Lets say you write a blog about poker. It is pretty hard to get legitimate links to a poker blog, but lets say you talk about how you met Phil Ivey but the story is not that interesting sounding. You can add a bit of authenticity to the sound of the story by buying a Phil Ivey autographed poker chip for $23 and include it in your post.

In certain markets (like poker) just about any type of link is worth $23. There are also other types of junk or collectibles that may be selling for far less than their linkability factor - weather you post about them and get a few links or you hold a contest of some sort to give them away, and get many more links.

Collecting allows you to easily create original linkable content which leverages the value of a celebrity or brand without needing to fully invest into the cost of building that brand or getting a celebrity to endorse your site. Branded keywords or celebrity keywords are typically high traffic and / or high value terms.

Clicktracks offers up a free version of their analytics software by the name of Clicktracks Appetizer.

At WMW Boston Mike Nott pointed me at FlashObject, which is a Javascript Flash detection and embed script.

It is XHTML compliant and allows you to use flash detection and is probably the best way to do SEO for a flash site. A couple old related posts:

• How do Flash Sites Rank Well?

• Flash Design & SEO

I am probably not the biggest conversion expert in the world, but after you start playing around with pixels and offers sometimes doing a few small things makes you realize how important some of them are.

One of my web only clients was making about $3,000 a month in sales when he contacted me. I did SEO and PPC for them and got them up to $12,000 a month. I tweaked some of the conversion aspects of the site and the same traffic now brings in over $40,000 a month in sales. Some sites have their link equity split up between the www version and non www versions of their sites. By consolidating that link popularity (via a 301 redirect) your net number of pages in the index goes down, but each page becomes more authoritative.

My sales letter had a couple broken links to reviews (due to a JupiterMedia analyst moving on and another site changing its URL structure).

My sales letter had a couple broken links to search results due to MSN changing their search string and Ask killing the Teoma brand.

Some sites use sequential URL names and screw up their page level link reputation when they add a new page.

Some about pages or sales letter pages place AdSense front and center, which end up killing the brand credibility of those sites. Many of these sites would also make far greater profits if they sold ads directly instead of through AdSense.

Many websites have Liveperson contact me buttons even on content pages about topics they would not want contacted about. Many many many sites have too many things competing for attention which end up killing their conversion ratios. Give me too many things to do and most likely I will do none of them.

If you flip a person to a related idea in your content make sure you label it as being relevant and explain why the related idea is relevant and useful to the site visitor.

Many sites have content areas with text but no headings or subheadings, and worse yet no links in the active content window of their site. Assume people are going to ignore your sitewide navigation if you want to build a site that converts.

If you are using pay per click marketing try to aim some of your ads at the high end of the market. Write ads for conversion instead of clicks, and perhaps sell the idea of selling a quote for large orders instead of selling an item. If you already rank in the regular search results then you can limit the incremental spend of PPC while ensuring you attract the big fish by reminding them that you service big orders.

Use analytics. Some of the terms you are focusing on may be a complete waste of time.

Your email address may also hurt your conversions. If you are selling relationships some people may prefer to email help@, name@ or support@ instead of sales@.

If you give people information via your site give them an automated follow up email. This is an area where I need to work on. I also should have an autoresponder series set up, as that would surely help me make thousands and thousands of dollars for minimal effort.

Direct transactions also likely convert at a better rate than transactions which require you to go to another site. Eventually I hope to either better integrate the payment system or move away from Paypal for some of my transactions.

What are some common errors you see on many sites that could be corrected to drastically increase their profitability?

Google has been testing adding more information near search listings, including
- search this site
- inside this site (links to other pages on that site)
- related (links to related sites)

Testing the above, inline query suggestions, including vertical results via Google Onebox, and suggesting specific verticals for the most broad query types allows Google to attack vertical search from many angles.

Suggesting the broadest databases (shopping, news, images) for broad query types allows them to prevent too many large verticals from being created unless their creators do something fundamentally innovative. Increasing minimum bids for low quality ads also filters out some of the arbitrage model.

Query suggestions as you type and inline suggestions guide searchers toward more common (and likely more meaningful) search paths which will - on average - lead searchers to more useful results. They also aggressively aggregate data in some of the larger verticals, which adds value to the top few players they trust while making it harder for new players to spring up in those markets.

By adding more information near regular search result listings (including site search, related internal links and related external links) they only have to get near the search answer without necessarily needing to precisely answer it. Get close enough and then teach people about things like related links and site search and they should be able to get the rest of the way where they want to go.

The search box has the most value per pixel second, and until some major publishers find new monetization models or ways to challenge Google it is obvious that Google is going to keep adding more and more information to their results. Google may even be the one who helps them find better ways to monetize.

Unlike the competition, Google is not afraid to keep pushing the boundaries of their results, even if in the short term those tests lead to lower earnings. Why hasn't Yahoo! done anything with their Mindset search yet?

Once an engine gets enough marketshare there is a virtual endless stream of revenue possibilities so long as they listen to their users.

The value isn't just in the network, but in how quickly and smartly it reacts to changes. Google generally is the king at that.

They lower costs across the board while making information more accessible. Clicktracks now has a free version. If companies like Britannica listen to the advice they are given then Google may have access to encyclopedias of information for free, on top of having the largest userbase.

I think Wall Street is a bit stupid for reacting to quarter to quarter results. I just don't see a way of Google losing at this point. Even if eBay partners with another large player it still does not change the fact that their value add and relevancy is decreasing with each day of non innovation at eBay.

While keeping an eye on general search Google has also refined some of the more important verticals, which allows them to more precisely answer queries for those who care so much that they want to get much closer than just nearly answering the queries. In some of those verticals they are creating new standards for what is important.

You can count on Google hitting the education market hard, from funding literacy to pointing librarians at lesson plans.

From a marketing perspective these changes all add value to legitimacy while making the marketplace and SERPs more relevant. But as Google pushes these types of features they will also create new types of spam. For example, if you can't easily rank #1 for a competitive phrase, but you can easily make Google believe your document is somehow one of the most related documents to what is ranking at #1 that might be a cheap way to garner targeted traffic. Learning how to become related will be exceptionally useful if the current results may not answer the query as well as it should.