I went to Affiliate Summit this week. I probably could have went to more sessions than I did, but I had too much fun hanging out with the TLA crew.

I did see the keynote speech by Jim Bouton. His thesis for success was that you must be persistent and you must love the process of whatever you are doing. Jim made it to the majors twice, co-created Big League Chew, and wrote a groundbreaking book titled Ball Four, which in many ways changed the way baseball operated as a business. I have attended many conferences, and it seems like most everyone says the same thing, but with their spin on it (based largely on their own experiences). Go to SXSW and you will hear how important design, standards, and blogging are. And you will hear how you have to be persistent and work hard and keep learning, etc (that is generally the thing you hear everywhere, that and maybe if someone had good market timing they say they were lucky too).

At Affiliate Summit I also listened to Rosalind Gardner offer affiliate marketing tips. I think she is highly focused on getting email addresses to create large targeted mailing lists and use pay per click to protect your site from the engines. Her tips for success seemed similar to things Jim Bouton would say, I would post here, or things I have read on many SEO forums. The one downside I felt in her speech was that she really talked down on SEO as though it was not as reliable, predictable, and as safe as pay per click marketing.

While my position is largely biased by my own experiences, I never really understand when people say pay per click is going to be more reliable long-term than SEO is. All of the markets are growing increasingly more competitive. With PPC someone can overspend you out of the market, and the market makers weed noise from the market. Both of which result in many casualties.

People can also spam the heck out of email too, which may limit how effective email is. And what happens when the major email providers allow more targeted ad buys on their email products? Competitors to your business may subscribe to your newsletter and bid against its contents to show up wherever you are.

With SEO, if you have good market timing and can create better ideas than the competition you carve out a market position and then are sorta stuck there, with the help of reinforcing links. I recently launched that SEO for Firefox extension. Assuming I keep the software functional the download page will probably rank in the top 5 for SEO Firefox and Firefox SEO for years.

The best converting terms are typically brand related terms and search is about communication. As long as you build a brand and gain mindshare search engines will deliver an irrelevant user experience if your site is not showing up.

In some cases it makes sense to buy mindshare, even if it only barely pays for itself and lowers your overall margins. Why? Because it provides another lead source and strengthens your overall brand awareness and mindshare (and, of course, exposure leads to more exposure).

I spend about $1,000 a month on AdSense just breaking even on the ads because the additional 12 or so unit sales does not increase my customer service load by much, but the $1,000 ad cost provides millions of ad impressions and increased mindshare. If I ever need to cut that ad cost I can.

Once people see your brand enough they will assume you are successful and offer free honest feedback. Exposure not only leads to more exposure, but it seems the less you need help the more people are willing to help you. And they may offer you free help that is better than anything you could have paid for.

Using any single medium as your exclusive lead provider is going to be risky, but by using multiple you can make your business profile less risky.

Matt Cutts is looking for feedback on improving Google Sitemaps.

I'm expecting some creative answers here. I'll phrase it more generally: Forget XML files or even what Sitemaps looks like currently. What info would you want as a webmaster?

If you could design your dream webmaster or site owner console on Google, what would it look like?

Rand announced the launch of his page strength tool, which aims to be more accurate than Google's PageRank. The one downside to the tool is that there is a delay most all the data sources (for example I think my SEO for Firefox page is ranking at #10 in Google for SEO right now, but the page strength tool shows it as being at 3.5), but it is probably quite a bit more accurate than PageRank alone is.

Also interesting that on one front Google is requesting to look for ways to share as much data as they can with you while on other fronts they make external tools and ideas necessary and valuable because they are unwilling to share data they once shared. Thus markets which were once fairly open are getting more and more abstract. It happened with PageRank and SEO and now it is happening with AdWords too.

I recently asked Dan Kramer of KloakIt if I could interview him about some common cloaking questions I get asked, and he said sure.

How does cloaking work?

It is easiest to explain if you first understand exactly what cloaking is. Web page cloaking is the act of showing different content to different visitors based on some criterion, such as whether they are a search engine spider, or whether they are located in a particular country.

A cloaking program/script will look at a number of available pieces of information to determine the identity of a visitor: the IP address, the User-Agent string of the browser, the referring URL, all of which are contained in the HTTP headers of the request for the web page. The script will make a decision based on this information and serve the appropriate content to the visitor.

For SEO purposes, cloaking is done to serve optimized versions of web pages to search engine spiders and hide that optimized version from human visitors.

What are the risks associated with cloaking? What types of sites should consider cloaking?

Many search engines discourage the practice of cloaking. They threaten to penalize or ban those caught using cloaking techniques, so it is wise to plan a cloaking campaign carefully. I tell webmasters that if they are going to cloak, they should set up separate domains from their primary website and host the cloaked pages on those domains. That way, if their cloaked pages are penalized or banned, it will not affect their primary website.

The types of sites that successfully cloak fall into a couple of categories. First, you have those who are targeting a broad range of "long tail" keywords, typically affiliate marketers and so on. They can use various cloaking software packages to easily create thousands of optimized pages which can rank well. Here, quantity is the key.

Next, you have those with websites that are difficult for search engines to index. Some people with Flash-based websites want to present search engine spiders with text versions of their sites that can be indexed, while still delivering the Flash version to human visitors to the same URL.

What is the difference between IP delivery and cloaking?

IP delivery is a type of cloaking. I mentioned above that there are several criteria by which a cloaking script judges the identity of a visitor. One of the most important is the IP address of the visitor.

Every computer on the internet is identified by its IP address. Lists are kept of the IP addresses of the various search engine spiders. When a cloaking script has a visitor, it looks at their IP address and compares it against its list of search engine spider IP addresses. If a match is found, it delivers up the optimized version of the web page. If no match is found, it delivers up the "landing page", which is meant for human eyes. Because the IP address is used to make the decision, it's called "IP delivery".

IP delivery is considered the best method of cloaking because of the difficulty involved in faking an IP address. There are other methods of cloaking, such as by User-Agent, which are not as secure. With User-Agent cloaking, the User-Agent string in the HTTP headers is compared against a list of search engine spider User-Agents. An example of a search engine spider User-Agent is
"Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)".

The problem with User-Agent cloaking is that it is very easy to fake a User-Agent, so your competitor could easily decloak one of your pages by "spoofing" the User-Agent of his browser to make it match that of a search engine spider.

How hard is it to keep up with new IP addresses? Where can people look to find new IP addresses?

It's a chore the average webmaster probably wouldn't relish. There are always new IP addresses to add (the best cloaking software will do this automatically), and it is a never-ending task. First, you have to set up a network of bot-traps that notify you whenever a search engine spider visits one of your web pages. You can have a CGI script that does this for you, and possibly check the IP address against already known search engine spiders. Then, you can take the list of suspected spiders generated that way and do some manual checks to make sure the IP addresses are actually registered to search engine companies. Also, you have to keep an eye out for new search engines... you would not believe how many new startup search engines there are every month.

Instead of doing it all yourself, you can get IP addresses from some resources that can be found on the web. I manage a free public list of search engine spider IP addresses. There
are also some commercial resources available (no affiliation with me). In addition to those lists, you can find breaking info at the Search Engine Spider Identification Forum at WebmasterWorld.

Is cloaking ethical? Or as it relates to SEO is ethics typically a self serving word?

Some would say that cloaking is completely ethical, others disagree. Personally, my opinion is that if you own your website, you have the right to put whatever you like on it, as long as it is legal. You have the right to choose which content you display to any visitor. Cloaking for SEO purposes is done to increase the relevancy of search engine queries... who wants visitors that aren't interested in your site?

On the other hand, as you point out, the ethics of some SEOs are self serving. I do not approve of those who "page-jack" by stealing others content and cloaking it. Also, if you are trying to get rankings for one topic, and sending people to a completely unrelated web page, that is wrong in my book. Don't send kids looking for Disney characters to your porn site.

I have seen many garbage subdomains owning top 10 rankings for 10s to 100s of thousands of phrases in Google recently. Do you think this will last very long?

No, I don't. I believe this is due to an easily exploitable hole in Google's algorithm that really isn't related to cloaking, although I think some of these guys are using cloaking techniques as a traffic management tool. Google is already cleaning up a lot of those SERPs and will soon have it under control. The subdomain loophole will be closed soon.

How long does it usually take each of the engines to detect a site that is cloaking?

That's a question that isn't easily answered. The best answer is "it depends". I've had sites that have never been detected and are still going strong after five or six years. Others are banned after a few weeks. I think you will be banned quickly if you have a competitor who believes you might be cloaking and submits a spam report. Also, if you are creating a massive number of cloaked pages in a short period of time, I think this is a flag for search engines to investigate. Same goes for incoming links... try to get them in a "natural" looking progression.

What are the best ways to get a cloaked site deeply indexed quickly?

My first tip would be to have the pages located on a domain that is already indexed -- the older the better. Second, make sure the internal linking structure is adequate to the task of spidering all of the pages. Third, make sure incoming links from outside the domain link to both the index (home) cloaked page and to other "deep" cloaked pages.

As algorithms move more toward links and then perhaps more toward the social elements of the web do you see any social techniques replacing the effect of cloaking?

Cloaking is all about "on-page" optimizing. As links become more important to cracking the algorithms, the on-page factors decline in importance. The "new web" is focused on the social aspects of the web, with people critiquing others content, linking out, posting their comments, blogging, etc. The social web is all about links, and as links become more of a factor in rankings, the social aspects of the web become more important.

However, while what people say about your website will always be important, what your website actually says (the text indexed from your site) cannot be ignored. The on-page factors in rankings will never go away. I cannot envision "social techniques" (I guess we are talking about spamming Slashdot or Digg?) replacing on-page optimization, but it makes a hell of a supplement... the truly sophisticated spammer will make use of all the tools in his toolbox.

How does cloaking relate to poker? And can you cheat at online poker, or are you just head and shoulders above the rest of the SEO field?

Well, poker is a game of deception. As a pioneer in the cloaking field, I suppose I have picked up a knack for the art of lying through my teeth. In the first SEO Poker Tournament, everybody kept folding to my bluffs. While it is quite tempting to run poker bots and cheat, I find there is no need with my excellent poker skills. Having said all that, I quietly await the next tournament, where I'm sure I'll be soundly thrashed in the first few minutes ;)

How long do you think it will be before search engines can tell the difference between real page content and garbled markov chain driven content? Do you think it will be computationally worthwhile for them to look at that? Or can they leverage link authority and usage data to negate needing to look directly at readability as a datapoint?

I think they can tell now, if they want to devote the resources to it.

However, this type of processing is time/CPU intensive and I'm not sure they want to do it on a massive scale. I'm not going to blueprint the techniques they should use to pick which pages to analyze, but they will have to make some choices. Using link data to weed out pages they don't need to analyze would be nice, but in this age of rampant link selling, link authority may not be as reliable an indicator as they would like. Usage data may not be effective because in order to get it, the page has to be indexed so they can track the clicks, defeating the purpose of spam elimination. There best bet would be to look at creation patterns... look to see which domains are creating content and gaining links at an unreasonable rate.

What is the most amount of money you have ever made from ranking for a misspelled word? And if you are bolder than I am, what word did you spell wrong so profitably?

I made a lot of money from ranking for the word "incorparating". This was waaay back in the day. I probably made (gross) in the high five figures a year for several years from that word. Unfortunately, either people became better spellers or search engines got smarter, because the traffic began declining for the word about four or five years ago.

If I wanted to start cloaking where is the best place to go, and what all should I know before I start? Can you offer SEO Book readers a coupon to get them started with KloakIt?

KloakIt is a great cloaking program for both beginners and advanced users, because it is easy to get running and extremely flexible and powerful. There is a forum for cloakers there where you can go for information and tips. I am also the moderator of the Cloaking Forum over at WebmasterWorld, and I welcome questions and comments there.

SEO Book readers can get a $15.00 discount of a single domain license of KloakIt by entering the coupon code "seobook" into the form on the KloakIt download page. I offer a satisfaction guarantee, and, should you decide to upgrade your license to an unlimited domains license, you can get credit for your original purchase towards the upgrade fee.

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Please note that I am not being paid an affiliate commission for KloakIt downloads, and I have not deeply dug in to try out the software yet. I just get lots of cloaking questions and wanted to interview an expert on the topic, and since Dan is a cool guy I asked him.

Thanks for the interview Dan. If you have any other questions for Dan ask them below and I will see if I can ask Dan if he would be willing to answer them.

I get asked to review a wide array of sites being asked "what is wrong" and "why isn't this working".

Many times I think that the underlying problem is something I call cart before the horse syndrome. While you can view many data points in the competitive landscape when you view a site what you see now is not the way it has always been. Many of the most authoritative sites were created without any commercial intent, and then the site owner later fell into a business model, and as they saw profit started to maximize their profit potential.

If you start off with a lead generation form as your website and are unwilling to give anything away until people give you money or an email address then you should be looking more toward the pay per click market than at organic SEO.

There is nothing wrong with maximizing your potential profit, but if you create a site geared around converting 10% of the site visitors into paying customers right off the start you are probably going to limit your ability to gain any serious link authority and serious distribution unless your conversion rate and profits are so great that you can convince affiliates to push your product.

If you can afford heavy PPC spending by automating your sales process and maximizing your ROI that is fine, but if you want free traffic there are hidden costs to maximizing right out of the gate. It is like buying a 99 cent burger. Sure the upfront cost is next to nothing (and it seems like you are getting more for less), but as competing sites build traffic while you stagnate those invisible costs start to reveal themselves. You have to consider what search engines want and what your site visitors want. Try to create something that covers those wants and then roll commerce into it.

Seth Godin frequently stresses that getting people to PAY attention is a cost, and even if they give you no money PAYING attention is still a cost. Once you earn that it is worth a lot of money because it takes a long time to build trust. And trust is fragile. If I hadn't built up a lot of friendships and trust over the last couple years there is no way the SEO for Firefox launch would have went so well. The new links and new readers that tool brought in are probably worth far more than the tool cost to build, but it may not have spread so well (and it may not have covered its cost) if I had not worked so hard to build up my authority.

Hitting the traffic jackpot once does not make one a marketing expert, but in spite of being on the delicious popular list and Digg homepage yesterday this site only doubled its typical traffic. A friend of mine says that it is a marathon and not a sprint, and that is the way you have to look at getting traffic, especially if you have a new site.

Back to the new sites I get asked to review. What do they need to spread messages or compete in the SERPs?

• Set reasonable goals. Do not expect to rank for mortgage or search in one month if you have a $0 marketing budget and a site that is so bland or conversion oriented that it would never merit a single legitimate organic citation.

• Pick a path and run with it. Be a maximizer or an optimizer, but know your path and run with it. If you are stuck mixing up in the middle you will probably do worse than a person who is working hard at either of the edges. After you are well established on either front and are beyond self sustaining then you have money to invest and room to play and test, but you need to have a clear message off the start. You don't want your site to one day say you believe on taking the hard and steady and slow and... way to the top, and then have visitors come to your site the next day to see a picture of a check for $50,000 that you allegedly made while you were on vacation last week.
• Come up with a clear unique branding angle that makes you stand out. Make sure it is obvious what you want people to do on your site and make sure it is obvious what message you want them to spread away from your site. When it doubt it is better to be niche and unique over broad and not unique.
• Do not chose cheapest as your branding angle unless you are a masochist.
• Create a clean site design which reinforces your brand image. For example, if your brand is supposed to be fun and hip POO BROWN is a bad color. If your service is supposed to convey a sense of trust to businesses or people seeking health advice go lean on red and orange. I typically favor clean over going too far with a design. If you can find a good priced logo designer and spend a day learning a bit of CSS you can create a reasonably decent looking site for around $100.
• If you are unsure of what you want to do participate in topical communities to learn about the market and what the market wants. If all of your marketing is done on your site and it is not backed up by friendships away from your site it is going to be hard to convert potential prospects if they dig further into the SERPs and can't find anything about you other than a few cheesy syndicated articles and free directory listings. The web is cool, but also make sure you find your way to relevant off the web (ie: real world) events. That is where you really solidify your friendships and get to know the people you really should know.
• If you have down time make sure you keep learning. You should be able to learn quicker than the market leaders because you know less, are more hungry, and have less busywork filling your day if you are seriously focused on success and are new to a market. Read and experiment widely. Especially if you aim to be a consultant review that which you consume (it helps buid relationships, and most personal brands are not too deeply developed, so it also provides a cheap and easy relevant traffic source). Don't wait around for a golden day for things just to fall in place. Don't be afraid to be wrong. I have had people take the time to email me and tell me what a piece of shit I was for having incorrect information on my site only later to have them buy my product, put huge ads for it on their site, and recommend it on various community sites.
• If you want to rank for competitive terms you have to give to get. Look to create ways to make people want to revisit your site many times and/or link to your site for having a definitive topical resource. When you create a (hopefully) definitive article it may go nowhere, but if you do a half a dozen of them well eventually one of them will take off. You are over-investing hoping that eventually one of the investments will pay big dividends. When you have a great idea make sure you tell a few friends to see if they would be willing to help you market it.

Recently it was noted that Business.com started using nofollow on many of their outbound links. If you don't trust the content of a site then why link to it at all? To list it on your own site and then put nofollow on it is to say that you don't trust your own content. Which is especially stupid. And perhaps the quickest way to become irrelevant, if you are an editorial listing company.

It turns out they were likely using nofollow on the free listings to some of the higher quality sites, which in turn means that the links without nofollow are pointing at sites that are on average of lower quality than the sites they added nofollows to.

If I was a CRM company I would think that on average a link from a page that links to Salesforce.com is worth more than than a page that does not. If I was a software company I think that on average a link from a page that links to Microsoft.com is worth more than a page that does not.

I think it muddies their credibility. A lot. Think of the quality of their site from a search engineer's perspective

Oh, the only links they left live were the low quality ones. Outbound link authority nuked. Next.

A site which uses nofollow on most of their quality outbound links also reduces their outbound good link to bad link ratio. Even if search engines still counted Business.com links I think the loss of quality outbound links hurts their authority far more than whatever gain someone gets from having a link on a page with fewer links on it.