointless now. It seems as though it's getting harder to combat each year too. Anyhow, I'll be back to posting regularly...

Living With Apple TV

So it's been about a week since I've purchased and installed the new apple tv. Overall not bad, but if you are thinking about replacing cable for this, not so fast. I always detested the idea of having to pay for cable since the idea was that subscribers would subsidize the need for advertisements on cable programming per the astronomical subscription fees. Should I be paying for content I'm not watching or just selective content? I don't know yet, but that's what intrigued me about the apple tv.

If your thinking about getting one, here are few tips I suggest you implement before you install and sync with itunes for the mac os x.

1. Make sure you buy an external hard drive. I run a Macbook Pro laptop so my storage space is limited. Besides video files are bloated, and can eat up space very quickly
2. Set up your itunes to open and sync with a totally new library. That way you can sync the external hard drive with movies and video only, and not interfere with other types of syncing (i.e. iPhone, iPods, other macs, etc). Switching libraries is simple; hold down the option key on your Mac (or shift key on Windows) when you launch iTunes, you'll get the option to create a new library or choose the library you want to load.
3. Buy a Airport Extreme or Time Capsule to stream and sync movies and television shows wirelessly. No messy wires and you can truly separate your TV with your home networking crap
4. Watching TV is different now, so no news or sports to digest. Unless you get lucky with the occasional video podcast - but even those are updated at least one day behind. Audio podcasts are different and get updated daily - like NPR. But seeing that it's on your TV, it beats the purpose of watching actual video content.
5. You can't purchase movies on the Apple TV. Only movie rentals. Hopefully they will follow through with a subscription based model like NetFlix and charge unlimited movie rentals for $17.99 per month.
6. The remote is way too small. My 1 year old grabbed the remote when I wasn't looking and hid the tiny remote in her stroller. So there is no way to control the blasted thing without the tiny plastic remote.
7. No commercials are nice, but $2 per show can really add up, so be aware of your viewing consumption habits. I've actually been watching less tv, because the video podcasts and youtube videos are way short so I have more time to read Ben and Jackie.
8. Content is fragmented, so don't expect a full viewing session when you sit down to watch the nightly news. I have to be trained to watch programs all over again.

That's about it for now. I'll update as more develops with this.

Nine Inch Nails Marketing

Trent Reznor has some really good ideas. Back in 2007 he released Zero One, and put together an elborate easter egg hunt to tease and engage his most loyal of fans. Now... He releases an impromptu 36 song soundscape album on YouTube defying his fans to come up with creations to supplement his music. Then he improves his lesser offerings and releases 9 songs for free, all you need is an email address and he'll send you a download link. But of course the real fans are going to want the whole thing (the better stuff is on the works 28-34 anyways). That runs you $5. But the hard core followers are paying $300 for the limited edition package set of 2,500 (which just got sold out at the time of this posting).

Do the math, that's $750K in 2 weeks. All because he put his thinking cap on and tapped his hard core fans the right way. These fans become mini marketers spreading the good word. All for free. Brilliant.

iPhone SDK - Voice To Blog Request

Now that the new iPhone SDK is out, I'm calling on any software developer(s) to make this request.

1. I want to turn my iPhone (or iPod) into a voice recorder and save my recording into some editable audio format. Since the headphones come with a microphone, I'm sure inputs won't be a problem.
2. Synch my iPhone to import the recording to my computer (Mac OS X running Leopard or PC running Windows XP or Vista).
3. Then use Dictate to convert what I said into text.
4. Finally, publish that text to the blog.

Preferably all this can be automated into a single step, but bottom line, I think tons of folks would now have the bandwidth to blog heavily and regularly. So any angel developers out there looking to make something new and useful, do the world a favor and make this please?

We Can Do It Better

Movies like Be Kind Rewind really appeal to me. Not so much for the story line (although the plot was highly unusual which I always dig), but for the message it touts - We can do it better than the pros.

Hollywood has provided the formula(s). Technology has provided the means to creation and distribution. The beauty of this self created user generated work is that it means something to the user or in this case the community. All have a part in the the making and re-enactment of the story, which means much more than polished production value.

Wouldn't you pay more to see yourself in a movie?

CBS Radio Mystery Theater MP3 Download

A few years back, an old designer friend of mine turned me onto some really old science fiction audio stories from the 1970's: CBS Radio Mystery Theater .

These are perfect for long plane trips, traffic distractions, creative facilitations, work displacements, etc. So I have about 50 CBS Radio Mystery Theater episodes in mp3 format ready for download. I don't have much space to pop these on my server, so if you want a copy of any of these titles in MP3 format, send me an email and I'll send you a copy.

Title	Length	Show
Area Thirteen	42:18:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Berenice	44:38:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Black Room	48:11:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Body Snatchers	42:47:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Brain Drain	42:13:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Bullet	40:12:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Cabinet of Unsolved	45:37:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Checkmate	1:00:13	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Coffin for Devil	42:05:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Colony	41:57:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Damned Thing	44:38:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Diary of a Madman	44:20:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Dig Me Deadly	1:01:38	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Don Quixote	43:30:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Dracula	55:05:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Edge of Death	52:04:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Final Step	50:50:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Follower	41:36:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Four-Fifteen Express	40:08:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Frontiers of Fear	51:23:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Garrison of Dead	44:31:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Ghost at the Gate	44:10:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Ghost Driver	57:35:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The God Machine	46:00:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Harry's Taxi T-Machine	44:22:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Horror of DeadLake	41:37:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
House of Usher	40:54:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Lone Survivor	44:22:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Lost Dog	51:09:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Man in Black Cap	42:57:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Meteorite	45:24:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Ninth Volume	43:51:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
No Business Like	45:13:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Oblong Box	44:24:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Ocean of Emptiness	46:39:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Old Ones Kill	41:50:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Phantom Stop	44:45:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Phantom World	40:16:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Spaces on the Wall	46:03:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Stitch in Time	51:49:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Strange Lucas Lauder	42:23:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Terror in the Air	54:12:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Therapeutic Cat	43:07:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Time and Again	53:36:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Transmutations Inc	44:27:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Transplant	44:45:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
The Unquiet Tomb	45:22:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Unseen and the Seen	43:17:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
Now You See Them	46:04:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater
A Stranger Among Us	44:04:00	CBS Radio Mystery Theater

Here are 10 more CBS Radio Mystery Theater episodes not in my collection but available for download in mp3