Favorite SEO Blog

At least three or four times a week I go through the SEO blogs, just to read what people are saying. You’re welcome to have a look at all what I read, it’s listed here at Bloglines.

BUT, my favorite, is Loren Bakers Search Engine Journal. If you only read one, I’d suggest it be this one, as Loren generally points out all of the interesting discussions and news in the SEO world.

What’s your favorite?

The things you know about the search engines, you don’t really know.

Everybody and his brother has a bit of SEO advice these days.  A bit of this magic powder, or that snake oil, and instant rankings.  It doesn’t take long before the rumor becomes “fact” after enough people have repeated it.  I’m here to say, just don’t believe any of it.

Even the people who watch the search engines most closely, don’t always know what it is they’re seeing.  Matt Cutts recently spoke about the “IP Watchers” and said “The other reason why it’s not worth watching data centers is because there’s an entire set of IP addresses, if you’re a super-duper gungho SEO, you’ll know 72.2.14.whatever.  But that IP address will typically go to one datacenter.  But that’s not guaranteed.  If that one datacenter comes out of rotation, we’re going to do something else to it, we’re going to change the hardware infrastructure . . . So if you take that datacenter out of rotation for some reason, that IP address can point to a completely different datacenter.  So, the currency, the ability to really compare changes and talk to a fellow datacenter watcher and say ‘what do you see at 72.2.14.whatever?’ is really pretty limited.”

Obviously, this inhibits the ability of the datacenter watchers to be able to determine for sure that what they’re seeing is really on the datacenter they think it’s on.  Of course, Matt has a better idea for what they should do with their time.  “So, I would definately encourage you to spend more time worrying about the results you rank for, increasing the quality of your content, looking for high-quality people that you think should be linking to you and letting them know about that, and stuff like that.”  I agree.

Four kinds of money making websites you can start by yourself

Making money on the web is becoming a bigger topic.  Every day, I see more people talking about how to do it, or how much they’re making.  For the person who hasn’t even dipped a toe in yet, where to start?  I wanted to offer this list, as a part of Darren’s Group Writing Project, and as a way of helping inexperienced people take their first step into building money-making websites.

This is a non-exclusive list.  It’s meant to cover the main categories, and most of what’s not listed can be considered either a sub-category or a hybrid of what’s listed here.  It’s meant to get you thinking, to get you pointed in the right direction.  The most important thing, in my opinion, for the person ready to start a website is to take action.  Use this list as a way to get you one step closer to taking action.

1. Forums: I put this first as it’s where the bulk of my experience lies, not because I think it’s the most profitible.  My favorite tool for building a forum is vBulletin.   It’s also the only commercial software I’ll list in this post.  There are tons of resources about how to build a forum, and it’s a topic I’ve written on in my blog too.  In a nutshell, you need to choose a topic, selecting the niche is a key here, and assemble a group of people to help you get forum discussions going (a Launch Team), and promote.

2. Content: A news site, or a magazine type site.  This is where you publish articles, or information in other forms, that people will find useful.  Drupal is a good tool for building a content site.  You can write the content yourself, or commission others to write for you.  I do not recommend using free content, it’s ok for experimenting with, but if you want to build a sound business you should rely on quality content that cannot be found elsewhere.  Regularly add new content and promote.

3. Ecommerce: You need to have something to sell.  osCommerce is a good tool to use for an ecommerce site.  You need to have something to sell.  It works best when you have a product that many people need, that you can produce or have produced for you, and sell for a tidy profit.  A lot of people who talk about making money on websites say ebooks are a great way to go, but I think ebooks are a tough sell unless you are breaking new ground.  If you don’t have a product idea, try finding a drop ship company that hasn’t been exploited terribly.  Or, a local company that produces a great product but has no website, make a deal to be their exclusive distributor on the web.

4. Blogs: Last but not least.  Blogging for money works best when you’re writing on a topic that you’re both knowledgeable and passionate about.  I think that choosing the right niche is also the first important decision you need to make when starting a blog.  Blogs can be slow to ramp up, so be sure you’re starting something you care about in the long-term.  Wordpress is my favorite blogging platform.   Make good, regular, blog posts, and network with other bloggers on your topic.

How much is my forum worth?

This subject is coming up more and more with me.  I’ve touched on it before.  I spoke about it on a podcast recently.  I discuss it in forum threads too.  Everyone has an opinion on the topic, and whether they’ve bought or sold a forum doesn’t seem to prevent them from offering it up.   I’ve bought and sold over a dozen active forums (and am always in the market to buy more, contact me if you have something to sell), so hope my experience can be of help to others.

From your first steps in researching how to value a forum, you’ll see people mentioning a specific multiple of monthly earnings.  This measure is of limited use, and can as often be a way of someone getting you to sell your forum too cheaply as a way to get too high a price on a forum sale.  When you’re buying a car, would you pay more for a car because it gets higher gas milage than another?  Of course not.  A forum’s revenue is very important, as is the gas milage of a car, but you don’t set the value based on that alone.

What else is there?  Well, the most important factors are traffic, topic, members, and content.  I’d sooner pay more for a forum getting loads of traffic than one that’s maximized its revenues.  Why?  A forum that has already maximzed its revenues leaves little room for improving, while a forum that gets loads of traffic leaves me room for improving the revenues on my own.  Thus, given the choice between a forum with lots of traffic and little revenue against one with lots of revenue and little traffic, I’d go for the one with traffic assuming all other factors near equal.

Why is topic important?  Well, you don’t want to end up owning a forum on a topic you hate, right?  That’s obvious.  But, you also want to have a forum that has a topic that will appeal to advertisers, if you’re looking at it as an investment.  If you’re getting into forums out of a passion for a specific topic, then it’s probably obvious to you which forum you want to buy, but when you get into it as an investment, you want to be sure that you’re getting a forum that will attract advertisers.  So, two forums equal in all other factors, you want to buy the one that attracts advertisers.  So, you’d pay more for that one.  The other side of the coin, if you’re selling a forum that is on a topic that advertisers won’t touch, you might not attract as high a sales price.

Members and content go hand in hand.  One of the most attractive aspects of owning a forum is that it attracts members, and the members generate the content.  In fact, it’s the whole concept behind a forum.  Great content on a forum is self-propagating.  Good members, make good discussions, and good discussions encourage more new members to join in and make more good discussions.  So, a forum that is active, well moderated, and has loads of quality discussions, adds value.

So, where do you get the price?  That’s difficult.  Look at some recent sales.  I’ve posted before on places where you can find sales.  Go in the past sales and find out what sold for how much.  Find something similar to yours.  Take into consideration the factors that I’ve mentioned.  Adjust your pricing accordingly.  If your selling a forum, come into it with a price in mind, that’s going to make you happy.  Ask for maybe 25% more than that price.  If you get into negotiations, you can adjust down and find a happy middle ground where both buyer and seller feel good about the deal.  If your’e buying, ask the seller what they want to get for the forum.  If they don’t know, point them to this post.

Linking New Blogs

Anyone who blogs should keep an eye on what new blogs are starting, and be generous with links. Whether you’re a well established blogger, or the newest blog on the block, link out. I believe that linking out is just as important as linking in. I’ve gotten as many readers from linking to people’s blogs as I have from getting links from other blogs, and a lot of those inbound links I get are a result of linking to other people.

Here’s a few new blogs I’ve looked at this week.  Dave Turnbull’s blog, he’s writing about internet marketing. And, Ten SEO Tips for Wordpress by SEO Portal.

So, with that, I’ve gotten the attention of three bloggers, who hadn’t previously been reading my blog. Now, they at least know the address. Maybe they’ll become regular readers. Maybe occasional readers. The links help too. Link out, and link often.

My letter to Susan Taing and the Adsense Team

I saw this post on the Inside Adsense blog today. It just grates on my nerves. So, I posted this letter off to the email listed on their blog.

Dear Ms. Taing (and the rest of the Adsense team),
I just wonder if you realize that the people you’ll be meeting at SES are SEO professionals, not real webmasters. Sure, you might find the odd few genuine publishers at the conference, but in general you’re meeting the SEO crowd. These are the guys who’s idea of quality content is the results of the new ArticleBot tweak they learned at the private party the night before. Or, a new way to auto-generate blog posts. Link spammers. Yea, teaching them ways to optimize Adsense sure sounds like a great idea. Yea.

I’ve said this to Matt Cutts before, and I think I got his attention. The video series he’s made recently is super! But, then, he is supposed to be working in spam. I really find the efforts the Adsense team makes to reach out to spammers very frustrating. I feel that it really devalues the honest websites that are using Adsense to generate revenue. I see it more and more. People are becoming prejudice against sites that use Adsense, because so many spam websites use it.

How about spending less time with SEO people at SES, Webmasterworld, etc, and more time with quality publishers? Wouldn’t hurt you would it? There are some great web communities that are full of genuine publishers, and hardly any search engine spammers. Sitepoint, for example. Why does the Adsense team ignore them? I really just don’t understand why you reach out so much to the SEO crowd, and not to decent webmasters.

One of the things I told Matt was that I believed he could be far more effective in combating spam if he spent some time helping webmasters of quality sites to raise their rankings, rather than just trying to beat down the spammers. I think his video series is a great first step in that direction. Couldn’t the Adsense team benefit from that line of thinking as well? Do splogs and scraper sites really present such a promising future to Adsense?

Oh, yea, I got a quick reply. lol

Hello,

Thank you for writing in about Inside AdSense. Though we may not get to
respond to you personally, we are reading through every email that we
receive. So keep visiting the site.
If you have questions about your AdSense account, please visit the help
center at https://www.google.com/support/adsense. The AdSense Help Center
provides the answers to a wide variety of questions. If you are unable to
find the information you need, you can contact the AdSense Team through
our online contact form.

Thank you,
The Inside AdSense Team

Heck, Matt Cutts replied when I posted him a similar question. Who knows, maybe the Adsense team will show up on my blog, and see what I really think Adsense is becoming. I doubt my question was what lead him to do the video series, but I hope it did get his attention for more than just a moment. I have done my best to make sure the members at Sitepoint find out about Matt’s video series.

Website Buyer’s Time Saver

A few days back a friend launched a site that I’ve found to be a big time saver. As I posted a while back, there are a number of sites that I routinely check when I’m on the prowl for new websites to buy. Bizmp.com takes the new threads from many of those marketplaces, and links to the source. So, instead of checking a dozen sites, I just check one, and click directly to the sales page of the ones I’m interested in seeing. Big time saver. Bookmark it.