As the web grows users are getting better at tuning out obvious ads. So ads will get more insidious, and more and more businesses will be built off a missing features and shadow brand built on the back of the goodwill from sharing and open source.

One guy got angry at me claiming that I was providing conflicting information, because he read the blogger's guide to seo and saw that I recommended using Wordpress but also recommended avoiding using Wordpress.com. I am not the one who created that shadow brand, but I do realize that is has the potential to be enormously profitable.

Pligg, an open source software program similar to Digg, recently went up for sale but did not sell. Now Pligg is has some plug ins available from the official Pligg pro store. One of them is a list of known spamming domains.

As software licensing costs fall, the keys to selling software are to:

• create an open source core that does your marketing and builds a large userbase
• have some dynamic updating data service
• lack essential features that people can buy as a bolt on (this is essentially your software licensing fee, but it is cloaked)
• lock in user data (though this is short term - the smartest users will refuse to use it)
• provide an easy to use for dummies version that makes it easier to charge people for easily automated services

Google opts to not show AdWords ads above the search results unless they deem them exceptionally relevant to the query, with the ads proving that relevancy with a high CTR. With Google's other verticals, they have a database of options which is

• much shallower
• spammier
• less efficient
• with fewer signs of relevancy and trust

Markets start out ugly then you try to make them more efficient as they develop. Google tries to make some of the verticals become relevant by pricing them at free and forcing exposure upon them, front and center at the top of the search results - hoping competitive market forces and market feedback will drive the new verticals toward relevancy, and a market leading position they can charge for. You rarely see Google charge for basic level usage of something if they are the #2 or #3 player in the market. First they want to buy the market leading position by giving it away, then start charging for it.

In some cases they are willing to hold these new verticals to a much lower standard than their paid ads in an attempt to win marketshare. Google tracks CTR on Google accounts and knows most of the people searching for SEO Book click on SeoBook.com, but they still show their product search ads for that query:

While some marketers paying Google for traffic can not pay enough to keep their ads live, here Google is giving away traffic. As a marketer I see this more as an opportunity than a reason to pout. How hard is it to get inside these other verticals? Probably a lot easier than you think, and many people who are just entering the PPC game will be too lazy to enter the other markets until they are proven. When you see Google rolling out other projects know the early bird gets the worm.

Focus on Results & Achieve Them

Cygnus offered this quote on Rich Skrenta's blog post about PageRank:

I like all the traffic types coming in; in order to get that traffic on a couple of sources I have to jump through a few hoops. Big deal. So long as the requirements cost less than the expected revenue from ranking, I'll meet the requirements.

As long as something works and is within your personal ethical, financial, and risk boundaries then why not give it a try?

Setting Up a Baseline for Risk Tolerance

Bob Massa published a great article casting aside the hats while looking at link buying from a business objectives standpoint:

SHOULD I BUY LINKS? ... Most of the people who ask me that question are the people who least need to worry about the risk. The risk motivating the question being whether or not they may be penalized by google instead of the risk being about going broke.

Logic would dictate that anyone concerned about the risk of being penalized by Google, is actually worried about losing something they already have. In this case sales coming from targeted traffic generated from superior organic placements in the SERP’s. ...

But far more often than not, when I take a look at the site belonging to the askee, I see a site that looks like a third graders ransom note. ... Little traffic to speak of and certainly no sales to lose. There is VERY little visible investment in design, content or anything else. Yet they brag of the #3 spot they have for a keyword with over a million results like that is all they need for proof of their valuable contribution to the world of online commerce.

The biggest risk to most businesses is that they will never be found and never gain any traction. That is why I found the concept of debating the risk of buying links getting you in trouble 5 years from now a bit intellectually dishonest. If in 5 years you built no momentum and someone can just wipe you out that was not a very good business model.

Bob Massa's article is also a nice summary of why SEO client experiences are bad unless you have a strong brand and/or are selling to the right clients. If you are going to the effort to market thin affiliate sites you may as well keep the all revenue for yourself, and design to at least 4th grade standards!

Why Trust Another Business More Than Yourself?

John Andrews did a fun comparison between AdWords and doorway pages. Considering the cheating wives offers that AdWords promotes I have to agree with him that Google's moral superiority strategy is a bit thin.

In a post about domain consolidation Michael Gray wanted an opinion from Google. Marisa left this great comment:

The underlying question is, “Why are we seeking permission from Google to do webmaster things when it’s Google’s responsibility to make their search engine work according to our typical practices?”

Just because Google is the most popular SE doesn’t mean that they can now make the rules. They need to go back to coding their SE to be better than the others rather than spending so much time trying to make us code or setup sites to their specifications.

After Google bought YouTube they integrated YouTube directly into their site and their search results.

Many sites and marketers that are considered spammers by Google only use aggressive push marketing off the start to market their sites because the framework for ranking that Google set up require it. If the "spammers" were given the same head start that YouTube pages or Knol pages will get then they would not need to "spam" to rank. They would just produce the best content and watch it rise to the top of the results.

The Value of Exposure & Feedback

I recently spoke with a mentor who told me that starting about 20 years ago he lost 10 years because he was sitting around expecting everyone to figure out how brilliant he was. His tips and advice likely saved me from making that mistake on some fronts - and saved me a couple years of my life. And while he is considered a guru by many today, what more momentum would have have today if he didn't lose those 10 years? What if someone would have gave him the speech he just gave me? How much richer would he be? Would I have even been able to afford hiring him for a consult?

If I was not a push marketer a few years ago and I avoided link buying without debating the risks, would I have been able to afford that phone call that will likely save years of my life? Probably not.

Everyone starts off as a push marketer, and then moves toward pull marketing as they gain feedback and get more well known, and build a brand they do not want to risk damaging.

I took down my old Overture powered keyword tool and replaced it using Wordtracker data because:

• I like Wordtracker's data more
• Wordtracker's API is much more reliable than scraping data from Overture
• the Overture tool seems like it has been down more often than it has been up recently

I primarily focus on the US market and did not realize how popular the international aspects of the old keyword research tool were until I started getting a rash of email complaints after taking the tool down.

So I put the old keyword tool back up, renamed it the international keyword suggestion tool, and defaulted it to using UK values (while still allowing users to grab data from other regional markets). I also zipped it up here, so anyone can install it on their site, and set it to a different default language if they like.

I recently talked to the fine folks at Wordtracker about how unreliable the Yahoo! keyword suggestion was, and Wordtracker offered to work with me to power the SEO Book keyword tool using Wordtracker's robust and reliable API.

The new SEO Book keyword tool operates like the old one, but with the following improvements

• We now have a CSV export option at the top of the results. And it is pretty sweet! It lists keyword, WordTracker count, daily estimates for the big 3 engines, and broad and phrase match versions of each keyword :)
• Because Wordtracker's business model relies on selling keyword data, they have a vested interest in keeping it as clean and reliable as possible, and are unlikely to pull a Yahoo
• Wordtracker does not tokenize plural words into their singular versions, so you get to see volumes for both singular and plural to know which is more popular. In fact, if you search for the plural they will still return the singular
• Wordtracker does not arbitrarily alter the word order like the Overture did
• Wordtracker's API is much more reliable than grabbing the data from Overture was
• Wordtracker's API allows you to filter out adult keywords.

Yahoo! Search Marketing offers a developer API, but given how rough their transition away from their old keyword tool was, I would much rather use a reliable market leading tool like Wordtracker. Please give it a spin and let me know what you think.

Recommendation: If you don't mind investing a couple bucks into in-depth keyword research, make sure you try the paid version of Wordtracker with all the added features and benefits they offer.