Ready For The Conficker Virus?

This is more of a public information blog post more than anything. The Conficker.C virus is set to go off on Wednesday. The virus is called Conficker-C, and it's actually sitting dormant on millions of Windows PC's right now.

Here are some tools you can use to battle the Conficker.C virus.

Latest Windows software update: http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

Get a free PC Safety Scan: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

More information about how to protect yourself from Conficker can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx

McAfee Security Center:

http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/conficker.html

Help protect Windows from Conficker here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/dd452420.aspx

Get a free PC Safety Scan here: http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm or http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Free virus program: AVG actually has a free version of the Anti-Virus software for home users only. If you go to http://free.grisoft.com you can download a copy for free and right now.

Ideas To Help With Your Next Article

I am behind the eight ball today as far as production goes as I spent most of the day keeping my brother busy with work around the house so he could get himself out of town. That is a blog post all to itself for sure.

Anyways, I thought I would point you to a blog post on EzineArticles that discusses some fresh ideas for your next article. The blog post is short and sweet and to the point and more importantly should get some ideas flowing in your head. also they will be dedicating another blog post on Tuesday to the same topic, so make sure to check back into their blog for part two.

Free Traffic System For Article Directory Submissions

I have recently been experimenting with the new Free Traffic System as of late in conjunction with articles submitted to article directories. While it is a bit early to truly see the effect, I feel it is quite safe for backlinks pointing to your main article submissions to whatever article directory you are using. In short, you offer up a blog to the network, I set one up on an .info domain. You give Free Traffic System author rights (not admin rights) and as articles are submitted they get posted to your blog if the submitter chooses. The real value is that any submission you make can be posted to 30 other blogs in the network. Now let me say, I only suggest pointing the bio links with solid anchor text to your article directory submission until you get more comfortable with whether or not you want to point to your main niche site. I am not a big fan of using spinners, but theirs is one of the better ones I have seen and being as these submissions show up on other blogs and point to your article directory submission, I see no real harm to give it a whirl. The best thing is it is FREE and you can monetize the blog you offer up to the network should you choose to do so. Make sure to read all of the directions thoroughly and you should get the just of everything fairly quickly. Once again, I suggest pointing the anchor text to your article directory submission until you get a better handle on things and be sure the blog you offer up to the network is a throw away domain name as basically it will be filled with spun articles. If you need more clarification on the Free Traffic System, just shoot me an email or comment in this post.

Reverse List Building - Things You Did Not Do Today

I am pretty good at keeping list of things to do around me at all times, but can get lax in a moments notice. Most of you probably do not keep list at all. If you fall off of the wagon and need a jump start, I suggest reverse list building. Really all it is is breaking out a piece of paper and writing down 10-20 things you did not accomplish today that you should of. In essence you are just list building but tricking your guilty conscience part of your brain. Write down these 10-20 items and now you have a new list of things to do. Regardless, list building is essential to keeping you targeted and on path to getting the most done everyday. If you do not have a list, your production level will not be as great, I promise you.

Another Article Marketing Plan Post

Continuing on with my recent post about article marketing, I wanted to give you a real life example of a strong article marketing plan in action. If you do a search in Google for the word backlinks, you will see at the time of this posting that the number two or three result is an article on GoArticles from Angela Edwards. You will see that the current pagerank of the site is 3 and was submitted by Angela on 09-30-2008. That page has been seen 6834 times as well. Angela surely gets some flow through, highly targeted traffic from that article and is doing a great job of building backlinks to that article and also playing off of the authority of the GoArticles website as well. You can simply check the backlinks to the article page in any backlink checking tool and you will get a better understanding of her article marketing plan. So do not discount, strong original content, article directories and backlink building to that article in your plan going forward. It indeed does work as you can see by the example plan that Angela uses.

A security Alert You Need To Know About

I have been playing around with some article directory databases as of late and noticed a very scary thing. It is the type of thing we all take for granted on any site that we have to create a username and password with. Most of the time, your username and password are not encoded. In playing around with one of the databases, I had usernames, emails and passwords for all 3000 plus members. Scary isn’t it? If you use article directories or any site for that matter that you have to provide a username and password for, you better be unique to that site. If you use the same username and password for several sites, you need to change them. People buy and sell these databases all the time for hackers to get their hands on. For sites that you get paid on, such as Pay Pal, EPN, Pepperjam or one of the many other affiliate programs out three, every username and password better be unique. Sure it is a pain in rear, but identity theft and fraud are higher than ever in a down economy. The article directory and link directory scripts are the worst of these. You may think no one can see this info, but I am here to tell you, anyone who knows how to use phpmyadmin for database administration can get this info in 5 minutes flat. There were a ton of EPN account hijacks a few months ago and this very well could of been how the emails and passwords were attained. Several EPN members use the article directories and if they used the same email and password for their EPN account, they were a sitting duck. EPN has included a bit more security now for any account changes, but that does not mean you shouldn't be any less cautious.

Keep a notebook or spreadsheet if you must for ever login. Once again it is a pain, but can help more than you think. Also use a junk email address for the less important signups. A great deal of sites use the email address as the username, so having an email address for just article and link directory sites will help a great deal. This is a serious matter and I hope you head my advice and change ALL of your very important passwords right this second.

Choosing A Good Domain Name

When buying a new domain name for a new found niche you have discovered a few things should go through your mind.

Is is spammy? By spammy I mean; red-fuzzy-widgets-for-sale.com. Several will tell you that multiple hyphens are fine, but all in all it is spam and used in ranking manipulation. There are so many things that go into the ranking of a site that spamming up a domain name will not help as much as you think.

Does it contain trademarks? You may get away with it, you may not. It just is not worth the effort and risk. Once again in the whole ranking scheme of things, you just do not need Oakley in your domain name if you sell Oakley sunglasses.

Is it brandable? Is the domain name easily remembered by the surfer? Let's face it, Amazon is not another word for books, but everyone knows they sell books.

Is it LSI related? Latent Semantic Indexing is not going anywhere. If you owned DiscountVideos.com and where trying to rank for the phrase "cheap movies", then you made a great domain name choice. Google knows that discount also means cheap and that videos are the same as movies. Use LSI to your advantage.

Is it a Top Level Domain? If it is not .com or .net, I leave it alone for a commercial site. Buy only top level domain names.

All in all people spend TOO much time hunting for the perfect domain name. The perfect domain name is one you can buy and build a authoritative site around and build backlinks to. If one put in enough effort, you could rank the term "buy red roses" with a domain name called NoGreenRosesHere.com

Godaddy also has some great tools on finding domain names with related keywords to terms you give it. You should really play around with it next time you are choosing a good domain name.

What The Two New Improvements To Google Results Pages Means To You

Google rolled out two new improvements to Google search today. The first improvement Google made was offer a more thorough list of useful related searches down at the bottom of the search results page while the second improvement being the addition of longer search result descriptions. Both these improvements are intended to help guide a surfer more effectively to the information they are looking for.

So what does that mean to you? Mostly, it means that well research keyword driven content should have even a greater chance at organic traffic. I have posted several times on LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and it's relation to search. Now Google in effect puts it front and center for you. While creating original content, you should look for what is Latent Semantic related in Google’s eyes for the topic or keyword you are writing about. If Google deems it a related search, then odds become great that having it mentioned in your content can not hurt. Google’s whole purpose is to give the surfer what they are looking for. If you can not do that, be prepared not to rank.

Another factor is the article directories I have been talking about for the last few days. You should see the higher authority article directories remain strong organic wise in search results. If your own website is still developing its own authority, you really need to play off of another’s sites authority in the meantime. Great keyword tools are now more important than ever in my opinion as if they are used in conjunction with the new improvements made by Google, you can easily craft great original keyword content better than ever. If you have yet to check out the Micro Niche Finder tool, I highly suggest it. I use it everyday and it does not close until I go to bed.

So let the article spinners continue to use the regurgitated spinner tools and plugins, while you and I continue to dominate our niches through the rules of engagement that Google suggest us to use.

Low Competition Keywords

I touched yesterday on Utilizing The Article Directories and want to take it a step forward. There is perhaps tons of low hanging fruit in low competition keywords related to your niche. I am including some pre fix words to use in accordance with your niche. A simple check with Micro Niche Finder will uncover quite a few long tail keyword phrases for you to use as article titles for use of articles that you will submit to the article directors. Now this list is not totally complete by any means, but should get you thinking a little more with using the MNF tool. You are looking for results from the 50-500 range with attainable green SOC or strength of competition number. Simply find that phrase and write a 350 word article on it and see if you can rank for it in the article directories. This will also give you a good lesson on HOW to rank and the importance of site authority. In addition you will be building backlinks at the same time.

Low Competition Keywords

how to
how can
how do
instructions
tutorial
directions
remove
crafts
love
key
home remedy
remedy
natural remedy
cure
buy
purchase
online
review
reviews
secret
increase
decrease
improve
faster
fast
cheapest
best
top
article
where can
luxury
quality
videos
video
learn
save

Utilizing The Article Directories

If you have not started using the free article directories like EzineArticles or Goarticles, you should be. If done right these articles can bring a little traffic and more importantly some solid backlinks. Have you ever searched for something keyword related and an article from either of the two directories listed above shows up on page one of the results? This is because both these sites have strong authority, something you are trying to get for your site in the near future. Even new submissions can rank in a hurry on these two sites because of the authority the sites have.

The best way to utilize these sites are through general teaser articles with a well researched, keyword driven title of the article. If you do your keyword research, long tail keywords are just waiting to be exploited in a free article submission. Often times the article can rank on page one in a matter of days after approval. Make sure to use some anchor keyword driven links in the bio section of the article you submit and make sure the article is original and stays as factual and as on topic as possible. Now traffic is not tremendous from the articles but can indeed pull in targeted visitors and the backlinks will help your own site over time. Article marketing is not dead and not enough people use it or use it the correct way.

Affiliate Magazine March Issue Is Out

Not sure if I have metioned this link before, but Affiliate Classroom is must to bookmark. They have a great blog and a monthly magazine as well. This month's magazine features a cover story on Niche Markets and Targeted Traffic and also some smaller articles on the Big Do’s (and Little Don’ts) of Building Links and Getting to Know Your Traffic. all three articles are very newbie friendly and easy to understand. Best of all it is free.

They also have a great free course

Have A Great Saturday!

How I Got Scammed By A Girl Scout

Well the neighborhood Girl scout really taught me a lesson in marketing and it was not until a few days later that I became aware of it. As many know, Spring signals the annual Girl Scout cookie drive. This yearly ploy to sale cookies that I do not need at an over inflated price happens every year. This year I bought four boxes thanks to a pre teen marketing genius. Now it was not until a few days later that I realized I had been scammed. OK, scammed is a harsh word, perhaps I should say PWNED. While having a discussion with my wife when said boxes of scrumptious cookies arrived, my wife wondered why this year we purchased four boxes. I had to think back and then remembered that this Trump like little girl told me that the yummy Caramel deLites were four for $14.00 when I asked how much they were. I did not even think twice and opened up my wallet and paid her. My wife went on to inform me that you can buy them by the box at $3.50 a piece. My wife informed me that from now on I am not allowed to buy the Girl Scout cookies.

Is there a marketing lesson in here? Most definitely and it his not hard to learn it. I am pretty sure this little girl won the most sold boxes sold contest and if the Girl Scout Organization is indeed teaching this, then they will likely be breaking ground on a Casino resort in Las Vegas pretty soon. All in all, it is good to see that business and marketing is indeed being taught to our youth, even if it was at the expense of my waistline and hard earned money.

The Girl Scout website is here and you can locate those delectable, over priced cookies here. It is a good cause, I think!!! Girl scout picture from here and no it was not this Girl Scout that sold me the cookies, if it were I would have bought 400 boxes and been divorced.

New EPN Ebay Partner Network Features Coming March 24th

Just saw the new blog post on the new features that EPN will be releasing on March 24th, looks like some new features to enhance security and some new and improved tools as well. The RSS generator will be enhanced and publishers will be able to request access to eBay product data feeds as well. You will need to submit a request to use data feeds though via email and get approved. Really looks like EPN are starting to listen more to what affiliates want and need.

Blog post

Free Article Marketing & Social Media TeleSeminar

Just wanted to alert everyone that there will be a great free Article Marketing & Social Media TeleSeminar today at 1 pm Eastern on Article Marketing Cafe. Jeff Herring interviews Chris Knight - CEO of EzineArticles.com and the topic will be Article Marketing & Social Media. You can listen online by Web Cast at the link below.
http://articlemarketingcafe.com/this-months-cafe/

These TeleSeminars are picking up steam and if you are into learning more about article marketing and social media, I highly recommend you tune in.

Hostgator Coupon Code St. Patricks Day Special

Hostgator is running a St. Patricks Special from now until April 1st. If you follow this blog, you will know that I am a huge fan of them. They are one of my many hosting companies that I use and they are especially very user friendly for newbies. Just enter in coupon code: LUCKY and receive 20% off of your initial order. Get your spring off to a great start with Hostgator. Host Gator provides Shared, Reseller and Dedicated web hosting packages. Their hosting platform is designed for both beginners and experienced professionals. All of their shared plans include a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 support and a 45-day money back guarantee.

Twitter Power Book Arrived

Just received my Twitter Power book by mail earlier today and dove right into it. I still have a ton of reading to do but Joel Comm does an excellent job on the surface laying out everything you need to know about Twitter and how to use it to gain traffic and help your niches. Renowned author Anthony Robbins wrote the forward in the book and Ken Burge is a contributor. For the money, this needs to be in your library. if you have yet to hear about or use Twitter, you are already way behind the eight ball, but with this book you can get up to speed and on the right track in a hurry. with only 230 plus pages, it can be digested very quickly. I highly suggest you buy this book, it will pay for itself in no time.

Google Analytics Tutorials

I continue to learn more and more about Google Analytics and how it can help me.
Google Conversion University has some great flash video tutorials so you can go at your own pace. These are very well put together and easy to understand. I suggest a half a day to go through them all and completely understand them. If you do not have time now, make sure to bookmark for future reference.

Do You Buy A Washing Machine Every Week?

Another great title of a blog post in my opinion, but it is something to think about when building niche sites. As much as eBay wants you to be engaging, some items are purchased just once every ten to twenty years like a washing machine. Building a website around just washing machines can work, but once someone buys one, they likely will not be back unless you blogged about tips and tricks on washing clothes. even that would be a stretch. Now there is nothing wrong with selling washing machines, but know your audience and what they are looking for. They are looking for features, ratings, dimensions and information on them before buying. So the website ought to have that info on site. Now something like Barbie clothes would be different as the visitor might buy several times a week or month so a daily blog would keep them more engaged and coming back to your site. Know your audience and know the product before you even break ground. Have a clear direction of what you are trying to accomplish with the surfer. Is it a one time sell or is it a surfer that can be massaged to come back and buy AGAIN in a few days. If it is a washing machine site, there is no reason to engage them to buy AGAIN, just once. Believe it or not there are differences in how you would build a Barbie clothes site versus a washing machine site. Just think it out before hand.

Looking For The Easy Way Keeps You Futher From The Right Way

It amazes me the amount of emails I get from readers and BANS forum members that want me to either look at a gimmick product they have found or ask to pay me for the secret they think I am holding back on successful niche site building. Everyone constantly is looking for the EASY way that requires less work or a hole in the system. Are there holes in the system? Certainly, but those holes are closed as fast as they are opened. I have bought a ton of junk in my online marketing career and I mean a ton. There are different paths people take to build successful niche sites, but all use a combination of the basic principles I teach here. You will find success quicker by implementing those basic principles instead of trying the gimmick of the week.

Do not confuse tools with gimmicks. A tool is designed to make a task easier and a gimmick is just that, a gimmick. Some gimmicks look like tools though, like content scrapers or spinners. The same goes for services. Some services make task easier while other services are gimmicks. All in all if you concentrate more on the basic principles of niche site building versus spending your time looking for gimmicks that only make the gimmick owner and said gimmick affiliate money, the quicker you will get to where you are going.

Adsense Privacy Policy Update Must Be Done By April 8th

Not sure how strict they will be on this, but Google Adsense is wanting the privacy policy on your site updated by April 8th to reflect the new DoubleClick DART cookie used by Google in the ads. Hopefully a Wordpress plugin or stock privacy policy will be released soon as if you are like me, need to update quite a few sites.

The 90 Day Train Of Thought

Every morning I tell myself that the things I do today, will not show the results for 90 days. This theory alone keeps me motivated to do the little things that I need to be doing everyday. Sometimes new problems do present themselves that pushes everything else to the back burner so to speak, but those days are not so often. Keeping a good rhythm going is key in successful niche site building. There is always something to be done. I am at a great place now business wise, where I can farm out a ton of the dirty work like link and article directory submissions and concentrate more on content, SEO and solid backlinks. You should try to install the 90 day theory into your own regimate as you will get more things done and you will see results happen daily as you get into the rhythm. remember that the SERPs are not fully static or real time for the most part, especially in the backlink building process, so you need to keep at it daily.

Help A Reporter Out?

Help A Reporter Out, yep that is the name of the website preface. Peter Shankman is the founder and operator and the preface of what he does is to broadcast what media reporters are looking for as far as story subjects and people to do stories on. Reporters and media types let Shankman know what they are looking for as far as sources go in a certain area or niche and he passes that info on in daily emailings. You never know if someone is wanting to do a story on your niche and might even interview and discuss your site in the article. That will likely equate to an engaged surfer and a golden backlink to your site as well.

You will get about three or so emails a day from him, all with reporters looking for sources.

The emails will be formatted like below:

A paragraph or two of Shankman ranting about something funny.
**********************
Query Title...
Query Title...
Etc...
**********************
____________________
Query
____________________
Query
____________________
Etc.

Shankman also has his own blog here. Sign up and get in tune with what the media types are looking for. You may even uncover a new niche or two.

Say No To Site Wide H1 Tags

I am not a big fan of site wide H1 tags if the text is not changed from page to page. A few of the early BANS templates place this in the header usually with the site name you designated in the set up. This is usually followed by another H1 tag in the content you add as well. I am a firm believer that every page should have it's very own H1 tag unique to that pages content. Having multiple or one universal H1 text throughout your BANS site or any site for that matter is just bad SEO in my opinion and could confuse the search engines. If your template shows the site title in a H1 header tag of every page on your site, I recommend removing it from the header.php file for whatever template you are using. Use your H1 tag in the page content to tell the SERPS what that page is about.

Free Blogger Blogspot Template Generator

I know a few readers have been playing with blogger as of late, so I thought I would pass on this fun blogger blogspot template generator.

http://psyc.horm.org/

It takes a bit of playing with, but you can get it wide enough to show EPN ads from the tool generator in your EPN account.

Matt Cutts Video On Brands & Google Search

This video is of Matt Cutts explaining Google emphasis and the weight of brands and the new tweak to the algorithm.

Submit Edge Article Submission Service

Article directories are just a small part of my backlink strategy as it should be every one's. I used to do all of this myself in the earlier days, but needed more time to write my own on site content and also focus on other backlink processes. The last six months I have been using Submit Edge for article directory submissions. For 30 bucks, you just can not beat it. They also write the article and change out the footer bio and rotate out the backlinks you set as well. I am not too picky as far as the article goes as it is off site and not on mine, but they do a better than average job on the article itself. Filling out the form is simple. Just make sure to fill out the three Author Bio options with different backlinks and anchor text use as many relevant keywords in the keyword box as well. I truly do not think you will be disappointed with the results or the service.

EPN To Implement Consistent Payment Date

In case you missed the email from EPN... Starting in April 2009, the eBay Partner Network will process payments to publishers on the 25th of each month, unless it's a weekend, then you will be paid the next working day. For example, if you are eligible to receive payments from the eBay Partner Network, you will be paid for April activity on May 25, 2009. The conditions for payment eligibility are still the same. Remember that this begins in April.

Yahoo & Ask Gain Little Ground On Google

Hitwise has released the latest data on the percentage of U.S. searches among leading search engine providers. although Yahoo and Ask have both increased, they pale in comparison to the 72.09 percent of all U.S. searches Google accounted for. The interesting note I found in this report is that the length of search queries has increased over the past year. This is good news as surfers are learning to be more specific for what they are searching for and good for webmasters in the fact that longer tail keyword phrases are easier to compete for.

For more up-to-date analysis of online search trends, you can visit the Hitwise blog at http://weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

Free SEO Book Information From Aaron Wall

Cleaning out some of my bookmarks this afternoon, I cam across some free info put out by Aaron Wall from SEO Book. This info is not overly thorough, but will point some newer people in the right direction and provide an overall snapshot of search engine optimization.

http://www.work.com/learning-search-engine-optimization-1053/
http://knol.google.com/k/aaron-wall/seo-basics/38v8wakla8f98/2#

Edit Those Free Article Backlinks If Needed

After helping one of my blog readers with her site today, I noticed she had several backlinks on some free articles she had submitted that were not using effecting anchor text links in the bio footer. MOST of the major free article sites will let you edit both your article and article bio footer links should you need to. Merely log into your account and navigate to the proper article edit area for that article ezine and just edit the article. Your major directories like ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com make this a very easy process. ezinearticles.com will need to be re approved, but should only take a few days to be live again. So have a look at the ones you have submitted and are live and see if you can improve that backlink anchor text, to better reflect what indeed you are trying to rank for, for the linked to page.

Another Nice Looking Wordpress Site

As much time as I spend on my own sites, I also like looking at and analyzing other well built sites as well. I always have more to learn and try to look at any advantage I can learn. Came across another great site today, built with Wordpress. Very nicely SEOed with great content. Monetized with some CJ affiliates and Google adsense and ranks well on its target keywords. Backlinks mostly from the authors other sites and own blog, but seems to be getting the job done. I am sure this site does indeed earn money and is nice and simple and effective.

What do you like or dislike about this site?