Bramblog

Well…I talked to Godaddy a # of times about my (then) upcoming campaign & was reassured twice that my shared hosting account would be able to handle the traffic. I specifically asked them, both times, if they were familiar with “the digg effect” and to please go google it. They said they weren’t familiar, but they had no doubts they could handle the traffic. If this is what they mean by “handle the traffic,” then I guess they were right.

After the server crashed, I immediately called them back & asked them to transfer me to the manager. Apparently, my hosting plan can only handle 150 inquiries/second, and we had 1.1m in 2 hours. Unless we had <1 second latency, this wasn’t going to cut it. The manager then transferred me to his manager, who then got on the phone with the server tech, who manually changed the permissions to allow the necessary amount of inquiries. With 2 hours of downtime, I logged 50k visitors that day. I’m not sure how many I missed out on.

I found this on digg, and thought it was hilarious. Check it out:

One of the basics of SEO is checking links. It enables you to see how you stand with the competition, to keep tabs on the competition, and to gauge which keywords to go after. Everyone knows that Google won’t show you their true count of links w/o verifying ownership of the site, so this will focus on Yahoo commands.

Simple

link:www.mysite.com/page – this will give you the # of links to the specific page you run the search for.

linkdomain:mysite.com – this gives you the # of links to the domain in its entirety.

External Links Only

When you run the simple commands above, it’s a good “quick & dirty” but won’t give you the most accurate info. The most accurate info is “how many external links does this site have.” In order to find this info, use:

linkdomain:mysite.com -site:mysite.com

Exclude Specific Sites

Let’s say that you’re really active on a forum…you’re a moderator or something like that, and you have thousands of links from this one source. You’re getting some juice from these links, but not as much juice as you would if they were spread out elsewhere. So…to see how many links you have, excluding this one source (or two, or three) use the following command:

linkdomain:mysite.com – site:myforum.com -site:myfriendsblogroll.com

So…these are the basics. There are some more advanced features out there, but this will get you going!

It struck me that my notes from Pubcon were pretty much a list, and don’t make a lot of sense to anyone but me.  So I thought it might be a good idea to expand a bit.

The link building session was very good – it confirmed a lot of what I’m already doing, and gave me some new ideas, as well.  The bottom line of any good link building campaign is to pay for links – without money.  MC is on a tear after paid links (which I’ve never paid for monetarily, btw) so now, more than ever, we need to find other currency to trade.

So….what to trade….how about an “ego fit?”  Everyone has an ego, and everyone likes it to be fitted.  But how to trade this for links?

Create a “best of the web” award.  Whatever your niche might be, create a “best of my niche website” award.  You can give it out as frequently, or as sparingly as you like (or can get away with.)  Get with your favorite graphic designer, put together a cool looking banner, and start distributing online trophies!  Make sure to create a page about this week’s/month’s/year’s winner, and let them know they won.  Email them the graphic and watch your backlinks climb!

You trade a little ego satiation, and you get a lottta link love in return!

If you’re like me, you hate clunky software – which means that you’re really annoyed by anything that Adobe puts out.  I don’t know what it is about their software, but it’s ridiculously clunky, and takes up tons of resources.  Even simple programs like Acrobat Reader take a few seconds to load – and you can’t do anything to the document.

So….I did some searching & found Sumatra.  It loads REALLY fast, and allows you to rotate the document, and save (which is really the only document modification I ever need for pdf’s.)  Check it out – I think you’ll like it enough to replace Reader.

I saw this Google SERP heat map on Knox’s blog & thought it was pretty sweet.  It shows the CTR, and gives you an idea of how important #’s 1-3 are.

So…I bought a new Sony Vaio laptop over the weekend.  I know, I know…should’ve gotten a Mac.  The problem is, the comparable Mac costs twice as much.  I’d rather buy a new PC every 2 years than a new Mac every four.  Oh…and I’m seriously going to learn Ubuntu soon.
The original game plan was to buy the machine and immediately wipe it clean and install XP.  Then I started reading about what a bitch it was going to be to install all of the drivers.  So…I decided to live with Vista.  And I hate it.  Then I found some cool hacks that make it much more bearable (I found them at computerworld.com.)

1) Disabling the User Account Control:

The user account control sucks.  Bad.  Every time you run anything that might, possibly, minutely jack up your system, it asks you if you really want to do it.  If Microsoft ran the world, it would be rubber coated, and everyone would wear helmets when walking.  So…to disable it:

•  Run msconfig
• Click tools
• Scroll down to “disable UAC”
• Click “Launch”
• Reboot

2) Access the Double-Secret Adminstrator Account

Microsoft decided to coat the administrator account in styrofoam, as well.  Even when logged in as an adminstrator, you’re not really an administrator.  In order to unlock the double-secret administrator account, use the following steps:

• Type cmd into the search box in the start menu.
• Right click the command icon that shows up at the top of the start menu.
• Select “run as administrator”
• Enter this command: Net user administrator /active:yes

So…that’s what I have right now.  I’ll add more as I learn them.

Link Building 101

1) Directories – only a few worthwhile
a. Yahoo
b. DMOZ
c. BOTW
d. Specialty (Industry Specific)
e. Business.com

2) Do-Follow Blog Commenting

3) Articles/Widgets/Tools

4) Analyze high ranking sites
a. Hubfinder by Aaron Wall
b. Common Backlink Tool – Jim Boykin “We Build Pages”
c. Linkdomain:competitor1.com – linkdomain:yoursite.com

5) Ask for links from related sites

6) Look up Search Engine Journal “20 Places to Submit Your Blog”

7) Paid Links from Blogs
a. Look for blogs w/ adsense below the fold – shows they want to monetize the site, but they’re probably not making a lot of money on it.

Paid Links
a. Relevance (page good, site better)
b. Purchase Annually

9) Buying Dead Websites
a. Search “temporarily down for maintenance”
b. Search “site is offline”
c. Contact the webmaster & offer to buy – it’s probably a deadbeat client
d. Look for underperforming websites
e. Search for “copyright 1999″ and things like that

10) Site of the Month
a. Search for “site of the month” + keyword – ask to be the site of the month

11) Google “google doesn’t know the face of evil”

12) Use the Ego Hook
a. Create “Top 100 Bloggers” – contact them, they will link to you

1) Google Local + Other Directories
a. Postcard Option
b. Bulk submit option (much faster service)
c. Bulk upload = superpages, infosolve, etc…

2)ROI for Local/Mobile Search is much harder to measure than web traffic.
a. Most people don’t click through – they call in.
b. Create a unique phone #
c. Include a coupon

3) Mobile Site Notes
a. Create a new site for your mobile site.
b. Mobile sites need fresh content – RSS feeds are awesome
c. Use your standard mysite.com – do not use .mobi or m.mysite.com – use a redirect for mobile browsers
i. This establishes your brand much stronger

Originally titled “96 Forms of Linkbait,” this session was more of a “Link Bait 101.”

Common Forms of Linkbait

1)      Informational

2)      Controversial

3)      Humor

4)      News

5)      Tools

 Benefits of Linkbait

1)      Links

2)      Link Profile

3)      Traffic

4)      Branding

5)      Bookmarks

6)      Media Publicity

 Finding Ideas

1)      Run searches on the social bookmarking sites for ideas on what to write on.  What was popular.

 Creating Content

1)      KISS

2)      Lists

3)      Pictures

4)      Videos

5)      Example: myspace for rehab – wrote “The Most Dangerous Drug in the World”