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Learn Affiliate Marketing Ranks 1st from 7,200,000
By Todd | January 15, 2009
Ranking 1st on Google out of 7,200,000 results might not be all it’s cracked up to be. A couple weeks ago I did a series of posts on an on-page SEO technique I was experimenting with where I was trying to rank for the keyword Learn Affiliate Marketing. During the experiment some strange things were happening regarding the number of pages google was reporting for the keyword and a lesson was learned.
BTW, my squidoo lens, Learn Affiliate Marketing | How I Made $7,219 Online in My First 59 Days, was already ranking in the top 3 at the time for Learn Affiliate Marketing so I was actually trying to rank my blog.
Anyway, at the time of that blog post my google search showed 3,400,000 results for the keyword. But doing a single keyword search in google will not always reveal the true number of pages for a keyword. It’s important to check the keywords you’re considering multiple times throughout the week and at different times throughout the day. The numbers at different times can be vastly different and might falsely lead you to believe a particular keyword is more difficult to rank for than it really is.
Do a google search for the keyword learn affiliate marketing right now and then check what you see with what this video shows and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Topics: SEO, Squidoo | 10 Comments »
Obama Twitter Acount Hacked? Or Given Away?
By Todd | January 6, 2009
News today about Obama’s twitter account being hacked is kind of interesting because no one seems to want to discuss the possibility of user error, or user carelessness.
Obama along with many other celebrities have been reporting their twitter accounts were hacked sometime yesterday and today. Is it just a coincidence that for the past two days twitter has been warning us of a phishing scam going on through direct messaging via twitter?
Here’s the deal, in case you haven’t already got the memo …
There’s been a phishing scam floating around twitter where people are getting direct messages (DM) via twitter telling them something interesting with a link in it. When you click the link it takes you to a site that looks just like the login page for twitter.
Now the idea is that the perpetrators are hoping that the user makes the false assumption that they’ve timed out on twitter and need to log back in. What they may not notice is the url in the browser address bar is NOT twitter.com, but some other url.
The user unknowingly proceeds to login in to the fake account and in doing so has given the crooks their login information.
This is a classic phishing scam and has been happening on twitter for a couple days. Twitter has been warning us about it but it seems some people are not listening. Not only has there been a warning right on the twitter screen, but it’s been on their blog front and center.
Now, back to the Obama hack. Is it a hack implying the twitter system has a hole in it or was this simply a case of carelessness on the part of the person maintaining the Obama twitter account?
No one will likely know for sure, but coincidence of the twitter phishing scam and all these celebrities accounts being “hacked” certainly sounds phishy to me!
I say we call them what they are, phishing victims, and get on with it.
How to NOT Be a Phishing Victim
The reason phishing works so well is because the website doing the phishing looks exactly like the real website. If you’re not accustom to looking at the url in your browser before logging into a site then you’re likely to become a victim someday.
One of the best ways to never have to worry about this again is to use a password manager that not only encrypts your passwords but also handles logging into websites for you.
For instance, the most widely used password manager is probably Roboform. Roboform thwarts phishing by only logging into websites after it’s verified the url is the correct one for the login you are trying to use.
Here’s another major plus to using a password manager … you’re more likely to use different passwords for different sites. This is huge. Thinks about it … how many different passwords do you have?
Most people use one of maybe 5 or 6 passwords and simply repeat them because they’re to much hassle to remember. Problem is, if you get compromised you’d better start changing your accounts all over the web because hackers and phishers know that once they have your username and password it’s probably good at dozens of sites around the web. What a pain in the a**.
Since Roboform manages all this password crap for you you’re free to use different passwords without having to remember them all and in the end you’ll be much safer for it.
Not only is Roboform a faster way to surf, but a much safer way to surf as well.
As long as people continue not taking security seriously they will continue to be victims.
P.S. join me on twitter at https://twitter.com/talan604
Topics: How To, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Internal Blog Linking Experiment for SEO Part 3
By Todd | January 3, 2009
As a final word on the internal blog linking experiment we’ve been running this past month I’ve put together this video walking your through at the request of a number of readers. The video shows you how to add and style the link code into your single post template file for most wordpress blog themes.
If you’re haven’t been following the experiment you can find the previous two posts about it here
Internal Blog Linking Experiment for SEO part 1
Internal Blog Linking Experiment for SEO part 2
Although, as you read in part 2 of the experiment, the results from such a simple 5 minute linking procedure were fairly dramatic, they were not long lived. It seems in this past week the serp ranks have fallen back down from their highs of the week before.
Having said that I believe the reason for the fall has more to do with the frequency of my blog posts than anything else. During the week of Christmas I only posted once to my blog and it was this week that my ranking began to fall back to where they were at the beginning of the experiment.
This makes sense since it is the bottom of each blog post that the links appear pointing back to your home page (or wherever you have them point) so the more often you post the more often google will see new links to your home page.
Now that the holidays are over and the blog posts will be more frequent again we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on.
P.S. this bit of code was added after the original post and is the same code found in the video. It will help you layout the h1 tags inline with a different style than the other h1 tags on your blog
<center>
<h1 style=”font-size:9pt; font-weight:normal; display:inline”>
<a href=”http://www.longtailtreasure.com”>Learn Affiliate Marketing</a>
</h1>
| <h1 style=”font-size:9pt; font-weight:normal; display:inline”>
<a href=”http://www.longtailtreasure.com” >Affiliate Marketing Course</a>
</h1>
</center>
Topics: SEO, link building | 6 Comments »
The Last Word on Why You Need Twitter
By Todd | January 2, 2009
Twitter is arguably one of the fastest growing social media tools on the web today and yet many marketers are still confused about how to use Twitter and are literally missing out on boat loads of opportunity that are as good as cash in the bank.
My prediction is that Twitter will become as significant a tool as blogging itself by the end of 2009 and, while it will not replace blogging, it will become the primary tool for “getting the word out” about your blog content.
While there will be much to say about Twitter in the coming months I believe the following blog posts contain all that needs to be said for anyone to understand why they need Twitter for their business and how using Twitter as one of your primary marketing tools is like money in the bank.
Start with this excellent article from copyblogger which explains the basic philosophy of Twitter and how it can be used to grow your business.
How to Use Twitter to grow Your Business
Here’s a post on finding the Twitter conversations that matter most for your business
Twitter Gold with Tweetlater Keyword Alerts
How about a little Twitter mind control?
3 Forbidden Twitter Mind Control Tricks to Explode Your Marketing
Want to experience the real Viral power of Twitter and how it can explode your business?
Retweet: The Infectious Power Of Word Of Mouth (MUST READ)
These three posts should provide you with all the incentive you need to hop on the twitter bandwagon and start following the conversation for your niche.
What’s the next step?
Follow me on twitter of course!
Topics: Social Marketing | 2 Comments »
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