Arguably the most comprehensive SEO tool on the market, Market Samurai is an affordable, must-have research and management aid for the affiliate marketing expert and novice alike.
Eugene Ware demonstrates Domain Samurai
Yesterday, more than 150 people were privileged to see a presentation of Market Samurai by Eugene Ware of Noble Samurai, the company behind the tool. Speaking at the Affiliate Marketing SIG of the Melbourne PC User Group, Eugene went through the basics of using this tool that is rapidly catching the interest of affiliate marketers everywhere. Continue reading…
From Publishers Weekly
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Bo (more…)
Amazon.com Review
Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father, was a compelling and moving memoir focusing on personal issues of race, identity, and community. With his second book The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised i (more…)
— January 8, 2008
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The keynote address was delivered by Satya Nadella of Microsoft Live Search.
E-Commerce and Shopping Cart Optimisation
Rob Snell, Ethan Giffin, Jimmy Duvall
moderator: Joe Laratro
Contextual Ad Program Vendor Roundtable
Microsoft Representative, Shuman Ghosemajumder, Derek Brinkman, Tony Wills
moderator: Heather Lloyd-Martin
Getting Rid of Duplicate Content Issues Once and For All
Rahul Lahiri (no show), Derrick Wheeler, Ben D’Angelo, Priyank Garg
moderator: Rand Fishkin
Ben D’Angelo from Google cited how they handle duplicate issues. They have many systems for de-duping URLs at various stages in the crawl/index pipeline. They cluster pages, then choose the best representative cluster. There are different filters for different types of duplication. Your site is not “penalised” – simply, a duplicate page will not rank high.
How can you avoid dupes?
For exact dupes – use a 301, such as in tracking URLs, www vs non-www situations.
Near duplicates – use noindex / robots.txt, such as in printable pages, PDFs, clones of other sites.
Country domains – a new language is not a dupe. Add unique country content. Use ccTLDs.
URL parameters – if data does not affect the substance of the displayed page, put it in a cookie.
How can you avoid duplication by another site?
If distributing articles, show the original, absolute URL in the content.
Syndicate content that is different to the version on your site
If you use others’ articles, manage your expectations
Scrapers and proxies won’t affect you too much, but if you are concerned
Deborah Wilcox, from Baker and Hostetler, gave a sobering account of the “Million Dollar Domain Case”. In this incident, the plaintiff was punchclock.com. They made software to record worker hours and to calculate payroll deductions.
The defendant was punch-clock.com, a Canadian company that sold into the US and made a similar product. It ranked higher in a search and the company ignored a C&D in 2001.
There was a Florida lawsuit in 2007. The defendant defaulted, so the judge ruled in favour of the plaintiff. In brief, the defendant had to transfer the domain name and pay over $1,000,000 in damages and corrective AdWords advertising for seven years!
CSS and HTML Coding Today
Ted Ulle, Marc Juneau, Bryan Gmyrek, Lachlan Hunt
moderator: Lawrence Coburn
Bryan Gmyrek gave examples of how you can work with datafeeds with the help of PHP, Perl and databases.
Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on Organic
Byron White, Scott Hendison, Bruce Clay, Jessie Stricchiola
moderator: Dixon Jones
Podcasting and Podcast Optimisation
Glenn Gaudet, Jay Berkowitz, Cindy Turrietta, Tim Bourquin
moderator: Joe Laratro
Learning To Love Your Quality Score
Michael Stebbins, Jason Cooper, Mary Berk, Dan Sundgren
moderator: Brad Geddes
Linkfluence : How To Buy Links With Maximum Juice and Minimum Risk
Rand Fishkin, John Lessnau, Aaron Wall
moderator: Todd Malicoat
Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget
Brett Tabke, Marty Weintraub, Jessie Stricchiola, Gary Kirk
moderator: Carolyn Shelby
What Every Webmaster Should Know About Code Installation
Marc Juneau, Bryan Gmyrek, Ralf Schwoebel, Todd Keup
moderator: Jake Baillie
Interactive Site Reviews : Focus on E-Commerce
Rob Snell, Ethan Giffin, Bob Rains
moderator: Rob Snell
Top Secret Tools of The Trade
Todd Malicoat, Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola
moderator: Joe Laratro
Optimising Your Site for Contextual Ads
Matt Daimler, Jaan Janes, Aaron Wall
moderator: Jon Kelly
Optimising Your Site for Contextual Ads
Matt Daimler, Jaan Janes, Aaron Wall
moderator: Jon Kelly
Real-World Low-Risk, High-Reward Link Building Strategies
Eric Enge, Rebecca Kelley, Roger Montti, Greg Hartnett
moderator: Chris Tolles
Effective Domaining Strategies
Jeremy Wright, Jeff Libert, Jay Berkowitz, Victor Pitts
moderator: Michael Bonfils
Information Architecture : Design Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make
Scott Fegette, Ted Ulle, Daniel Schulman
moderator: Heather Lloyd-Martin
Organic Site Reviews
Greg Boser, Todd Friesen, Jill Whalen
moderator: Tim Mayer
In-House SEO, PPC, and Campaigns
Jessica L Bowman, Allison Fabella, Ana Schultz, Jill Sampey, Dan Perry
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Taking Your Analytics Data Beyond the Page View
Shuman Ghosemajumder, Geoff Mack, John Marshall
moderator: Joe Laratro
Geoff Mack from Alexa Internet introduced Alexa Research, a new competitive analysis tool in beta release. It shows your web competitors, their success and where they get traffic. You can see their visitor demographics, the upstream and downstream sites, the shared audience, the top URLs, and so on.
You can drill down quite deep and get down to a specific category, whether the site accepts ads, where the company is based, and more. Want to find sites that target a certain demographic, such as a Midddle Eastern female aged 55-64 and living in a certain country, who went to graduate school, and browses from work! If you are fussy, you only want to find a site that has a certain minimum pageviews, minimum monthly growth, etc. Alexa Research can do it.
Community Hacking – 96 Baiting Strategies You Can Employ
Todd Malicoat, Ian Ring, Bill Hartzer, Jane Copland
moderator: Andy Beal
Ian Ring had an intriguing title for his presentation, “Optimising Conversion using Genetics”
Equally as challenging was his assertion that your stylesheet can affect optimal user behaviour. CSS can determine how you display links. Ian introduced “Genetic Algorithms” where user behaviour, namely, clicks could be used to weed out poor CSS values and strengthen favourable ones.
In this ecosystem, survival of the fittest requires a measurement of fitness. This can be any measurable action, such as a click, a transaction, subscriptions, and so on.
Reading Time: 4minutesGeorge Wright blends a rake in a BlendTec domestic blender
Day Two of the Webmasterworld was keynoted by George Wright of Blendtec, better known for the viral video series Will It Blend?. George gave an entertaining presentation about how BlendTec achieved millions of visits (therefore, brand awareness) with a budget of only $50.
When George was new at the company, he noticed piles of sawdust in their demo room and was told that the founder, Tom Dickson, liked to test new components by blending wood and that this was normal. George immediately saw the viral marketing potential and asked Tom for a marketing budget. Tom generously suggested $50, which turned out to be just right.
George bought a lab coat, some marbles, a McDonald’s Happy Meal, a rotisserie chicken, and so on. Each of them was blended by Tom and the video of each experiment was placed on YouTube with some Digg publicity. Some 75 such videos have been released, including some resulting from viewer suggestions.
This fantastic viral marketing campaign has resulted in:
65 million views on YouTube (34th most subscribed channel)
120 million views on the willitblend.com site
200,000 subscribers
700% increase in retail product sales and a pull-through effect on B2B product lines
Great brand awareness, including a mention in US Congress
BlendTec has no need to spend money on traditional advertising. In fact, a radio station in New Mexico pays them to make blend videos, then shows them on local TV as commercials for their blend of music – this must be the only marketing department that generates revenue!
Analytics Vendors and Package Implementation
Brett Crosby, Richard Zwicky, Jamie Smith
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
Local and Mobile Search
Shailesh Bhat, Alex Porter, Chris Zaharias, Gregory Markel
moderator: Andy Beal
Danny Dover of SEOmoz at their booth
Brand Management
Brian Combs, Lauren Vaccarello, Tony Wright, Jessica L Bowman
moderator: Joe Laratro
Brian Combs is an SVP and Chief Futurist at Apogee Search. His message was that reputation is best protected before a problem occurs. It gets harder once the mud starts flying. Precautions you can take include:
Monitoring online conversations
Using consistent language
Create and propagate several websites for your company.
If the problem has arisen, then you should engage with the aggrieved person in a professional, non-defensive manner. Learn to recognise trolls and avoid them.
Set up multiple sites for products, perhaps a microsite for a problem that has gained widespread attention and encourage traffic to it (rather than your main site). Encourage positive articles on third-party sites. This does not mean pay-to-blog posts, editing Wikipedia, Googlebombing or other deceptive tactics!
Webhosting Industry Overview
Aaron Phillips, Ben Fisher, Amy Armitage, (Curtis) R. Curtis
moderator: Aaron Shear
Real-World Winning Tactics for Content Creation
Rupali Shah, Robin Liss, Ted Ulle
moderator: Derrick Wheeler
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus – Social Media
Brent Csutoras, Tamar Weinberg, Bill Hartzer, Michael Gray
moderator: Todd Malicoat
SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
Mark Jackson, Lyndsay Walker Blahut, Aaron Wall, Alan K’necht
moderator: Todd Friesen
How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns To Grow Traffic
Lisa Buyer, Robin Liss, Greg Jarboe, Jiyan Wei
moderator: Michael McDonald
Competitive Intelligence : Know Thy Competitor Well
Jake Baillie, Andy Beal, Larry Mersman, William Atchison
moderator: Bruce Clay
Andy Beal described a lot of useful websites that you can leverage to spy on your competitors:
Ground-Up SEO Content Development as Pure Business Strategy
Heather Lloyd-Martin, Matt Tuens
moderator: Gillian Muessig
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Brand and Social Reputation Management
Brian Combs, Tony Wright, Geoff Livingston, Bill Hartzer
moderator: Alex Bennert
SEO and Big Search
Melanie Mitchell, Dave Roth, Maile Ohye, Derrick Wheeler
moderator: Joseph Morin
Alternative Discovery and SEO – Feeds, PDFs, and Blog SEO
Rick Klau, Stephan Spencer, George Aspland, Greg Jarboe
moderator: Joe Laratro
George Aspland talked about optimising PDFs to facilitate alternative discovery. For example, some PDFs consist of scanned documents and we know that search engines can’t read images. Their representation in a SERP can also get screwy. In the US government site shown, each page in the document showed up in the snippet as Page 1, Page 2, etc.
The first heading in the document may get picked up as the “title tag” of the search result, so pay attention to it. Better still, use the Document Title of the PDF to advantage. If you use Microsoft Word to create the PDF, you need to select File/Properties to find the dialog box. If you left it blank, the document title might read “Microsoft Word”, which isn’t very click-worthy.
Hyperlinks in the PDF should be enabled and have good anchor text. The PDF itself should be linked from an already indexed page.
You should invest in a copy of the full Adobe Acrobat so that you can edit the PDF that was created by some simple program or Office 2007.
(Curtis) R. Curtis, Jake Baillie, Jordan Kasteler, Scott Hendison
moderator: Jake Baillie
Scott Hendison from SearchCommander gave some practical checklists to use before buying hosting. By asking such questions, you can save yourself a lot of bother later on.
What Apache software is in use?
What control panel is offered?
What, if any, mods are installed?
How are mods used and used, e.g. via .htaccess? php.ini? http:conf?
Is shell access available?
Speed and performance?
Effective Action-Based Copywriting
Brian Clark (regrettably unable to attend), Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen
moderator: Carolyn Shelby
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Organic
Andy Langton, Stoney deGeyter, Robert Charlton, Brant Bukowsky
moderator: Michael Bonfils
International and European Site Optimisation
Michael Bonfils, Andy Atkins-Krueger, Ralf Schwoebel, Frank Watson
moderator: Dixon Jones
Local Search Optimisation
David Klein, Joe Laratro, William Leake, Justin Sanger
moderator: Larry Mersman
Conversation and Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Todd Parsons, Louise Rijk, Ben Fisher
moderator: Mark Jackson
How To Move Your Website Without Chaos
Jake Baillie, Andy Langton, Guillaume Bouchard, Ralf Schwoebel
moderator: Jake Baillie
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Links
Rae Hoffman, Roger Montti, Rebecca Kelley
moderator: Rae Hoffman
Increase Your Post-Click Conversion Performance
Glenn Alsup, Philippe Lang, Alex Porter
moderator: Alex Bennert
The Secret Life of On-Site Search Exposed!
Laura Dansbury, Marc Cull, William Leake
moderator: Jessica L Bowman
Five Bloggers and a Microphone – What’s The Worst That Can Happen?
Andy Beal, Lee Odden, Michael McDonald, Barry Schwartz, Jane Copland
moderator: Ken Jurina
Web Services and Cloud Computing
Mike Culver, Microsoft Representative, Jeff Hardy, Kevin Gough
moderator: Jake Baillie
26 Steps Revisited – 2008
Brett Tabke
moderator: Brett Tabke
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Organic
Brian Clark, Heather Lloyd-Martin, Jill Whalen, Jeremiah Andrick
This is my fourth Webmasterworld conference and the second one (for me) in Las Vegas. I went to Orlando 2004 and New Orleans 2005. The 2007 event feels as though it was almost yesterday, so here I am once again. Note: I will update this post with more details and images when I get home. (If someone has a better photograph of me, please send it to me) Photographs at Flickr.
Agenda
Brett Tabke opened proceedings and made the observation that only one third of the sessions could be described as pure SEO. The rest covered affiliate marketing, PPC, social media, and so on.
Shawn Rorick from Cirque du Soleil delivered the keynote address, which covered the changing nature of the Internet, particularly how the Internet was better exploited by Barack Obama than John McCain. He introduced a new phrase, “Halo Media”, which means that users decide when/how/where they will consume media.
Top-Shelf Organic SEO
Bruce Clay, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, Jill Whalen
moderator: Mark Jackson
Bill Hunt from Global Strategies International spoke about Keyword Relevance via Prominence. Keywords should be placed in prominent parts of each page, such as the Title, Heading and so on.
After making pages relevant, you need quality backlinks from equally relevant sites and the anchor text needs to be keyword-rich.
Ash Nallawalla from Sensis focussed on Content, using the experience of the Yellow Pages® (Australia) site as an example. As with all advertising-based sites, Sensis needs people to look at advertiser content, namely their Yellow Pages listings. A business profile page has relatively little content compared to a regular website, so getting it to rank is not easy. Adding text to each advertiser’s page can’t be accomplished quickly.
Ash outlined several content-based strategies that deliver value to the reader and they can choose to proceed to the listings or not. One trial that has worked well is a home improvement magazine that gets over 700 visits a day, just six weeks since its launch.
Jessica L Bowman, Scott Polk, Aaron Shear, Tony Adam, Alex Schultz
moderator: Lou Ragg
Tony Adam from Yahoo spoke about the practical aspects of being an in-house SEO. He gave practical tips such as:
Knowing who are the stakeholders in your company.
Getting to know your colleagues, their personality types and who can help your agenda.
Knowing what projects are under way and whether you can add SEO value to them.
Ideally, the SEO should be plugged into the company’s strategy map and have several opportunities to contribute. SEO training should be arranged for the entire organisation – obviously tailored to the audience. SEO knowledge can also be imparted through the internal communication channels.
Most important, show your passion for SEO and get colleagues enthused!
Navigating The Complex World of PPC Engines
Christine Churchill, Microsoft Representative, Andrew Beckman
moderator: Melanie Mitchell
The main takeaway for me from Alexander Barbara was that social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Hugg, Twitter, etc is that their traffic quality varies and they do not convert as well as targeted traffic would. If your business appeals to this audience then it might suit you.
Earning Big Bucks With Social Media Traffic
Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray, Alexander Barbara
moderator: Rand Fishkin
Balancing Income Channels Between Affiliates and Ads
Jim Banks, Jon Kelly, Adam Jewell
moderator: Joe Laratro
Video Search Engine Optimisation
Mark Robertson, Edward Kim, Gregory Markel, Grant Crowell
moderator: Robin Liss
Interactive Site Reviews: Open Call
Kate Morris, Wil Reynolds, Craig Paddock, Guillaume Bouchard
moderator: Gord Hotchkiss
Universal and Personal Search – This Changes Everything
Brian Combs, Greg Boser, Amanda Watlington
moderator: Jake Baillie
Keyword Research, Selection and Optimisation
Ken Jurina, Larry Mersman, Wil Reynolds, Stoney deGeyter
moderator: Christine Churchill
Social Media : The Big Sexy Buzz
Guillaume Bouchard, Kent Schoen, Brian Carter, Warren Whitlock
moderator: Roger B. Dooley
Affiliate Based PPC Issues and Options
Adam Jewell, David Naffziger
moderator: Jon Kelly
Video Engines – New Kids Rocking The Web
Cuong Do, Chase Norlin, Henry Hall, Stephen Baker
moderator: Brett Tabke
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Video
Grant Crowell, Gregory Markel, Michael McDonald, Mark Robertson
moderator: Chris Winfield
Organic Keyword Research and Selection
Eric Papczun, Seth Wilde, Craig Paddock, Carolyn Shelby
moderator: Mark Jackson
Landing Page Optimisation
Brad Geddes, Lily Chiu, Kate Morris
moderator: Christine Churchill
Is Social Media & Search a Love Story or a War Story?
David Wallace, Chris Winfield, Liana Evans, Bill Hartzer
moderator: Lawrence Coburn
Your Relationship With The Affiliate Manager
Bob Rains, Shawn Collins, Brook Schaaf, Beth Kirsch
moderator: Lisa Riolo
Video and Multimedia Advertising – Show Me The Money!
Mort Greenberg, Angela Lauria, Bob Bahramipour
moderator: Joseph Morin
Interactive Site Reviews: Focus on Affiliates
Adam Jewell, David Rivero, Elisabeth Archambault
moderator: Jill Whalen
Discover Techniques Used by Enterprise-Level SEOs/SEMs
Marshall D. Simmonds, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, Scott Polk
moderator: Joe Laratro
Ash Nallawalla from Sensis gave an insight into the corporate SEO’s challenges. Essentially, things happen at a slower pace as corporations become larger.
The website can have millions of pages, so keyword selection is limited to a handful of key terms
There is greater emphasis on site architecture and strategy
Changes can be slow to implement and costly
Many stakeholders have to be consulted
As a bonus, it is easier to get unsolicited links
Web platforms are chosen for many reasons, but seldom SEO.
Web design and site architecture practices might not have taken SEO into account.
The web pages might not contain a lot of text.
Others might not link if you require them to link only in certain ways.
Duplicate content can occur when multinational companies copy the same pages from the parent site, or when content is licensed from a third-party specialist provider.
Ash then presented a case study of the Australian Yellow Pages website where IT resources were limited owing to other competing projects and how good SEO value was extracted. Sometimes the corporate SEO must make do.
When you are trying to optimise your Google AdWords campaign so that your ads rank high for less money, you usually are sharpening your ad copy, improving your landing page, playing with the bid and so on. If you worked at Google Maps, you wouldn’t need to work so hard.
At least in Australia if you search for <placename> <word>, e.g. Toorak dentist, Werribee cafe, Narre Warren restaurant, the first (almost always) AdWords result is an ad for Google Maps.
You can see this in the image on the right. Another interesting discovery are the two Menulog ads – one is the gTLD .com and the other is the ccTLD .com.au. Nice technique to remember if you need to display more than one ad. Just buy a few ccTLDs, since the algo won’t know if the various domain names in different “countries” are the same entity.
My next search was for a cafe in my old stomping ground, San Mateo, CA. Both Google and MenuLog were confused (click image on the left). I wasn’t logged in, but both remembered my previous search. Google Search showed the right results, but AdWords didn’t want me to leave these shores, choosing to show me an ad for Toorak cafes, and Menulog.com.au hedged its bets by showing me an ad for Armadale cafes, and Menulog.com showed me Toorak cafes. OK, these are broad match ads for the word “cafe”, but why show an irrelevant city in the wrong country? Since Google isn’t paying for its top-ranking ads, I think it could have shown a PSA or none at all.
Yes, cafes are in a tough category for AdWords. Either you phrase match <placename> <cafe> for thousands of placenames (not practical) or load a whole bunch of negative keywords (not practical) — I’d rather not see this prime position taken up by Google Maps ads at all. You can see these ads for many location searches, such as dentists, restaurants, etc.
eBay can’t handle the place name Narre Warren, a Melbourne suburb. Search for Narre -Warren (that’s a negative Warren) and eBay will exhort you to buy a Barre, whatever that is. MyLocal gets too familiar — look for Narre Warren cafe and it will tell you to go to Narre Restaurant. Local search doesn’t seem easy for some companies. TrueLocal still wants me to go to the solitary cafe in Redfern. Menulog wants me to go to Barre, WA – apparently there is a cafe/restaurant of this name in Perth.
I attended an informative talk by Glen Staiger about his experience with the “30 Day Challenge”, which included a mention of the free Wordtracker tool known as GTrends. It is a keyphrase competitiveness research tool, which is an extension of the free Wordtracker search tool.
My friend had blogged about Iron Maiden’s videos taken during their recent Indian tour and this had swelled his visitor count (briefly) by a huge number that I won’t reveal. So I used some Iron Maiden related phrases to test GTrends.
To check any keyphrase, type it in the Keyword field and look at the results:
Click the bar graph icon on the right of any keyphrase and you will get a popup like the image to the right (click it to enlarge). If both bars (representing Google Competition – the number of results is less than 30k – and the number of Google visitors per day is more than 140) are green, then this is a keyphrase worthy of more research.
Now the count for Iron Maiden Tour in the popup is a lot more than 25, which I can’t explain, but I created a small blog to monitor its traffic. The above is the only link I am giving it, although it might attract one or two from elsewhere as I populate the blog later on. Check out the free tool!
Many affiliate marketers use Google AdWords to get traffic to their pages. Some indulge in arbitrage, where a cheap PPC click brings traffic that might click an AdSense ad on the landing page that delivers a greater payout per click.
A recent post in the Inside AdWords blog brings bad news to some affiliates and others who fall in these categories. They will be awarded low Quality Scores if they have:
Data collection sites that offer free gifts, subscription services etc., in order to collect private information.
Arbitrage sites that are designed for the sole purpose of showing ads.
Malware sites that knowingly or unknowingly install software on a visitor’s computer.
It would be interesting to know if such sites can be determined algorithmically. How can a human determine that a site has a “sole purpose” and no more?
Google is getting serious about quality and this should silence some sceptics who say that Google doesn’t mind who clicks an ad on any site — The following types of sites will no longer quality for cheap clicks:
I don’t know what is meant by a “frequent ad” — do they show ads frequently? Where? Again, this list is bound to include some advertisers who don’t see themselves as dodgy.
As a web professional and marketer, I am excited by the technology used online – it is mainly clever programming and scripting. I bought a script that displays an enticing “peel-away” edge at the top right of the page. I am not showing it on the main blog, but you can see it on the Peel Away Ads page linked from the top of the screen. I won’t leave it up for long as it detracts from this site but I may use it on some of my affiliate sites.
