has 13+ years experience in web development, ecommerce, and internet marketing. He has been actively involved in the internet marketing efforts of more then 100 websites in some of the most competitive industries online. John comes up with truly off the wall ideas, and has pioneered some completely unique marketing methods and campaigns. John is active in every single aspect of the work we do: link sourcing, website analytics, conversion optimization, PPC management, CMS, CRM, database management, hosting solutions, site optimization, social media, local search, content marketing. He is our conductor and idea man, and has a reputation of being a brutally honest straight shooter. He has been in the trenches directly and understands what motivates a site owner. His driven personality works to the client's benefit as his passion fuels his desire for your success. His aggressive approach is motivating, his intuition for internet marketing is fine tuned, and his knack for link building is unparalleled. He has been published in books, numerous international trade magazines, featured in the Wall Street Journal, sat on boards of trade associations, and has been a spokesperson for Fortune 100 corporations including MSN, Microsoft, EBay and Amazon at several internet marketing industry events. John is addicted to Peets coffee, loves travel and golf, and is a workaholic except on Sunday during Steelers games.
When Google started displaying search volume numbers on its famous AdWords Keyword Tool, I thought things could hardly get any better. It seems I was wrong though.
This week Google announced the release of a brand new tool. It’s called Google Insights for Search.
How is Google Insights for Search like?
I see it as a sort of Google Trends on steroids. This is due to the fact that with Google Insights for Search you can not only analyse regional trends — which are shown in maps for easier visualisation — but also view other data, such as related search terms and rising searches. Besides, this new keyword popularity tool lets you choose the desired comparison criteria: search terms (the traditional option on Google Trends), locations or time ranges. (more…)
I know it’s hard to believe, but for a long time I thought Google didn’t like blogs.
Some years ago, I read on an Internet marketing site — I can’t remember its address — that blogs were falling out of favour from Google and wouldn’t rank well, if at all. That piece of (mis)information had been written by a man who looked like an authority in site traffic, so I just assumed he was right and, unfortunately, I decided to ignore blogging. How silly I was.
Misinformation on blogging is still spread on a regular basis
Nowadays, just when you’d think blogs have gone mainstream, you’ll still stumble upon articles meant to classify blogging as a major waste of time. Their authors will tell you to avoid blogs if you want to succeed on the Internet. What’s worse: most of this (bad) advice is directed towards business owners. (more…)
It doesn’t take much browsing across Internet marketing sites to realise that having a niche is mandatory. This is the piece of advice that you’ll find everywhere you go: choose a niche for your site or blog and stick to it.
Why having a niche is so important anyway?
1. Niches help your visitors find what they want
When you give too many options to your readers, they may get confused, bored and eventually leave your site. People don’t have much time; they want to get things as fast as possible. They want to arrive to your blog and make sure that its topic is interesting to them. So, stick to a niche and help your visitors stay focused. Don’t distract them with pages on ten different, unrelated subjects.
2. Search engine optimisation is much easier with niches
Build your site around a specific subject and you’ll automatically help Google identify your content as relevant to all related search terms. It’s that simple. Now, I don’t mean that this is the only thing you need to do in order to rank well. Search engine optimisation is a process that involves several steps. But picking a proper niche for your site is one of them — a very sensible one. (more…)
Did you notice that Google and Digg have been sharing several headlines lately? Take a look at blogs, news sites and forums on our industry and you’ll find several references either to Digg’s acquisition by Google or to Google’s experiments with a Digg-like SERP interface.
Despite the fact that Google gave up on the Digg deal (for good or only temporarily?), the googlesphere is still excited about this topic. But…
Does Google need Digg?
Is Digg an essential tool for Google’s Internet dominance arsenal? It doesn’t seem to be the case.
* Google is already used by the vast majority of websurfers. Digg, despite its popularity, still looks like a small club dominated by a few privileged members.
* Digg lacks diversity; most links on it are of a geek-oriented nature. Google, on the other hand, can lead users to any type of site they want to see. This efficiency is the reason why it rules the search engine market.
Do Google users need Digg-like features?
How would those impact our search experience? Would such features give us the power to find more (good) sites in less time?
* Perhaps Google intends to use our own votes as a basis to bring us more customised results over time. However, isn’t it what our search history is for? At least, this is what’s been implied by a post at Google’s Official Blog.
* If you think a social voting system could effectively reduce manipulation of search results by suspicious webmasters… forget it. All social media sites are manipulated in some way (bury brigade anyone?). Why would a “social Google” be different?
Let’s see how the whole Google-Digg (or “Giggle,” as suggested by some good-humoured guys out there) case will evolve — if at all. Whenever I find any substantial news on this thought-provoking subject, I’ll write more about it.
While researching for the blog on PageRank I was about to publish in place of this one, I landed on Patently-O, a patent law blog that had this post: The Death of Google’s Patents?
It would be interesting to know what you all think about this development.
For the longest time, traditional news wires have been the preferred choice when it came to disseminating information. They can send releases where it matters – newsrooms, trading desks and websites – quite fast. But although they may be efficient, they can also be costly. Calls for alternative means have been getting stronger in the past few years, thanks in part to the rapid development of the Internet. Just recently, the US SEC has finally responded. Companies may now solely use their websites and blogs to meet public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), as long as they follow a new set of guidelines to be released by the commission. Chairman Cox has this to say: (more…)
How can you choose the best headline — or at least the most appropriate one — for each article? I’m going to offer some suggestions that may help you make a decision next time you write a new post.
Why should I care about writing deadlines anyway?
Because each article’s headline is like an ad.
The headline is obviously the very first thing readers will see. If it doesn’t catch their attention, you’ll be in trouble. Some readers will proceed to read the article descriptions or excerpts available on search engines and social media sites, even when a headline doesn’t look particularly interesting. But many won’t do it. If your headline doesn’t make they feel compelled to read on, you’ll lose them.
Of course, the whole article must be good, not only its title. But then again, a good article without a good headline may pass unnoticed.
How is a good headline like?
While it depends on your audience — not all types of readers will react equally to the same titles — , it’s safe to say that the best headlines are the ones that let your readers know in advance what your articles are about. It’s a matter of usability: people feel more comfortable when they know what they are going to see after clicking on a link. (more…)
AdSense has always been ideal for small blogs as barrier to entry is so little. As long as you can get some traffic going, you can start making money right away, albeit probably not much in the beginning. However, there are changes in Google’s AdWords program that may tip the scales in favor of the bigger, more established websites. From Google’s Adsense blog:
“One of the main changes is the ability for advertisers to be more specific with their ad targeting through a combination of contextual targeting and placement targeting. As you may know, contextually targeted ads will appear on your pages if an advertiser’s keywords match your content, while placement-targeted ads will appear if an advertiser has specifically selected your ad placement or site. Now, advertisers can target your site or placements, but can also specify keywords for them so that their ads only appear in the most relevant pages. These ads will still need to compete with the available inventory of ads for a particular placement, and so only the highest-paying, most relevant ads will appear on your pages. At the same time, you’ll still be able to use your Competitive Ad Filter to prevent ads from specific URLs from appearing.”
Google contends that this will mean more relevant ads for your site’s visitors and increased advertiser confidence, resulting in greater ad spending. These may be true, but mostly for those sites that are already popular. It remains to be seen if this will lead to a major shift in advertiser preference (big sites vs long tail). I guess it will all depend on this new model’s effectiveness.
“In addition, while advertisers previously could only change their bids for all ads running across multiple sites, they can now adjust their bids for individual sites. This means that advertisers can spend more of their budgets on the specific AdSense sites which perform well and generate high-quality leads for the advertiser.”
With this recent development, I see scraper-type sites nearing their extinction. As for blogs, they will now have to be more competitive with their site branding to get noticed, and targeting a lucrative niche will become even more important. Google’s certainly keeping us on our toes.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have to look for a purple cow.
The technology that propels Google and other search engines might be ahead of our time but one of the most basic principles, Information Retrieval (IR) was propounded in the middle of 20th century and is still at the core of search engine technology. At that time and for another 40 years information retrieval was used in government labs and research facilities that had retrieval systems. The scientists at that time working on developing the search function realized that the quality of a search result depended on two concepts: (more…)
At the end of my article about link shops I promised I’d show you a few more ways to monetize your sites and blogs. That’s what I’m going to do today. You’ll see that besides the 4 basic business models presented in the previous parts of this series, there are several alternatives and mixed plans that you can use to make money online.
1. Article marketing
You choose a good product to promote and select appropriate keywords. Then you write articles optimised for the search engines and publish them on article directories. People will read your articles and hopefully click on the links in your resource box, which will lead them to a sales page on your chosen product. (more…)
