Click here to Sign the Kill the Panda Update petition
Well, that’s been one destructive Panda. And they look so cute!
Internet sages and gurus around the internet are still trying to figure it out — some sites were massacred, some sites left untouched. And it didn’t seem to matter whether they were guilty of the same “crime” or not. Some that were hit hard were members of link networks such as BMR (which immediately ceased operations, perhaps permanently). But some that weren’t hit at all were also members of link networks.
Click here to Sign the Kill the Panda Update petition
Well, that’s been one destructive Panda. And they look so cute!
Internet sages and gurus around the internet are still trying to figure it out — some sites were massacred, some sites left untouched. And it didn’t seem to matter whether they were guilty of the same “crime” or not. Some that were hit hard were members of link networks such as BMR (which immediately ceased operations, perhaps permanently). But some that weren’t hit at all were also members of link networks.
So it’s all real confusing what to do now. The best advice, though least attractive in most eyes, is what I have always advocated: doing it right, the slow and painstakingly difficult way by NOT trying to game the systems by finding workarounds to Google’s algorithms so marketers can “scale up” and earn millions by next week.
But even THAT may not be the answer as Mark Mason found out when his uber-beautiful site about corn shellers got de-indexed by Google. And I’ll be honest — I am seriously impressed with that site. It’s beautiful, for one thing (especially for corn shellers!), and has some really great content. A LOT of really great content. Mark explains in his post why he thinks it got hit.
Without getting too much into what I perceive as Google’s philosophy (this is supposed to be a practical post, after all), let me just say this: in my personal analysis of the search results post-Penguin, it appears that Google either didn’t realize that a large portion of high quality sites use the backlinking techniques they now consider “spam”, or they are so full of their own idealism about what should and shouldn’t be rewarded in their algorithm that they simply didn’t care how much damage they were going to cause to the quality and relevance of their results with this update.
And if you read the petition he links to, you’ll be astonished at the apparently mindless random havoc wreaked by Google. One of the petitioners even suggests complaining to the FTC.
For more utter astonishment: Panda Update post at SEO Book is a great round-up of the types of missteps Google made with this update, and some glaring, jaw-dropping examples. It makes me think that whoever created this particular update ought to be fired. (I DID sign the petition, btw.)
Here’s another heart-breaking example in the 2nd post in the 22-page JLForum (Jon Leger) thread on the subject. If I were in her position, I don’t know what I’d do. And THAT’s precisely the problem: with the incredibly arbitrary results, what DOES one do now? I think Google is asking for lawsuits, personally. I don’t know how you can arbitrarily ruin some people’s entire business, while far worse examples go unpunished. There really ought to be some way to stop that sort of nonsense. I’d love to see them try to defend their actions (or their algorithm) in court somewhere.
I do think Leger has the best bead on what it’s all about (that I’ve seen so far) and possibly how to work with it:
My own analysis also indicates that Google wants to see more variation in anchor text now than before the Penguin update. Many results that were doing heavy exact-match keyword linking aren’t ranking well anymore.
Finally, as I said before, authority domains are being favored more than ever.
And by the way, if the subject of SEO interests you at all, do be sure to hit Leger’s site for the oodles of other interesting posts on the subject. I know I’ll be going back. And, as I’ve said before, SEO Book is also a terrific resource.
Lotsa people don’t even know about Posterous.com, though that may change considerably over the next few months and not because of this post.
Posterous is a very versatile little blogging platform, not too unlike Tumblr or Blogger, except that Posterous has a few wrinkles of its own that make it really useful.
Posterous.com
Posterous.com home page
home page
One is its incredible ease of use. It was literally built for email blog submissions (so it’s really easy) as well as for blogging while internet surfing without batting an eye. And it’s built for internet sharing without batting an eye.
Email blogging: You can literally start your blog by emailing a photo or other file or just some text content by sending in an email to post@posterous.com. Try it and see.
Blogging while surfing:A cute little “bookmarklet,” it’s called, that you attach to your browser and invoke when you find something wonderful you want to share in your blog makes that almost a one-click task.
Effortless Sharing to other social media: Set up your blog to automatically “share” your blog content with 27 different social media and web 2.0 properties and you can do your blog post and social media sharing in one fell swoop, building some traffic and backlinks effortlessly.
I thought Posterous was so darned cool I wrote a small (and affordable) video training course on it, complete with mini-user manual. (I’m thinking of renaming it: Twitter Bought Posterous — So, Ya Wanna Make Something of It?)
But none of that is the purpose of this post. I was going to share how I use Posterous.
Alas, I’m not nearly as smart about it as I should be. And I know better; after all, I wrote the book!
I should be using it to flog the heck outta my backlinks and social media for those blogs of mine that I consider my money-makers. After all, Posterous will post to 27 different social media properties, and multiple accounts are allowed on a good many of them. Sharing with these sites is automatic (but can be over-riden) if you’ve got them set up in your blog, so it takes zero extra effort.
I tend to use Posterous to update my WordPress blogs and social media accounts more for my personal interests than monetization purely because I tend not to take the time to look for good, sharable information for the monetized blogs. That’s downright silly, and it’s painful enough to confess that I just might have to do something to correct it. In any event, when I run across an interesting blog or a news item, with a single post to the appropriate Posterous blog for that subject, I automatically update several different blogs and several social media accounts all at the same time, effortlessly.
Google loves that kind of thing (curation of content). If you’re not a Posterous user, the more WP blogs you’ve got, the more Posterous could be helping you.
I don’t quite know what Twitter sees as the benefit to owning Posterous, but it’s hardly to bury them. So methinks now would a good time to have a look and start your own free Posterous blog. And don’t forget, for a really quick but thorough overview + tour, I’ve got the perfect training. Most fairly intelligent types don’t strictly need it, but it’s the fastest way to get up to speed.
Alas, not all of these are free. But most of them are, and the others aren’t all that expensive, or are temporarily free (free trial).
Whether you’re just starting out or an old pro, one of the main reasons to conduct any keyword research is to find or learn more about a niche and choose a domain name to go with that niche. Well, here’s a shortcut: you get an idea a day (7/365), free! — complete with keywords. Try it: NicheADay.com
In Part 1 I gave you InstantDomain, which I said I preferred because I felt like it was a safe place to explore potential domain names. Here’s another very similar one …
I have thought of myself as a writer for most of my life and for some of that time I actually earned money as a writer.
Writers are supposed to produce things that are creative and original, and we spend a lot of our time figuring out how to be just that: original ideas to write about, or original slants on old ideas (and they’re pretty much ALL old ideas), original phrases, and especially, original and attention-grabbing titles or headlines. If we can come up with phrases or concepts, analogies, metaphors and similes that NO ONE has ever thought of, so much the better.
Those principles have been drummed into me since I was in grade school (which means for a very, very long time).
Finally, as promised, here is a recap of your responses to the survey (and if you didn’t take the survey yet, but would like to, I’d like that as well: SURVEY )
How long have you been involved in internet marketing?
Surprisingly, a majority have been at this “more than that even” — that is, more than 3 years.
What is your current level of involvement?
Forty-five percent “make some extra money,” none are making a living at it, for 35% it’s a hobby they plan to do more with and for 20% it’s more or less new.
As for your online presence –
Most (80%) have more than 1 website, 10% hope to have more than 1, and 10% are mostly involved with social media at this point.
Niches –
ALL of you claim Internet Marketing as a niche, but from some of the comments I’m wondering if I was clear enough with my question because by IM I meant marketing to other marketers . Other responses included Health, Weight Loss, Forex, Personal Finance/Debt, Pets, and at least one person is involved to try to raise funds to “help needy folks and organizations,” which I think is highly admirable. In fact, I think we should all have that as one of our goals.
What type of marketing are you most interested in?
Most people are interested in most of the things I listed, with the exception of CPA and Creating PLR. So that means Affiliate Marketing, Article Marketing, Niche Blogging, Ebook and or Report Marketing, Selling PLR, Video Marketing, Other Services.
Are you a member of the Warrior Forum?
Surprisingly only a little more than half are. Go join! Participate! It’ll do you good. And after a while, when you’re ready for more — or right away — join the War Room too, where you will likely get your money’s worth the first day because of all the free stuff.
What has been most helpful to you in your journey?
Not a well-phrased question, I’m afraid, so the answers were mixed. One person even said: “Sorry, I don’t understand what the question means.” And rightly so. I was trying to find out what things you’ve learned or what things you’ve implemented that helped you the most. Even so, some of the responses included: Facebook groups, email marketing, listbuilding, backlinking. One person said, “I’m on a learning curve, which isnot helped by the many different voices and hype,” to which I can only say: AMEN!
What is your biggest concern right now — the thing you most need to learn or skill you need to develop.
The answers pretty much cut across all of internet marketing: getting Google page ranking, backlinking, offline marketing, putting a plan into action that produces results, video creation and presenations, traffic generation, SEO. Several said, in effect, that they hardly knew where to start and/or needed EVERYTHING. (Again, I can identify.)
Goals for 2012?
Many want to work toward financial independence (with or without more specific goals thrown in), many want to get a residual income started, some have membership sites they’re in the process of establishing, some want to create products to sell, others want more blogs or more financially viable blogs, etc. In general, the usual roundup of things one might expect from a bunch of internet marketers.
I originally wrote this sometime early last year, as I was dealing with and wrote about being overwhelmed with way too much email (still a problem btw). I’ve resurrected it, from an old text file, and thought I’d go ahead and publish it again, only slightly edited.
IF YOU WANT ME TO STAY ON YOUR EMAIL MAILING LIST, HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO.
Dear Purveyors of Internet Marketing Programs:
* If your only interest in me is the contents of my wallet, we’re over or soon will be.
Some internet email list marketing experts send sales pitch after sales pitch, day in and day out (or several times a week at least). In one case, Read the full article »
I’m not really big on New Year’s Resolutions, having learned decades ago that they are fleeting things at best, but it’s only natural to take a contemplative look at this time of the year, along with a hopeful look at the coming year.
The Economy
I am NOT hopeful that the economy will improve, unfortunately. There are too many things going on that are dragging it down, including international pressures. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to, just that I don’t reasonably expect it to. Hmmm, so what does that mean for my business? What should it mean? What does it mean for yours?
I AM hopeful I can do better at my business — better in virtually every way.
For one thing, I know more now than ever before. That alone ought to help, eh?
For another, I’ve identified some of my own faults and failings in the implementation department. That’s been a hard though necessary lesson. I won’t bore you with all of them, at least not in one setting, but I do want to cover two.
I get entirely too much email to start with, but entirely too much of that is about the newest, greatest, must have WordPress plug-ins, one or more. Many are WSOs, some of them are free, some of them are Javascripts, some of them come with PLR or MRR rights –
AARRGH!! Too many, too many, too many. ENOUGH already. Just STOP IT.
My own experience with WP plug-ins has been not that positive. I bought one of those must-have WSOs and it broke my blog. Well, 2 of them. The developer/seller was completely uninterested — and why not? All he needed to do was refund the piddly purchase price, which he did and then blithely went on his way.
My hosting company couldn’t help me.
The official WordPress blogs and forums and other hangouts were of absolutely NO help.
So I was stuck — for months — until I finally stumbled upon someone who was able to help me.
And I just happen to have a very in-depth 
