Joe Whyte - Digital Marketer » SEO

Interview with Michael Jenson of SOLO SEO

joe.whyte — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 02:36:58 +0000

I found an old interview I did with Michael Jenson of SOLO SEO a few months back. It was in a pretty raw format when I got it. This interview was taking with web hosting in mind so I posted this information over at LP as I thought it would be a good idea.

Michael Jenson has put together some really great mybloglog tools and have developed an interesting system for personal SEO enthusiasts. I strongly recomend checking out SOLO SEO and Michaels tools.

If you are interested in seeing my interview with Michael please check this post out.

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Utilizing YOUMoz to gain traction and authority for your SEO company

joe.whyte — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:16:20 +0000

Around the time that I developed Rockyfied Rand had created and developed a system called YOUmoz. Youmoz is a hybrid version of the seomoz.org blog. Over the last 2 years Rand Fishkin and his blogtastic cohorts have been laying down highly informative and education posts on SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing and much more.

Recently, SEOmoz has released its new design and along with the new design comes a new bursting opportunity for social media. In the last 2 years seomoz.org has gown from obscurity to the high traffic powerhouse it is today which is why YOUmoz is a perfect chance to implement a new version of Social Media.

Recently Rand has been inserting YOUmoz posts into seomoz.orgs main blog. Getting your post on YOUmoz over to seomoz main blog can result in as big of a spike in traffic as digg, del.icio.us and stumble upon. The only difference is that it is a Social Media Niche for SEO and Internet Marketing. Recently I read a post done by Daniel Tynski about ” a comprehensive guide to going viral on digg”. It was a pretty good post on digg and how to be successful on it.

Let me show you how getting a post from YOUmoz to SEOmoz can effect your traffic as much as getting an article on digg.

Mr. Tynski recently just put his site online and has released 2 posts utilizing Youmoz has a social media jump off to gain traction for his SEO company. See the Graph below which indicates when his blog first started gaining traction.

His first post on the “anatomy of a super digg” was moved over from YOUmoz to SEOmoz and created his first push in traffic as you can see represented from theFeb 19 to the 22. The next time he created a post which resulted in a move from YOUmoz to SEOmoz was around March 3rd called ” A comprehensive guide to going viral on digg” which landed him an enormous amount of SEOmoz traffic.

What daniel has done is utilize YOUmoz to gain traction and traffic to his own SEO firm. I am pretty impressed with his leveraging and I have a feeling many other companies will follow him in his footsteps.

Now that you know the power behind YOUmoz lets digg into some factors to consider to get your YOUmoz post over to SEOmoz.

How informative is your YOUmoz piece:
Depending on how informative your post is will have a strong influence on weather rand or someone from the SEOMoz team brings your post over. Give as much proof, examples and tips as you can . Don’t be shy to link to informative articles and or sites.

How Accurate are you:
In order to have your YOUmoz post make it to SEOmoz blog you will need to be accurate. Obviously, anything that contains errors or is claiming a fact that is at best considered an opinion.

Are you utilizing your SMO:
Link Bait and title bait are very important. These are key considerations when writing for the public. Is your title attractive, are you utilizing lists or do you target hot subjects in the industry? The more attractive your story is the better chance you will make it from YOUmoz to SEOmoz.

How in depth is your post:
Most likely a small post will not get from YOUmoz to SEOmoz unless its something that is extra special. Make your posts in depth but not LONG. There is a difference. Informative posts are long because they are full of education , tips and tricks. Long posts can be full of nothing.

What is the objective of the post:
Are you using YOUmoz to just self promote? Is your only motive for posting at YOUmoz self gain? Are you trying to game YOUmoz for self gratification? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you probably won’t make it into SEOmoz from YOUmoz.

Are you offering something new and fresh to the community:
So you have created a post that is indepth, articulate, thoughtful and you are utilizing your SMO. Great, but is your post topic outdated or regurgitated material? From what I have seen, YOUmoz posts make it to SEOmoz blog because they put an interesting spin on a widely talked about and virally hot subject.

Are you an active user on SEOmoz:
Honestly I really doubte that this is to big of a concern. I think the powers at SEOmoz would appreciate it but I think they know how to spot real potential and really great posts and what it comes down to is basically, is your post worthy?

Watch your popular posts:
Something that I like to do is take a look at the most popular YOUmoz posts going on. This portion of SEOmoz reminds me a lot of the popular user list on digg before it was taken down. Take a look at your YOUmoz most popular posts here.

I know Rand had mentioned to me that he would be putting together a post on outlining a posting guide for YOUmoz but I thought it would be fun to put together a post on how you might get a YOUmoz post over to SEOmoz. I am really impressed with the idea of YOUmoz and I knew the first day it was released that it would be a big success. Something that I did not think of is that it would be a new form of social media. I expect in the future for many other highly trafficed sites to follow suit. Who know, we might even see newspaper’s doing something like YOUnews Orange County .

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31 reasons why SEOs suck – 53 reasons why We Rock!

joe.whyte — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:07:43 +0000

Reasons Why SEOs SUCK

1.Some SEOs unnaturally alter digg rankings which cause you to get banned

2.Some SEOs use keyword stuffing to make you rank better but get you banned

3.Some SEOs use cloaking

4.Some SEOs take prepayment and give you no results

5.Some SEOs do spam email marketing

6.Some SEOs guarantee top ten natural rankings but deliver you top 10 paid search results

7.Some SEOs will tell you a nice web 2.o site structure needs to be redesigned with table description

8.Some SEOs scare you by saying many things are wrong with your site so they can charge you more like a car salesman

9.Some SEOs charge you for monthly search engine submissions to top search engines

10.Some SEOs have never done SEO professionally and you are their first real client – be careful

11.Some SEOs take a white hat site and employ techniques they used to get ranked on MSN but ban your site in Google

12.When an SEO only communicates via email

13.When an SEO uses a digg spammer to get your post on the top of digg and digg bans your URL – sneaky black hat seo

14.When an SEO charges 20 grand for meta tag optimization

15.When an SEO firm gets it’s client sites banned for interlinking/link farming

16.When an SEO requires one grand a month for maintenance while they do NOTHING on your site

17.When you take your SERP ranking problems to two different SEOs and they both tell you different stories on what is wrong

18.When an SEO gets 10,000 inbound links in a month and Google bans you

19.When an SEO creates a link development campaign and puts you into a link whole you can never recover from so you have to buy a new domain name

20.When an SEO is not familiar with Google filters and gets your site caught in them

21When you have to sign an SEO contract and on the contract it states “if your rankings disappear or 22.you get banned you cannot sue me”

23.We think we are really hot stuff

24.Some SEOs have only a high school diploma and some college credits but make more then people 25.who have Bachelor degrees

26.Most of us do not have tone bodies

27.We speak our mind and that offends people

28.We all like Stephen Colbert and the daily show

29.We like to tell people about new SEO ideas, topics, tricks or techniques but we do not give out our secrets. We only give people the tip of the iceberg and let them figure it out for themselves.

30.We are complete nerds

31.If you piss SEOs off they can bring your site down or Google bowl it

53 Reasons why SEOs Rock

1.If you need to be found online but do not know how

2.When you get banned we can sometimes unban you from the search engines

3.We can get you quality links

4.We have contacts in the industry to help us get discounts

5.The good SEOs can get you on digg again and again without being banned or unethical

6.The good SEOs will educate you as you go along your optimization

7.The good SEOs wont charge you an arm and a leg for simple modifications

8.We can get you to rank for competitive keyword phrases

9.SEO can make or break a new business

10.SEOs can help your search engine saturation which increases branding, sales and ranking

11.The good SEOs will not utilize black hat techniques and they will NOT get you banned

12.Maintaining search results is a full time job and some one has to do it

13.The Internet is the major source for retrieving information – you need someone to make you appear in the search
results

14.SEOs can help make your site a self reinforced authority site

15.We can diagnose problems in the serps and find ways to fix the problems

16.We know how to read multiple analytics

17.We can improve PPC landing pages to help better PPC campaigns

18.We can improve your sites conversion rate

19.We can control search engine spiders – we are the lord of the spiders

20.We can analyze and optimize the BEST keywords to target

21.We can create sub pages to rank for 2nd tier keywords and 3rd tier and so on

22.We can create and optimize multiple satellite sites to get rankings and sales for the mother site

23.We are ambitious

24.We are attractive

25.We are nerds but the cool kind

26.We are fashionable

27.Many of us are Rockyfied – triumph in the face of overwhelming odds – Rankings for the top tier of competitive
keyword phrases

28.We are experts at link bait which can drive return traffic and spike traffic to your site

29.We are experts at conversion methods

30.We can kill a deer with one hand

31.Many SEOs are actually SEM, PPC, SMO and Internet marketers so we where many hats

32.We are involved with SEO on a daily basis so we are up to date and aware of where search used to be where it is now and where its going

33.The good SEOs have the experience and the reputation that you can count on to get the job done

34.We can improve your CTR and lower your PPC budget

35.Good SEOs have quality contracts and excellent customer service

36.We offer consultation for the do it yourselfer

37.We have experience with multiple verticals and expertise with optimizing them

38.Most quality SEOs have a blog with high traffic and quality rep

39.We know what we are doing over the average JOE

40.SEO is to important to leave it up to someone that does not know what they are doing

41.In the hands of incompetency you can ruin your site for life

42.To be successful you need to rank well for your keyword terms – That is our job

43.We can diagnose technical issues missed by the untrained eye

44.Good SEOsare ethical

45.We attend conventions to challenge our thought, increase networking and are dedicated to constantly learning in this ever changing medium

46.Most of us are designers as well as SEOs

47.If you have a product or site and need exposure we are your go to guys

48.We know what an H tag is and why its important

49.We keep on top of algorithm changes

50.We keep on top of new patents placed by the Search Engines

51.Without us, most popular, worthy sites would NOT be ranked well in the search engines

52.Without us Google, MSN, Yahoo and the other major search engines would not be as popular because their results
would not return accurate sites for customer queries.

53. We are trend setters

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Deep linking, when to do it and is it illegal?

joe.whyte — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:35:45 +0000

Deep linking has been a topic of interest for the longest time. There have been many litigations and court cases challenging free speach and copyright infringment associated with linking to internal pages. Read my article about Deep Linking at search marketing standard.

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Google Filters, how to get around them and exploit their loop holes

joe.whyte — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 02:18:20 +0000

I have been doing SEO for some time now and I have been witness to many a strange occurrence regarding serps. Most of these weird occurrence I would have to say are directly attributed to a Google Filter or Google penalty. So I have been inspired by a post over at webmasterworld and as far as I know there is not a current list out online that list’s all of the potential Google penalties so I have decided to put together an arbitrary list of potential Google Penalties. Please note that there is no proof i.e. press release from Google stating these exist but rather these are ideas, theories and assumptions from SEO’s experiences.

Google Sandbox: The Sandbox Filter is usually applied to brand new websites but has been seen to be applied to domains that have been around for a while. Since most websites do not make it past a year Google implemented a filter that will prevent a new site from getting decent rankings for competitive keyword terms. Usually brand new sites can still rank for non competitive keyword terms though.

How to work around the Sandbox: Google uses a system called trust rank. The idea behind trust rank is if authority sites link to your new site then you must be an authority site as well and since Google trust’s these older more respected sites it will trust your’s as well. Hence getting you out of the sandbox right away. That is not an easy thing to do so if you are not able to get these links then try expanding your content to rank for many more less competitive keywords and keyword phrases (long tail keywords).

Google -30: This Google filter is applied to site’s who use spammy seo tactics. When Google find you using doorway pages, java redirects etc then they will drop your rankings by 30 spots.

How to get around this: If you find yourself a victim of the Google -30 filter then usually just removing the spam elements on your site will get you back in. You can always fill out a request for re-inclusion is worse comes to worse. Here are some resources for the Google -30. Arelis, Threadwatch, SERoundtable.

Google Bombing: Google Bombing is a filter applied to sites who gain a large number of inbound links with the same anchor text. This raises a red flag to Google as it is extremely unnatural for an inbound linking structure to all have the exact same anchor text.

How to work around this: If your site actually has this filter applied then most likely you have been banned from the search engines and a re-inclusion request is probably your best bet. If the filter is not applied but through your monitoring you see this potential then you might want to go back and request people change your anchor text, buy some links with varying anchor text etc. Here are some resources for Google Bombing. Search Engine Watch, NYTimes, Google Blogspot.

Google Bowling: This is not really a filter as much as it is a series of black hat techniques that will get you banned. Usually people use this term in reference to competition or a page/site they want OUT of the serps. Google bowling is usually only effective to site’s that are much new with lower trust rank. Trying to do this to a large site with high trust rank is going to be virtually impossible.

How to get around this: Google says that there is nothing a competitor can do to drop YOUR rankings. Many seo’s do not believe this and if you seoblackhat sells services for something like this. Re-inclusion request is basically your only option. Here are some resources for Google Bowling. Web Pro News, ThreadWatch and SEroundtable.

Google Duplicate Content Filter: A duplicate content filter is applied to sites who take content that has already been created, cached and indexed on other sites. News sites are usually exempt from the duplicate content filter via a hand job. Usually the pages that have this applied are not ranked very well in the serps. Page Rank can be devalued and if a page does not have inbound links you could see your results being put into omitted search results and supplemental results.

How to get through this: If you find yourself in this filter then your first step can be trying to remedy the duplicate content. Contact the person stealing your content and ask them to remove it. You can contact the persons web host to see if they will take down there site and the last resort is “trying” to contact Google and alert them of what is going on. Keep on top of your content by using copyscape to check for duplicate content.

Google Supplemental Results: Google supplemental results take pages on your site that have been indexed and put them into a sub database in Google. Supplemental results do not rank well but rather Google uses its supplemental DB to populate its results when they don’t have enough results to show in a given query. This means pages on your site in Google’s supplemental DB will not help you in the serps.

How to get through this: Its pretty simple actually. Just get some inbound links to your pages. Check this post out to find out more about the Google Poo (supplemental results).

Google Domain name Age Filter: The Google domain name age filter is closely related to trust rank and the sandbox but it is possible to be out of the sandbox and have trust rank and still be in this filter. The idea behind this filter is that older sites and domain names are more likely to rank well for keyword terms then newer sites. If you are in this filter you will most likely not rank well for terms that are competitive until your site grows older.

How to work around this: Quality links from authority sites with high trust rank will help you do much better in the serps.

Google’s Omitted Results Filter: Pages within your website that are in omitted search results will not show up in a Google search unless a user specifically says to show all omitted results. Usually users do not even get to the last page to do this which makes any page of yours that is omitted completely out of a Google search result. The reason this happens is lack on inbound links, duplicate content, duplicate meta title, duplicate meta description and poor internal linking.

How to get out of this: In order to get pages are omitted out of this filter simply alter the meta tags and fix duplicate content and get some quality inbound links.

Google’s Trust Rank Filter: Like the PageRank algorithm the trust rank algorithm has many factors that determine a sites trust rank. Some of the known factors are the age of a site, the amount of quality authority links pointing to it, how many outbound links it has, the quality of its inbound linking structure, internal linking structure and overall SEO best practices on meta and url structure. All sites go through this filter and if your Trust Rank is low so will your rankings in the serps.

How to get work with this: An old site and a new site can both have high trust rank or low trust rank. It is basically determined by the amount of quality authority links pointing to it, how many outbound links it has, the quality of its inbound linking structure, internal linking structure and overall SEO best practices on meta and url structure. Optimize these and you will have quality Trust rank.

links.htm page filter: This filter penalizes a sites ranking determined by the use of a links.html page. Using reciprocal linking is a old technique that is not promoted by Google anymore. This filter effects your ranking in the serps.

How to work with this filter: Instead of using “links” as your page title and name try using something like “mynewbuddies” or “coolsites” as this will help get around this filter. Reciprocal links are old seo techniques and Google devalues reciprocal linking structures.Here is someone discussing this at SEOChat.

Reciprocal Link Filter: Google is very open about reciprocal linking and clearly states that their algorithm can detect reciprocal link campaigns. Usually sites that only participate in reciprocal linking will have a hard time ranking in the search engines but depending on what you are using your site for a reciprocal links campaign might be exactly what you need. For example if you are building an adsense site then you do not want to spend to much time building a site up and a reciprocal linking campaign will help your sites inbound links grow over time.

How to work with this filter: When it comes to building an inbound linking structure try to utilize some or all of the 15 types of links and how to get them post I did a ways back. Here are some resources about this filter. Matt Cutts here and here, Search engine guide and Webmasterworld.

Link Farming Filter: Link farms are sites/pages that have a mass amount of unrelated links grouped together arbitrarily. Link farms can also be related links but most commonly they are unrelated. IP farms and bad link neighborhoods are all part of link farming. Being a part of a link farm can get your rankings dropped in Google and possibly get you banned.

How to get around this: Currently the only way to get around this is to NOT participate in link farming. Here are some resources on link farming:

CO-citation Linking Filter: This popular filter by Google watches your inbound link structure. If your link is on a site who’s outbound links are related to casino’s and porn sites and your automotive site is an outbound link on this site then google will think your site is related to porn and casinos. Poorly constructed co-citation will damage your ranking and make it hard for you to rank well for the terms you are targeting.

How to work with this: When considering a link partner, paid link or monitoring your inbound links be sure to follow this linking quaility guidline page that was derived from Patrick Gavin over at text link ads.

To many links at once Filter: This filter is applied when to many inbound links are acquired by a site to fast. The result can lead to a ban across all search engines. How these links are obtained, how many and over what period of time are factors for this filter.

How to get around this: Simply do not participate in black hat linking schemes and link spaming and you should never have a problem with this. Here is some information concerning this filter over at Aaron Walls at SEObook.com,

To many Pages at once filter: Google is keen on natural site development. Anything that look “unnatural” is going to be flaged by the search engines. Having to many pages to fast will raise this flag/filter. Some people believe that 5000 is the max for pages in a month but this number in my opinion can fluctuate depending on other factors and filters your site might be going through at any given time. The effect of this filter can result in pages being omitted, pages in supplemental results and in the extreme case a Google ban.

How to get through this filter: If you have a system that pulls content in or are using a dynamic content generator be sure to limit it per week and I would stay under 5000 pages per month just to be on the safe side. Depending on how large or well known your site is then the limit will be adjusted.

Broken Link Filter: Broken internal links can cause pages from not being crawled, cached and indexed. If pages like your home page do not have a link back to it on all pages this can count against you in the serps and your overall quality score for things like PR. This is not just bad seo and bad site design but this is bad for your users and can cause poor traffic and poor serp ranking.

How to get through this: Make sure you have a quality footer, a sitemap that covers all of your pages in one central hub and make sure you test your site for broken links. (be sure to use full url’s in your linking via source code).

Page Load Time Filter: The page load filter is very simple. If your website takes to long to load then a spider will time out and move past your site or page. This will result in NEVER being cached and indexed. Ultimately this means your site or page will not be present in Googles SERPS.

How to work with this: Make sure your pages are optimized for load time. Make sure if you are using flash or many images you use java pre-load coding. Make sure you limit the file size of your page’s as much as possible to make sure the spiders can read the entire document and be sure to use web 2.0 and css best practices.

Over Optimization Filter: Over optimization can cause a Google ban or hardship in rankings. Over optimization could be considered keyword stuffing, to much keyword density and keyword proximity optimization, meta tag stuffing etc. Stay away from over optimization.

How to get around this: Don’t over optimize!!!!

There are some filter’s I have not mentioned but I thought I would give a smaller list of other filters that could be attributed to Google:

Keyword Stuffing Filter:
Meta Tag Stuffing Filter:
Automated Google Query Filter:
IP Class Filter:
Google Toolbar Filter:
Click through Filter in serps:
Traffic Filter:
Google -950 Filter:
I would like to hear what other SEO professionals have to say about my list as I have seen a lot of these and I have heard other’s speak of these and since Google has not come out and told all of use which filters exists and do not exists please consider this an excersize of knowledge expansion for all .

P.S. Mark Blair put together a very nice printable pdf file version of this post for your downloadable and printable pleasure . Thanks Mark!

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Optimizing your social media | Digg, Reddit, Netscape and MYspace

joe.whyte — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 04:37:42 +0000

In the last 6-12 months social media optimization has been a very highly talked about and discussed venue for traffic. Although social media sites like myspace have been around much longer then a year over the last year many internet marketers and SEO’s have been focusing their attention on marketing and gaming these sites. With the emergence of proper SMO the need to have top rankings in the SERP’s has decreased and the need to optimze content for sites like digg, myspace, redditt, newsvine etc. has become a very indemand skill.

Anyone who is an SEO/SEM should definitly know about SMO and if they are serious SEO’s they should learn how to be a SMO.

Lets take a quick look at SMO results over at shoemoney.com. Jeremy released a blog post about 10 reasons why Microsoft will aquire Yahoo! in 2007 and soon after that released his traffic stats which shows almost a 100% boost in his traffic from reaching the first page of digg. These results are being seen all over the web but the problem I see is that the boost of immediate traffic is extremely fast BUT the drop in traffic is also fast. Darren Rowse posted a pretty interesting article on how to cultivate your digg traffic into long term traffic which is a great resource for anyone looking to become successful as an SMO.

Here is a quick break down of what Darren mentioned.
-Style of Writing
-Topic of Writing
-Become a Digg User
-Comment on other key sites and blogs
-Drive Traffic to Diggable posts
-Make it easy to digg your work
-Titles and first lines are important
-Digg own stories with caution
-Celebrate Digging subtly
-Quality Content

I think this is a great list but I would like to add onto it if I may and since its my own blog I MAY!!!

-Utilize your My #1
-Notify people of a diggable story (do this with caution as to not spam people but if you have a report with some diggers it is perfectly ok to let them know of a diggable digg)
-DO NOT ask top diggers to digg for you in exchange for cash
-Becoming a member is not enough you need to become VERY active within digg.
-Comment First before you digg an article
-Get involved in community forums NOT JUST blog sites and leave comments and informative posts regarding your posts (do not spam)
-Comment back on people who leave you comments from digg.
-Comment back on comments left on your dugg articles ON DIGG.
-Be concious of the digg community as they are VERY fickle.

There are tons of social media sites out there and the first thing an SMO should do is figure out a sites algorithm. Rand Fishkin over at SEOmoz.org put together a great list of ranking factors that Digg, Reddit, Netscape, and Shoutwire might use. Todd malicoat came out with a great post about how DIGG will be the next google and gave some great suggestions about how to improve digg. He also did a really great interview with web pro news with neil patel and I will post that now. Its kinda long but I loved this interview as todd and neil really gives us a play by play on how to become a SMO.

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO LEARN!!!

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By the way if you are looking to create a site like this you can use PLIGG which is a content management system for digg like sites. I put together a test one over at youhypeit.com.

Myspace marketing – everyone is doing it but is the traffic really there?
If you have been on myspace recently you have noticed a HUGE increase on how many profiles have been created that are 100% marketing profiles like the boost mobile profile or the personal marketing profiles like the Tera Patrick Profile.These profiles are pure marekting tools that have been created with the sole purpose of marketing a product or a person. I am sure you get the email and bulletins that are complete spam and you just over look them. This is pretty much the attitude of your myspace community. Here is a list of some things that myspace members are pretty aware of and usually look over and why it seems like the marketer is marketing to other marketers.

-Bulletin spam: the same bulletin over and over again or bulletin’s that are specifically selling a product or service.
-Email spam: Myspace spam emails can get pretty out of hand and since myspace has not truely implemented any kind of spam protection these emails are easily spotted and overlooked.
-Comment spam: comment spam is usally the same message over and over again and not specific to a person or their life so sometimes these comments are actually posted but a click through is usually far from ever happening.
-The myspace community is there for friends, family and networking NOT purchasing a product through your profile. The digg community is kinda like the myspace community.
-Over the last 6 months I have seen real people’s profiles with thousands of friends get knocked down to just there immediate friends and new networking aquantances. The myspace community is pushing away from fake profiles and more towards real people.
-The myspace community finds these spam profiles misleading, bothersome upsetting.

How to tell if you are marketing to other marketers?
-When you mass friend request usualy the people who add you back are other marketers.
-You find a large amount of comments on your site are from other marketers
-Most of your emails are from marketers and not real people inquiring about your product/service
-Your bulletin’s are complete spam

How can you make myspace marketing work?
-Make your profile an attractive womens profile.
-Right your page copy as a real person.
-Do not oversell or over push a product or service. If you are going to mention something be subtle.
-When doing timed bulletins vary the text and make them hours apart.
-Interact with people on myspace so you do not come off spammy.
-DO NOT email market but subtly talk to people and see if you can get them to advertise for you and promote you or your service for you.
-Purchase banner ads on myspace
-Purchase new sponsored links
-Remove spam comments from your profile
-Use a template and spice up your site with music and photos
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person
-Make your profile seem like its a real person

NOTE: Somthing I think most social media marketers will agree on is that people need to trust your profile in order for you to be successful.

Todd Malicoat listed some great other resources for myspace marketing and I will repost them here.

I would like to add a few resources as well

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Google Search Suggestion for Popular Search Terms

joe.whyte — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 05:36:12 +0000

I was doing some searching for “web hosting” and I noticed something new in the google serps. I noticed a series of links at the bottom of this search that shows other related search’s. We have seen these types of serp changes before with real estate searches and specific refinements although this is less of a refinement and more of a suggestion by Google. I think this could be a way to help novice searches search more effectively. This could also be great information for SEO’s who are wondering what related terms to rank for or dominate .

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Interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org and Joe Whyte | SEO Corner

joe.whyte — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 08:37:26 +0000

I was working on a new blog series on blog.lunarpages.com. I came up with the idea of interviewing some of the web’s most successful SEO and Internet Marketers. My first interview in the series is with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org. We talked about what a professional marketer needs to look for when considering a web hosting company. Stop in and take a look.

Lunarpages Blog

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Google Sneak’s images next to its ads

joe.whyte — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 06:51:30 +0000

I was over at blog.outer-court today and I could not believe my eyes when I read this. My jaw literally dropped! Something that adsense site owner’s like to do is put pictures next to adsense which helps the click through rate as people tend to identify pictures with links next to them which is a sneaky way to improve CTR that is prohibited in googles TOS. Here is an example of an adsense site owner placing ads next to images to improve ctr.

So google seems to have done something amost exactly against its OWN TOS. I guess its ok if google does it but NOT us.

This is what they have to say about their own images next to advertisers.

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Pre-production SEO and Googles Crawl Cycle

joe.whyte — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 07:04:10 +0000

When attempting to launch a site it is always a good plan to come out of the gates fast. Launching a site at the right time can mean the difference between monetizing your site now or in a couple months. To many SEO’s and Webmaster’s this might not even be an issue but for an SEO professional who has time constraints and deadlines these are must have tools. Out of the majority of major search engines Google is one of the fastest for inclusion. As expected, there are risk’s and potential concerns that we need to face regarding pre-production. Below I will be addressing how to catch the googlebot, how the Google cycle works and what this means to you.

Google “dance” cycle:

The Google update cycle is more then simple termonlogy regarding the update and shift Googles Serps go through during periodical updates but most recently google has incorporated a “Google Dance” at their conventions quite literally. Over the last few years pin pointing this dance has turned out to be more of a shot in the dark then an educated guess which is due to many algorithm updates.

The process of the google crawl is as follows:
Crawl one: Google sends out spiders or (Googlebot) out to spider the sites in its current database and to spider new websites. Sometime around 2 weeks Google will show these new results within a secondary and third level serp at www2.google.com and www3.google.com. User’s of Google will most likely see shifting in results as sometimes Google moves results from its second and third database to its primary database. Another problem I have encountered is that results can be different depending on what Google server your results are being pulled from again allowing many variations of potential search results until the smoke clears.

Crawl two: Once the new results are being shifted in the Google serps googlebot will again be sent out to start crawling new sites along with the current sites within its own index. This process continues and has been the case ever since Google has been around.
Note: It is important to watch the your PR update list as well to help you gage when Google’s PR updates are coming along with the cycling.

How to catch the Googlebot:

From what experts and user’s have found is that there is an update usually at the beginning of the month and then immediately during and after the first crawl so you will want to do your pre-production accordingly.

If you are looking to have a new site included into a certain months update then will either of these crawls get you into the database? Studies show that putting your site up at the beginning of the month might possibly NOT bring your site into the index within that months update. If your new site is crawled in the second phase then you could have a better chance of seeing your site in the revised results following the next month’s first crawl. In other circumstances you will see that Googlebot only grabs your homepage and your robots.txt which is a good indicator that your site will be revisited in the next update.

Here are some helpful tips: If your site is crawled after the first crawl then you are looking at most likely having your site included in the next update which should show new rankings within a month or a month and a half. Now to plan for the exact moment to launch your site and get a few inbound links would be best planed out rather then a random guess. You can do this by watching some of your other sites crawl and update patterns and time it accordingly. This should give you the key to increasing your update schedule for your new sites.

There is no 100% sure fire way to pinpoint these updates but you can use these steps and tools to help you make the best of your efforts.

-Obtain links from relevant sites with decent PR
-Submit your site to the add url page on google and other search engines
-Install the Google toolbar and visit your own site using the toolbar

How does this relate to your SEO Campaign

The information provided to SEO professionals can undoubtedly help with any pre production site launch and SEO campaign planning. This information can help with a tight production schedule and monetizing your site as quickly as possible.