We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Domain name masking is a really cool feature of the DNS system. It allows you to use a vanity domain name on an external third party service.

One example of Netpaths SEO using domain name masking is on our search engine optimization job board. The jobs are hosted on a server that is completely disconnected from netpaths.net servers, but the content appears to be served from us.

Domain name registrars that natively support domain name masking are Enom.com and Godaddy.com http://help.godaddy.com/article.php?article_id=424&topic_id=165. This tutorial concerns the zone file settings in the Web Host Manager of Cpanel (WHM) a very popular web hosting control panel.

Main > DNS Functions > Edit DNS Zone > Choose Zone to Edit

Unless you have a reseller hosting account or are a server administrator, you will not be able to access this file directly. Just contact your web hosting support rep and they will gladly change it for you.

In my example I use the .Mac service from Apple. This is a great service that provides a photo gallery, disk backup with iDisk, a super easy to use website builder, web and file hosting, Sync file synchronization, web mail with IMAP, shared calendar for iCal, groups, and 10GB of online storage. This is accessed through web.mac.com, and a standard user account and website would be http://web.mac.com/UserName/welcome.html

Instead we can make this same dot Mac web hosting account look like this: http://www.mydomain.com/

Though the wonders of domain masking, all your internal files will appear to be hosted on mydomain.com and none will ever know you are using the .Mac service. Well, they may be able to see you are using dotmac hosting because sneaky Apple places their made on a mac logo in the footer of every page.
Below is a screenshot of what the updated zone file should look like. I blurred the domain name details, but it still shows the correct details you will need to setup domain name masking. This setup also allows you to keep mail on your own server, as the MX records are pointed to the same IP address of the originating server. The reason for this is that the .Mac setup will not let you use your domain name for email. You can still accept email from your personal domain name using an email forwarder, this is in your cpanel control panel: Main >Mail > Forwarders > Add Forwarder

Cpanel Zone File:

Again this is for the .Mac web service but it will work with any site that accepts domain name masking.

As a web designer and online marketer you have 1 goal when you create websites: get your users to convert.

Creating conversions can include a newsletter signup, subscribing to an RSS feed, filling out a contact form, or making a purchase. Any of these actions would me a mark of success to a diligent search engine optimization team.

When users don’t complete any actionable steps that lead to a conversion the visit has no value.

In an example of the US Census website, users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion. Data was placed in a prominent position in the top right of the page but only 14% of visitors read and comprehended it even though nearly 100% of the users scanned this text!

Can you see the population data in the top right corner? Doesn’t it look like an advertisement? If so, you’re not alone, as 86% of people performed a search on the government site to look for this data that was staring them in the face.

In the above heatmap of the U.S. census bureau we see the population data was scanned but overlooked.

Moral of this story to web designers: make sure your page elements do not resemble an advertisement or your users will ignore it. This is especially relevant to contextual advertising such as Google Adsense as many users are developing banner blindness to in site text ads.

If your website resembles an advertisement it will be ignored. Web design should not use gimmicks, unrecognizable text elements, or non standard fancy formatting.

read on

How do you create exciting prose and witty copy that will enchant your audience and make the search engines give you a top 10 ranking? How can you use the art of search engine optimization to please real readers and not just try to appease the fickle google gods?

It’s simple write like a king, or more precisely like B.B. King. The legendary blues icon was once asked how he found his heart-warming, bone-chilling sound and relied “It’s simple,” he said. “I only steal from the best.”

Many a great SEO and company has used this to their advantage, most recently Google’s announcement of hijacking appropriating your persona information for their web 2.0 social networking venture.

Here are great tips to write optimized copy for both search engines and endusers:

Writing Headlines

• Headlines: Do You Really Need 200 to Land a Good One? — Attversumption.com
• Are Your Headlines Missing These Precise Psychological Triggers? — Ezine Articles
• Top 10 Ideas for Testing Your Headlines — GrokDotCom

Readability

• Nobody Reads Web Pages — But Everybody Engages Websites — American Small Business
• The Secret of Writing to be Read — Seth Godin
• People Really Do Read Online — Who Knew — Marketing Interactions
• Fight the Bull — Bullfighter software helps to eliminate jargon from web copy

Customer-focused Copy

• Test your customer-focus ratio with Future Now’s ‘We-We’ Monitor. Having studied French and participated in the culture while in France this is a particularly poignant point.

Copywriting Techniques

• Six Types of Words That You Should Axe in Business Writing — Bizcovering
• Going for Broca: Show Don’t Tell in Action — Grok
• Time vs. Money — work less and make more money at the same time GrokDotCom
• What is Substance? — GrokDotCom
• Style vs. Substance — Mr. Blackwell would be a great SEO, as long as he wasn’t a blackhat (linking to TMZ.com is a first for the Naked SEO) GrokDotCom
• Pain vs. Gain — Arnold the Governator is here to pump up your keyword density and remove words that make you look like a girly copyblogger GrokDotCom
• Intellect vs. Emotion — this is a battle of wills, similar to the debate between emulation and imitation by Mr. Colbert -GrokDotCom
• Emotional Perspective Redux — GrokDotCom
• You Ain’t All That! — A Marketing Copy Autopsy keeps your search engine optimization strategy alive — GrokDotCom

Trust & Relationship Building

• Transparent Marketing: How to Earn the Trust of a Skeptical Consumer — Marketing Experiments Journal MEJ
• Inspiring Online Credibility – 3 part series showing how testimonials, real user feedback, friendly faces, inviting graphics, clear purchase policies and straightforward toll free support will boost your website’s bottom line. GrokDotCom
• Screencast: Building Trust & Credibility Online — GrokDotCom

Blogging

• Blogging for Beginners — ProBlogger Whether you’re starting a blog or just thinking about it, this is the place to be. A great collection of must-read how-to posts on how to make money online from Darren Rowse the original Pro Bloggeer.
• 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang — Copyblogger (Finesse tips from Brian Clark.)
• Write a Review — Rediscover Your Blogging Groove — The Emperor isn’t the only person who can get a new groove ProBlogger
• How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic — The Ultimate Guide — Copyblogger
• The Two Most Important Words in Blogging — be user centric Copyblogger
• Lessons in Corporate Blogging — Nicholas Carr shows us that not only SEO bloggers in their pajamas can have fun online BusinessWeek

Like all good duplications, I have to thank Grokdotcom for the all the ideas inspiration for this post. As Steven Colbert said to Bill Oriley, its emulation not imitation that makes great men (or at least a great comedian).

Social networking is the center of web 2.0 and Google desperately wants to get into the game. They have Orkut.com but this doesn’t really count as it has a pithy userbase compared to myspace.com and facebook.com. In order for Google to truly compete in the online social revolution is to play strong and dirty. Just like Mocrosoft, Google is willing to use any and all resources to win this game, and the resources in question are your personal information.

The G social network of the future is codenamed Maka Maka and it will integrate every bit of your known data into one complete system. Your personal search history, gmail.com contacts, google reader feeds, iGoogle widgets & data, Gtalk buddy list, events in your Gcalendar will all suddenly be part of the social web.

Yipee! We now get  to let Google monetize our personal information, and we unknowingly agreed to it when we signed up for all these time saving Google services, clicking i agree to the end user license agreement.

Google wants to place ads on your homepage, start page, networking page, personal events, heck if google could produce an alarm clock that displayed adwords they would send them to every household in the world.

More from the Google social announcement:

Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time.

On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information – the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. . . . Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform – meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, Digg and thousands of others) to give access to their user data to developers through those same APIs.

Yahoo site explorer is the best tool to use to find incoming links to your site, and without them SEO’s would not know much about the strategic link building practices of their associates.

Recently yahoo started showing erratic backlink results and caused much speculation in the SEO world that they were on the verge of removing this research tool as Google and MSN have done. Google has the most reliable link data, but it is hidden behind Google Webmaster Central, disabling competitive link research on websites you don’t own. MSN is a mixed bag, some seeks they show relevant link data, other times you might as well ask the magic 8 ball for a backlink count. For the past few years, showing links was Yahoo’s game to loose.

Today Yahoo! Search maestro Priyank Garg put the search engine optimization community at ease with these comments:

While the counts have been incorrect in some cases, the actual returned results have been correct. However, we did roll out a product fix yesterday and will be rolling out a couple more over the next few days to resolve this difference in counts some of you have observed.

If you are serious about getting a better ranking for your site and engaging in link building, Yahoo Site Explorer is the tool you need to monitor your backlink status.

Business.com is one of my recommend directories and it should be on your short list of sites to submit to. Having a directory listing at business.com will help your search engine optimization efforts and give you a high quality authoritative backlink.

A recent study by Enquiro reveals 70% of business buyers start their online research with a general search engine (77% prefer Google) or start with a business-to-business search site (73% prefer Business.com). The use of B2B vertical search sites increases as serious business buyers progress throughout the purchase cycle and identify specific needs.

Us this free coupon which is good for 20% off Business.com directory listings. Inclusion typically costs $199 a year, so with the coupon you would pay $159 for your submission.

Business.com coupon code: AVIVA

If that doesn’t work you can try Coupon Code: BDCSL1

Submit your site to the business.com directory and you should get a nice link boost along with some direct traffic.

If you engage in large scale link buying or your website sells text link advertisements it is likely that you lost Google Page Rank yesterday. The PR update on October 23 has wreaked havoc on the green line, and many website owners are forgoing green peace for green war on google.

Google has given webmasters and bloggers an October surprise that will likely generate as much controversy in the SEO community as past Google updates such as Florida and Jagger.

From Andy Beard:

I certainly don’t intend to be whipped by Google for 9 reviews or “public consultation” pieces I have written over the last 12 months, and as I gave the links in an editorial matter of my choosing, I didn’t use Nofollow.

Aaron from B5 Media:

At b5media, we are weighing how we want to respond to this. Either we give in to Google and let them dictate what we do and have the unenviable position of losing pagerank and possibly advertising dollars, or we take the stand that quality content is quality content regardless of Google and that our content will speak for itself.

Courtney Tuttle:

Does Google Want PageRank To Be Irrelevant? If they do, they’re doing a fine job. Seriously who cares anymore? I’m done worrying about it because Google hasn’t even said what they want people to change.

Jim Kukral on buying links:

So how can TextLinkAds survive in it’s current business model if the rumors are true? Furthermore, would you buy a text link from them if they had a “nofollow” in it? I like the guys at Text Link Ads, but personally, I never did like the model of “passing Google juice” for cash. It always seemed very gamey to me.

Even the Scobelizer has some refreshing honesty about PageRank:

Google Page Rank is dead and has been for quite some time. I don’t get bloggers sometimes. They get all huffy about their Page Rank going down as if it’s something that they are entitled to. Now, normally I’d be front and center on all these ego games but here the real truth is that Page Rank has been dead for years. That’s why I never even looked at it anymore.

Some notable sites that have lost Page Rank:

* http://www.statcounter.com/ PR10 to PR6
* http://www.searchengineguide.com/ PR7 to PR4
* http://www.washingtonpost.com/ PR7 to PR5
* http://www.forbes.com/ PR7 to PR5
* http://www.suntimes.com/ PR7 to PR5
* http://www.sfgate.com/ PR7 to PR5
* http://www.copyblogger.com/ PR6 to PR4
* http://www.masternewmedia.org/ PR7 to PR4
* http://www.autoblog.com/ PR6 to PR4
* http://www.engadget.com/ PR7 to PR5
* http://www.problogger.net/ PR6 to PR4
* http://www.joystiq.com/ PR6 to PR4
* http://www.tuaw.com/ PR6 to PR4
* http://www.searchenginejournal.com/ PR7 to PR4
* http://www.quickonlinetips.com/ PR6 to PR3
* http://weblogtoolscollection.com/ PR6 to PR4
* http://andybeard.eu/ PR5 to PR3
* http://www.seroundtable.com/ PR7 to PR4
* http://www.blogherald.com/ PR6 to PR4

I was searching for information about why my AuctionAds were performing so poorly, and I came upon another ad network offering from Media Whiz, ShoppingAds. Shopping Ads uses the same basic premise as the Auction Ads network by displaying relevant ads from aggregators. The big difference is that while AuctionAds is CPA (pays per sale) and relies solely on the Ebay affiliate program, while ShoppingAds is PPC (pay per click) and uses multiple sources for the ads, similar to TTZmedia.

Use your existing auctionads login
shoppingads.com invitation code: betaluck! (note you must use the exclamation point)

Login to ShoppingAds here instantly

view the brand new ad banners from ShoppingAds

One nice thing about this ad code is that it does not contain hidden text or ridiculous legal requirements like some other monetization opportunities.

I think this has much more potential than other blog monetization schemes, and am mildly hopeful this will work. I hope Media Whiz is an honest company and records all clicks using fair and balanced recordkeeping.

Tip courtesy of the make money at home guy

There’s been a lot of talk about the WidgetBucks ad network so I thought I would signup and try it out. I believe that every affiliate program or advertising network should be tested to see if it works.

So I signed up with WidgetBucks.com and I have to say the design impressed me. In a Web 2.0 world of soft gradients, rounded corners, pastels and soft deopshadows their website is quite unique and punches your eyes out with hard edges, bold colors and strong type. It could almost be a hunting site, and if you squint your eyes while looking at the Widget homepage you can see camouflage and bullet holes (note I have a very large monitor with a lot of horizontal empty space, if you run your monitor at 1024×768px you likely won’t be able to see the army theme).

I wonder how many webmasters and blog publishers will make a killing from Widget Bucks ad payouts? They claim up to $2 per thousand impressions using pay per click ads from these sources:

* shopping.com
* wal-mart.com
* amazon.com
* target.com
* bestbuy.com
* ebay.com
* circuitcity.com
* and more

Below you can see a WidgetBucks ad unit:

There are Many bloggers are talking about Widget Bucks including an interesting post by Shoemoney who notes the draconian legal statements in the signup page:

[you cannot share] click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to by Mpire;
Client agrees that Mpire may use Client’s name and logo in presentations, marketing materials, press materials, customer lists, financial reports and Web site listings of customers and therefore grants Mpire a limited license to use Client’s logo in accordance with the foregoing.
Back-links placed by Mpire in the HTML code must not be removed.

Here is a plain text version of the HTML code that WidgetBucks autogenerated:
<!– START CUSTOM WIDGETBUCKS CODE –><script src="http://www.widgetbucks.com/script/widgetMagic.js" type="text/javascript"></script><div id="container_3DXrqR0cN8CLCUgg" class="wbtw468×60"><a href="http://www.widgetbucks.com" target="_blank">WidgetBucks – Trend Watch – WidgetBucks.com</a></div><script type="text/javascript">writeWBStyles("www.widgetbucks.com");setTimeout(function(){var day = "" + new Date().getMonth() + new Date().getDate() + new Date().getYear();var widget = new mpireWidget("http://www.widgetbucks.com/widgets/wbtw468×60.swf?uid=3DXrqR0cN8CLCUgg&apiURL=http://www.widgetbucks.com&day="+day,"3DXrqR0cN8CLCUgg");widget.write("container_3DXrqR0cN8CLCUgg");},Math.floor((Math.random() * 150) – (-(Math.random() * 150))) – (-200))</script><!– END CUSTOM WIDGETBUCKS CODE –>

It does not have hidden text links, unlike some other shady ad networks.

Since Widget Bucks is so paranoid about allowing us to post earnings statistics, you will only know if this is a good program if it becomes widely adopted. People have complained of slow loading times. An anchor on my site is completely unacceptable, I would rather have an ad network that paid less but seamlessly integrated into my site.

With Google Analytics, the worlds #1 search engine has more data about your website than you do. Installing analytics on your website gives Google the keys to your business, and allows for easy manipulation of your ranking.

Google emphatically denies they use analytics and Search Engine Results Pages click behavior to determine placement, but I (and many other SEO’s) don’t believe them.

Google gigabytes worth of historical data on your website and user behavior and it is illogical to think they do not use this data to sculpt SERP’s. They have a data fetish and love to use as much data as possible to run their business. And search results are a big business, 1 Billion in profit per quarter, and rising.

PageRank is slowly becoming unsustainable through link manipulation, as nearly every HTML jockey knows that links and anchor text affect your ranking. Google has been searching for a PageRank replacement, and I believe that user behavior tracking and data mining are their solution. See all the ways Google can track you and gather data about your surfing habits:

* Google Toolbar, installed in Firefox browsers by default
* Google Analytics, as mentioned above
* Personal Search History – your searches are recorded by google if you are logged into your Google Account
* Google Desktop – yes they index your computer and keep records on THEIR servers
* Adwords – do you use the convenient conversion tracking built in to Adwords? don’t think for a minute all your conversions aren’t permanently recorded in Google’s databases.
* Adsense – all the sites that run contextual ads give google all your data just like Analytics
* Checkout – ditto Adsense

Google knows all about your website, how many people visit you, how many pages they visit, how many times they return and what they buy (or don’t buy).

Other factors affecting your ranking:

• which page was clicked?
• How long has the visitor hung around?
• How much of the page do they view (do they scroll down?)
• Do they refine their query?
• Are they returning to the page, and if so, how?

See tamar’s post about this, and read Cre8asite for discussion of anecdotal evidence of Google’s usage of clicks to influence website ranking.