We Do Search Engine Optimization.

Normally I find Michael Arrington’s blog posts self fulfilling and entertaining – he is a great technology gossip and loves skewering venture capitalists. He has done a great job of it, with over 600 thousand readers.

Today he shows us the lighter side of Silicon Valley, one with compassion, feeling, and emotions. Tin Woodman, there is indeed hope you’ll get a heart

Theodore Roosevelt from a 1910 speech in given in Paris, and drew an analogy to today’s entrepreneurs:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

With the advent of Graham Langdon’s MillionDollarWiki.com people are jumping on the wiki money making bandwagon. It seems like a safe bet with the original Million Dollar Wiki having an incredibly strong start. Graham has created a new online market using the free mediawiki code and I think its a great idea. Wikipedia.org is an great source for reasonably commercial free information, and the Million Dollar Wiki is a source for marketing and commercial information. There is no ambiguity what kind of content you will find at either website, and this is good for users.

As the original JohnChow reports, JohnCow sold the MillionEuroWiki.com domain name, but there are a lot of wiki currency domains still available.

MillionPoundWiki.com – registered 7/29/07
*MillionDollarWiki.co.uk – registered 8/23/07
MillionPoundWiki.co.uk – registered 8/20/07
MillionPoundWiki.ie – available
MillionDollarWiki.ie – available
MillionMarkWiki.com – available
MillionMarkWiki.de – available
MillionDollarWiki.eu – registered 10/1/07
MillionEuroWiki.eu – registered 10/1/07
MillionPoundWiki.eu – available
MillionFrancWiki.com – available
MillionFrancWiki.fr – available
MillionDollarWiki.fr – available
MillionPesoWiki.com – registered 9/25/07
MillionPesoWiki.mx – available
MillionLiraWiki.com – available
MillionLiraWiki.it – available
MillionDollarWiki.it – available
MillionDollarWiki.es – available
MillionDollarWiki.ru – registered 8/15/07
MillionDollarWiki.tv – available
MillionDollarWiki.au – available
MillionDollarWiki.cn – registered 6/6/07
MillionDollarWiki.in – available
MillionDollarWiki.jp – available
MillionDollarWiki.ca – registered 9/13/07
MillionDollarWiki.co.jp – available
MillionDollarWiki.co.za – available
MillionDollarWiki.co.kr – available
MillionDollarWiki.fi – available
MillionDollarWiki.se – available
MillionDollarWiki.br – available

*note, if I did not include your coutry, It’s not because I don’t love you or you aren’t important, I’m just too tired to lookup all ~200 countries.

Why did I research all the names and post them for a domain name squatter entrepreneur to purchase? Variations abound. I have a lot of other projects and obligations, and at this point it’s more fun to be on the sidelines watching this unfold (along with John Lampard, Matt Jones and Angel ). The original MDW has an excellent, passionate marketer behind it and it should be a resounding success. However, like the MillionDollarHomepage.com, I think the marketplace will only support one website, and it will be the first player in the game.

There’s no reason not to try your hand at the money wiki table, with the right skills you could produce a winner!

*update* - use the code cvos to receive a $5 discount when signing up for the MillionDollarWiki.

Stuntdbl rants about search engine optimization and notes that most SEO’s talk, blog, complain and pontificate about optimization instead of actually doing the work necessary to get pages good placement.

From his site:

Optimal is the best case scenario in any given set of circumstances.
Optimized is creating a site that gives users and bots what they are looking for realtime, and IS an ongoing process (show me a site that has too much content or too many links…I dare you.)

Yes search engine optimization is an ongoing task, and the best sites add new information daily. Just like Todd created a compelling blog post, getting people like me to link to it, successful websites will create pages that attract and inspire their audience and are link magnets.

SEO is not voodoo – it is making informed decisions based rules and experience and applying them to complicated sets of variables to create a process and strategy that has the highest likelihood of success, and adjusting the marketing strategy quickly and effectively as new information becomes available.

Speaking of making adjustments based on what new information and analyzing your competition, Derek Edmond shows us how Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots optimized his information gathering strategy. While this is a decidedly blackhat technique, It was stunningly effective. I don’t recommend blackhat SEO in general, or spying on your competitors in particular, but the more information you have the more informed choices you can make.

SEO’s don’t work in a vacuum – which is why it is important to let your SEO know about your strategies and implementation… proper SEO is about more than meta tags and anchor text

So to be successful in SEO just do more actual content creation that is targeted towards your audience. It is easy to discern good writing from bad, and people will always come back to your site if it is well written and interesting. This is the optimal result of a well done website.

I have compiled a list of services I use to help me acquire, manage and broker domain names. These are almost all free services that can help a webmaster purchase a desired domain name or get a name that is pending delete. If you’ve ever been frustrated that some other guy seems to get the best domain names, read on.

Namescout – Excellent free service with a very intuitive interface that any Adwords user should recognize

Domain Name Aftermarket – Godaddy service offering domain name auctions at low bids
Domain Alert – Another Godaddy service offering alerts to changes in domain names. Similar to Domaintools.com
Sitefinder 301 – Sitefinder301 uses the Open Directory Project and the Internet Archive to find sites that are relevant to your niche that you may be able to buy. Check for domain names that have not been updated in a long time.
Domain Tools Advanced auction – Excellent tool allows you to search domain names by dmoz and yahoo directory listings, extension and alexa ranking and ranks them hierarchically. You will find great domains with this tool.
Register Compass – Similar to the advanced auction above, but this service costs $30 per month.
Instant domain search – Search through available domain names with a lightning fast ajax interface.
Domains bot – domain name suggestion tool. It may be able to help you come up with a good name, or you could just spend senseless hours trying to coerce the computer to find you a good available name.
Afternic – marketplace for premium domains, buy and sell domain names.
Sedo – Domain name parking services uses google adsense to give you revenue from empty domain names.
Just dropped – Search for domain names that have recently expired.
Moniker Appraisal – Looking for a domain name appraisal? Moniker is one of the top brokers for premium domain names.

If you want to order expired names you need to do it through an automated domain name recapturing service to secure domains that are pending delete.

There are 3 domain name capture services that will backorder dropped domain names:

Snapnames.com
Pool.com
Namejet.com

If I missed any feel free to post them in the comments.

Blinx just launched an ad overlay system allowing you to place ads on any video. This awesome technology lets you pollute the web get paid for sharing videos. Blink works with popular video sharing sites including YouTube, DailyMotion, Myspace Video, Yahoo Video, Google Video, Revver, MetaCafe and others.

See the ad overlay I created on the Google Adsense video unit announcement on YouTube. I beat Google to the punch and am showing 3rd party ads on their announcement for a similar service. I have no idea what the payout will be, and it’s likely that the Google video unit contextual advertising program will pay more.

But today, we have Blinx beating Google to the ad delivery:

This has nothing to do with SEO but everything to do with business and our internet society. This prediction made by the Ladies Home Journal in 1900 gets a lot of events correct, like the automobile replacing all forms of mobile transportation, cell phones, satellites and air conditioning.

Some things it gets amusingly wrong: “All americans will be able to easily walk 10 miles, and those that can’t will be regarded as weaklings. All schools and communities will have huge gymnasiums and health facilities.

Unfortunately the Ladies overestimated our ability to want to leave our comfortable automobiles.

Quotes from the 1900 edition of the Ladies Home Journal
Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

Prediction #5: Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Oh yeah, Jim Boykin and the crew from webuildpages.com sent out free clocks and I had to take a photo of mine. WeBuildPages is a link baiting firm that is run by the self proclaimed link ninja, and has been providing high end link building campaigns since 2001. I’m a big fan of linkbuilding through social networks and targeted exchanges and WBP has some cool tools that allow you to analyze your incoming links and backlink anchor text.

Who can say no to free swag, and besides, having a clock hanging on my neck makes me look like Flavor Flav. My next post will be both me and Jim with these SEO clocks around our necks. That would be a great photo.

I think I’ll stick to SEO instead of rap, even though Flava’ was the king of style in the 90′s.

We have the following coupon code available for you to promote. Soundview Executive Book Summaries has given us $15 off any annual subscription. We are passing this to you, it is valid for the month during 2010

Soundview coupon code: $15OFF

If you’re like me you don’t have much time, and have a lot of books you would enjoy reading, as well as a lot of books you should read to make your online business better. You also may have a lot of dead time spend driving, waiting in line, or traveling. This is time you could spend listening to audio books on your ipod or laptop computer.

Enter Soundview. Soundview Executive Book Summaries provides audio excerpts from leading business and corporate books that you can listen to in a variety of digital formats including mp3 that will play in any audio player including the iPod, iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player, Real Player, Quicktime, and any other software that recognizes mp3′s.

When I first browsed this service, it seemed bland and uninformative. Their website has a decidedly web 1.0 feel and looks like it was last updated in 1996, the design is exceedingly bland and very rough. It is hard to quickly find the important points of interest. I found myself scanning the page for key conversion elements and struggled to fine them. There best selling point is a free sample, and this button is buried in the left column barely above the fold on a 1080×768 monitor I don’t know what they want me to do and they hide a lot of their great content behind needless barriers. Soundview is completely behind their competitors.

What they do have going for them is an awesome domain name, summary.com this is a great generic name that is easy to remember and should capitalize on it. I would even recommend renaming the company to Summery.com and get rid of “Soundview Executive Book Summaries”. No one will remember the 4 word title, but people will easily remember Summery.com, and at this point this is a web only company anyway, their brick and mortar days (if there ever were any) are long gone. Take the risk and rename to .com, this is free advice and I just saved you listening to 1000 hours of your business audio books. If they don’t, Simply Audio Books will continue to grab their marketshare, and likely put Soundview out of business.

While I am skewering summery.com’s website I need to point out their wasted title tag and under performing search engine optimization efforts. This precious tag provides no benefit with their long 4 word unmemorable business name. People are searching for keywords “audio business book” “mba book on tape” “download business book” “business book mp3″. Their internal site search returned 417 books on marketing and no 2 books on search engine optimization, but they are by people I’ve never heard of and never mention SEO in the summaries.

This is not intended to be a review of the summary.com website, but I will bet a dollar to a doughnut that I could increase conversions in the double digits with a redesign.

I enjoyed listening to a demo of Stephen Covey’s The 8th Habit. You can listen to a summery of the Eighth Habit demo here, and here.

Here is the summary of the Steven Covey work on summary.com:

For individuals and organizations, excellence is no longer merely an option – survival requires it. But to thrive, excel and lead in our Knowledge Worker Age, we must move beyond effectiveness to greatness. Leadership guru Stephen Covey writes that accessing a higher level of human genius and motivation requires a sea change in thinking: a new mind-set and skill set – in short, an additional habit to those featured in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey explains that the crucial challenge is to find our own voice and inspire others to find theirs.

Purchase individual business book summaries in many different formats (from PDF to MP3) with over 300 titles available for instant download. Sounds good to me, and it should work well for any busy business owner who travels a lot.

The summaries I downloaded and listened to were about 10 minutes long, and cost $13. This seems like extortion and I can’t imagine people paying this much for a watered down cliffs notes version of a business book. $13 is way too much for a small audio file, why not get the entire audio book for $19? Soundview has a $169 1 year subscription deal that includes 12 monthly issues (30 summaries) delivered to your mailbox. Includes print and CD formats of the summaries, as well as free access to the online versions in your Online Library. This makes the cost of each business audio book summery $5.63.

Summary – Soundview has quality mp3 files, but they are way overpriced. Checkout a much better web based audio book solution Simply Audio Books.