who is a rankmaniac

Wants to have a drink with a Rankmaniac

Party like a Rankmaniac

Vote like a Rankmaniac

Overhead bin for a Rankmaniac

sometimes you have to be a rankmaniac

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Rankmaniac

1. Get Out and Vote All of you responsible Americans and are going to go...
2. The Thrill of Being Hunted Last night I went to my wife’s company Christmas Party....
3. Party Animals You think when you were paying top dollar you wouldn’t...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I’m a big fan of the Google Webmaster Central Program and using sitemaps. I agree that you should build your website so that it is crawlable and not rely on sitemaps to compensate for poor site architecture, but hands down there is no better tool when you are migrating or cleaning up after a site migration than webmaster central. However there’s a dark side to webmaster central that I haven’t seen anyone else bring up.

First we need to dive a little deeper into webmaster central and sitemaps. One of the subtle features of webmaster central is the priority tag in the XML file. You are allowed to specify a value from 0.1 (lowest) to 1.0 (highest) for your pages. Now some people try to “trick” the search engines giving all of their pages a 1.0 thinking this will result in a SEO benefit. This is completely incorrect, as they are scale values. If all of your pages are 1.0 you have told Google they are all equally important, and that there is no priority. So you are much better off playing by the rules on this one.

Some sites generate XML files manually or use an automated tool to generate the pages interfacing with the CMS. If you are using wordpress you can get the Google Sitemaps Plugin to do this automagically for you. It even takes care of pinging Google and the other sitemaps programs from Yahoo and ASK as well. However out of the box the program uses number of comments as the priority calculator, which is well just bizarre, and almost always inaccurate. However what you can use for better results is the Alex King plugin called Popularity Contest to give you a more accurate priority calculation. Popularity contest uses number of page views to determine priority, not perfect but IMHO much better.

So here’s where the competitive intelligence comes in, people who are using automated solutions like popularity contest are telling you their most highly trafficked pages. Other people who are generating Sitemap XML files in a more manual fashion, are telling you the pages they want to rank. Chances are good the pages they want to rank for are the “money pages”. Now of course you could cloak … err … IP deliver your sitemap file, but IMHO that’s about as smart as trying to pick pockets at a police convention. So there you have it a little something extra to look at the next time you do some competitive analysis.

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Using Google Sitemaps for Competitive Intelligence

1. Wordpress 2.0 Permalinks, Error Codes, and Google Sitemaps So I’m working on using Wordpress as a CMS for...
2. Google Sitemaps Review I launched multiple new websites in July (more than 2...
3. Looking at Google Sitemaps A few weeks ago Aaron asked me to look at...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Sometimes things need to be tested and checked, answers need to be sought, friends need the assist, even if it is for Monkey Balls In Louisville Kentucky

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Primate Spheres in the Blue Grass State

1. Blue Widgets – Google and CSS Files With all this talk about Google Crawling CSS files I...
2. Michael Gray Well some search engines seem to be having a hard...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Nicest Bloke in SEO

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Nicest Bloke in SEO

1. Thesis is a Wordpress Framework Not a Design and Why That Matters for SEO When I mention Thesis a lot of people don’t...
2. Wordpress SEO: How to Use RSS and Scrapers to Build Links When you run wordpress or any other blog for...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I actually like Compete I think it’s quite a bit more accurate than Alexa or other competing services, however when I see comments like this on their blog it makes me question some of their conclusions:

Every search query we see in our data is a query performed by an actual person.

via compete blog

Ok Compete gathers their data in a few different ways, first they have a toolbar which lets them gather data, easy enough to fake the same way Alexa is faked. However they also use other methods like clickstream data from ISP’s (like hitwise), and then weight the data according to their algorithm.

Not to rain on their parade but people sometimes send automated queries to search engines for any number of purposes, some benign like ranking reports, others more nefarious like trying to influence things such as Google Trends. Of course a human being does “push the button” so if you wanted to get technical about it yes they are all human generated, but I think the essence of your statement is each query is done by a person singularly, not en masse. It gets even more difficult when sophisticated people start generating massive amounts of “pseudo human” traffic, and throttle it with variable time intervals so it appears more natural. Compete you really think you’ve got that one beat do you … c’mon now … (wink wink nudge nudge).

No doubt you are better than many of the others, but lets be real adversarial information retrieval can get very tricky at times and I think declaring “Every search query we see in our data is a query performed by an actual person” would rank right up there with building an unsinkable ship … and removing spam from the internet

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Compete Still a Bit Wet Behind the Ears

1. Steve Rubel, Wikipedia, and AOL Data, Part II One of the great things about the AOL data leak...
2. Alexa Get Yer’ Game On In certain circles and under certain circumstances having a good...
3. Do You Buy Cheap Cialis Do You Buy Cheap Cialis? How about Viagra? Do you...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

For Jason Calacanis

1. Jason Calacanis In a keynote address today Jason Calacanis said “SEO is...
2. Michael Gray and Jason Calacanis Best Friends Forever This story is dedicated to my best friend, and guiding...
3. Don’t Trust Jason Calacanis It’s been five days since Jason posted his new rules...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s amazing in this day and age that companies really don’t know how harness the power of the internet for good. It’s so much easier to try and solve problems and create evangelists instead of threatening legal action. However MyMac Melbourne did the opposite they took a bad situation and made it worse threatening to sue him. Also be sure to check out the MyMac Melbourne you Tube Video.

oh and if you are someone’s legal team any and all communications you make with me about this will be published in their entirety on this blog

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

MyMac Melbourne Threatens Blogger

1. 27.3 Ways To Do 51 1/2 Things on Wordpress, Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupn, Blogger, Pownce, Reddit, Hugg, Sk-rt, Propeller, SugarLoving, Mixx, Delicious, Blogger, Facebook, Google Reader, YouTube, Gmail, RSS, iPhone, Qik and Seesmic While I Optimize, Stategize, Customerize, Search Engine Optimise, Social Media Enable, SEO, SEM, PPC, LODLSM, for the Long Term in 2 weeks, 14 Day, 7 Hours, 2 minutes 19 seconds and 7 nano seconds while You Were Merging With Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK and Plaxo There that should just about do it Advertisement: Scribe SEO...
2. Bonehead Blogger Seems bonehead blogger Russell Beattie can’t hack it in the...
3. Guy Kawasaki The Blogger I’ll shamefully admit to not knowing who Guy Kawasaki...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Controversial and confrontational marketing are time tested methods for bringing traffic, attention and links to your company, product or website, however there’s more to it than just picking a fight.

The key to being successful with this approach is really having a firm understanding of your market, audience or ideal customer. Find a topic or subject that speaks directly to them. You want to find issue they are concerned about, things they are thinking about, or problems that they need solved. You then want to alienate people aren’t part of that market and probably aren’t ever going to become your customer. Want an example here’s a Clearasil commercial where a young girl deals with the embarrassment of having her mom show her baby pictures to her boyfriend

The commercial speaks to teens about coming to grips with their own individuality, sexuality, and growing into a confident adult. The commercial obviously has upset a certain sector of conservative parents.

Another example comes from Carl Jr’s. While McDonalds and Burger King go after the “family” market, Carl Jr’s goes after the single male 18-35. They produced the infamous Paris Hilton Car wash commercial last year, and followed it up with Flat Buns commercial featuring a teacher bumping, grinding and gyrating in front of her class

The ad has conservative parents and teachers worked into a tizzy.

Another example is the Dove Soap pro aging campaign, featuring mature non models in unretouched photos

The company is also trying to embrace women who don’t fit the stereotypical image of beauty or glamour and speak directly too them

Ok enough theory I’ve shown you some funny commercial and nice pictures how does this help you as an internet marketer, is it for you, and how do you put a plan into action?

Identify Your Market – first and foremost you really need to have a really good idea of who your target market and ideal consumer is. Understand what they want, or need, or desire (see nobody wants to be fat or poor). Speak to them and not at them. Be honest, truthful, and direct, don’t use the same old marketing hyperbole they’ve been getting from everyone else for years.

You Need a Villain – For everyone who is in your ideal customer there are people who aren’t, and understand you are going to piss them off to a certain degree. What are they going to do when they get pissed off, can you take the heat and weather the storm? For example will painting someone as a link communist help or hinder you in the long run? If you’re really good or clever you’ll use you’re villain guerilla warfare style to help spread your message.

Fan the Fire – There’s a fine line between astroturfing and a grass roots movement, and sometimes it’s hard to know where that line is (see Sony viral marketing ploy angers consumers). Drop as many hints as you possibly can in the “right places” in front of the right people. Make it really easy for them to spread your message. For example instead of trying to hoard all the link love for yourself, let people embed your youtube video and spread it for you.

Still too much theory for you, you want some real life examples in action, ok here you go …

Rand Fishkin – see I Used to Respect Robert Scoble’s Opinion
ShoeMoney – see DMOZ Extortion
Jason Calacanis – see SEO is Bullshit
Rae Hoffman – see Merchant Circle
Kim Krause – see I Don’t Digg Being Dugg
Tamar Weinberg – an Open Letter to Kevin Rose

There are lots and lots more out there. To what extent each of these was a planned event where all of the pieces were set in motion according to a master plan, I don’t know. I’m sure some were, and some just kind of happened overnight when someone felt really passionate about a particular issue. However unless you’ve actually dissected some of these, you really won’t have an idea how they work, and how to make them work for you. My advice smart small, don’t step up to the plate looking to hit the bottom of the 9th grand slam homerun your first time at bat. Secondly pay attention, things have the potential to go terribly wrong, know when to pull the plug and apologize.

Advertisement: Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts. #6

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Understanding Confrontational and Controversial Marketing

1. Understanding Adsense Patent Review Eric Giguère of Make Easy Money With Google Adsense published...
2. Viral and Word of Mouth Marketing Moderator: Todd Friesen Speakers: Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz Louise Rijk,...
3. The Wiggles and Understanding Your Market If you’ve been around small children who are under the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So one of the reasons I’ve been light on the blogging is I’ve got a lot of projects going on. One of which involved rebranding a domain from a crappy hyphenated domain to a brandable/purchasable one. So I had my XML sitemap ready to go. I had my htaccess ready to go with redirects in place. I let the dogs loose about a week and half ago and things are not going entirely according to plan.

The htaccess is redirecting the traffic so everything that was ranking is being sent to the right spot. However a site command still shows 200+ pages in the google index under the old domain. More disturbingly webmaster central throws this error

Using some header checker tools I verified there is only one 301 being used no chaining or multiple 301, 302, or any other redirects are occurring. So it looks like webmaster central has an issue interpretting a 301 from one domain to another. I want to keep feeding them the sitemap at least until they pick up that most of the files have moved and adjust them in the index. So I’m stuck wondering am I in some bizzare data flux or is Google just having “issues”.

Hey Google instead of falsely accusing people of illicit practices, you publish a site migration guide. I’m sure that’s something people really want more than the ability to narc on the guy next to them.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Webmaster Central has Problems with 301’s to a New Domain

1. Minus 30 Penalty from the Webmaster Central Control Panel Just for kicks I thought I’d post a picture from...
2. Interpreting Data from Webmaster Central – Page with the Highest PageRank I’m really a big fan of webmaster central it’s about...
3. Google Webmaster Central and Google Accounts Hey Google can we get a link for Webmaster Central...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Think it’s just whiney SEO’s who have issues with accuracy on the wiki? Not so my friend, for example Morgan Webb of Webb Alert has a problem with people who keep editing her wiki profile and perpetuating the inaccuracy that she was born in Canada.

Again a resource who’s standard is citability not truth should not be trusted, by you or anyone else. Google however exacerbates and perpetuates the problem by giving them such high trust and rankings in a flawed algo.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

It’s Not Just SEO’s who Have Issues with the Wiki

1. Let’s try some Wiki Jacking Let’s try some wiki-jacking Matt Cutts Marissa Mayer Eric Schmidt...
2. Google’s and Yahoo have Size Issues We’ve all seen the “my dad is bigger and can...
3. Wiki Jacking Rand’s got an interesting video up about wiki-jacking watch it...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.