Just wanted to wish everybody that reads my blog a happy (and safe) new year!  I hope that in 07′ I can continue to provide useful information when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Internet Business (ecommerce) and all areas of marketing your website and business!

Also, thanks to all my readers for helping make the first “real year” of my blogs life such a success!  Lets keep rocking it for 2007!  (this will be my past post for a few days due to the holidays, so everyone again, have a happy and safe new year!)

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This is one of the many reasons the seo and internet marketing industry gets a bad rap. There is another seller on eBay selling PR 6 and PR 5 sites that are all fake PR. Go to this eBay link and see for yourself. He definately knows what he is doing as he lists different pr datacenter checks, and other tools yet none of them are the fake detection tools that check for old 301’s. If you use this tool provided by Seo Logs and type in one of the domains, www.abengoabioenergycorp.com you will see it is stealing the Page Rank from www.abengoa.com. What the person did was take the first domain and did a permanant 301 redirect in the .htaccess file to the legit domain and then after a Page Rank Update he took the 301 off and it gives the new domain a PR 6 until the next PR update when am excited buyer will find out that they now one a pr 0 site.

This is very important to understand and look for when buying links or sites, you always want to check the validity of the Page Rank they are boasting since most of the time that is what you are paying for. You don’t want to pay a pr 7 price tag whent he site is a 0 and has no back links.

Checking the back links of the domain can help as PR is only passed through links, if a site has no back links just as all of the sites in the eBay listing have no backlinks you are not getting legit PR.

Also unrelated to PR but very important to buying links is check the page you are getting the link from and make sure it isn’t supplemental, getting on a supplemental page isn’t going to help you out either. There is a lot of money wasted on fake pr and supp links.

It sucks there are still people falling for this. I emailed the seller we will see what happens.

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As I have been on vacation thinking about a lot of the small business owners (from small towns) that are clients of mine, it got me thinking about something. And since this is my blog I can post about it - right?

I have some pretty cool clients from small towns that are doing big business and making big business money. For them its ideal online - they get the opportunity of big business with the small town lifestyle they are looking for. This is the main reason I love doing business online - you can do it from anywhere! You are not tied down to a big office building in the middle of downtown that you have to fight hours of other commuters in the rat race.

If people could just get the vision and see the possibilities online they would be changed forever. I was thinking about an Aunt of mine (by marriage) that has a local business that is pretty dang successful selling goat soap and other various lotions. She is afraid to take the jump online and see what can happen because of fear of losing current income stream. i personally think going online could only explode it more for her and take her out of her 9-5. The only problem she may have if she went this route is not being able to keep up with the demand. (My guess is its a problem she would be willing to tackle if it took her out of her 9-5 comfort zone)

I have a really good buddy that lives in a ski resort area of Pinetop Arizona that goes and does what he pleases anytime, and most of the time when I am talking to him he has no idea what day of the week it is! He lives this “successful entrepreneurial” lifestyle by teaching other people about his home based business opportunity (again its online and can be done anywhere)! I have done business deals with this guy while he has been in Cabo, Hawaii and other places I have no idea!

The point here is the power of business online and what it can do for your lifestyle. You just have to believe you can make it happen and go make it happen!

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I came across this new tagging site today called Shadows and wanted to share my profile with everyone. Go ahead and register and get an account and add me if you like.

I have not played with it enough to tell you if I like it a lot or want to bag it, but for now lets give it a test run!

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Just wanted to write a quick post (in between 3 kis being sick and on a so called vacation) about domain age.  I had a good conversation with a buddy of mine I do some SEO for down in a small town in Arizona and he was talking about scrapping a domain name their company has owned for the last 8 years and re-branding and going with something completely new.

I personally do not think re-branding is a bad idea and for sure sometimes needed, but I had to explain to him about the power of his old domain name and what we can make it do, opposed to the brand new one.  This works much easier if the site you are thinking about re-branding can still work with the old domain name (in my friends case it can) so we talked about things like - back links, domain age, domain authority, page rank etc.  All the usuals and the fact that he is no longer in “filters” of any sorts on any major engine.

We talked about implementing a solid SEO campaign and in the long run saving alot of money rather then going with a new domain name with the new branding.   I think he will go with both (and thats always a good idea too) but he learned a good lesson about the power of old domain names.

(hint) Any time you have access to old domain names and can snatch them up, go for it!  It will only bring you joy.  Be smart though and do some research on the domain name.  We don’t want to get access to any domain name that was used in “shady” business in past.

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Another lame ass policy by the Google Adsense team on placing images near Google Ads. When I read this I was pretty much blown away and wonder how many stupid people are really out there because the way I see it Google Adsense team thinks alot.

Who is not smart enough to figure out the difference between a Google Ad and an image? Who does not already just look past the ads on most every website we look at?

The new policy Google has set forth is preventing webmasters from placing images near the ads that would try to increase click through ratio. I can’t even begin to explain my lack of words for DUH! Google is making to much money because they have teams that actually research this crap out and come up with these policies. Here is what I don’t get - why the hell would they not want to increase the CTR (Google and the webmaster)? I really do not believe an image near an ad is going to make the click less valuable.

I think the ads are good to have on pages and serve their purpose (monetary purposes) but from my experience most people that click on the ads know what they are and want to learn more, just like when doing a search on Google when the sponsored ads come up on the right, or up top!

I will just keep using YPN and loving waking up in the morning!

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I am on vacation and am going to be doing light posting - actually I was going to try not to post at all, but I saw something today as I was working on a clients site that made me laugh.

When I saw this SEO no-no today (I am getting to what it was be patient I gotta build it up) it really made me laugh and wonder with all the resources out there and information why people still do this stupid crap.  Do they really think its going to help them dominate on a big search engine?  Maybe they are just trying for all the little ones that will get them no traffic at all?  Who knows.

It does not matter if its its on the page in question, or in a div table in the html, or behind an image invisible to the human eye, the search engine can still see, and find the hidden text on your page (and they are getting better detecting it more and more everyday).  It will get you banned from Google.  It will not help you in the long run on any of the major search engines out there.

This is a white hat SEO Blog, and I understand there are reasons why some feel they can get away with this, but if you have a legitimate site and want to keep it that way, you should do your best to avoid all “black hat” areas.

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Just wanted to share with everybody a promotion that is going on with the Text Link Ads guys -

I have been using these guys for a couple years now and have never felt it a waste of money!  If you have a marketing campaign and budget going, you need to make sure that Text Link Ads is a part of it.  Click on the banner for 100$ in free links!  It don’t get better then that!

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Believe it or not this was a question I was asked recently, but it made me think about some tips I could give to those looking to start submitting to directories.

To answer the question; You most certainly do not need to be already selling products on your website to be able to start submitting to directories. In fact, its just the opposite - you want to be starting to submit a new site to many places, directories included, but you do this so the search engines can start to pick you up easier and more naturally.

Directories are trusted sites (well alot of them, but not all) and just getting listed with them because of the human touch most really good directories will really start to help out with search engine rankings and standings.

I have a list of directories that are absolute musts everytime!

• http://dir.yahoo.com
  
• http://www.dmoz.org (good luck getting listed with DMOZ and who knows when their directory will be accepting new sites again, but its still a must)
• http://www.botw.org (if you are smart this one is a no brainer)
• http://www.goguides.org
• http://www.abilogic.com
• http://www.uncoverthenet.com/directory
• http://sbd.bcentral.com (not sure if they are accepting brand new listings still)

If you are on a marketing budget, which I assume most of my readers are then you will probably want to start with these directories when it comes to paid directories (besides DMOZ cause its free) because they will pack the most punch for the money spent.

If you are wondering if you are wasting money on directories let me assure you that you are not! Directories are one of the best solutions to start getting your site recognized by the search engines. A lot of clients I talk to that know about free directories always ask me, with so many free directories how come I need to pay for directories. Its like saying what will get you more exposure a billboard on a deserted island, or a billboard in downtown Los Angeles? Figure it out!

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As most of my readers know I recently switched to MAC. I have been using PC’s for the last 15 years and finally made the switch. I still am not looking back and actually love using computers again.

I wanted to share a pretty cool MAC messenger program I found called Adium.

If you are a MAC user and still need to use MSN because of all your contacts, or if you are like me and use Yahoo, MSN and ICQ then you love this program. It combines them all! I know this is not the first program like this out there, but this is the absolute best one that I have ever used and found.

A few things I like about Adium:

• Separated your chats (msn, yahoo etc. you know who is chatting with you much easier)
• Themes - its open source so again - developers make this program amazing
• Extras - there are cool things that the program can do because of … again open source and developers
• Sleek looking
• Easy to use and set up accounts
• If you have been using MSN (like I have for the last (almost) 10 years!) and want to keep using it, but you own a MAC, then you will want to download this program.

I love it and can’t say enough about it. I would love to know of other chat programs that MAC users love and why they would not use Adium?

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