Free $200 Bing Ads Coupon! Rock on Live Search!

I just found this great offer for search advertisers. Well worth a look if you are trying to get traffic to your website.

Here is a free $200 Microsoft Ad Center promotional code.

Update: It looks like Microsoft no longer offer the $100 or $200 coupons. I did find another great Bing Ads (formerly Microsoft adCenter) offer that still works though. Bing and Yahoo! Search expand the reach of your business to millions of monthly users.

Considering that Microsoft's ads are cheaper (because the ad network is newer than AdWords) and their traffic is so clean (they cut out on the dirty syndication partner stuff that Yahoo! once allowed) a free $50 coupon is just like setting up a printing machine for money. I hope they keep building marketshare because they have such high conversion rates and are offering some awesome tools for advertisers.

SEO & the Static vs Active Web

A while ago I made a bunch of posts about search (and the web as a whole) being about communication, but I think the posts were so verbose that nobody cared. :)

Since then I have been playing with social web stuff a good bit more and it is hard to grasp the full potential of it until after you see some of your marketing ideas spread like a weed. I have done well spreading ideas related to SEO, but I really was blown away by the potential when I had ideas not related to SEO that spread fast and far. In A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Manuel De Landa highlighted that smaller businesses tend to act as research labs for larger ones. Nick Carr highlighted the erosion of blogs from the Technorati top 35 media sites over the past couple years, based on David Sifry's most recent state of the blogosphere post. The problem is not that blogs are less important than they were, it is just that big media is integrating blogging into what they are doing, and are leveraging their other assets to boost the blogs.

As more and more people write online the value of any singular algorithmic exploit is reduced, and the value of creating what people want or being able to influence decision makers and authorities directly goes up. If you are featured in TechCrunch the odds are good that thousands of people will see your product and hundreds of people will link at your site.

How much is a static link in a lower quality directory worth? It is hard to quantify, but as the static portions of the web represent a smaller and smaller portion of the whole, the value of being mentioned there goes down. If you create something that people are actively talking about which quickly spreads the marketing value of that exposure can be far greater than any marketing you could buy, especially if you value your time.

There are many ways to participate in the active web. If you build a finite amount of attention in the marketplace before you need to leverage it then you can use that asset over and over again.

Blogs & Forums: You can leave comments on blogs and forums, or if you are motivated you can create your own blog or community. If you have limited funds to invest you can invest by spending significant time learning your industry and freely linking out to other sites.

Feedback: Before launching an idea ask important members in your community what they think about your idea. Sometimes their feedback can make it far easier for your idea to spread. If they owe you a favor or feel emotionally attached to your idea they may even help you market it for free.

Social News & Social Bookmarking: You can learn a lot by seeing what stories are spreading on various social bookmarking and news sites. Pay attention to article titles, community bias, bias of the marketed content, format of the marketed content, how frequently certain topics appear, and how you can relate your site to topics these communities enjoy.

The Past: It used to be cheaper and easier to directly manipulate the engines by doing things like

  • focus on a highly profitable commercial niche

  • focus your anchor text
  • buy high PageRank links and build many low quality links
  • focus your link equity, pointing links at the page you want to market

But Google filters many obvious bought links, has added cost to low quality links (by making it harder to get in their index and not crawling some sites that have too many low quality links), has a -30 ranking penalty for sites with artificial profiles, and even MSN is getting more aggressive at filtering link spam.

The Present: In many markets it is getting cheaper and easier to manipulate the engines indirectly by participating in the active web, by dong things like

  • creating ideas and content people like and want (even if those ideas do not have a direct monetization model)

  • being willing to go exceptionally niche or exceptionally broad with some content to create an idea which people would be likely to vote for
  • not caring about anchor text
  • not caring about what page they link at (realizing that authoritative links to any page on your site will boost your site's authority and the rankings for all pages on your site, and thus will allow you to monetize your commercial pages from the authority of the linkworthy pages)

The Future: Imagine a day when

  • hardware, software, and bandwidth are free

  • Google and other engines have access to most web usage data
  • most people who use the web run websites
  • the web is a reflection of what most people think

If that happened would you still be able to compete in your vertical? No matter how good any of us are at manipulating engines, invariable for longterm brands and websites it is going to be cheaper to influence people.

Can New Domains Outrank Old Websites in Google?

SEO Question: I have the same content as a top ranked competing site. Are they outranking me because of their domain age? What can I do to outrank them?

SEO Answer: Competing requires more than just replicating what a competing site has done. Back when search was less sophisticated people had to follow links to get where they wanted to go. Thus directories were more relevant and many sites listed any halfway decent sites in their vertical based on the fact that they were even in the same vertical. With search replacing links as the default navigational scheme you have to do more to be linkworthy.

A site like SeoToday would not get to the top of the search results if it were launched today, but because it was launched many years back and was easy to link at back then it has many authoritative industry related links that help keep it ranked well in Google.

Also think of the search business model as though you are a search engine. To them, being the first person to do something is a sign of quality because to be the first person in a market requires some market timing / knowledge / investment / luck. The people who bet on new markets are in essence rewarded if/when their market takes off, both by self-reinforcing market effects (people being more likely to find / experience / link to top ranked results) and by algorithmic weighting on domain age.

The biggest issue facing search engines is the quality of their results. By relying on old / stale results they require new content producers to do better things than old websites did to steal marketshare. Thus you have to be innovative / offer a better customer experience / be more remarkable to rise to the top of a marketplace.

If you want to outrank established websites you can't just replicate what they have done, you also have to do unique and linkworthy things that will help you overcome their early market lead and the self-reinforcing effects of search.

Overlapping Navigation

In the past it made sense to cross reference categories and locations to make hundreds of thousands of pages, but with duplicate content filters improving that is a fast track to nowhere. In some cases though it still may make sense to make pages which will still rank for geolocal queries.

One way to do this is to create local pages as their own categories, but to make the page linking to the local pages a category page which shares navigation common to the rest of the section of your site. That will allow you to rank for many modifier rich keyword phrases without requiring you to generate 50 pages per topic.

Creative Process Flipped On Its Head

Threadless is like a Digg for t-shirts. Tim O'Reilly thinks it is an important step in meshing the web with the physical world. I used to associate wealth with negative ideas until I read this Paul Graham article, which made me realize that you didn't have to be responsible for destroying Earth to be wealthy.

The fight for freedom from censorship is only going to grow as innovative business models undermine many unneeded authority structures. When old authorities try to mesh with new technologies they will create conflicts of interest that prevent them from maintaining their authority.

SEO Tool Updates

I recently updated a number of my SEO tools, and a few other people recently launched some interesting new search engine marketing tools.

  • Google changed their SERPs so I updated SEO for Firefox.

  • My keyword research tool was endlessly looping when Overture failed. A friend helped me update it to stop doing that. :)
  • All major search engines came together to support an open xml sitemaps standard.
  • on SEM2.0 a PPC keyword research tool named Key Compete was mentioned. It shows you keywords competitors are bidding on by URL, and can be used for keyword ideas for arbitrage plays or authoritative content sites. You know if people are bidding on the keywords that there are going to be relevant ads. If you track your earnings and outbound ad clicks (if you do not want to buy a script for that use the free script here) then when you find an overpriced outbound click you can go buy the keyword list for that advertiser and start cranking out bids or content based on exploiting a great keyword basket or an idiot advertiser. As technology gets cheaper and people keep getting better at packaging highly relevant affordable market research the only thing that will prevent you from becoming commoditized is your brand.
  • In case you missed it, a week or two ago I posted about a few new competitive research tools.

How Do I Get Large Websites Indexed by Google & Other Search Engines?

SEO Question: I have a 100,000+ page website. Is there any easy way to ensure all major search engines completely index my website?

SEO Answer: Search engines are constantly changing their crawl priorities. Crawl too deeply and get many low quality pages while increasing indexing time and costs. Crawl too shallow and you don't get down to the relevant pages. Crawl depth is a balancing act.

There is no way to ensure all pages get and stay indexed...they change their crawl priorities constantly. Having said that, you can set your site up to make it as crawler friendly as possible.

Five big things to look at are

  • content duplication - are your page titles or meta description tags nearly duplicate (for example thin content pages that are cross referenced by topic and location)? or do other sites publish the same content (for example an affiliate feed or a wikipedia article)? are search engines indexing many pages with similar content (for example different model color or splitting feedback for one item across many pages)?

  • link authority - does your site have real high quality links? how does your link profile compare with leading competing sites? what features or interactive elements are on your site that would make people desire to link to you instead of an older and more established competing site?
  • site growth rate - does your site grow at a rate consistent with its own history? how does your growth rate compare with the growth rate of competing sites in the same vertical?
  • internal link structure - is every valuable page on your site linked to from other pages on your site? do you force search engines to go through long loops rather than providing parallel navigation to similar priority pages? do you link to low value noisy pages (sometimes a search engine indexing less pages is better than more)?
  • technical issues - don't feed the search engines cookies or session IDs, and try to use clean descriptive URLs

Some signs of health are

  • you don't have pages you don't want getting indexed - wasting link equity on low quality pages means you have less authority to spread across your higher quality pages

  • most the pages you want indexed are getting indexed, actively crawled, and are not stuck in Google's supplemental index - supplemental problems and / or reduced indexing or crawl priority are common on sites with heavy content duplication, wonky link profiles, or many dead URLs
  • your site is building natural link equity over time and people are actively talking about your brand - if you have to request every link you get then you are losing market share to competitors who get free high quality editorial links
  • you see a growing traffic trend from search engines for relevant search queries - this is really what matters. this includes getting more traffic, higher quality traffic, and searchers landing on the appropriate page for their query.

things you can do if conditions are less than ideal

  • focus internal link equity at important high value pages (for example, on your internal sitemap consider featuring new product categories, new and seasonal items, or link to your most important categories sitewide)

  • trim the site depth (by placing multiple options on a single page instead of offering many near duplicate pages) or come up with ways to make the page level content more unique (such as user feedback)
  • cut out the fat - if many low value pages are getting indexed block their indexing by doing something like nuking them / not linking to them / integrating their information into other higher value pages
  • use descriptive page relevant URLs / page titles / meta descriptions - this helps ensure the right page ranks for the right query and that search engines will be more inclined to deeply crawl and index your site
  • restructure site to be more top / mid / bottom heavy - if a certain section of your site is overrepresented in the search results consider changing your internal link structure to place more weight on other sections. in addition you can add features or ideas which make the under-represented pages more attractive to link at
  • use Sitemaps - while you should link to all quality pages of your site from your site and use internal link structure to help them understand what pages are important you can also help search engines understand page relationships using the open sitemap standard

Embracing Your Quirkiness

I recently read a blog post where I was referred to as a superstar, which to me an absurd classification given that I am me. But I do like to think of myself as being citation worthy in nature. Some people are citation worthy because they do great in depth research while others are citation worthy because they are creative or naturally quirky and then there are people who are citation worthy because they can relate complex ideas to easy to understand topics. Some people push buttons or are egotistical / insecure / shy / weird / uncultured / uncouth to the point of being citation worthy.

At times I am all or none of the above. Depending on mood, who I am with, where I am, how I feel, what song is playing, and what dance I am doing.

When I was in the military we had to wear these stupid straps on our glasses in bootcamp. The difference between me and most other people was that when I got to the boat I still wore those stupid straps, largely because glasses gave me a headache if they put pressure on my ears, and largely because I knew it annoyed certain people. At one point I also ate so much bacon that the boat got put on rations so that I personally forced the cooks to fix breakfast. Both of those things made me citation worthy.

I recently met a cool girl and we make up lots of fake words and tease each other for some of the silly things we say or do. In a couple of weeks of hanging out there are dozens of shared bizarre words and experiences. The connections associated with those tags we made up are easy to vividly share and remember because we made them up and only we know what they mean. I think great writing has the ability to make you think the writer was just writing for you.

I went to a Bob Dylan concert with a friend of mine last night, and on the ride home there was a dining place which had neon lights that said bakery and cocktails. And while that may have been dumb marketing for a restaurant to combine those two (who does that?), it also was citation worthy and memorable. And being memorable is about sharing connections. Our imperfections (also known as character) are what make life great.

I saw some people giving speeches at the conference which were well polished and were effective at making the audience yawn. I decided to not polish myself to the point of trying to make myself a perfect speaker. It is not who I am and is not who I want to be...at least not now. Instead I decided I would try to feel comfortable and just make people laugh. I am not sure how well my speech went (Powerpoint online here). If you saw it (or my Q&A Panel) feel free to let me know what you thought below.

If you give into who you are then you are less likely to get burned out and will be harder to replicate. If you have things you feel insecure about or areas where you feel insufficient or inexperienced one of the best things you can do is embrace your default character and let that carry you. If you are following someone else's path you are likely building their brand and reinforcing their market position while undermining or ignoring your core assets. What makes you a non-commodity is just as likely to be your flaws as your skills, so long as you are unafraid of appearing broken, which can go a long way on a network consisting mostly of various manipulative goals and chunks of scattered text.

Authorities, Language, Emotional Connection, and Relational Databases

Why does Google sponsor spam and tell people to blend their AdSense ads, but try to control other link sales? It is the frame of thinking which allows them to make the most money (don't spam unless you do it with us and give us insider information on your business). If you are afraid of the consequences then you become risk adverse. But you are rarely going to do anything great if you let fear control your actions. It is an epiphany the day you realize that you created enough value that the search engines need you more than you need them. Why does the media like to paint a wall between editorial and content when there is none? Many movies are profitable only because product placement revenues. And many toll booths have ads on them. Think about the toll booths...there only to collect money and slow you down AND they still have ads on them.

Why is Matt Mullenweg so afraid of spam after he stepped his game up a level above anything I would consider doing? Because he feels he has to be for his credibility, especially after botching it up badly in the past.

As a recruiting technique the US government holds pizza parties with 13 year old children, getting them to play video games where the content is about killing people.

"We want kids to come into the Army and feel like they've already been there," said Col. Casey Wardynski, who as director of the Army's office of economic and manpower analysis came up with the idea. "A game is like a team effort, and the Army is very much a team effort. By playing an online, multiplayer game, you can get the feel of being in the Army." - The Washington Post

Yet politicians talk about protecting the children online. Do you notice a moral disconnect here?

If you look at a tag cloud of presidential speeches you won't just find issues that the population find important. You will find some of them scattered in to make the rest of the sales pitch sound legitimate, but you will also find ample amounts of bogus Orwellian language like death tax.

There is no need to repeat what is actually true and believed. Power sources only repeat things because

  • they are untrue or misrepresented

  • they set a frame of thinking to the benefit of the speaker
  • they pull focus from other issues

Why do authority sources hate the idea of openly selling authority? Because if they openly endorsed it then they might not be able to do it themselves, and people openly and honestly selling influence create more value in richer conversations.

Value systems only exist in our minds. The value of asking for feedback is not just in the chance that people give you a better idea, but also their experience and bonding with the idea which turns the feedback giver into a person who is emotionally connected to your brand... which is especially true if you listen to their feedback. The very ability to influence Digg and Wikipedia directly are what make their brands so powerful.

When language is a commodity that is targeted, bought, sold, and repositioned against ever-shifting arbitrary quality guidelines what could be more valuable than asking influential people what words / tags / ideas they relate you to and how you could do a better job of it?

When is Too Much Too Much?

I feel a bit guilty about blogging with a bit less passion recently, and perhaps coming off as a bit infomercially, but that is largely a function of me taking on far too many things at once while also changing my life REALLY fast. So some of the things I am doing right now include...

  • rewriting my ebook (which has been tougher than expected...not so much due to market shifts, but due to how much I have learned about marketing recently...by playing on the social web and reading books about linguistics, history, markets, value / authority based systems, and business. when my book first was created it was moreless "here is how to spam google" but as time passes it is becoming "everything you need to know about internet marketing"

  • working on the ReviewMe launch (and reading endless streams of feedback that we need to integrate into improving the system)
  • working on Elite Retreat (check out the flames I got here)
  • speaking at Pubcon a couple times this week
  • answering about 100 or so emails every day
  • fighting off about 300 blog comment spams a day - how low is the person who comment spams about the Holocaust and doesn't even check if the links stick? WTF?
  • learning a lot about the social web
  • keeping up with search news (this is getting more difficult daily because Google wants to make any and every type of communication and advertising a free service which runs through Google)
  • helping run Threadwatch (thanks to the editors and community members over there for kicking ass)
  • working for larger corporate clients with the Caveman
  • working on about a half dozen large content websites (including implementing associated viral marketing ideas)
  • I mention some of the viral marketing ideas heavily on this site because to me showing examples really helps solidify what I am trying to say...some people learn much better by seeing or doing than just reading about a concept.

In addition to doing all of that online I have been doing quite a bit offline. And this is what presents the real pinch point because up until a couple months ago just about everything I did revolved around telling myself that it was OK for me to work on the web 18 hours a day. But out of that I was in terrible physical shape, depressed, and quite lonely. I was making comfortably over $1,000 a day, but in spite of sitting in a sweet Aeron chair and having a Tempurpedic bed my back was hurting... I was anything but comfortable, so I decided to start living again. In the last few months:

  • I decided I am moving to San Fransisco bay area before the year is out

  • I started eating healthy (cut the drinking, junk food, and sugar - did you know just how much sugar acts like a hardcore drug?) and started working out (about 3 hours a day) and lost 40 pounds
  • I went from always depressed self destructive guy to always happy guy (and it is really hard to balance how much you work when your motivation, outlook, and perspective on life suddenly and totally flip)
  • I met a kick ass kick ass girl (who played a large roll in all of the above items)

So sorry if I have been spotty with blogging or email responses and for the delay in updating my ebook. Am trying to do more offline in conjunction with doing way too much online. Thanks for reading this post and even reading my blog at all (especially after the recent uninspired / infomercially blogging). It is you who reads this site that makes all of my happiness and other opportunities available. If you see me in Vegas please do say hi and let me buy you a drink...but don't buy one for me...I usually drink too much and I am on a diet! :)

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