More Tools to Help You Rank

Here are a couple of more great tools to use in combination with the C Class Tool I mentioned the other day.

HubFinder: Awesome tool by Andy Hagan. This tool was a little finicky for me, but still a great tool none-the-less. This tool will give you the backlinks of multiple sites entered and check for consistency between them. Nice way to check competitors backlinks.

TouchGraph: This is a neat tool that I've been using for a while. Great for seeing the linking structure of a site as a whole. Definitely shouldn't be used with the HubFinder tool to glean insight on a competitors site...ya...right! :)

Thanks ThreadWatch!

New Tool from We Build Pages

Jim over at We Build Pages has designed a new tool for everyone to love and cherish. The tool checks the IP class your incoming links are on. The tool is called C Class Backlink Analyzer Tool. Great tool to see how many unique IP C class incoming links your site has. It scans the 1st 1000 incoming links.

Here's the results from one of my sites:

Results Summary
The first 494 backlinks found come from
117 unique domain names (1 of which is invalid),
67 unique IP addresses, and
64 unique C classes.

The ratio of unique domain names to number of backlinks is 117 to 494, or 23.68%.
The ratio of unique IP addresses to number of backlinks is 67 to 494, or 13.56%.
The ratio of unique C classes to number of backlinks is 64 to 494, or 12.96%.

Ohh..Ya...Happy Easter!

For all of you who celebrate... Happy Easter!!

Google Hacked?

I started a thread the other day at Search Engine Watch labled Google Hack. A friend of mine had shown me a page on a Google search page with a link that looked a little weird.

This search has a italized text at the bottom of the page that reads:

In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.

The 2nd link in that little paragraph goes to a page which looks like Kazaa...weird.

Making Money with a Long Tail

I have been very intrigued with the Long Tail. In particular, the long tail in a business model. I first heard about it on Chris Anderson's site. I didn't read it, but I did read Joe Krause's post on the long Tail (Co-Founder of Excite) and it got me thinking.

So, what is the long tail? Well, let me give you a little snippet from Joe Krause's blog:

The most popular searches (things like Sex, MP3, and the bare midriff female singer du jour) were vastly more popular than the 1000th most popular search. For example, “sex” was on the order of 100,000 times more popular than the 1000th most popular search (whatever that was). Said another way, there were a handful of extraordinarily common queries and millions of far less popular queries.

In fact, the frequency of the average query was 1.2. That means if you wrote each of the millions of queries on a slip of paper, put them all in a fish bowl and grabbed one at random, there was a high likelihood that this query was asked only once during the day. Of ten-plus million queries a day, the average search was nearly unique.

The most interesting statistic however, was that while the top 10 searches were thousands of times more popular than the average search, these top-10 searches represented only 3% of our total volume. 97% of our traffic came from the “long tail” – queries asked a little over once a day.

You know the real reason Excite went out of business? We couldn’t figure out how to make money from 97% of our traffic. We couldn’t figure out how to make money from the long tail – from those queries asked only once a day.

Overture figured it out, Google perfected it and we all know what happened from there.

What's the long tail in your business? What part of your industry do you see the long tail needing to be built and perfected so you can become the next Google or Amazon?

Revisiting the Sanbox

NFFC at ThreadWatch brings up the Sanbox issue. Brian Turner does a good job of re-capping the issue with some valuable links.

Google Adsense
Please feel free to tell me how much your making. It's ok now. :)

5 Valuable Services
This is a cool Entrepreneurs list that you can't live without. Paul Allen goes into detail 5 services he absolutely loves/needs.

Google Getting Smart with Local Search

This is a good move by Google. One of the recurring issues I've heard from the Local search listings is if a business has moved or the phone numbers are no longer active, their was no way to proactively make changes. Google has rolled out a feature to make edits or changes to your local search listing.

Fighting Fire with Fire
Spam tactics fighting spam tactics to get better Google results...classic. :)

Drop Shipping and Internet Life-Style

I have to say, thoroughly enjoy the dynamic drop ship database Chris Malta has designed. It is so great. I can go in there, spend a couple of minutes, find a product a want to market and then start designing a site catering to that niche. Chris got into a little heated discussion not to long ago about his directory and the integrity of the business he has built.

You go Chris!

I need to go to China
Brad Fallon recently got back from China and it got me thinking that I should take a trip to China. There are so many opportunities out there and I really just need to get out of sunny Southern California and see a little bit of the world. That said, I might be going to Norway in August. That should be fun!

Taking Out My Frustrations

Why is it somethings online can happen within the blink of an eye and other situtations can move as slow as snails. I sold one of my websites the other day and before I can get my large some of money, the registrar has to change so you can verify via Whois. Well...it has been 2 weeks now since I requested the change over at GoDaddy and still nothing has happened. I'll stop ranting now. Thank you for listening.

More on Sandbox Theory

The sandbox theory has been around for about a year now and there still hasn't been any clear definition of what, why and how you get out of it. At the recent SES conference, several SEOs tried to get little "nuggets" from Google rep Matt Cutts. There is an interesting thread brewing at Search Engine Watch discussing what officially has been said by Google on this topic.

Google Cloaking
I thought Google was against cloaking. Well, maybe they should re-think TOS.

2005 Search Engine Strategies in NYC

He's a recap of the 2005 SES conference in NYC. I didn't go, but Barry Schwartz (AKA RustyBrick) was blogging every step of the way. He's links to all his posts for the conference:

Advanced Keyword Research Tools
Integrating Search into Other Marketing
What is Content?
Reaching Out To Europe
Local Search Marketing Tactics
Measuring Offline Sales & Conversions
Brand Summit: Life After Geico - Google
Search Convergence
Webfeeds, Blogs & Search
News & Webfeed Search
Indexing Summit
Perfecting Paid Listings
What is Spam?
Keynote with Jerry Yang
Search Algorithms and Research
Searcher Behavior
The Search Landscape
Search Forecast and Outlook: Profiting From Growth Through 2009

Slap in Google's Autolink Face

I found this tool earlier today on Threadwatch, posted by NickW. This tool is the anti-christ to the Google's autolink. Developed by an anonymous SEO professional who doesn't want to get his site's banned. The tool is called Dougal Evil Toolbar V3 Beta . Give it a try and spread the word. Have fun! You'll laugh at this one. :)