Open Questions Thread

[Deliguy]

This is an open ended lightening round. Ask any question you'd like and if its within my small realm of knowledge I'll happily answer it. If you got a good answer to a question feel free to jump in with your own response.

I'm going to heavily moderate this thread and only leave the actual sincere questions and answers so future readers can easily find the good information through all the smart ass remarks(my specialty). So if you got something witty to say don't feel like your being censored in this thread, because you are.

Thread will close when it gets too far off topic.

Ready set go!

[Aequitas]

Ok Eli I'll toss a question out.

We know that Offsite SEO is just as important as onsite SEO, what additional features can you do to improve your rankings besides the usual onsite, title tags, url name, h1,h2,h3,h4 tags, keyword density, ect. and besides the usual offsite seo backlinks, networking by creating smaller sites.

Any tips on how to better find quality backlinks for your sites? or any other quality ways to increase your rankings besides the usual.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by Aequitas

Ok Eli I'll toss a question out.

We know that Offsite SEO is just as important as onsite SEO, what additional features can you do to improve your rankings besides the usual onsite, title tags, url name, h1,h2,h3,h4 tags, keyword density, ect. and besides the usual offsite seo backlinks, networking by creating smaller sites.

Any tips on how to better find quality backlinks for your sites? or any other quality ways to increase your rankings besides the usual.

Very good question,
If all we're talking about here is offsite SEO than I have a few suggestions outside of the usual lines of thinking. I find that people often get very stuck on their own anchor text. As if that was the only factor in determining "quality" or relevancy of an inbound link. The on site SEO of the site linking to you is just as important when determining the value of your off site seo. Does that make sense? Let's say for instance that you have a car audio site. You get a link within a post on a blog about cars. There is a level of relevancy there because they are talking about cars while your site is talking about car audio. However there is always room for improvement in such a case. Since they linked to you, the subject matter of the site can easily be changed by "overwhelming the original content." For instance even if the post is about cars and your anchor text within the given link isn't very optimal(ie click here), if enough people leave comments on the post their content can overwelm the content of the post itself. In other words the search engines will see that the particular page is about "cars", but if people in the comments (or yourself) flood the comments with enough questions about "car audio" than the search engines will start to see the subject matter change from cars to car audio more specifically. Like you said keyword density plays its part in every document. So I think people see the promotion of their site in the sense of quality and relevancy in the wrong light. If you have the possibility to inject a link on an offsite page than you may just have the possibility of changing the subject matter of the page all together to improve the quality of the link.

Once you understand that then the possibilities to increase the quality of your inbound links on a mass scale become almost infinite. Lets say you are doing some inbound linking on a mass scale for instance. If your doing some link bombing and being blackhat about your links, a good target would naturally be old abandoned posts and link injection possibilities where the original writer stands a smaller chance of removing your link. If you can get the links to stick on a mass scale than by all theory you can flood the page's content and alter the subject matter all together to fit your keywords better. The same goes for any other type of link promotion. It's not just all about the anchor text, it's been proven that links with the proper anchor text accompanied by relevant content work much better than just the link with the proper anchor text alone. Subject hijacking to increase inbound link relevancy? it's entirely possible. Look how certain trackback spammers will repeat their text over and over and over instead of just once to increase the keyword density for their real terms within the document.

I preach this a lot I know, but remember, there are no rules in the SEO game only guidelines.

[Aequitas]

Nice response and I actually never thought about changing the content on the page like that, you just gave me a whole wack more motivation tonight, just what I was looking for, thanks.

[SleepyStarling]

Damn, I wish I could remember all of the questions I had when I was reading your blog!

In the meantime, that answer gave me a fantastic idea for linking a specific site of mine. Thanks!

[CorrectAD]

Right now I have 1st page rankings in MSN and Yahoo for a really good keyword, but I can't find myself on Google Anywhere (other than when I type in my domain name)

I'm sure the causes for that could be far and wide, but in your experience, what would you say a site is lacking if it ranks high on msn and yahoo but nowhere on Google?

Thanks dude.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by CorrectAD

Right now I have 1st page rankings in MSN and Yahoo for a really good keyword, but I can't find myself on Google Anywhere (other than when I type in my domain name)

I'm sure the causes for that could be far and wide, but in your experience, what would you say a site is lacking if it ranks high on msn and yahoo but nowhere on Google?

Thanks dude.

If you absolutely can't find it anywhere for a high traffic term yet you're indexed, I'd have to logically guess that you're sandboxed. How long as your site been in the index?

If sandboxing is your case than Matt Cutts accidentally let the secret to getting unsandboxed out of the bag. When talking about the exceptions to the sandbox he said something along the lines of, "sites that draw a lot of initial attention, like for instance big news stories are compensated for and won't ever be sandboxed." He also said sites like this include ones that widely "capture the attention of news sites and the blogosphere." The moment I read that my mind twirled. Does he mean if i get enough links on blogs I can't get sandboxed or does he mean if over a certain percentage of my links are from blogs my site won't get sandboxed? After I did some tests, i found out both were true. So get some blog links from places that are obviously blogs. I say obvious blogs because Google doesn't always know whats a blog and what isn't, but it can be guaranteed that a something.wordpress.com or something.blogspot.com is always a blog. A program called Comment Hut should work nicely for this.

[poolemit]

Originally Posted by CorrectAD

Right now I have 1st page rankings in MSN and Yahoo for a really good keyword, but I can't find myself on Google Anywhere (other than when I type in my domain name)

I'm sure the causes for that could be far and wide, but in your experience, what would you say a site is lacking if it ranks high on msn and yahoo but nowhere on Google?

Thanks dude.

you could also check your site on SeoDigger Beta to see if it ranks for anything you may not have thought of, in order to rule out the sandbox.

[wdmny]

The "blackhat sphere": is everyone constantly peaking under the hood, looking for exploits to gain links and mass automate, or are select people making the discoveries while most everyone else is along for the ride, just copying their way to profits? How does one get into this scene?

I had a lot of musings about the "100's of Links an Hour" exploit, but they aren't exactly questions haha. Also, I had a follow-up idea to that I am going to test. You may already be doing it, but I'll let you know the results as a hat tip for posting the technique.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by wdmny

The "blackhat sphere": is everyone constantly peaking under the hood, looking for exploits to gain links and mass automate, or are select people making the discoveries while most everyone else is along for the ride, just copying their way to profits? How does one get into this scene?

I had a lot of musings about the "100's of Links an Hour" exploit, but they aren't exactly questions haha. Also, I had a follow-up idea to that I am going to test. You may already be doing it, but I'll let you know the results as a hat tip for posting the technique.

Question within a question. You were mostly right, black hat isn't all about finding exploits. It's mostly about mimicking in an automated way. I'm a firm believer that the ultimate goal of a black hat is to actually be white hat. Black hat produces, white hat converts. It's an almost even trade off. If you can convert like a white hat site yet have your production be completely automated than you've found the illustrious golden goose of SEO. A site that completely passes human check yet at the same time is completely autogenned and promoted in a socially acceptable black hat way? Some would call this gray hat. I call it one step further in the quest. If you look at some of the major sites on the internet, most are user contributed content. This in a sense is the ultimate black hat. The content is unique, linkbaitable, and nearly automated. However social sites are a huge investment. The best tactic I've found is to mimic social sites. Everything is fake but looks very much real. In fact, this is a little early, but at the moment I'm currently writing a post on my blog on this exact subject. Feel free to check it out sometime tomorrow. It'll be called "how to be a gray hat." It's pretty in depth so be sure to bring more than one beer when you go to read it.

[LazyHippy]

Roughly how much has your $100 a day method generated so far? Is it still generating income?

Has your increased knowledge of the psychology of marketers (or get-rich-quick dreamers?) been more valuable than the method itself?

Great blog and advice here btw - cheers.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by LazyHippy

Roughly how much has your $100 a day method generated so far? Is it still generating income?

Has your increased knowledge of the psychology of marketers (or get-rich-quick dreamers?) been more valuable than the method itself?

Great blog and advice here btw - cheers.

Nothing I ever post or make public will hurt my own profits, so my $100/day technique still makes at least that. In fact I recently renegotated with Zango and other bundle programs for better margins because they've been doing extremely well. I actually have several screensaver sites. One of which now ranks for the term "screen savers". Many also rank for some large terms such as celebrity names and brand names(ie car names and that type of stuff). So they actually do very well and haven't been harmed a bit by the competition. I also completely changed up the method before I made it public, i also shot for different niches that others probably would never guess.

I'm no psych expert, in fact my only way of knowing if a person is mad at me is when they either try to kick my ass or in a girls case, refuse to sleep with me. My own experience in knowing what other webmasters are likely to do comes from nothing more than my own meandering experience and personal fuck ups. However I know most webmasters will take the screensavers example literally. Most of the money in the method is actually in doing the exact same thing but with different mediums. I'll just spill one for the hell of it, cus I know very few people will actually read this thread. Flash Games. Getting permission from dozens of flash game designers to bundle their games into an exe, then redistributing with an adware bundle is very profitable if not more profitable than the screensavers. Bundling webbased stuff into a downloadable exe is a huge business that has very little competition by comparison to it's size. For instance, if you find an internet provider that has an affiliate program and then you bundle their signup software with your affiliate code built in. Then distribute it as AOL download, people pc download, earthlink download, and such works very well. There's a million possibilities. For just about every niche there is in web based form there is also a downloadable counterpart that is not only easily distributed but also tends to convert better since it's up in there face on their desktop. So that's at least something worth considering.

As far as my own actual earnings go, ya know me I never talk about that kind of worthless trash. But the referral earnings from posting that has actually been very minimal. From my count there has been about 18 people who have successfully done the project and reached beyond the $100/day mark. Most seem to be hovering around the $8-$20/day mark and only about 14 total actually signed up through my affiliate link. My referral earnings last month was over $1,000 but under $5,000 from that post. So i would definitely say doing the technique was MUCH more profitable than disclosing it to the public. However I stick by my original statement, the most profitable thing you can do when following the method is to change it up and not follow the stream of blind followers. At least it got people moving and starting to make at least some money. So all in all, i consider it a success

[BeerHat]

Eli, you have some unique ideas for promoting online, getting backlinks, content, etc... Do you do anything offline and has it been profitable?

[cdc]

This is quite possibly the most important question ever asked:

Who the hell is Recessive Pat?

[DomainRealty]

Eli:

How much effort per day do you put into any given web site, and please itemize it

Jason

//EDIT: Have to add...in addition to effort, please include time and money spent if you would.

Jason

[Blastyourass]

Thanks for the thread and people need to realize the value that your providing by doing this.

I have a few basic questions for you:

1. I have a year old website that has and still does jump anywhere fronm page 1 on google to page 10. One day I'll be strong on page 2 for a few days and then I'm gona again and bumped tp page 3 and then 10. A week or so goes by and then I'm back again. Number one site for my earch term is a pr3 and has been online for 11 years. The site is relevant but 90% of it is dup content with just a few words changed on each page like the stae and city. So my question to you is what would you do to stabilize your rankings and take over a number 1 spot that to me should be fairly easy?
2. What is the quickest way to get ranked high for a search term where the number 1 spot in the big G is totally worthless and not relevant to what searchers are looking for. Meaning I have a term where every month 100,000 people search for something and their needs are'nt being met. I have a couple blogs and websites that I am running side by side to test how qucik I can rank. What would you do?
3. What is the best way to get back links in an industry like mortgage moere everyone is a competitor and it's almost impossible to get them free and the costs are high to buy them?

Questions are long but you can keep the answers short if need. Thanks so much Eli!!!!!!

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by BeerHat

Eli, you have some unique ideas for promoting online, getting backlinks, content, etc... Do you do anything offline and has it been profitable?

If you mean do offline as in promotional techniques for my sites offline, no i don't really. Offline stuff takes a lot of effort. I try to put the minimal effort i have into any single project. Although I have done some offline stuff for a real estate website a long time ago, had to get some real estate agents to participate, so i went and started pitching it around town to get the ball rolling on the site. Or if you mean do i do anything offline to make money, i do have a computer store.

[chatmasta]

Eli, thanks for this thread. I have a fairly general question. I don't know how much AM you do, but what do you think is the best way to promote something zip/email submits? Link injection, PPC, whatever?

Thanks.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by cdc

This is quite possibly the most important question ever asked:

Who the hell is Recessive Pat?

Recessive Pat is the unisex dummy used to teach people CPR and first aid. The dummy is named Pat because Pat can either be a guy's or a girl's name and the dummy itself has no distinguishable features.

My sig is a joke for the people who liked to make out with the dummy and slip it some tongue while practicing mouth-to-mouth just to piss off the teacher.

[lerchmo]

Name 3 sources of content that is readable and covers a massive breadth of keywords and we probably havent thought about..

examples being
Wikipedia
Search Results
Ebay
IMDB
myspace profiles
......
you have 2minutes!

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by lerchmo

Name 3 sources of content that is readable and covers a massive breadth of keywords and we probably havent thought about..

examples being
Wikipedia
Search Results
Ebay
IMDB
myspace profiles
......
you have 2minutes!

1. Archive.org.
2. Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia data files on the cdrom.
3. Manufacturer pdf user manuals located behind drop down menus or other noncrawlable navigation.

[lerchmo]

sweet

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by DomainRealty

Eli:

How much effort per day do you put into any given web site, and please itemize it

Jason

//EDIT: Have to add...in addition to effort, please include time and money spent if you would.

Jason

I also put the absolute minimal I have to. However more importantly would be the fact that I automate every possible step I can in the building and promoting of a new site. For instance if I'm coding the functionality of a site and basically laying out its structure, most of the time that structure can be reused later for another project or site. So instead of hardcoding it and making it how I want it to be, I'll take a little extra time to make it variable based and easily customizable for another day on another project. Sometimes I'll even go as far as to create a packager and quick installer for it, one that'll setup the database and all that for me. This is a pain in the ass at the beginning but after so many projects it really starts to pay off big time. You can start looking through your structures and decide on one within your library for just about any new site you can produce, and boom most of your work is already done because you thought ahead. Every once in awhile you'll need a new structure or something so I just keep the future in mind when I code it, then add it to the library.

The same goes for promotion. I started off a long time ago with a base. I know I'd eventually start promoting a lot of websites. So I setup a small server and had a secret website on it where me and the people in my office can login and see the global stats of all of our sites and quickly promote a site. Then when we would get a neat idea of how to get some links we would code it into a module and add it to the system. After so long it built up and built up until you can login, put in the sites information, check all the methods of promotion you want to do with it, over what amount of time, and pick several options on how many links you want and other variables, hit a button and be completely done. so you can move on to the next project. Set it and forget is a strong policy in my office, there's no point in ever coding things twice.

[BeerHat]

My wife is forcing me to ask you another question. I finally got her to start doing something productive on the internet, (she is a stay at home mom). So she is really good with writing tutorials and I gave her an unused blog I had. She has been writing tutorials for a while and it has paid off in terms of adsense. Is their any other way that you could think of to monetize a tutorial based site?

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by BeerHat

My wife is forcing me to ask you another question. I finally got her to start doing something productive on the internet, (she is a stay at home mom). So she is really good with writing tutorials and I gave her an unused blog I had. She has been writing tutorials for a while and it has paid off in terms of adsense. Is their any other way that you could think of to monetize a tutorial based site?

Absolutely, hand written tutorial based sites always do very well with pagerank due to their own internal structure plus the fact that they can easily be submitted to places like Wikipedia(nofollow isn't as ineffective as you may think). So places like textlinkbrokers provide an awesome steady income that can usually match the adsense dollar for dollar each month. They usually climb in income each month because the people who bought the link are usually so happy with the site its on and never take their link down. I have a few tutorial based sites that have had the same textlinkbroker links for 4 solid years now, and still gains one every once in awhile. With the textlinkbrokers example they also have a directory program, where you put up a small link directory and hide it on your site with a link on the main page and no where else. Then they can automatically insert content based links at will. They payout $5/link and can be negotiated up to about $7/link. People buy these directory links in mass so you can usually average a solid 50 links/month. Also with a bit of negotiating you can break down the tutorial topics into subdomains and they each count as a separate site. Especially if you assign a different class-c ip on each subdomain.

There are also several other options she can do, she can promote products directly related to the tutorials. I'd sign up with Shareasale because they have an absolutely huge inventory of products and she can easily find just about any product she wants. Also, Ad-Bright and other places will work and remain discrete on the pages.

[emp]

Well, it depends on the tutorials (sorry)

Say, photoshop:

- Photoshop software (plug ins, adobe creative suit, etc)
- Photoshop Books
- Photoshop Tutorial DVDs

All of this can probably be found at amazon, so open up a partner ID there.

Just take some of her writing skills and review some books/dvds etc..


Same for tutorials on anything (just replace photoshop). If the thing is craft related, you might also peddle accessories, etc..

So here goes: Oil Painting

- Painting software (Multimedia museums, painter, etc..)
- Painting Books
- Painting Tutorial DVDs

::emp::

[chatmasta]

Yeah just look at the AdSense ads on your site. Chances are you're going to see "buy photoshop" ads. BLOCK THAT SHIT!

Why should you get paid like 10 cents for someone to buy PS from a guy who will get paid more along the lines of $50....do it yourself!

[springer]

Eli,

Between your blog and this forum, I believe you are one of the most generous people I have ever encountered. You could easily keep all this to yourself or hire out your services or otherwise sell the information but you choose to give freely. The reciprocation gods will look favorably on you!

My question is about learning to implement so many of these techniques. Specifically, learning the lingo and jargon, as well as the technical intricacies involved.

How does one go about learning what's needed to automate? How do you seperate what's important to know from what's not?

I know a lot is subject to personal preference but, if one does not know the difference between say, PHP or RoR, how would one choose to learn one over the other? (That was merely an example and I'm NOT trying to decide between PHP or RoR.)

So many things I read take for granted the reader already knows and understands the technology or topic. There is so much specific lingo in the text it's impossible to understand unless one is already familiar with it.

My question boils down to, how do I figure out what it is I don't know and where to learn it? What's a good starting point for someone who wants to learn something useful and what is most useful to learn first?

I already earn a handsome living from my efforts but so much of what I do is manual labor because I don't know how to automate very much. The automation I have is either commercially produced or I have to hire someone to custom build it for me. I'd really like to learn more but I don't know where to begin.

I know this kind of knowledge will not come to me through osmosis but I don't have the time or inclination to spend the next 4 years attending school full time to earn a degree in computer science.

Basically, I don't know what I don't know and I don't know how to figure out what is important to learn and where to learn it. Any advice you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Thanks very much for starting this thread and allowing all of us to ask these questions!

PS I always thought, when you referred to Recessive Pat, you actually meant Androgynous Pat from SNL. My bad!

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by Blastyourass

Thanks for the thread and people need to realize the value that your providing by doing this.

I have a few basic questions for you:

1. I have a year old website that has and still does jump anywhere from page 1 on google to page 10. One day I'll be strong on page 2 for a few days and then I'm gona again and bumped tp page 3 and then 10. A week or so goes by and then I'm back again. Number one site for my earch term is a pr3 and has been online for 11 years. The site is relevant but 90% of it is dup content with just a few words changed on each page like the stae and city. So my question to you is what would you do to stabilize your rankings and take over a number 1 spot that to me should be fairly easy?
2. What is the quickest way to get ranked high for a search term where the number 1 spot in the big G is totally worthless and not relevant to what searchers are looking for. Meaning I have a term where every month 100,000 people search for something and their needs are'nt being met. I have a couple blogs and websites that I am running side by side to test how qucik I can rank. What would you do?
3. What is the best way to get back links in an industry like mortgage moere everyone is a competitor and it's almost impossible to get them free and the costs are high to buy them?

Questions are long but you can keep the answers short if need. Thanks so much Eli!!!!!!

1. Here's my thoughts on fluctuating serps.
http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-s...tml#post157346

2. If the top sites are shit than you got an easier job ahead of you. Your linking campaign is more likely to stick and the people who link to them are more likely to link to you as well and possibly even remove their links once they see your site. Consider checking out a program called Link Fetcher.

3. I actually gave this exact advice to another member here with one of his sites. He was going for a term that had very little link possibilities just like niches such as mortgages would. So I recommended he looked for his links through parallel niches where the gathering is still relevant but much easier to acquire. For instance if you're going for "mortgage loans." You could search for links with "mortgage forum", "mortgage blogs," "mortgage directory," "loan forum," "loan blog," "loan directory." The basic technique you want to aim for is look for mediums and site types that are quick to give out a link, like i mentioned above, blogs, forums and directories. Then break down all your keywords and similar keywords to find related sites, build your links through them. It makes it much easier and gives you a much larger bucket to pick from.

[Roc-Star]

Eli,

What is your method on finding niches. Do you look at an offer then find keywords?

thanks

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by springer

Eli,
My question is about learning to implement so many of these techniques. Specifically, learning the lingo and jargon, as well as the technical intricacies involved.

How does one go about learning what's needed to automate? How do you seperate what's important to know from what's not?

I know a lot is subject to personal preference but, if one does not know the difference between say, PHP or RoR, how would one choose to learn one over the other? (That was merely an example and I'm NOT trying to decide between PHP or RoR.)

So many things I read take for granted the reader already knows and understands the technology or topic. There is so much specific lingo in the text it's impossible to understand unless one is already familiar with it.

My question boils down to, how do I figure out what it is I don't know and where to learn it? What's a good starting point for someone who wants to learn something useful and what is most useful to learn first?

I used to have this professor that was an ex high level nasa engineer. He was a really nice guy and incredibly smart. However he warned us at the beginning of the term that since he's new and is so used to the nasa environment he used a lot of acronyms. So he gave us a cheat sheet of all of his most used acronyms along with our syllabus. That fucker was not joking! We spent the first few weeks of class frantically scrambling through our cheat sheets just to figure out what the hell he was talking about, he'd say shit like, "just connect TRW to the common ground" What the fuck! What the hell is a TRW. *scramble* TRW- The Red Wire. Ooooooh. haha. So don't get too caught up in all the jargon and lingo. It's just to make our writing lives easier, if you systematically work your way through it and look 'em all up you'll find each has a very logical and simple meaning. The same goes for automation.

Task automation is a skill just like marketing and design are. It involves knowledge of server side language's just like marketing involves a knowledge of consumers. Automation seems very complicated if you look at it from behind the glass, but once you get up close and start learning how to script yourself you'll find it's incredibly easy. A good place to start out would be to find a good server side language to learn, you really only need to learn one. A server side language is a programming language that allows you to directly interact with the operating system, so you can do actual tasks internally and browser side as apposed to just browser side which would be languages like Javascript and CSS. Here's a great tutorial on the differences between the server side languages, because like you said it really is just a matter of preference.
Which Server-Side Language Is Right For You? [Server Side Essentials]

I personally use CGI/PERL. but I know most of the people here prefer PHP and a select few are hardcore into Ruby on rails. Just pick whatever you think is best for you. The reality is they all will do nicely.

[lerchmo]

Name 3 places to get links for mostly white hat sites. So trackback spam doesn't count and social bookmarking sites does. Also ones that most people wouldnt think of

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by lerchmo

Name 3 places to get links for mostly white hat sites. So trackback spam doesn't count and social bookmarking sites does. Also ones that most people wouldnt think of

I'll give you one right off the top of my head

Dmoz editor bookmarks. Editors can bookmark sites they like and it shows up under their public profile (many have very high page ranks because they edit top level categories), and dmoz has a form you can submit to contact each editor. Convincing a couple hundred or thousand to bookmark your site is worth quite a few dmoz listings.

Here's about 44,000 to get ya started -> Yahoo! Site Explorer

[LazyHippy]

Great tips Eli. Cheers.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by Roc-Star

Eli,

What is your method on finding niches. Do you look at an offer then find keywords?

thanks

I always find the niche than the offer. Offers are easy to come by. In fact i consider the montenization of my sites to be the job of my account managers. They know their inventories better than I ever possibly could. So first i find the niches, build the sites, then everyday i schedule a small meetup with my account managers. I give them their sites for the day and they respond back with what ads I should put on. If they don't have any ads to match they let me know and I give the site to someone else on another network. It's a give take relationship. They know the better they serve relevant and high converting ads the better I will do on their network and the more money they will make, so the sites rotate through until all the best matches have been made. Then after about six months they go through the revamp process, where all poorly performing ads are given to other account managers where they are allowed to make any changes they'd like and swap in their own ads. If those ads end up performing than they get to keep the site 6 months later. Eventually every site I own ends up with the highest performing ad placement possible.

[springer]

A good place to start out would be to find a good server side language to learn, you really only need to learn one. A server side language is a programming language that allows you to directly interact with the operating system, so you can do actual tasks internally and browser side as apposed to just browser side which would be languages like Javascript and CSS.

Eli,

Thanks man!

I guess your answer validates my recent decision to learn PHP. I just wasn't sure that's all I'd really need. I imagine, as time passes, I'll want to learn other stuff, too. I just wasn't sure of the best place to begin.

I allowed my lack of knowledge to overwhelm me and cause me to doubt myself. I recall how satisfying it felt when I finally started to grasp HTML so long ago. If I can keep that in the front of my mind, I think I'll be OK.

I read things like are posted on your blog, as well as so many other places and the ease which people use to explain things and the comments by others who already understand just contributed to my feelings of being overhwelmed. I'll look at it all differently now.

Thanks for making something complicated so simple.

[chatmasta]

Originally Posted by Deliguy

I'll give you one right off the top of my head

Dmoz editor bookmarks. Editors can bookmark sites they like and it shows up under their public profile (many have very high page ranks because they edit top level categories), and dmoz has a form you can submit to contact each editor. Convincing a couple hundred or thousand to bookmark your site is worth quite a few dmoz listings.

Here's about 44,000 to get ya started -> Yahoo! Site Explorer

So are you saying scrape all those names and use the email form? Then just use a generic email saying "hey you should bookmark my site?" How do you make it so it doesn't sound like you're just begging for links...

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by chatmasta

So are you saying scrape all those names and use the email form? Then just use a generic email saying "hey you should bookmark my site?" How do you make it so it doesn't sound like you're just begging for links...

That you have to be creative with. Just try to sound as personal as possible.

[Jdog]

Eli, you rock.

I set up a script for your blackhole method. It scrapes weblogs for now, but will be different soon. When I create my feed, it pulls a random description and link from a database. So, it pulls a different link/description everytime the feed is updated.

2 quick questions:

1. Where should the channel link point to, or does it matter?
2. My posts are not showing up in blogsearch at all (after 3ish weeks), but the feed is indexed in google's normal serps. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by Jdog

Eli, you rock.

I set up a script for your blackhole method. It scrapes weblogs for now, but will be different soon. When I create my feed, it pulls a random description and link from a database. So, it pulls a different link/description everytime the feed is updated.

2 quick questions:

1. Where should the channel link point to, or does it matter?
2. My posts are not showing up in blogsearch at all (after 3ish weeks), but the feed is indexed in google's normal serps. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

channel link can just point to your site. So thats fine.
Google blogsearch is a big cookie to take on. They are very slow at indexing(in my experience it takes about 3 weeks) but once your feeds are in they get updated fairly often. It also takes a lot of feeds and a lot of time before they start producing results. There's millions of feeds in gbs and scraper sites only grab the top 100-1000 for their keywords. In my experience i've gone up to 400 megs worth of xml files alone before i started seeing the 100's of links/hour rolling in. It takes time, patience, and continually building before any measurable results start coming in. The best indicator of whether or not its working is if your getting any links at all. When you do then it starts snowballing from there and becomes very big very quickly.

Good luck man and keep plugging away.

[illusion]

What is a good whois lookup where you can scrape emails and they don't have a limit of searches per day?

[JamesH]

You talk a lot about these special scripts to use your Blue Hat SEO techniques. To a non-tech guy (non-programmer) how would you advise the non-tech'ers to get started?

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by illusion

What is a good whois lookup where you can scrape emails and they don't have a limit of searches per day?

The best and probably only good solution for scraping emails is a custom script. All whois finders use the whois registries. Which are made to be queried by scripts and will return the results.

Some Common servers are:
whois.publicinterestregistry.net
whois.nic.uk
whois.internic.net

I would recommend you go to a free scripts download place like hotscripts or something and download a simple whois script in your favorite language (ie perl or php) and then open it up and snag the code that grabs from the whois registries and prints it to the screen. Then take the portion of the response that says email and parse it into a variable to be stored in whatever database you're using.

Indeed some registries limit the number of queries by ip per day, but those are easily fooled through the conventional gateway and proxy methods. There are some who don't allow it, but at the same time don't enforce it. So if you can find those, that would be optimal.

[illusion]

Originally Posted by Deliguy

The best and probably only for scraping emails is a custom script. All whois finders use the whois registries. Which are made to be queried by scripts and will return the results.

Some Common servers are:
whois.publicinterestregistry.net
whois.nic.uk
whois.internic.net

I would recommend you go to a free scripts download place like hotscripts or something and download a simple whois script in your favorite language (ie perl or php) and then open it up and snag the code that grabs from the whois registries and prints it to the screen. Then take the portion of the response that says email and parse it into a variable to be stored in whatever database you're using.

Indeed some registries limit the number of queries by ip per day, but those are easily fooled through the conventional gateway and proxy methods. There are some who don't allow it, but at the same time don't enforce it. So if you can find those, that would be optimal.

Bah why didn't I think of that, thanks Eli

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by JamesH

You talk a lot about these special scripts to use your Blue Hat SEO techniques. To a non-tech guy (non-programmer) how would you advise the non-tech'ers to get started?

In the retail world and much of the business world they enforce whats called a cross training policy. Which basically means they believe every employee, even the specialized ones, should have at least some knowledge of how to operate in all the other departments. I'm a firm believer in that. I'm not the greatest coder in the world, in fact I'm pretty pathetic at it, but I can get done whatever needs to get done without too much outside help. I can at least know where to find the information I need. But I strongly believe that in order to be successful in your business you are required to at least be adequate in every aspect of the business. The same goes for internet marketing. Needing to hire someone to code something for you, should be an optional solution based on your own time tables. It shouldn't be an act of desperation or a requirement for almost every project you do. If you really want to be good at what you do, and make some money I'm sorry to say but you're going to have to dig into a couple programming books and/or tutorials. At least get to the point of understanding what you want before you ask for it. That only comes through some knowledge of programming. In my office I'm mostly specialized in the coming up of the ideas, the testing, and producing the projects. Bobby is the master of coding and can make things happen. However he also is proficient enough in SEO, at least well enough so I don't have to spell things out for him and visa versa for me with coding.

So go download some tutorials buddy. Trust me, you'll understand my techniques a hell of a lot better once you do.

[chatmasta]

Wow that whois post was gold. Seriously, I don't know why I thought I was going to reinvent the world. I was going to write a script to scrape whois for a bunch of domains I have next week, but your post made me realize not to waste me time and just download a premade scraper. Thanks for saving me a couple hours Eli.

Also, to add on to your answer to JamesH's question. I've only been trying to make money online for a couple of months, but I've been programming for a few years and designing even longer. I can design fairly well, program proficiently, and understand how to put the two together. I have to say that I have found these two skills to be INVALUABLE in this internet marketing world.

Seriously, I have friends who have none of those skills and they will spend hours getting hungup on one line of code that could easily be fixed in a couple minutes if they had some basic programming knowledge. Not to mention the fact it eliminates a huge overhead since you can do everything yourself.

But you don't always want to for time's sake...which leads me to a question: back before you had any employees, what was your best method of finding reliable programmers? Forums, freelance sites? Every time I've tried I've just given up and done it myself because all I get are Indians who can't communicate well and scammers. Is it basically just luck - and when you stumble upon a good programmer to keep him?

Thanks

[chatmasta]

Here's one, if you're still answering questions.

What's a good video ad network that isn't click-to-play, but rather pay per view? I want to play video ads before the user downloads something.

Or would my best option be just to make some quick promo video for my site and put invideo advertising on it? Basically what I want is NOT click-to-play, but PPV.

[Airkat]

Here's a question. I have some websites sitting around with various page ranks, and they are from various niches. Since these websites aren't being used for anything to make me money, I'd like to figure out a way to at least use their PR to help boost a couple sites that are. My question is though, since they are not directly related to the niche the new websites are, should I NOT use them for text linking to the new sites, or does 'any little bit help'? I was thinking I could change the text around on the PR'd websites to fit the websites I was linking to, but I wasn't sure if that would fuck up the current PR by updating the websites and removing the current content. Or is that not an issue?

Thanks for answering this if you do, I've saved every Q&A you've had so far in a microsoft word document. Priceless information man. I appreciate it.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by chatmasta

But you don't always want to for time's sake...which leads me to a question: back before you had any employees, what was your best method of finding reliable programmers? Forums, freelance sites? Every time I've tried I've just given up and done it myself because all I get are Indians who can't communicate well and scammers. Is it basically just luck - and when you stumble upon a good programmer to keep him?

I'm still in this same debacle so I'll leave this question to anyone who has some good experience they can help out with.

[Deliguy]

Originally Posted by chatmasta

Here's one, if you're still answering questions.

What's a good video ad network that isn't click-to-play, but rather pay per view? I want to play video ads before the user downloads something.

Or would my best option be just to make some quick promo video for my site and put invideo advertising on it? Basically what I want is NOT click-to-play, but PPV.

Ummm. I don't know about ones that automatically play, but Revver comes to mind.