If you are thinking of going to SMX West let me try and convince you. One of the most important aspects of success is the old adage, “it is not what you know but who you know.” This couldn’t be further from the truth in SEO and the online business world. You know someone at TC or Mashable it is going to be easier to get a look, you know some top diggers you will front page more often, etc.

SEO Conferences and specifically SMX conferences are the best way to expand your network and grow your online “Crew.” SMX has been my favorite for networking, because the feel and the structure is more geared towards just that. Danny and Chris are working hard to make sure that there is an open environment to talk, discuss and meet pretty much anyone that you want in the industry. SEO’s are already cool by nature and all about networking so it makes it even better. If you are thinking of going in Feb, and whether it is your first conference or not, let me share a personal experience with you as to why you must attend.

Mat and I planned to go to SMX Advanced in Seattle, it had been a while since we had been to any conferences, and we had a lot of huge plans in the works for 97th Floor, clients and our sites. So we figured it was the time to go and really expand on our network. We have been doing SEO for a long time and I guess cause we had gotten into it together, we really didn’t network that much until this last year. We had just landed the sweetest client of all time, we had Social Media for Firefox in idea/alpha stage, we relaunched the new 97th Floor design and migrated our old blogs and we really wanted to get to know some people in the industry.

To make a long story short (you can read the rant) I ended up getting stranded in Vegas for 2 days, I missed the entire conference except the last session. Mat was chilling in Seattle on his own for two days and I was stuck on a laptop in a terminal with 60 super angry people. Yet it still turned out to be the most productive conference I have ever attended. After the last session everyone went and got some dinner and then headed over to the SEOMoz after party. It was a super intimate get together at a sweet little billiards hall and Mat and I got to know everyone. Specifically Cameron Olthuis, he and I had been commenting on each others blogs and emailing each other, he now lives where I grew up in Cali, and I live where he grew up in Utah and there aren’t very many SEO’s that Surf at least that I know of, so we had a lot to talk about. As a direct result of growing the contacts and expanding the online IM Crew, we generated over a million unique visitors in the last 6 months that we wouldn’t of if we didn’t go. Our eyes were opened up to some new avenues of marketing, specifically making boring sites go viral. Below is some snippets of just 3 sites that had their traffic and success increased because we went to SMX.

A Site Mat and I Run
May 2007 2,086
Jun 2007 2,362
Jul 2007 2,850
Aug 2007 9,975 (this is when we started to implement things)
Sep 2007 25,736
Oct 2007 19,143
Nov 2007 18,249
Dec 2007 32,653

A Clients Site
May 2007 19,704
Jun 2007 16,008 (I called client, we are going to switch our strategy and focus on certain types of content)
Jul 2007 12,348
Aug 2007 12,721
Sep 2007 10,736 (finally got site ready and started to implement for a push in Oct.)
Oct 2007 149,586 (One of the viral articles we did this month got over 4,600 links and counting)
Nov 2007 32,413
Dec 2007 94,786

Site I Partner With a Buddy
Jun -Sept (I have an idea for a site I got from talking to some people at SMX)
Oct 2007 47,458 (started the site brand new domain on Oct. 27th)
Nov 2007 66,534
Dec 2007 76,555
Jan 2008 17,767 (so far)

Together that equals 669,670 unique visitors not 1 million plus, but this is just 3 sites out of about 10 specifically that were all greatly effected by attending SMX.

So if you are new to SEO conferences, or you haven’t attended an SMX, you need to go. You will be surprised on how easy it is to meet the people you need to, in order to grow your business.

I will be speaking on Reputation Management so come and say hi. I am looking forward to getting to finally meet Chris Winfield face to face as we have emailed, and talked on the phone, but never in person. I want to sit down and chat with Rand as we have always said hi in passing and really the longest conversation I have had with him was when I emailed him and and went off cause my friends Pest Control website that I was marketing for pennies hadn’t been approved by SocEngine as fast as I would have liked. I need to digg up that email, I was like, “who is this Rand guy, I paid my $7 bucks over a month ago.” I also want to meet Tamar and many others, of course all of our readers.

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Ok, I am doing this post because the holiday season is upon us, and it reminded me of a useful tip (I use, and was taught a few years back) that can help web surfers save big bucks. Plus, we can all use a little reminder now and again. There may also be some readers out there that are new to this blog, and the information provided.

When I was renewing some domains this morning, during the checkout process I was asked if I had a “coupon code”, but I didn’t for this specific registrar. So I did a simple Google search (for this example I will use Go Daddy) - Go Daddy Promo Code, and was flooded with a ton of results of “Promo Codes” that I could sift through, and find the best deal, apply the code, and of course save a ton of money. Some of the promo, or coupon codes (as they are called) I found were significant savings, even up to 75% off. Think about it, if you are paying $100 bucks to register a domain name for 9 years, and you save 75% because of a code you found from a Google search, then that is a savings of $75 bucks! I am sure during this holiday season you can find another use for that $75, right?

The thing thats cool about this method is you can find promo, and coupon codes for almost anything you shop for online, just by doing this simple Google search. It does not even have to be the holiday season to use this method, because I do this year round on almost everything I buy online. You can use it for goods, services and almost anything you pay for online.

Heres how I would suggest doing it - If you are purchasing something online, and they give you an opportunity to put in a coupon code, rather then just skipping it because you do not have one - search for it on Google! Once you get the list of results, keep them open because you may have to refer to the list several times. When you are back in the shopping cart area (or checkout area) you may have to apply several different codes you find, because some may be old, expired or no longer in use. This really does work though, and I have fond a coupon code for every single website that I have purchased from this holiday season!

This is also a good reminder for you Internet business owners selling products online that promo and coupon codes do work. Even if people are using this tip against your business, you are still making money. If I normally make a profit of $100 on a product, but I can sell more to the deal seekers because of a 50% off coupon, and only make $50 on that product, I would still rather make $50, then nothing with these kind of “deal seeking shoppers”. You will end up selling more, and making more in the long run. At least thats what I have found!

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The battle of buying links rages on at SES San Jose. I really wish I could have been in the room that was (from what I hear) “standing room only” I can imagine with the panel that was put together. It would have been worth it for me just to listen to GrayWolf go off on the politics of Google. Oh how he does such a great job at that!

For me, something that Todd Friesen (again, since I have posted stuff from him I liked before about the buying links debate) from Range said describes my feelings PERFECTLY;

If link purchases have a positive ROI for a company, they’ll continue to make them. If they have a positive ROI, chances are good that they must also be serving the searcher effectively and thus, be good results for the engines.

When are we gonna get past the fact that Google is not the end all save all? Sure, they are huge and we will keep doing everything we can to optimize for rankings on the engine, but there are other sources of traffic.

They need to do a better job of practicing what they preach at Google if buying links is so bad. (Just Google “buy text links” and you will see how Google is getting paid by promoting buying links) I really didn’t want to make this a Google bash post, but I do think the whole debate about buying links is a bit silly when Google still endorses buying links with AdWords and suggests signing up for (PAID) directories like the Yahoo Directory.

I guess worthless results because of lack of optimization would prompt more clicks on Google Ads, so maybe it is a good business model?

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Yes, we all love getting link love, but we all love getting traffic too - right? I really don’t think it was Danny Sullivans intent to be greedy with the link juice. People react way to quickly when tests are being run (and no, I really don’t care if it’s not a test). I will run tests all day if it can prevent more spam, and take less time away from me having to deal with idiots.

Something else people need to pay attention to is traffic they are getting from Sphinn. I am seeing some amazing traffic from Sphinn, and to me, thats where it really matters. If you are doing your campaigns correctly anyway you won’t have to rely on a site like Sphinn to pass you any link authority.

My hat is off to Danny Sullivan for creating such an amazing site to share search industry news, and a social site that “SEO’s” are not hated, but accepted. Sphinn, you can keep nofollowing me all day if you like, as long as you keep sending me that amazing traffic from stories that are worthy!

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The way I see it - If ShoeMoney posts that affiliate networks have nothing to worry about with the launching of Googles PPA/CPA program then CJ is ok.  I was laughing when everybody was worried about all these programs losing their steam, so I loved it when Jeremy posted 6 reasons why these networks won’t die because of Google.

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Over the past week in my circle of seo friends I have heard rumors of Google Launching a new affiliate network. I did some searching and found one post on the Affiliate Beta.

In the post it links two blog posts by Google on their Adsense Blog and Adwords Blog in the post’s they aren’t saying it is an affiliate network but they are saying things like, “Pay-per action” and “referrals beta” so it seems like an affiliate network.

Anyone been invited? Or have anymore info?

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This is according to a client of mine in the home based business industry. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that Google (or Yahoo!) organic listings don’t bring you quality traffic, or amazing conversion, I am just pointing out that a search engine that many would consider dead (as far as traffic goes) still can get your quality traffic that converts. (more…)

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I won the HDTV Sony WEGA 50″ TV from BOTW.org this week. You can see the details here.

BTW I swear BOTW it is easily the best directory on the net hands down.

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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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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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