Fred Black: Internet Business Blog.

CISPA H.R. 624... More Invasion of Our Online Privacy

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:35:24 -0500

CISPA H.R. 624... More Invasion of Our Online Privacy

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) H.R. 624 moves to the Senate this week for a vote. Contact your Senators and ask them to vote no on this invasion of our online privacy. A lot of websites have gone dark today in protest of this bill. CISPA allows U.S. Federal Government to perform search and seizure without a warrant, without individuals even being aware they were being analyzed or knowing their data was taken and then, shared with various agencies. Even more troubling is that CISPA would allow a large range of Federal agencies - including Immigration, the TSA, Homeland Security, FBI and the DoJ, to quietly access our data from sites ranging from Facebook and Google to Apple, Amazon, and more. CISPA would protect the companies - but not the people. We were able to stop SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), but they've regrouped and have returned with blatant disregard our rights. Meanwhile, the Government can't adequately protect the data it already has on us. If you feel helpless, angry, and are wondering what you can do... you can contact your elected representatives and tell them NO. Also on the radar this week is the "Marketplace Fairness Act", or the "Internet Sales Tax", that proposes to make internet companies pay sales taxes to all states. While you're emailing your Senators, ask them to vote no on this bill as well. You can read more here: Say NO to Internet Sales Tax Bill or Marketplace Fairness Act.

Contact Your Senators

Contact your Senators and ask then to vote no on the "Marketplace Fairness Act". Until next time, Fred

Google Panda Update Coming this Weekend

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:03:21 -0500

Google Panda Update Coming this Weekend

Google is releasing an update to their Panda webspam algorithm either this Friday (March 15th, 2013), or Monday (March 18th, 2013). Matt Cutts of Google confirmed this information this week at SMX. Also mentioned: Google will release a major, as in very large, Penguin update before the end of this year. They are also tracking 1 or 2 major linking networks and plan on taking them down soon. I have my guesses as to one of them; it'll be interesting to see if I'm right. Hopefully this update will fix some of the shortcomings of the previous ones, however, I doubt that happens. Google is in a battle with spammers and seems to have a high tolerance for collateral damage (sinking valid websites). Give Bing a try! Fred

Still Fighting Google EMD Update

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 08:59:03 -0500

Still Fighting Google EMD Update

My previous blog post on Google EMD updates generated a lot of questions. I wish I had solid answers for them, but that's not the case. It's always frustrating when clients, employers, friends, etc. want quick SEO results... it takes weeks, sometimes months to see changes. The EMD update seems to have left the exact exact match alone... in other words, if your web site is www.bluesolarwater.com and someone searches for "blue solar water", then it still is placed where it was before the update - well, almost... this is one of my sites and it had dropped from #1 to #2 or #3. This has not been the case for all EMDs, there appears to be instances where the EMD update buried sites for all key words. What has been decimated, destroyed, and mangled, are long tail keywords related to the domain that contain some of the EMD keywords. You'd think this would be the opposite but it's not. One of the variables is related to content quality and number of pages. This works to weed out the old "adsense sites" that were built using EMDs and tons of links with the anchor text containing the EMD keywords. Having a decent amount of quality content along with a fair number of pages seems to help inoculate your site from the effects of the EMD update. My blue solar water site above has several pages with quality content... I built this site after Panda/Penguin delisted the original site selling these bottles... I did the same thing with a site selling my wife's children's DVD... the original site was delisted by Panda/Penguin so I built a new, EMD site www.PretendWithMissKim.com - however in this case, I only have 3 pages... it's not doing well on Google... It needs more pages. Why does the EMD and exact match keyword phrase still work at all? Probably because a lot of companies named their domain after their company: like they should have. Penalizing this would be really stupid and so far it appears that Google realizes this. However, the site has to be high quality, have significant number pages, and have some link weight provided by "natural" links to the site. Remember, Google used to advocate putting your main keyword(s) in the domain name. You may be asking yourself, if he knows so much about SEO, why were two of his sites delisted by Panda/Penguin? Good question (actually it was more than 2!). Because they were old sites and years ago I used some techniques that Google now considers offensive. Even the EMD is something they used to recommend. I will have a new article soon about what I'm doing to recover from this. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, it's slow... each attempt at getting relisted takes weeks. Google has a new tool out as well, to tell them to ignore inbound links to your site that you've not had any luck getting removed... I'll cover this in an upcoming blog post as well. I've used it on one site and I'm waiting on their answer before I write anything about it. One thing I can tell you is that, unless Google reverses some of their last updates, the days of ranking well with little effort using cheap tools and link networks is over. It takes quality content and a team that knows what they're doing. I'm working with a small group of associates to create an inbound marketing company offering just that sort of service to both small and midsized businesses. One of the things we've been able to do in a relatively short time is to create landing pages on our company site for our customers that, in some cases, are ranking better than their own sites for the same keywords. I will share more about this soon. Until next time, Fred

Google EMD Update... Sinking Websites by the Dozen!

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:12:34 -0500

Google EMD Update... Sinking Websites by the Dozen!

Google announced a new algorithm change last week that took effect over the weekend... this update is not associated to Panda or Penguin and it's aimed at Exact Match Domain names (EMD)... but I assert that it IS related to Panda and Penguin in that it's punishing a lot of valid web sites and still rewarding sites that should not rank as high as they do... so like Panda and Penguin, it misses the mark... unless, Google's aim is to get more people BUYING ads vs. relying on good SEO to get found. So what exactly is an Exact Match Domain name? Let's say your company name is BigBoyTrucks and you register a domain name called BigBoyTrucks... that's an EMD, or, if you sell off road tires for trucks, you register a domain such as OffRoadTires... that's an EMD... Google used to say that including your major keyword target in your domain name was a good thing... but no longer... well, that is if they consider your site to be "low quality"... and there's where the problem is: Google can't seem to accurately determine what low quality is and what it is not. Long Tail Damage My initial analysis of the EMD Update is that it slightly punishes the exact match searches by one or two notches in ranking, but SEVERELY punishes the long-tail keyword searches, even if they contain the exact match phrase. I have sites that have gone from first page ranking for several long-tail keyword phrases and are now ranking 200 to 400 deep (in other words they will never, never, never be found).

Matt Cutts of Google tweeted this on September 28, 2012: "Minor weather report: small upcoming Google algo change will reduce low-quality "exact-match" domains in search results." He later tweeted this on the same day: "New exact-match domain (EMD) algo affects 0.6% of English-US queries to a noticeable degree. Unrelated to Panda/Penguin."

Here again, the term "low-quality" is key to this update - Google still can't figure out what is low quality... sites with unique content are being killed.. sites with products people want to purchase are being killed... while sites with neither are now ranking in the first few pages. History of EMD Exploits and Google's Conflict of Interest. One of the "secrets" that some Internet Marketing gurus have used to make Adsense revenue is to register sites that are exact match domain names to popular search terms, put some content on it, and load it up with Adsense ads... then build some links to it and after a while you would start making money from people finding the site and clicking on the ads... I think this type of site is what Google wants to kill... but the problem is, they're using a canon to kill a gnat... while the gnat is still flying around in a lot of cases. In fact, this is, in my opinion, what they've been trying to kill with Panda and Penguin all along... But this creates a conflict of Interest for Google since they themselves profit from those Google Adsense ads... if this is in fact the type of sites Google wants to kill then why are they punishing sites without any ads? Why not start with their databases of sites using Adsense ads and examine them for quality? But what Denotes Quality? I know it's frustrating to search for something and find sites that are junk, not readable, or, just plain wrong... but if the content is unique and not gibberish then it should not be punished. Quality is not easily determined: if the site is useful to someone then it has quality... if even to help someone figure out that they need to change their search terms slightly then it's useful... which infers quality. And that it seems, is beyond Google's ability to determine with algorithms and quite possibly with real, live people. It's getting harder and harder to keep Google happy... unfortunately, a lot of people never think to use Bing or Yahoo to perform searches, so in effect Google IS the Internet. Since Penguin was released, I've started making it a habit when searching for something to use both Google and Bing... in a lot of cases I've found better results on Bing. How to Recover from Penguin, Panda, and the EMD Update? In my previous post about Google Penguin I said that I would post more info when I had it on how to recover. I was just about ready to do that when this EMD update came out... I do have some recommendations for recovering from all these Google updates, but nothing will get you back to where you were before they hit... especially with this latest update. I will post my thoughts after we've had a few weeks to digest this EMD update. Until next time, Fred

Is CallMDPlus the Ultimate Affiliate Program?

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:34:14 -0500

CallMDPlus, is it the Ultimate Affiliate Program?

Who/What Is Call Md Plus?

CallMDPlus is a concierge Telemedicine company, with an outstanding referral program!
Its Members have access to RN's and Board Certified Physicians 24/7/365.
They provide HIPAA Compliant electronic medical record storage with File MD.
They offer HUGE discounts on prescriptions with their RX Scripts card. All for as little as $20/month. Their Ultimate plan includes access and discounts on services like:

Vision
Dental
Wellness
Alternative care
and much more!

CallMDPlus offers outstanding services like ID theft protection, Discount legal services and Patients Advocacy protection!
Their Nexus™ referral program can generate true Monthly Residual Income (M.R.I.) for all associates!
New Associate referrals pay associates 50% for the initial month AND 33% Monthly Residuals for the life of the customers service plan!

The Perfect Affiliate Business: Everyone Needs It - No Licensing Required - 96% Retention - Lucrative Pay Plan This Is A Program You Will Become Passionate About! 13 REASONS TO JOIN The CallMDPlus AFFILIATE PROGRAM (www.CallMDPlusIntro.com/callmdplus-is-the-perfect-business-opportunity/):

Six Years In Business (Traditional Marketing)
300,000+ CUSTOMERS (96%+ RETENTION)
Low entry point to become a customer, as low as $19.95 A MONTH covers the entire household. Call an experienced medical doctor (MD) any time of the day or night; you might even be out of the country. CallMDPlus will have your entire medical history on file already; they own this propriety product; Harvard is already using their wholly owned subsidiary to store medical data.
The Chairman of the Board, Rowland Hanson, is a very wealthy and successful business professional.

He headed up marketing for Bill Gates; branded them with "WINDOWS".
Mr. Hanson also brought two additional, well known other companies to a billion dollars.
He loves this Company for two reasons;

one is because they will soon be a billion dollar company,
and two because CallMDPlus is good for America.

Associate referrals pay associates 50% for the initial month AND 33% Monthly Residuals for the life of the customers service plan! Just one aspect of this powerful plan is a 50% and 25% bonus match on all personally enrolled affiliates; this means you could possibly enroll one superstar and you will earn 50% matching check of all of the bonus checks they ever make. CallMDPlus pays a premium commission on the very first month's sale.
This is potentially a worldwide service; they will have doctors worldwide that need not even speak English. We currently have over 800 doctors in our network with at least 12 years experience each, plus over 300 nurse practitioners in the US alone - all on contract. They will be opening soon internationally; delivered wholly thru the Internet with foreign speaking doctors.
Charities get in FREE with a special program that shares huge overrides.
B to B is definitely a great way to go; business owners can no longer afford health insurance but they can afford $20.00 a month. Why not sign up 100 people at a time? Perfect business for networking or direct sales. 50% commission up front and 33% monthly.
CallMDPlus's 14 investors are very wealthy businessmen; with have an average net worth over eight figures.
The Owners and management team are young, rich and dedicated people.
Affordable affiliate entry level options - $49.95 or $328 (which includes $99/month premium VIP Benefits package, with no co-pay for doctor calls).
The company is already very profitable;
PERFECT TIMING; they are just now introducing their opportunity to the social marketing community.

My friend Charles Dudley recorded a free webinar for my blog readers and email subscribers (my email list received this information already - it pays to subscribe)... the recording of the webinar is on this page: www.CallMDPlusIntro.com/callmdplus-is-the-perfect-business-opportunity/ join as an associate and start earning now, right away. Go to the home page of the same site for purchasing the product only; know someone who could benefit from CallMDPlus? Then send them this link - help them start saving on HealthCare: www.CallMDPlusIntro.com Until Next Time, Fred Black P.S. You can work this as a normal web-based affiliate program, placing ads on your websites, and emailing your lists, or, combine that with local sales to really create an opportunity.

Google Penguin = Pain...

Sat, 05 May 2012 11:38:13 -0500

Google Penguin = Pain...

There's been a lot of yelling and cussing about Google's "Penguin" update that was rolled out the last week or so of April 2012. And rightly so: it stinks! Panda (a previous Google update) didn't affect me or my sites. Penguin has hit me hard. It's hit in another way too: as a consumer I now find my searches on Google are much less useful. I've been using Bing for searches more often now, with better and more useful results. For instance... I have a site that sells blue glass bottles. Gone from the several #1 rankings I had in Google. Buried so deep it's crazy... how do you explain going from #1 or #2 to #300? How do you explain sites that now occupy the first page of Google's results that don't sell the product? At least one says it does, but when you go there it does not. Several are wholesalers (not useful to a consumer at all). Some are large retailers that do not have that product (again not useful). Some even make no sense at all. Now take my experience and multiply by about 1 million because it's not just blue bottles, it's across the board. My wife has a site that sells a children's creative movement DVD, gone now on Google... crazy. Is Bing the Answer? If Google is trying to improve search results for their users, then "Penguin" falls flat on its face. They've thrown the baby out with the bath water so to speak. Searching on Bing produces much more useful real-world results and it won't take people long to figure that out. Mixed Results I have several sites that, over the years, I've applied the same SEO techniques to... some are now impossible to find on Google, others are a notch or two higher... explain that... same techniques, same basic treatment, different results... what's more... some of the sites that have increased only consists of a few pages and have not been updated in ages... one is now on the first page! Is Penguin Over? As I said, I have some sites that were not affected... I did the same optimization on them and used the same link building strategies that I used on the sites that are now buried. Some of these have not been updated or modified in years... they still rank the same. I've read that Google is not finished rolling out Penguin. So maybe they're not done, or, maybe that's Google's way of saying, uh, we need to work on this update some it sucks. What Do We Do Now for SEO? Hold tight. Don't do anything rash. In my SEO course I state that Google likes to play "chicken", or, at least it appears so. I don't recommend doing anything until you've tracked the current situation for several weeks... SEO is slow business, with no overnight solutions. I've started two small tests on two sites... just to see what happens. I'm not changing much and I'm not changing anything on the rest of my sites for a few more weeks. I want to see what happens. I've seen in the past when either Google, or I, have made changes, that I've had a major drop that lasted a few weeks to suddenly end with my return to the first page (that's the "chicken" part... seeing if you'll blink and start changing everything). I've already had someone contact me from a company that had placed a comment on this blog back in 2008 asking to have their link back to their web site removed. They said they were trying to fix all their inbound links. I replied that this is a PR4 site with pretty clean outbound links and no spammy junk... were they sure? They replied yes. So I deleted their comment and link. It's not going to help them though - I see it as a rash mistake on their part, probably at the hands of a high paid "consultant". Recovery? In the past, I made some mistakes with a few sites and Google (as well as Bing [MSN at that time], and Yahoo!) all pushed the sites way, way down in rankings... once I realized that I'd inadvertently made this HUGE blunder, I fixed it... it took a couple of MONTHS before Google relented and returned the sites to where they were ranking previously (I think Bing and Yahoo! were much faster on the return or didn't punish me at all). So remember, any attempt at a fix or modification to your site, or linking strategy, will not show a change overnight, the next week, or possibly the next month. Like I said above, SEO is a process of patience. I'll make more posts as I track my two experiments and learn more about this really bad "update" from Google. Until Next Time, Fred

Conflicting Thought Patterns: Is Fear of being Unplugged a Sign of Impending Failure?

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:08:23 -0500

Conflicting Thought Patterns: Is Fear of being Unplugged a Sign of Impending Failure?

Maybe I'm just getting old but I don't care about a lot of the things I used to care about... like staying online no matter where I happen to be, or, having a spotless car, or an immaculately manicured lawn. Ok... so if you know me well, you know I've NEVER cared too much about one of those things!

Fred's Corollary of Matrimonial Happiness: The amount of time a man spends relentlessly working in his yard is inversely proportional to the satisfaction level of his marriage!

What about business, what does this have to do with business? I spent some time thinking about people I'd worked with in the past, and which ones had succeeded and which ones had not... and I tried to find something that was common to each group. I found this tidbit: people who cannot unplug, who cannot isolate, are more likely to fail over time than those able to turn off the phone, email, social media, other distractions, and focus. This also parallels not obsessing on what others think of you or your ideas. To some this sounds radical. To some it's scary to unplug. Focus and unplug. Focus on one thing and unplug as much as possible. No one starts off at the top. Too many of us try to juggle multiple major goals as if we are at the top and have the resources, staff, procedures, and experiences in place to do so. Success builds success and therefore it's easier to add more and more successes as your successes compound. You get better at saying no, asking for help, surrounding yourself with the right people to help you succeed, etc. You get better at making decisions and identifying successful possibilities. Saying No... is Hard... Until you try it a few times. Keep your goals in mind and say no to additional projects, requests, and ideas that do not lead to your goals. You can't say no to everything, but successful people say no to a lot of things. Probably the more successful you are the more you say no. The unsuccessful tend to say yes to everything and are constantly overwhelmed and spread too thin (and constantly somewhat miserable).

Fred's Law of Success: Your potential to succeed in any given endeavor is directly related to singularity of focus and congruency of thought.

Conflicting Thought Patterns (CTPs) Most people have CTPs: Conflicting Thought Patterns (I think I just coined a new term!). The most common CTPs are about money, success, and relationships. For example a conflicting thought pattern: wanting more money while at the same time feeling contempt for those who have more money. A conflicting thought pattern for success: thinking you can't block out or unplug from the world UNTIL you're successful... i.e. once you're successful you'll have the ability to say "hold my calls" and "don't bother me" I'm working on something. Well color me stupid, but why not take that attitude now? There are a lot of "gurus" out there teaching and coaching and counseling on this very problem of CTPs. It is known by a lot of names. CTPs are hidden little curses that can wreck your life. Some are innocently planted in you when you're very young, even as an infant. Some you germinate yourself as you bounce your way through life. Most of the time you're not aware of them, only their effects show. Even becoming aware of one does not make it go away. Sometimes you can change quickly, however, it can take years to change some thought patterns. Start this New Year off looking under the hood for what makes you tick. Maybe you'll discover some small things about yourself you can change that will have a huge impact on your life! Until next time, Fred P.S. My yard's a mess!

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & Protect IP Pending Bills

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:17:25 -0500

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) & Protect IP Pending Bills

Fear Makes People do Terrible Things... What does a child or an emotionally immature person do when faced with the loss of something? They act out of fear. The entertainment industry has been acting like a spoiled child for years, trying to stop the inevitable wave of change that technology has birthed. In the golden age of the recording and film industries they had it all: money, power, and prestige. Wanting to maintain their status quo, they've let fear instead of innovation drive their actions. Instead of embracing change (you can't really stop it) these industries have slowly driven nail after nail into their own coffins. Now, they've used their power and influence to back two bills that have the potential to radically change the internet forever. These bills, if passed, will drive more death nails, but not just into the coffins of the supporting industries, but rather into the entire online community and economy. These are bad bills and must be stopped. But Shouldn't we Stop Piracy? Yes. Piracy has always been with us. Before the internet people made illegal copies of albums by recording them to cassette tapes. Whatever technology existed people took advantage of it. However, with each step up the technology ladder, as piracy became easier, so did the distribution channels and connectivity between these industries and consumers. Imagine where we'd be if these industries had embraced these channels instead of acting out of fear? I agree that piracy is bad and people who create web sites that distribute illegal copies of copyrighted material should be stopped. But not the way these bills propose to stop them. These bills require hosting companies to become police and give our government, and some private companies, the ability to take over the DNS system and easily shut down web sites. Follow the Money... Want to know what the real purpose is behind most legislation? Follow the money. Always follow the money. If you look at the companies and organizations supporting SOPA and Protect IP bills you'll see big companies, unions, and organizations. These bills will make it harder and more expensive for individuals and small businesses to do business on the internet. All aspects of having an online presence will cost much, much more. The Inverse Is Sometimes Better... The problem that lawmakers have is that they think figures for commerce and revenue are static. For example, if reports show $1,000,000 online sales last month, lawmakers think that they can add fees and taxes and create x dollars of revenue for the government. They fail to understand that if they burden the system with fees and taxes that people will purchase less, so instead of $1,000,000, perhaps the figure will drop to $800,000. So their planned government revenue will be lower than expected... then they'll want to increase taxes even more. And revenue will go down even more. The key is to reduce taxes and fees, even though it's counter intuitive to most elected officials thinking, and revenue will go up. The same goes for regulations. Some laws and regulations are necessary. But each additional law and regulation causes more and more of a burden on businesses, primarily small businesses, until they can't survive. Only the large corporations and monopolies - who pushed the laws and regulations through - have the resources to comply. Relevant Articles about SOPA and Protect IP: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexander-howard/sopa-information-2012_b_1166214.html. http://youtu.be/ypbJzfGQ3CE. http://gizmodo.com/5868545/the-stop-online-piracy-act-and-you-a-primer?tag=sopa. http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2011/12/28/stopping-the-stop-online-piracy-act/. http://gizmodo.com/5870241. Contact Your Elected Officials. Did a boycott of GoDaddy changed their position on SOPA?. And this from my friend Ryan Healy: Why SOPA and PIPA Must Be Stopped. Nuclear Option... Some of the biggest web sites on the internet are considering a "nuclear option" to make more people aware of these bills: SOPA and Protect IP Nuclear Option!. What can You Do? Contact your elected officials and tell them you do not support these bills. I have and will continue to do so. It's our responsibility as citizens to tell our elected officials what we want and don't want put into law. If they don't listen then we elect someone else. Contact Your Elected Officials Protect Our Freedom... As pointed out to me by a respected internet marketer I'd asked to contribute to this article, there are much larger threats to our freedom such as the National Defense Bill that allows the military to arrest people in the USA and hold them without a trial... pretty scary stuff. Unfortunately that one has already passed. What can you do about it? The answer is the same; constantly let your elected officials know you don't want laws like this. It's our responsibility to be involved with our government - don't let freedom slip away. Until Next Time, Fred

The Lost Art (and Appreciation) of Quality

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:43:21 -0500

The Lost Art (and Appreciation) of Quality

It's easy to make a broad statement such as "people used to care about quality but now they just don't"... but like most broad statements, it's only partially true. Today there's a quality divide... it does not always follow income or wealth (but it usually does). The problem is that because of the race to the bottom by some retailers and marketers our choices of quality for some items is limited, hard-to-find, or non-existent. This same shortsightedness has led to a lot of less than desirable things... back in the days of video tape, the Beta format won out over VHS when Beta was higher quality. There are numerous examples, think the Wal-Mart crowd vs. the Neiman Marcus crowd. You may be temped to think that the shopper at Wal-Mart would prefer to shop at Neiman Marcus... in some cases you would be correct, but in a lot of cases you would not. This race to the bottom has led to generations of consumers that simply don't know any better. They don't know that laminated particleboard furniture you assemble at home is substandard to solid hardwood furniture with dovetail joints. They don't care that their shoes or electronics are made in a toxic fume laced factory in China by pregnant women and young girls. They simply care about price and nothing else. We live in a "disposable" age, where a good portion of the population is content paying for inferior goods and services. What's My Point? I'm glad you asked because I was starting to get off track! My point is that when you're creating your products, web site, sales pages, marketing material, etc. you need to understand which segment you're selling to. You can't mix them up. You'll fail if you do. For someone only interested in the best price, you have to only prove that your product or service is good enough and that your price is the best. For the person interested in quality, you have to prove you have extraordinary quality, better then the other guy's product or service. It's rare that one product or service would have both the highest quality and the lowest price - in that case you should raise the price! There are a lot of quality oriented consumers that will bypass a low priced product even if it was the best product simply because the price was too low. Too often price is directly associated to quality (no matter if it's a correct assumption or not) so don't try to fight that association. Update (10/11/2011) Seth Godin posted a great article that I relate to this article. Seth is talking about not shutting off the conversation between a customer or patron and a business, but I see it as quality of caring. You either care and open up the conversation, or, you don't care and shut off the conversation. It's all about quality and quality starts with caring... about yourself and the other person. Here's his post: Open Conversations (or Close Them) Until next time, Fred

Knowledge without Wisdom is Dangerous.

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:10:02 -0500

Knowledge without Wisdom is Dangerous.

Knowledge without wisdom is dangerous. This all too evident with governments. It's also all too evident with businesses trying to save money and get ahead by hiring young and/or inexperienced (cheap) people in key, or even less than key, positions. Knowledge with wisdom is unstoppable, unconquerable, and unfortunately rare. It also cost more if you're trying to hire it - but it's almost always well worth it. Until next time, Fred

11 Reasons You're Failing

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:36:18 -0500

11 Reasons You're Failing

I want to do great things and make a positive impact on other people's lives. I want to be one of those people that other people look at and ask how on earth does he get all that done... and still write his wife love songs? This post is going to be a post I look back to each week to make sure that I'm making progress in the direction I want to go. Take Care of Yourself First! Like the safety warning you receive when flying (to put the air mask on yourself first and your children second), you have to take care of yourself first. This means physically and mentally. This is not easy if you have children, a job, or any other responsibility! But it's critical that you do. If you're married, getting your wife or husband on board with this makes it a lot easier. Encourage each other to workout and eat healthy. Unless you can help yourself no one will expect, or trust, you to help them. You can't really imagine the disheveled drunk from the street corner walking into the Whitehouse and telling the President and Congress how to solve the debt problem (although he could do a better job than the current fiasco administration I'm sure)... You can't help anyone else until you can help yourself. 11 Reasons We Fail God has given us everything we need to succeed... I'm not kidding, it's really true. If we're struggling then we're have one, or more, of the following issues... at times I think I suffer from all 11!

We don't believe that we can - I call this the Eeyore syndrome.
We are filled with fear (related to #1). The thing about fear is that it usually does not appear as fear. It's usually masked behind well thought-out and polished sets of reasons and excuses. This also shows up as "we don't believe we deserve it".
We have underlying problems that are eating away at us. Financial, relationship, health, you name it. If we're not facing or dealing with it, then it's festering and fermenting and souring our subconscious. This undermines anything and everything we're trying to do. We may not be able to solve the problems, but the minute we start facing them we start making progress.
We don't see the resources and raw materials that we have available to us. This can be physical as well as thoughts and ideas (creativity).
We see the resources and raw materials we have, but don't see the path to use them.
We ignore God's plan in favor of our own: we want to be a ballerina and we weigh 350lbs and have bad knees (see paragraph about taking care of yourself!). If we're constantly feeling like a salmon swimming upstream then we're probably not doing what we're supposed to be doing with our life.
We are slaves to bad, detrimental, or time-wasting habits.
We are selfish.
We ignore or don't ask for help and guidance.
We listen to the wrong people. Satan succeeds by confusion and division... and he's very, very good at it. What? You don't think Satan is involved. Wrong. Evil is real: it does not want you to succeed and create anything good for yourself or the world - lest of all help other people succeed and create something good for the world.
We care about what people think or who gets the credit.

Until next time, Fred

How to Change Your Life in 30 Days?

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 10:57:03 -0500

I recently read a short eBook that I found to be very, very engaging and powerful. I put it on my iPad and plan to read it a few more times and refer back to it often. That's how good it is! The title is "30 Days to Change Your Life" and it's written by Mark Harrison. Mark has put together some incredible insights on how to effect change in our lives. It's an easy book to read. Mark has laid it out with 30 short chapters with the idea of reading a chapter a day... right... I just kept on reading and finished it in about 3 days! Mark builds his ideas by drawing from various cultures and religions and adding in personal experiences and stories. The result is a very positive and uplifting guide to help the reader find and identify areas and actions in their everyday life that can, and will, effect change. I can't recommend this book strongly enough! Click here to learn more and to purchase Mark's book: 30 Days to Change Your Life. (note: this is an affiliate link - however I would, and do, recommend the book regardless) Personally, I don't think Mark's charging enough for this book; his message is easily worth several times the price! Until Next Time, Fred P.S. Please take a moment if you haven't already and "like" my Blue Solar Water Facebook Fan Page: Blue-Solar-Water - I really appreciate it!

Barney Fife Chases the SEO Bandits at J.C. Penny

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 09:41:51 -0500

Barney Fife and the NY Times Chase the SEO Bandits at J.C. Penny

The NY Times published an article on February 13th (the 12th online) titled The Dirty Little Secrets of Search by David Segal, that lambasted J.C. Penny for a massive paid link campaign. This included playing elementary school tattle-tale and reporting their "findings" to Google - which in turn got J.C. Penny's search engine rankings flushed down the toilet. To me, and probably a lot of other SEO experts, the article is a joke. The condescending tone alone was enough to make me almost not read it. There are flaws in their "investigation" but come on; they didn't investigate Obama this much... had they, maybe our country wouldn't be swirling around, and around, heading down the toilet. I don't think all the "expert" SEO opinions in the article are accurate... more on that at the end of this post. Evidently Segal was irate that J.C. Penny was ranking so high for so many items they sold, and brought in an expert to do some research on why. This expert found that J.C. Penny had been buying links to boost their SEO rankings. Something Google says is against their rules. The article refers to link buying as "Black Hat". That's a joke. If anything, it's little off white or gray: nowhere, I repeat nowhere near black. People that actually know and use black hat techniques would laugh at the whole article. Woops... Segal should have done a little more homework on some of the sites he quotes in the first few paragraphs of his article. As he's naming various things like dresses, bedding, sweater dresses, etc. and questioning if J.C. Penny is really the best web site in the world for that product, he links to sites HE thinks should rank better... the problem is, he links to at least one site that buys links! Yep! You got it. And he gave them a no-follow link from the N.Y. Times to boot... I'll take one of those please! I spent maybe 5 minutes and found the rug site he links to has what appears to be paid links in link directories. J.C. Penny denied they were buying links, but subsequently fired their SEO firm. The SEO firm should have used other methods to build links and kept the paid links at a minimum. I'm sure J.C. Penny was paying big dollars to this SEO firm and the firm was being lazy and obviously didn't take the best care of their client. Buying links is common... my guess is Segal or someone at NY Times had a beef with J.C. Penny, or, owns a company that J.C. Penny was out ranking. Is Organic SERP Boosted by Massive PPC? The Times article also questions if there's a link between J.C. Penny's massive paid advertising spend on Google and their seemingly unnatural high search rankings. I think there is a correlation, however, I also think it's a subtle side effect not an intentional benefit rewarded by Google. Google is not God. Google is not infallible. Getting massive traffic from paid ads probably triggers an increase in organic rankings, but it's probably not much of an increase at all. I don't believe that Google rewards big advertisers by giving them a big jolt of organic ranking caffeine. But if they do, it's their business. They say they don't, so I believe them. If they do, then they shouldn't say they don't and that's the extent of it. My Take... My take on this "investigation" is: Get a Life! Go investigate something important and let Google police their own company and rankings. It reminds me of Barney Fife blowing something way out of proportion and making a big deal over nothing - and locking up the whole town. After all, J.C. Penny actually sells the products they ranked for - there was no trickery, you could actually get what you were looking for... and that's the point of searching for something. I don't agree with all the SEO "expertise" that's bantered around in this article - something I address in SEO Secrets - there are a lot of experts who state this or that, but when I've tested these things, they don't actually matter, or, even worse, will hurt your rankings... in this article I didn't read anything that would hurt rankings, but I did read a few things that they claim to matter that do not. Until next time, Fred

Have You Been Slapped by the Google Ranking Adjustment?

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:18:19 -0500

How has Google's Ranking Algorithm Adjustment Impacted You?

What, you didn't know they changed something? A lot of internet business marketing types get all upset anytime Google changes (or noticeably changes) their ranking algorithms. The truth is Google tweaks their rankings on a regular basis, sometimes they make public some of the changes, other times they do not. Below is an official link detailing some of the changes in this latest update that has a lot of Internet Marketers in a Tizzy: Google Search and Search Engine Spam As for me, I'm happy! Why? Because as I'll show you, a lot of my sites have improved in ranking. The ranking for this blog has suffered in recent months, not because of anything Google has done, but because I've not been posting on a frequent basis like I used to, and that matters in a competitive environment. So why are some people complaining and reeling while I'm happy? Because I practice what I preach, and I preach what I practice. Google and other search engines are in the business of dishing up what people are looking for. Give Google garbage to dish up and you'll get slapped. Maybe you will get your garbage ranked well for a while, but eventually you'll get ranked where you should be and that's way back in the pack. This latest update dealt with garbage and getting it out of the search results. Recent months have brought the spotlight on Google for some questionable search results in some areas. One person who sold eyeglasses had found if he treated his customers with distain and anger, practically stalking them in some cases, he would get enough bad posts and comments that it kept his rankings high... and kept business pouring in... not exactly what Google set out to create. Other items that were getting bad press were sites that were automated sites that "scrape" or copy content from other sites. These sites are generally not very human usable and low quality. There's nothing wrong with copying content - a huge part of the benefit of the Business of the Internet is the ability to do just that. In fact, at the end of each of my blog post is a statement specifically giving you permission to copy and use this content - provided you keep the source, author, and link back intact. A lot of high quality, very helpful sites copy content from other sites, either in whole or in part. It's all about quality and value to the user. And that's the secret to maintaining good, consistent rankings: it's all about quality and value to the user. There are a lot of other factors too, but without a quality base you're open to being slapped around a lot. Sometimes people follow bad advice (either free or paid for) and end up turning what would have been good work into something that gets flagged as spammy by the search engines. For example, if you're worry about keyword density while writing your web or blog content, then you need some better advice: www.pqSEO.com. Here's one example of a site that is a small site, has unique, quality content... look at the jump in ranking position for Google on 1/27:

Date	Google	Yahoo	Bing
2/3/2011	11	38	185
2/2/2011	11	37	187
2/1/2011	11	37	308
1/31/2011	12	38	313
1/30/2011	13	38	315
1/29/2011	13	30	301
1/28/2011	13	30	169
1/27/2011	13	30	196
1/25/2011	156	31	280
1/23/2011	165	31	181
1/22/2011	163	31	166
1/21/2011	163	31	140
1/20/2011	163	31	157
1/19/2011	165	32	126
1/18/2011	163	32	148
1/17/2011	163	32	142
1/16/2011	176	32	135
1/15/2011	169	32	130
1/14/2011	190	31	123
1/13/2011	185	31	123
1/12/2011	191	31	87
1/11/2011	191	32	88
1/10/2011	195	32	83
1/8/2011	188	31	82
1/7/2011	190	32	82
1/6/2011	189	31	82
1/5/2011	187	32	77
1/4/2011	179	32	81
1/3/2011	187	32	86
1/1/2011	177	32	89

Until next time, Fred

Advertising on Facebook

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:01:21 -0500

Advertising on Facebook

If you're tired of paying high click rates on Google for PPC ads, then you should give Facebook a try. Let's talk about some of the differences between the two and how you should approach each. Don't Spend a Dime Until You Do This... First, and this is important... no, it's UTTERLY, CRITICALLY, IMPORTANT... you should not invest one single penny in advertising unless you can actually measure its effectiveness. You may say "well duh", but people do it everyday. Everyday people pay Google, or Facebook, or some other site, to display ads... and they may look at various analytics about traffic, but unless you have your analytics setup to actually track when a sale (or other targeted event) occurs from a specific ad source (and even the individual ad), then you have no way to know what actually caused the sale. Zero, zip, nada. You may as well flush your money down the toilet. It's not all that difficult to track these things. You can do it for free with Google Analytics. But there is one catch: you have to have a page that you can put the JavaScript code on that signifies a goal has been met. A thank you page after the sale for example. So your order process goes something like this: Sales page, order form, Paypal or other payment processor, thank you page. The thank you page has the code on it to let Google Analytics know a sale was made. If the goal was not a sale, but rather a sign up form or something else, it works the same way. Not everyone will click through to the thank you page from the payment page, but most will. Once this is done, you can then look at your data in Google and view the goals met and the keywords that led people there from search engines (or other source). This will allow you to know if the money you're spending on PPC on a particular ad from a particular source is responsible for any sales and for how many sales (or completions of whatever the goal is). Why is This SO Important? This is important because here in the real world more than one thing usually happens at the same time. And unless you track everything you can, you won't know that the PPC ads had nothing to do with the little bump in sales you saw, that instead it was someone mentioning your product on a popular blog or web site. Or, you would know that for every $1 spent on Facebook you're getting $2 in sales. Now to my Facebook Tests... I really like the way Facebook handles ads.

They have a fast turn around on approval - I'm talking 10 minutes to an hour in my experience.
They have a easy to understand, real-time, display that shows each ad your running along with stats like impressions, clicks, and click through rate... and how much you've spent.
You can set low per-day limits - I set a $10 a day limit.
They make it easy to clone an existing ad and make a few tweaks.

The one thing I didn't seem to be able to do - and it may be possible, I just didn't see it, was to specify that my ads run at certain times of the day. But you can manually pause and restart your ads or campaign at will. But What about Keywords - How to Target? Facebook does not have keywords because its users are not searching, and therein is the big difference between advertising on Google and Facebook. On Facebook you select various profile settings to target where and to whom your ad is shown. You can select age ranges, male vs. female, looking for (male, female), location, and interests groups, etc. You can really zoom in on the perfect demographic for your product. One nice feature: as you tweak the demographic settings for an ad you see a real-time estimate of the number of possible people or profiles that could see your ad. What About Facebook's Suggested Bid Range? I didn't use their suggested bid range. I cut it a little more than in half. Once I had tweaked the demographics of my first ad sufficiently, the suggested bid range was between $1.02 and $1.80ish... I bid a maximum of $0.50, with a cap of $10 a day. I got as many impressions as I needed to reach my $10 limit - they do a good job of throttling the ads so that they don't all get displayed in 10 minutes - they were spaced out around the clock. And, a lot of the clicks cost a little under my 0.50 bid... Don't be Pushy... A Picture IS Worth a Thousand Words! Facebook users don't really respond to pushy sales ads. You have to hook them with an interesting photo and then some copy that peaks their interest. I read a really good post on Troy White's blog that his Facebook advertising tests showed that the most important factor in successful ads on Facebook is the image - and he is correct. I tested the exact same headline and body copy with several different images. Out of the 8 or so images tested only one had any click through at all. I got a few clicks (meaning literally 2 or 3 clicks) on one of the other images, but most received NO clicks at all. The same ad with the winning image received clicks - lots of clicks. What about My Results, My Sales? Please read the section above about tracking your ads. My weeklong test with 25 or 30 variations of my ad resulted in.... drum roll... Zero Sales. Yep... nothing. However, I thought after the first few days that it was. I had not looked at Google Analytics yet, just the Analytics on Facebook showing CTR, etc and was happy that I was seeing clicks and was making sales. My brain naturally saw the cause and effect. WRONG. Once I sat down and spent some time in Google (I had setup my goals as noted above before running the first ad). I could not find any sale that was directly related to Facebook ads. I did see a few where the person came from Facebook, but not from the ads. I did see where people came to the site from the URL from Facebook Apps (the ads) but that did not link to any sales. It's possible that one or two sales were the result of someone clicking the ad and then coming back to the site later. There are always those things that skew the totals a little. I will test Facebook again. It didn't cost much to run this test. But, had I not setup analytics correctly, I would have mistakenly thought the ad was working and kept spending money on it... money that would have been wasted. For this product, I didn't come up with a winning ad. It's a low cost product, so I didn't have much margin to work with: I had to have low click cost and some sales... I only got one of those, not both. Maybe if I'd raised my bid I would have received better placement or an increase in some other factor on Facebook I'm not aware of, but with this product, even if the ads had resulted in sales, at the higher click price I probably would not have broken even, I would have lost money. My goal was to at least break-even on the ad. Until next time, Fred P.S. Are you interested in a low cost tutorial on how to setup both Facebook ads and Google Analytics to do this? Leave a comment if you are.