EzSEO Newsletter # 68
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EzSEO Newsletter # 68
Andy Williams ez SEO
ez-search-engine-optimization.com
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This week:
1. Link Machine gets better
2. Are you a victim?
3. Spy on your web host.
4. Choosing a domain name.
5. Other stuff
Hi again
As you may have noticed, I did not get the newsletter out last week. Time, health and family issues conspired to keep me from publishing. However, we are back!
Today, I update you on that amazing Link Partner script, tell you how to spy on your web host, and why you should (do not miss that bit), plus a lot more.
I have had a lot of emails asking how Luna is doing after her recent flu. Well, she is much better thanks. She will be 5 months tomorrow (doesn’t time fly?). For those who like baby pictures, here you go:
Carnival Time in Tenerife:
http://andrew-williams.fotopic.net/p11665319.html
And a couple of others
http://andrew-williams.fotopic.net/p11665082.html
http://andrew-williams.fotopic.net/p11665317.html
http://andrew-williams.fotopic.net/p11665321.html
Enjoy this issue!
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1. Link Machine gets better
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Last week, Michael Ferrier (of Link Machine fame) added even more features to the already outstanding Link Machine script. He has really been listening to the feedback we have been giving him. Last week he finished the PDF manual, so that will make it so much easier to get the script up and running, and configured for your site.
Also, something else I have been asking for has been added - a PR check not only of the homepage, but also the links page. After all, it is the links page that “gives” you PR, so that is the page that you should be looking at when considering link partners.
Does their homepage have a good PR, yet the links page is PR 0? That might indicate someone not linking to their links page, so would be worth investigating more closely.
It is so important these days to keep an eye on your link partners. If their homepage is penalised by Google, it is likely to get PR zeroed. Link Machine has many different reports, but there is a very useful one to check for partners that are PR 0. If they used to have PR, but don’t now, they might be sites you don’t want to link to anymore ;o)
Another trick some webmasters have up their sleeve is to remove your link after they get you to link to them. Now, with Link Machine, you run a report to check up on your partners. You will be shown which webmasters no longer link to you. You can then send them an email from within Link Machine, or more simply remove them.
As of the Jan 25th update, LinkMachine doesn’t count reciprocal links that include the “nofollow” tag. You may have heard of this tag. Google has said that it will honour this tag (i.e. it wont follow the link). Webmasters around the world are now worried that unscrupulous link partners will simply add this tag to their outgoing links on the links pages, rendering them useless. Well, Link Machine checks this are will return a site using these tactics as not linking back to you.
I can go on and on, singing the praises of Link Machine, but why not install the trial version yourself, and see how powerful this tool is.
You can read a very quick review on my site, and also see a few screenshots showing how easy this beast is to install.
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2. Are you a Victim?
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I got an email last week that made me think, “Hmmm, that is what I believe too”. I don’t know the gentlemen referred to in this email, or his book, but I think he has certainly mastered the art of living.
I wont go into all the details of the email, except to highlight a few excerpts from it.
==== BEGIN EXCERPTS ====
In Harv Eker’s book, “Secret of the Millionaire Mind”, he outlines 17 wealth files.
Wealth file #1 reads,
Rich people believe “I create my life”.
Poor people believe “Life happens to me”.
To better illustrate the principle, he talks about how people view themselves as victims.
There are 3 clues that point to someone with a victim mentality, here is one:
Complaining - Complaining is the absolute worst possible thing you could do for your health and your wealth. The worst!
Why?
I’m a big believer in the universal law that states,
‘What you focus on expands.’
When you are complaining, what are you focusing on?
What’s right with your life? or what’s wrong with it?
You are obviously focusing on what’s wrong with it, and since what you focus on expands, you’ll keep getting more of what’s wrong.”
==== END EXCERPTS ====
Now, you may have heard many successful people saying that goal setting is fundamental to success. In some way, visualising goals somehow helps you achieve them.
This seems to agree with what Harv is saying in the above extract, but he looks at it from the opposite situation - focusing on negatives attracts more negative.
I love this quote:
Rich people believe “I create my life”.
Poor people believe “Life happens to me”.
What sort of a person are you?
Are you ambitious and hard working, and believe in your ability to succeed? You have the making of a rich person.
Are you a victim? Are you someone who says “bad things always happen to me”, or “I cant see any way to improve my life”. In that case you have the making of a “poor” person.
If you can identify yourself in the second category, then your mental outlook on life is not compatible with success - CHANGE IT NOW!
Opening yourself up to the possibilities of success can lead to success. Maybe it works like this:
If you believe in something strongly, and you have faith in yourself, then when small opportunities arise, you seize them with both hands, work hard at making them happen, and ultimately succeed.
If you do not believe in something, or don’t have faith in yourself, when an opportunity comes along, you may decide that it is not worth taking since you don’t really believe it can make a difference. Ultimately you fail.
Ultimately, however this “Universal Law” works, one thing I know is, your mental attitude will affect your life in both positive and negative ways.
Think about what you want to achieve, and make a list of a few things. Don’t think in future tense, think in present tense. In other words, your goals should be written like this:
“I am making $5000 a month from my online business”
“I am always happy”
“I own my home”
Whatever your immediate goals are.
Then, night and day, repeat these goals to yourself. Don’t just say the words, really picture it in you mind as if you have already achieved those goals.
Imagine yourself paying in the cheques every month, or the feeling you have when you have paid off your home in full.
You may think that all of this is hocus pocus.
One thing I can tell you though, is that I use these visualisation techniques, and they seem to work for me.
On top of everything else, visualisation has helped me become a happier, better person.
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3. Spy on your web host.
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You have seen those 99.9% uptime guarantees offered by web hosts, haven’t you? Does that make you feel safe knowing your web host guarantees your site will be up 99.9% of the time?
Well, it shouldn’t!
Read that guarantee again. In the case of one host I used (past tense!), it simply returns the proportion of your money corresponding with down-time.
Below is a real calculation based on the site I hosted with that company.
My site was making $1200 - $1500 a month (3 or 4 times that at Christmas).
In one month, the host was down for 40% of the time.
My host refunded 40% of my monthly hosting fee.
My monthly hosting fee was $7.99
I got a little over $3 back.
Since my site was down for 40% of the month, it lost $500 - $600 in affiliate revenue.
OK, so how safe does that guarantee make you feel now?
Web host downtime is a major headache, and can cost you a lot of money. You MUST find a quality host, and not go with one on a promise of uptime and a cheap price.
For a few years now I have been using a service from Internet Seer to spy on my web host.
Every week I get a report that tells me the percentage uptime of my site. In addition, Internet Seer notifies me when my site is down, and then again when it is back up again. If you want to see a screenshot from part of the Internet Seer report for the web host I use, have a look towards the bottom of my 1&1 hosting review.
There is a very simply reason why I host with 1&1 - every week I get the same report showing 100% uptime. I think that in the last year, my host was only down once, and for less than 1 hour.
Don’t you think it is about time you spied on your host?
Don’t just think of the money you could be losing every time your site goes down, think of what happens if the site is down when Googlebot (or any other SE bot) comes visiting.
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4. Choosing a domain name
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I received an email this week asking me about choosing a domain name. In the email, Brendan asked
“I think the subject of how to choose a domain name (especially from an SEO point of view) would be very helpful. Maybe a Do’s and Dont’s of selecting a domain. Ie: .com vs .net/.org/etc. , why you don’t want to use the keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com format , etc.
One thing I have started to do is: once I get the domain narrowed down to one and before i register it, I will check the ‘way back machine’ and make sure it wasn’t a previously banned or questionable site in the past.
Regards,
Brendan Triggs”
Brendan was referring to something I wrote in the Niche Blueprint.
This seems to be a common concern, and so it should be.
Brendan makes reference in his email to three important issues:
a) .com vs .net/.org/etc.
b) why you don’t want to use the keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com format
c) ‘way back machine’
Let’s look at each point.
a) .com vs .net/.org/etc.
I believe that the site’s content, and the links pointing into the site are far more important than whether the domain name has a .com, .net or .org extension. I use .com for all my sites for no other reason than I like .com.
There is one exception to this, and that is regional sites. If I am building for the UK, I would use a .co.uk domain. If I was building for the Spanish market I would use a .es. Using domain extensions relevant to the country you are targeting tells the search engines who your intended target market is, and I believe the search engines do take note of this. All of the major search engines do use Geographical information to help serve relevant results for different parts of the world.
b) why you don’t want to use the keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com format
I am a believer in the over-optimization penalty. If a site is too well optimized, it gets penalised. There are a lot of SEOs out there who disagree with me, but I can only tell you what I think from my own experiences.
I believe that Search engines are on the look out for over-optimized sites, and penalises them.
So, what do they look for?
My guess is that they look at the usual places webmasters try to force in their keywords. These include domain name, meta keywords tag, meta description tag, title tag, headlines, Alt tags and even comment tags. With a little maths, the search engines can identify obviously over-optimised sites, and mark them for penalty.
The reason I don’t use keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com domains is simple. I don’t want to trigger the penalty. I much rather under-optimize a site, and then use the power of incoming links, and site linking structure, to help rank my pages higher.
In the last year, I have seen a large number of my own site’s homepages drop out of the top spot at Google for the main site keyword (used in my domain as my-keyword-phrase.com), yet internal pages were largely unaffected.
c) ‘way back machine’
Some domains that you buy may have had sites on them prior to your purchase. Some of these sites may have had questionable content, or penalties applied by the search engines. The Way Back Machine is one way to check what was there before. It is always a good idea to make this check before purchasing. What if you found out that the “perfect”ยท domain you just purchased had previously been used as a po.rn site? Would you still have purchased it?
Checking is easy:
http://www.waybackmachine.org/
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5. Other stuff
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My blog stopped working recently after I upgraded to Wordpress 1.5. Those who get this newsletter through their feed readers will have missed the last issue (2 weeks ago). Well, thanks to one reader, it should now be working.
Thanks Ryan
http://www.ryan-sheehy.com
I have some new software coming out very soon. Anyone who is interested in adding content to their site, or publishing it for other webmasters to use, may find it interesting. For a limited time, I will be offering this software at a big discount to newsletter subscribers (as I do with all new software I release), so if you are interested in finding out more, I recommend you subscribe to the notification list for this software.
To give you a hint at the power of this tool, I received 200 articles last week from one of my article writers. They were published on my website, within 20 minutes, using my websites template, and all articles were inter-linked in an SEO friendly manner with relevant articles being suggested at the end of each article. The software also created a map of the articles (similar to a sitemap) so that the search engines could find them. Publishing content will never be the same again!
This last week, the first Niche Blueprint was released, and sold out within hours. There was some concern from some customers that I published the topic of the Blueprint. They felt that I should have kept this a secret, and only the 100 customers should get that information. After a lengthy debate on my SEO WSB forum, the final vote (of those who felt it should be a secret, against those that wanted to kow the topic prior to purchase) was roughly 50:50 . Because of this, I will be releasing 2 next month - one a secret, one not. Once exisiting customers have had the chance to but the blueprints, all remaining copies will be released to the Niche Blueprint notification list.
If you are interested in a blueprint, I recommend you sign up there.
This week, Michael Campbell released “Clickin it Rich 3″. I hope to bring you a full review next week.
Well, that’s it for another issue. If you want to read the recent issues of this newsletter, you can read them online here.
For older newsletters, you will need to visit the old archives at:
ezSEO Internet Marketing Newsletter Archives
Have a great week!
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If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. Also if you have any tips of your own, questions or comments, please send then to me at webmaster@ez-search-engine-optimization.com. Any tips or questions & answers I print in this newsletter will also be put up on the web version of the newsletter with a link to your site
if you want it. That’s extra free traffic for your site as well as an incoming link to your site.
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