Interesting column in the Wall Street Journal today about parents getting access to their public schools. The more “access” and parental involvement, the better the school. And the more choice the parents have, the more that schools want to deal with parents. Go figure.

It’s difficult to optimize your website when you only sell one product per day — and it’s a different one every day. Heh.

Three steps forward, two steps back.

You would think that, of all companies, a social networking company like Friendster would get it. After all, Friendster prides itself as a cutting-edge online company.

But recently, their clueless CEO, Scott Sassa, fired senior programmer Joyce Park, (author of the PHP Bible) for . . . blogging.

The irony is terrific.

Friendster’s business model is the public sharing of private information. And as an online leader in the “social networking” space, you’d think they’d be encouraging their employees to network about the company. Guess not.

From all accounts, the company had no policy on blogging whatsoever, the blogs in question were not negative towards the company, nor did they contain any information that wasn’t publicly available. (You can judge for yourself here.)

Now, a virtual firestorm has erupted and Friendster is taking a lot of heat.

As ZDNet noted, Joyce isn’t the first employee to be fired for blog comments, but it’s particularly interesting for “a dot-com that promotes connecting and community among Web users — a hallmark of blogging.”

Today, when smart companies are hiring full-time bloggers, firing a good one is not the way to manage your Search Reputation (SR) online. (See Google results for “friendster” — results #7 & #9 are negative stories based on this one event.)

For companies trying to do it right, as many are, here a good tip list.

My sister’s birthday is today. She is the proud mother of the child-star-to-be 2-year old Liam (check out his blog at liamharris.com.) (Is this not the cutest kid ever?) If anyone knows a good agent for child models and actors, let me know!

Tony emailed a great question today. I decided to answer it here because it raises several Stomper principles that are worth repeating, and uses a particular example that many people should find helpful.

Question:

Hi Brad,

I think I emailed you this question before (or maybe posted it on your blog). I have your CD Stomper course and I am getting a lot out of it. But I have a question about some results which somewhat undermine my confidence in your method.

Why is it that I can find examples where the combination of PR and backlinks does NOT determine the ranking order?

Here are the results for a random phrase I chose ‘road traffic accident’ in google.com. The first number it the PR and the second number the number of back-links

1st: PR6 – 26
2nd: PR8 – 498 <-- !! why not 1st?
3rd: 4 - 5
4th: 4 - 5
5th: 7 - 214 <-- !! why not 3rd?

I can repeat this scenario with other terms. In one of the CDs you make reference to the Google tool bar not being up-to-date. Is this the reason, or is there something else?

Next question: apart from your own results, do you have other results from web site owners who have followed your CD course? I have read some of your blogs but it is mostly people saying how great the CDs are but there aren't many actually hard factual results.

Thanks,

Tony

My Answer:

Good question, Tony!

Remember, PR and the backlinks (only some of which display on Google) are only two factors out of over 100 factors. Although they are very important factors, the info you list below isn’t enough, by definition, to tell anything, because it doesn’t include any of the other factors, including some of the Major on-page factors (like the Title tags) or the other off-page factor of Page Reputation, which is even more important.

The first thing to keep in mind is that you should always consider Page *Reputation*. What those links SAY about a given site is even more important than the pure count of how many there are.

Second, keep in mind that Google’s backlink checker is horrendously inaccurate.

Third, keep in mind the Toolbar PR indicator can be very inaccurate as well.

Before you do anything, though, you have to run a reputation analysis. (I use Optilink.)

In this example, you asked why the second site is not #1. In this case, I ran an Optilink analysis of the #2 site (with a setting of 50 sample links out of the 500 that are displaying on Google so it wouldn’t take all day).

For the second site, 53% of the links sampled contain the term “fhwa,” 33% contain “home.” None of the sample set included any of the words “road” or “traffic” or “accident.” (I actually found this hard to believe, so I ran it again with the sample size set to 100. This time, Optilink returned these results.)

As you can see, in this sample, 62% of the links’ anchor text contains the word “traffic” and 29% contain “road.” None, however, contain the word “accident” so it’s not at all surprising that this page is outranked by the one above it.

For the site that ranks above it (#1 on Google for “road traffic accident”) 64% of the links contain the word “road,” 64% contain the word “traffic,” and 64% contain the word “accident” — in that order! If you look at the “Links” tab in Optlink, you can easily see that most of the links to this particular page (another good example and reminder of the fact that Google ranks pages, not sites) you can see that most of the links are to “International Road Traffic and Accident Database.” Click here to see the whole Optilink exported report, and scroll down to the “List of Links Analyzed” section.

So for the search phrase “road traffic accident,” it should be obvious that this is almost the exact reputation of this page. The only thing more perfect would be “international road traffic accident” and, of course, it ranks #1 for that as well.

So this question raises two important takeaways for today:

1. Don’t overemphasize the Google toolbar and get overly hung up on Pagerank.

2. Remember that Page Reputation is even more important. (That’s why CNN ranks high for “news” but not “bananas.” And why Adobe Acrobat Reader ranks high for “click here” despite the competition of 15.6 million other “relevant” web sites.)

# # #

As far as the second part of the question, whether any Stompers are getting results yet, we’ll have to ask them. So I created the section below for Stompers to discuss their results and share ideas, issues and results. Stompers, you may want to bookmark this page and come back to see and post results as you get them.

Already, however, I’ve heard of some positive results, but most people have had the course Stomping the Search Engines less than a few weeks so there hasn’t been a lot of time for them to (1) listen to all 13 hours of recorded information, (2) make changes to their sites, (3) get more links, and (4) wait for Google to reindex and show the improved results.

But here is one example from an email sent to me by David Ledoux, one of the biggest MLM trainers in the country. David writes:

I had to share this with you….First-Week Results From Buying Stomper…

I never ranked in Top 100 in Google for “free mlm training” or “mlm training” or “#1 mlm trainer” or “mlm lead”…EVER! The only phrase that I ever ranked on was “mlm blueprint” because that’s the name of my product and page title at http://www.ilovemlm.com

Now my site is on the first page on Google for all 4 of those phrases!
…
I have already made back the cost of the course just in a few days from the increase in traffic from those 4 Google rankings!

David Ledoux
http://www.davidledoux.com
http://www.ilovemlm.com
http://www.freemlmtraining.com

This page is provided so that Search Engine Stompers can share their results, success stories, ideas, case studies, and examples.

Have your search engine rankings improved since you started Stomping the Search Engines? Share your results with others so everyone can benefit from each others’ experiences.

(This newsletter/blog entry is especially for subscribers of Stomping the Search Engines. To subscribe, and get the Insider’s Guide to the 7 Biggest SEO Mistakes, visit Instant SEO Expert.

Dear Search Engine Stompers,

I hope your Search Engine Stomping is going well. Judging from the positive feedback on bradfallon.com, it appears that many of you are well on the way to some great rankings. Ka-ching!

Next week, I’m going to put up a place where we can actually meet and post our own ongoing “case studies” to share information, ideas and brainstorm new and better ways to stomp the search engines. (More on this Members Only site later — By working together and sharing experiences, examples, data and ideas, we Stompers should be able to take on the rest of the world faster and more efficiently.)

Today, I want to talk about blogs. For example, the best part for me about reading all the comments on my blog has been seeing all the “lightbulbs going off” in everyone’s head. You can totally tell by the posts I’m reading that many of you are having the same experience I did a few years ago.

Something like this:

“Holy Guacamole, Batman! I think I’m figuring this Google thing out.”

Then you feel like someone just handed you the keys to the castle.

And that’s not far from the truth. As Ken McCarthy says, there are really only two main ways to get traffic — affiliate programs (including joint ventures) and Search. If you don’t already have relationships with guys with big lists, you’re sort of out in the cold until you can build up a network of your own affiliates. But if you know how to Stomp the search engines, you can write your own ticket — for any product — any time, any place. It is a VERY empowering feeling.

If you haven’t already ordered the Stomper for yourself, check out what the other Stomper owners are saying. For example, here, here, and here. (By the way, I have not edited these comments AT ALL so if you want to see what actual new Stomper owners are saying, check it out now. Pretty soon, I’m going to find the time to go in an clean it up — many people posted the same thing multiple times, etc. Hey, it’s my blog — I reserve the right to edit for clarity, grammar, pithiness — or anything else

Just kidding — but really, think about it, when was the last time you saw an online information product (or any product) that had the *completely* unedited comments of anyone and everyone who bought — online and live for all to see?

If you go and read the unedited comments you’ll see what I mean by that “Holy Guacamole!” feeling that people are showing by their comments. Once you’re a trained Stomper, you’ll start looking around for higher and better uses of your skills. As you look around for different products to sell, or businesses to partner with, it’s kind of like Tiger Woods giving a golf clinic to seventh graders. They sort of understand the game, but they really don’t know how you do it. They just know they want some of the magic that you possess.

The fact is, it’s September 2004 and as of today, if you know how to get any site up on Google, your biggest problem is deciding how to best use your skills. (Hint: Working on the site you’re working on right now may not be it.) I guess many of you realize this. When I threw out that paragraph in the last newsletter about training a handful of people to be Professional SEO’s and work on-one-one with them, you wouldn’t believe how many people emailed me to say they were interested. (More on that later, too.) If you’re a new Stomper and missed the last newsletter, I posted it here.

But you know, the comments from actual Stomper owners (currently 894 VERY cool people) bring up a couple of important points.

One: This whole blog thing is worth paying attention to. I know, I know — you’ve already figured out that RSS feeds and Blogs are the big deal lately. But have you already put a feed on your site? Have you already started a blog?

Here’s just one example of the power of a blog:

Many of you sell products online (like I sell wedding favors). But others of you sell information. It was less than a year ago, that I heard Ken McCarthy say at Yanik Silver’s 30th birthday party that selling information on the internet is the perfect business. Up until then, I hadn’t made a dime online. I had already built the store myweddingfavors.com so I went ahead and launched it. Revenue to date (less than 9 months) is over $600,000. Not bad for a newbie!

But now, with the Stomper, I’m in the information selling business. Since I’m new to that, I’ve asked other experts who’ve been around, and here’s one thing they told me. The number of people that will send you unsolicited testimonials (and this is assuming that you DO have a great product) is about one half of one percent — at best. So even if you have a great product, less than 1% of your customers will write and tell you they liked it.

Now think about this: Because of my blog, more than 20% of the Stomper customers have taken the time to go and post a testimonial. That is profound. Twenty percent of the customers have already given me written, unsolicited testimonials — and posted them in public. When I told this to some of the more experienced information maketers, they were stunned. (Someone should write an e-book on that topic

But actually, blogs are not just for selling information. In fact, here is an actual Marketing Sherpa Case Study, from just yesterday — of an online retailer who used a blog to sell more T-shirts online. They say their blog actually tripled their sales last year, and they already knew what they were doing. (And if you don’t already get all the Marketing Sherpa email newsletters, you should.)

But I hope you are thinking about how YOU can use a blog, with whatever your product is to (1) get more traffic, (2) get more testimonials, and (3) allow your site visitors to create your content.

As an Instant SEO Expert, you already know the multiple benefits of creating bigger sites with more content. And blogs are one of the easiest ways to do this. You can literally let your visitors and customers create the content for you.

Now, of course some people are just posting a comment to get a link back to their site. But as a marketer, the effect is the same. And there are a LOT of reasons that MANY of any web site’s customers would post public feedback if given the opportunity. Have you read The Cluetrain Manifesto yet? That’s what it’s all about — changing the way businesses converse with their customers. Just a few years ago it was impossible, but now, people can buy something and immediately go post their opinion for the world to see — and you can bet they will.

Of course, the big, traditional companies are the last to get it. But in late 2004, even they almost have to wake up and join the conversation. Do you think Home Depot cares that the #3 listing on Google for “Home Depot” is homedepotsucks.com? Are they even aware?

Today, the latest thing in Search is the burgeoning field of “Search Engine Reputation Management.” There’s hardly even a name for it — we used to just call it “ego surfing” when you looked yourself up on Google. But now, companies are employing consultants to do this proactively. (This is one more way you can earn a living as an SEO Pro that we’ll be talking about if I put together the Professional Stomper training class that I’m thinking about.)

In fact, I think the blogs that don’t allow comments are completely missing the boat. Actually, some people say that blogs without comments aren’t really blogs at all. Did you read the T-shirtking case study? I wonder what would happen if they allowed public comments. Sometimes, even the cutting-edge companies are afraid to *really* let it all hang out. Read Cluetrain and get back to me.

So if you have a blog, let me know how you’re using it. (Maybe we can make a case study out of you.) If you’re not blogging, get with the program. And hey, you can always outsource. Last week, a Stomper told me that for a few dollars a day, people in the Phillippines will actually conduct “chat marketing” on your behalf. Actually, meet people in relevant chat rooms and physically bring them to your site one at a time for, say, a buck a piece. Whoa. I guess a personal invite and conversation beats the heck out of a raw click for twenty-five cents.

As far as blogs, I’ll let you know. I don’t even have one on my wedding favor site yet. But then, I’m not even capturing email addresses at myweddingfavors.com. (I know, I know! What a waste of 4,000 plus uniques a day. And I have NO upsell. Doh! Anybody know something cool that people getting married would want, besides wedding favors?)

Well, there’s only so many hours in the day. I can chat about wedding favors or create the Members section for Stompers — if I had to pick, I’ll take talking about Search any day.

Until next time, keep on Stomping.

Brad

While listening to Brad and Andy and also James Martell (affiliate guru). I got a bit confused on links. For instance, I have an auto export site and I’m currently placing many, many articles on THAT site and lilnking them back to my new site here http://www.a1-car-truck-stuff.com/. Perhaps as many as 75 -100 total. Can I also put those same articles on MY car-truck site as a means of increasing the site size? OR IS THAT cross linking? I’m under the impression that it might mess me up, but I’m not clear. HELP out there!!!

Thank you!!!

http://www.a1-car-truck-stuff.com/

(Read the article)

It’s always cool to get a little PR, and this weekend an Alabama Stomper helped us do just that. A reporter in Birmingham was doing a story around the Google IPO and how Google impacts businesses in Birmingham.

An alert Stomper, Patrick, gave me a ring because our wedding favor business is there. I called the reporter last Thursday, and the next day they sent out a photographer and the story ran Saturday. Nice!

Brad,

I wanted to say Thanks for your SEO program. I’m new to the internet and just finished my first site. It’s profitable after 2 weeks! I do have a question. I have banner ads on several sites that have a PR of 6, but my page is still 0. What should I ask or tell the webmasters to do so that my site gets the Reputation?

(Read the article)