We Do Search Engine Optimization.

I just downloaded Ecto and I have seen the future and arrived at the promised land. This desktop software allows you to create blog posts with software that reminds me of a simple version of Adobe Pagemaker.

It allows for easy text formatting in blog posts but the real power of this blogging software is manipulating images. You can drag and drop images into posts and resize them dynamically. Ecto will automatically upload the small and large size image to your blog. Wordpress.org has a great web based interface, but the image manipulation is tedious and time consuming. Using Ecto blog software will help make blogs more visual as more people will be adding images to their posts. This is great for image optimization and will encourage adding alt tags and title element descriptions to images, essential for good search engine image search placement.

See an Ecto screenshot:

Drive Saver is not only the best hard drive recovery service, they also have a great affiliate program. Look at the sales material and promotional goodies they mailed me after applying to be an affiliate. They have a great affiliate manager who is very knowledgeable will actually talk with you on the phone!

The only downside to being a Drive Saver affiliate is there is no regular affiliate link, only a promotion code. Checkout DriveSavers and see how well they take care of affiliates and tell them DS19370 sent you.

 Homeagain.com created a brilliant affiliate store that seamlessly tricks users into buying from them. Home Again provides pet rescue and pet adoption services and they created a separate site full of affiliate programs and are asking users to click through to their site before making purchases. A portion of Home Again’s affiliate profits will be donated to the pet rescue service.

This is an amazing affiliate marketing strategy, similar to thehungersite.com where a charitable organization creates incentives to click on banners or purchase products for the good of the earth. This appeals to our inner humanist and generates a lot of sales for the charity. I love charities and contribute to many causes including arthritis, but every charity has to make money to cover expenses, pay employees (no one works for free), rent, etc.

Look at the affiliate marketing playbook used by charity organizations and see how they make sales naturally and effortlessly get site visitors to click their affiliate links.

The email newsletter from bringpetshome.com:

An estimated 8-12 million animals are taken in by shelters each year in the US. Providing care for these animals—including food, shelter and medical treatment—costs money, for which many shelters rely solely on donations. Shelters do not have the funds to take care of every pet that comes through their doors. Unfortunately millions of pets are euthanized each year.

BRING PETS HOME is a not-for-profit organization that raises money for animal shelters across the country. Our mission is to support shelters’ tireless efforts to provide care for pets in need—until they find loving homes or are reunited with their original owners.

100% of money raised through your purchases will go directly to provide food, shelter and medical treatment to pets in need. All operating costs of BRING PETS HOME are covered by corporate donations.

How Does The Program Work?

A portion of every purchase will be distributed by BRING PETS HOME to animal shelters across the country to help save pets’ lives and help them find loving homes. Simply click on a store link and start shopping. There is no extra cost to you.

Register – Register and select a specific animal shelter to benefit from your purchases. Or, if you use our site without registering, 100% of the donations raised through your purchases will be distributed by BRING PETS HOME to animal shelters in need across the country.
Shop – Shop at our participating online stores.
Give – A portion of every purchase aids shelters across the country-helping to save pets’ lives and adopt them into loving homes. 100% of the money raised through your purchases will go directly to care for pets in need.
Below are just a few of the many online stores where you can shop.
For a list of all of our participating online stores, click here!

Kudos to bringpetshome.com for creating a great example of an affiliate program for charitable causes. This site cannot fail.

Taking a page from the Auction Ads Playbook, Bidvertiser.com has created ads displaying Ebay auction listings. The new Bidvertiser ads actually look quite good, although one drawback is there seems to be no way for publishers to easily display the ad.

From their email to me:

Drive buyers to your eBay Listings using BidVertiser!

BidVertiser now allows you to drive buyers and increase sales by
placing an ad for any of your eBay Items on thousands of relevant websites.
Your ad will include a description and an image of your item, pricing
and time left till auction closes. Your ebay ad will be created automatically,
you only need to choose your desired Item

And best of all – we now offer you $20 in Free Affiliate Clicks!

For a preview of an eBay ad click below:
http://www.bidvertiser.com/bdv/BidVertiser/ bdv_ebay_preview.dbm

To enjoy this free credit, simply login, create your eBay ad and
activate your account. We will immediately credit your account with $20 and
start displaying your eBay affiliate ad.

Bidvertiser looks like an interesting option for monetizing blogs and websites. I tried them on this SEO blog and am averaging .20 per click.

Biggerboat.com recently launched an ad network for the entertainment industry. There are dozens of online monetization companies and vertical ad networks like this one that focus on one core online segment will do well against viscous online competition.

The Bigger Boat new member requirements:

Over 25 million entertainment page views per month:

phone: (800) 880-1976 x704
email: partners@biggerboat.com
Please include your name, company, phone number, monthly uniques, entertainment page views, entertainment categories (music, movies, tv), and best time to reach you.

 

Less than 25 million entertainment page views per month:

phone: (800) 880-1976 x705
email: partners@biggerboat.com
Please include your name, company, phone number, monthly uniques, entertainment page views, entertainment categories (music, movies, tv), and best time to reach you.

I expect Biggerboat.com to do well selling targeted ads to music, movies, film and TV websites. Bigger Boat has no affiliate program at this time and appears not to target bloggers or smaller content websites.

Just like with natural or organic search engine rankings, it’s not possible to guarantee top placement in Google adwords paid search. AdWordsPro a member from Google groups says that a company guaranteeing a specific position in paid or unpaid search engine results is potentially unethical and not feasible

Bottom line, if anyone says they can ‘guarantee’ top placement – whether in the unpaid search results or within AdWords – then buyer beware.

AdWordsPro

Google’s AdWords algorithm is not based on how much you are willing to pay for placement. Paid search ranking factors include click through rate, the quality of your pages, Quality Score, landing page relevance, overall website relevance, ad title & copy, keyword relevance, usage of Dynamic Keyword Insertion.

Barry has more on the paid search guarantee.

Are you a Search Engine Optimization company or solo SEO and want to know the industry rate for online marketing? Payscale.com has a widget to let you see.

Search Engine Optimization, Los Angeles

This company really tries to be tricky and insert text links in all the embeddable widgets. It looks like payscale has its own search engine optimization firm and they are helping spread the links online. Unfortunately adding individual salary listings is cumbersome and not very user friendly, especially in the wordpress editor.

An image says a thousand words, and while 1000 words are much better for search engine optimization, a high quality image will be invaluable to convert users and increase your website credibility. Getting high quality images will set you apart from other websites. If you don’t have a photographer on staff or don’t want to pay to have professional photos taken, public domain (free ) or royalty free images are a low cost solution to quality websites.

3 types of images:

1. Public Domain images – free to use however you want – pictures taken when working for the U.S. government or any pictures that you can download from a government website are automatically public domain.
2. Right Protected images – purchased for a certain length of time for one design project. These images are usually negotiated directly with the photographer, and for a fee you receive exclusive rights to the image during the pre arranged time period. May work for big businesses, but not very effective for website designers.
3. Royalty free images – purchased for a one time fee and you can use the image however you would like. Other websites and graphic designers can also purchase the same image. If you use a generic image, it is likely someone else in your field will use the same photo.

10 Free Online Image Resources

• Flickr.com share, store, search, and sort your photos. Flickr is free, though you will have to register if you want to upload and edit your own images. The photographers establish the terms, so read the permissions carefully. If you use someone else’s Flickr image, it’s an unspoken rule to link back to its source.
• Bigfoto.com pictures from around the world, including America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Pacific. Each main category has subcategories, which allows you to choose from pictures in a certain theme or business industry.
• Fotogenika.net photos for free download for personal, educational, and nonprofit use. You cannot use the free images commercially, sell them, or claim authorship. The site is well organized, and it includes categories such as architecture, animals, people, and textures.
• FreeDigitalPhotos.net over 2000 free images that you can use in commercial and noncommercial work. You are not allowed to sell, redistribute, or claim these images as your own. You can browse by category or search for exactly what you need.
• Stock Vault 12 Thousand images that are completely free to download. There are many free image sites, but this one is stocked with high quality photographs. I was impressed at the professionalism of many photographers.
• FreePhotosBank.com non-exclusive, non-transferable license to images. You can search for photos, see which photos are the most popular, and which ones have the highest ratings or the most downloads.
• FreeMediaGoo.com large collection of images, audio, textures, and other visual mediums that you can use for free with some restrictions. You do not even have to credit the images. The site also features some amazing digital images if you are looking for something different.
• MorgueFile.com stock photographs in high resolution digital. With over 55,000 images, divided into several categories, they are sure to have something you can use. The thumbnails are small, but your search results display quickly, and the photos are of top quality.
• PhotoRogue.com offers a different concept. If you cannot find what you need, you can send a request. The service is free and uses volunteer photographers. If you like, you can also sign up for an RSS feed that will let you know when new images become available.
• SXC.hu high quality images taken around the world by amateur photographers. If you have an interest in photography, you can even submit your own pictures with over 100,000 images online. The photographers establish unique terms, so read the fine print, most pictures can be reused immediately.
• Picsearch.com search engine that crawls the web and indexes images. Make sure that you see the site’s licensing terms or contact the copyright holder before you download pictures. Edit your search by animation, color, or size to find exactly what you need.

Royalty Free Low Cost Image Sources

• Fotolia.com
• Isockphoto.com
• Bigstockphoto.com
• Photos.com
• Ablestock.com
• Photoobjects

There are many more places to get free images and photos for your website, what sites do you use?

Read more at SE Journal.

Lecture on time management given at Carnegie Mellon University by computer science professor Randy Pausch. This video is an hour and eleven minutes long, but well worth it. Since it is a lecture, you can leave this video playing in the background as you dutifly work on your search engine optimization projects.

Randy gives an outstanding lecture on managing your time, which is managing your life. Anyone can benefit from watching this video and I have watched/listened to it several times and keep getting more out of it.

The best part about this video is the speaker is not trying to sell you anything. I really miss the open, free flowing nature of information in universities. The web has a lot of free information, but very often someone is trying to use the content to sell you something.

So kick back and listen to an expert on time management help you understand how to organize your life and remember the speaker is not selling anything and has no financial gain

Topics included:
Use a day planner: no successful people have no schedule. Planning is the only way not to fail.

How to get off the phone: use excuse I have someone waiting for me.
If a telemarketer calls: ask for their home number and when they eat dinner and offer to call them back. Or hangup while you’re talking.

If you go on vacation don’t allow people to leave you phone messages. 60% of the time the problem will have been solved by the time you respond.

Learn to say no, this is an opportunity cost. If someone asks you to do something weigh the benefits against lost time.

Make your office comfortable for you and optionally comfortable for guests/visitors.

Benjamin Franklin Quote: it’s possible to make money but impossible to make more time.

Record the usage of your time – what are you doing that is wasting other peoples time.

Delegation is key.

See the CMU.edu website of Randy Pausch.

I posted what I thought was an innocent search engine optimization question in Yahoo Answers. I simply asked how I could get data feeds and affiliate links for Yahoo content as is displayed on this monetized domain name: http://www.massagechairdirectory.com/.

This site syndicates content from various Yahoo properties including Answers, Shopping, and tons of pay per click listings. All external links filter through http://www.massagechairdirectory.com/ ppcredir.geo?rank=3&type=Domain%20Match%20Subsequent%20Arbitrage

Very interesting, is Yahoo sponsoring in house PPC arbitrage campaigns? Is Yahoo disclosing to their advertisers and investors that they are getting into the spam content generation game? Is yahoo losing the plot over the free and open internet?
Other companies have tried to make money off their clients using cloaked content sites masquerading as simple PPC arbitrage ventures including valueclick VCLK and marchex MCHX.

See my original post to http://answers.yahoo.com here.

I don’t expect a response from Yahoo, I just wonder why they are censoring their discussion boards and possibly promoting domain name parking content. I hope no one else has been blatently censored by this internet giant.