Hero
By Mike Collins | May 8, 2008
This post has absolutely nothing to do with marketing or making money online. I just wanted to share a tragic story I just read online about a father who was killed while taking his 4 year old daughter for a walk near their Chicago home.
As they walked down the street a car jumped the curb and headed straight toward them. Joseph Richardson grabbed his little girl and shielded her from the car. He was struck and killed on site, but his little girl was fortunate to survive.
This guy is a hero. As a father of 2 little girls myself this story really touched me. It scares me to think if something like that happened to me and my girls had to grow up without their dad. You can read the full story at the link below…
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354401,00.html
Topics: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Namecheap Coupon May 2008
By Mike Collins | May 6, 2008
Just realized I never gave you the new Namecheap coupon code for this month.
The code for May 2008 is MAYFLOWERS
Topics: Discounts and Promos | No Comments »
Faking Google Pankrank
By Mike Collins | May 6, 2008
Did you know that it’s possible to fake your Google Pagerank? This is something to keep in mind if you decide to buy or exchange links with another site. You may think you’re getting a PR 5 backlink when in fact it’s a PR 0!
The reason I know all this is that I recently asked a blogger to exchange links with one of my niche sites and he sent me an angry response accusing me of faking my PR 3 homepage. (I’m completely innocent by the way…up until this morning I didn’t even have the slightest clue HOW to fake PR). But after checking some of the online pagerank verifiers, it turns out some of them do show that I am faking PR. Not all of them though, some say my PR is legitimate.
I was pretty confused so I did some research and realized that I may have inadvertantly screwed myself by playing around with my htaccess file. Htaccess is a powerful file that can control passwords, redirects, and more. But it can really mess your site up if you’re not careful.
Anyway, I had added a line of code to redirect all visitors who go to http://www.domain.com to http://domain.com. It’s not really necessary but I like consistency and supposedly it helps having all incoming links point to one or the other. Well, I must done something wrong with set off alarms and made the verifiers think I was using some kind of shady redirect. At least that’s my best guess.
So I removed the redirect from my htaccess and we’ll see if that sets things straight. Could be a little while since my old page may still be in the cache.
In the meantime, here’s a great article I read on how to spot a site with fake PR.
How on Earth Do You Fake a PR (PageRank)?
By Urban Sotensek
Why would one want to have a fake pagerank? Google PageRank is a factor that determines a websites price. Usually the higher your pagerank is the more cash you can get for your website or advertising space on your website. Many webmasters are also buying pagerank for their website(s). A link to you on a website that has a pagerank of 8 will pass some juice to you and google’s robots will see this as a good vote for your website. Sometime later your web page may end up with a higher pagerank. The popular belief is that pagerank is all it takes to make your website more popular and thus appear in search results more often. While it is one factor to determine the positions of your web pages in search engines, it certainly is not the only and most important one. The recent google penalization of selling text links has cooled down matters a little bit, but websites with forged google pageranks still appear daily in the webmasters markets. Now that the reasons of why one should fake a page rank are known, we will look how this is done and how to avoid purchasing such websites or advertising on it.
SPOTTING A FAKE PAGERANK
There are two possible indicators that show google pagerank may not be valid. One is when a page shows pagerank in online tools but does not have any or very few backlinks in google. For example a website claims to have a pagerank of 7, but when you check it with the previously mentioned tool it shows no or very few backlinks (50 is very low for a website of PR7).
The Second possible scenario is when a domain is masked to redirect to a higher PR site. The masked page will temporarily gain the pagerank of the page it was masked to, even after the domain masking is taken down. All a person has to do in order to fake a pagerank is use a redirect for their domain and point it to a high pagerank domain. In the Google toolbar it will show the PR of the page it was pointed to.
DETECTING A FAKE PAGERANK
Detecting a fake PR is fairly simple. If you think that a site is showing a fake PR, then simply take a look at its cache version on Google. Make sure you check both instances, with and without the www prefix. One may be redirected, while the other not!
* Check cache by going to google and typing in info:yourdomain.com
* Check cache by going to google and typing in info:www.yourdomain.com
If you type the name of one domain, but results return a different domain, than this means an obvious sign of PR faking. To do that it is either doing a 301 / 302 redirect directly or with the use of cloaking. 301, 302, 200 are status codes which tell your browser what to do next.
* 301 - Permanent Redirect
* 302 - Temporary Redirect
* 200 - Connection Established and The Request Has Succeeded
To find out whether it is doing a 301 / 302 redirect directly or indirectly with cloaking, you have to look at its HTTP Header.
SUMMARY
So next time you buy a website, domain or advertising on a particular webpage, be sure to check out these indicators! If you are suspecting a faked pagerank, leave this website and search for another one.
Urban is an expert in fraud investigation, SEO, online marketing and business. This article is just an excerpt of [http://www.bustathief.com/2007/12/fake-pagerank-forged-google-rank.html]Fake Pagerank To read the detailed and full version go to [http://www.bustathief.com/2007/12/fake-pagerank-forged-google-rank.html]Forged Google Rank
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Urban_Sotensek
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-on-Earth-Do-You-Fake-a-PR-(PageRank)?&id=1124234
Topics: Website Building | No Comments »
SpeedPPC Version 3 Review
By Mike Collins | April 7, 2008
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Let me start off by saying I’m not a PPC expert. I dabble a bit in Google AdWords but I don’t consider myself a power user.
I always found PPC a bit scary because there’s so much testing involved (I hate testing!) and profit margins are razor thin. I’m much more comfortable using free marketing methods like article marketing.
But relying on any one method is a recipe for disaster. Right now I get tons of free traffic from Ezinearticles.com, but if they went down or got penalized by Google my profits would take a big hit.
That’s why I’m thinking about getting more into Pay Per Click. And with Tuesday’s launch of the new SpeedPPC Version 3, I’m starting to think now is the right time.
As you know, SpeedPPC is all about productivity and efficiency. They claim you can reduce 145 hours of work into just 12 minutes…with video to prove it!
It automates most of the manual tasks involved in setting up PPC campaigns and it helps you quickly identify which keywords are performing and which aren’t…so you can dump the losers and invest more in the winners.
The new version has even more features, PLUS they’re offering 12 months access to their own in-house Clickbank mining tool for anyone who purchases SpeedPPC 3 within a week of its launch. Using this tool you can pull every product from the Clickbank marketplace and create ad groups with customized landing pages.
I can’t even imagine how long that would take to do manually, but they promise it will take less than a day with SpeedPPC V3. That’s impressive.
Now before I go out and grab myself a copy, I’d like to get some feedback from those of you who are already using the system. Please feel free to post your comments here to give everyone an idea of what they’ll be getting.
And if you aren’t already using SpeedPPC, you can check out their video and read case studies here…
http://mikecollinsmarketing.com/speedppc
Topics: Pay Per Click, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Namecheap Coupon - April 2008
By Mike Collins | April 4, 2008
Most of my domains are registered with Namecheap. They’re inexpensive, they offer good service, and I like their control panel setup.
Each month they offer a new promotional code you can use to get a discount on the registration of a new domain. I’m going to start posting these codes each month to help you save a few bucks on your domains.
The code for April 2008 is APRILSHOWERS
Topics: Discounts and Promos | No Comments »
50 Link Building Tips to Promote Your Site
By Mike Collins | March 31, 2008
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Whether you just launched a new site or already have an established blog with hundreds of posts, you should always be on the lookout for new links. Backlinks increase your Google PageRank, bring new visitors to your site, and (hopefully) increase your revenue.
But link building can be a frustrating experience for even the most seasoned marketer. It takes a lot of time and hard work, which is why so many bloggers and website owners do a half-ass job and never see the benefits of a well-constructed link building campaign.
My goal in this post is to create a definitive list of link building strategies. I’ll come back to update it from time to time so make sure to bookmark it so you can use it as a reference.
Note - In this article I’m not concerned about PageRank or Nofollow tags. People obsess too much over this stuff. Nofollow links can still bring paying customers to your site…remember that.
50 Link Building Strategies
1. Give your readers unique, top quality content that they’ll find useful and you’ll get plenty of links without having to do a thing.
2. Be controversial. Take a stand on an issue and you’ll get links from those who agree AND disagree with you.
3. Be the first to comment on hot topics. Keep an eye on news channels and you can scoop other bloggers. The first to post on a topic is often linked to by other bloggers.
4. Include cool tools on your site (like a loan calculator) that people can use and link to.
5. Give away freebies. Create a free “Special Report” on your niche and let readers download it. Let bloggers in your niche know about the freebie so they can let their readers know.
6. Allow others to reprint your site’s content as long as they provide a backlink.
7. Trade content with another blogger. He writes an article for you and you write one for him.
8. Become a “guest blogger” and provide content for another blog in exchange for links back to your site.
9. Simply ask visitors to link back to you. You’d be surprised how often that works.
10. Make it easy for others to link to you by creating a “Link to Us” page. Give them the html code so all they have to do is paste it to their site.
11. Issue a press release using a service like PRWeb.
12. Exchange links with related sites. Reciprocal linking is still useful.
13. Create a simple program (such as a quote generator) and submit it to various directories like Tucows and Download.com
14. If you have coding skills, design a wordpress theme with your link at the bottom. Everyone who uses your theme will be linking back to you.
15. Not a coder? You can sponsor a theme and still get a link back…Michel Fortin sponsored the theme I’m using, you can see his link in the footer. You can work either directly with a coder or bid on a theme at the DigitalPoint Forums. Expect to pay anywhere from $25 to $100 to be a sponsor. The nicer themes go for more but usually result in more links.
16. You can buy other links at DigitalPoint too. Blogroll links, text links, blog posts, etc. Keep in mind that Google is not a fan of sites that sell links. It would be a shame if you bought an expensive PR6 link only to have it drop to PR0 with the next PR update.
17. Classified ads on Craigslist, USFreeads, etc.
18. Take out a solo ad in a popular ezine. Many ezines archive their newsletters and you’ll receive a permanent link.
19. Use Social Networking and Bookmarking Sites…add your site to services like Digg, Furl, Fark, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us.
20. Make it easy for other to do the same. Include bookmarklets at the end of each post to encourage readers to pass your link along.
21. Directory submissions are not as powerful as they once were, but they still influence PR and will give you a trickle of visitors too.
22. If you have more than one site, give yourself a free link.
23. Start a free Blogger blog and link back to your main site.
24. Do the same with Squidoo lenses. Use them to drive traffic to your site.
25. Add your link to your signature file in forums you visit.
26. Post useful comments or questions on other’s blog posts. Don’t spam!
27. Be generous linking to other blogs, they may notice and give you a free plug. Also, your post may appear as a trackback in their blog comments where their readers will see it.
28. Provide useful answers to questions posted on Yahoo Answers. You can leave a link to your site as a reference, but don’t spam.
29. Join or start a Google group focused on your niche.
30. If your site isn’t overly commercial, you can post a link on Wikipedia. There’s a good chance it will be quickly deleted though.
31. Look for companies that have an “In the news” page on their site. If you post an article about them and let them know, there’s a good chance they’ll add your article as a news item.
32. Submit testimonials for products you find useful in exchange for a backlink.
33. Sponsor a contest.
34. Review products on Amazon and include a link back to your site. This works especially well if you write a short, well-written review on Amazon and then mention that you have a more in-depth review posted on your own site.
35. Write a short ebook to give away and post it on various “free ebook” sites.
36. Take out an ad in your online yellow pages.
37. Join your local Chamber of Commerce and get a free link on their website.
38. Do the same with your local Better Business Bureau chapter.
39. Join other local business communities and organizations and you can get a link in their directories too.
40. Ask businesses and contacts that you work with offline to give you a link on their site.
41. Donate money to a local school and you’ll often get a link on a page listing donations. These EDU links can be very powerful.
42. Pay a professional link builder (very expensive).
43. Buy older sites that are indexed with traffic and pagerank and link back to your site.
44. Purchase expired domains and link to your main site.
45. Buy misspelled domains and domains with and without dashes. If your site is YourDomain.com, you should also register YouDomain.com and Your-Domain.com and point them back to your site.
46. Find old sites that aren’t updated but are still indexed and sign their guestbooks.
47. Automate link building with a service like 3waylinks. I do have some doubts about their long term effectiveness as search engine algorithms change, but in the short term their effects are often amazing.
48. Start an affiliate program. You can quickly have hundreds of affiliates sending thousands of visitors your way.
49. Add your link to your eBay profile page. Whenever someone views your profile they’ll see your link.
50. Last, but certainly not least, article marketing is still one of the most powerful methods for building both traffic and links. Submissions to article directories can be republished time and time again. Each time one of your articles is published you get another link.
OOPS! Make it 51…the last one got deleted when I copied over from Notepad.
51. Get a free link at Aboutus.org. Just visit their page, enter your domain, and click “Find”. It will automatically generate a page about your site. The basic page pulls info from sources like WHOIS and Alexa, but you can add your own comments and information too.
This is a free link that takes just seconds to get. Then all you have to do is post a link to it somewhere so it gets indexed.
Here’s one I created for this blog…its pretty boring but I can always add more details if I want to…
http://www.aboutus.org/MikeCollinsMarketing.com
Topics: Link-Building, Promotion | 8 Comments »
How Well Do You Know Your Corporate Logos?
By Mike Collins | March 28, 2008
It’s Friday and I’m not feeling very motivated so today’s post will be short and sweet.
Check out this link to take a simple test on how well you know corporate logos. For each pair of logos you have to pick out which is real and which has been doctored. Some are easy, but a few of them have very subtle differences.
Good luck, and happy weekend!
Topics: Fun Stuff | No Comments »
Meta-Improvement For Article Marketers
By Mike Collins | March 27, 2008
A few days ago I read a great article at Problogger, in which guest author Easton Ellsworth discussed what he thinks is the most important skill a blogger can have…Meta-Improvement.
Put simply, meta-improvement is just the ability to improve yourself at a faster and faster rate so that your overall skills improve exponentially. To paraphrase Easton, you want to improve more today than you did yesterday. Each day your goal is not just to improve, but improve at a higher and higher rate.
Meta-improvement can be applied to just about any aspect of your life you wish to develop, but today I’m going to discuss it in terms of article marketing.
A great number of visitors to my niche sites (and therefore a great deal of my revenue) comes directly from article marketing.
I’m certainly not the greatest writer out there, but I do enjoy writing and I’ve become very good at using articles to drive readers to my sites.
But you may struggle to write good articles. It may take you a couple of hours to research, write, edit, and submit each article. That’s a lot of time to devote to a single article, so you can use meta-improvement principles to develop your skills until you’re churning out 2 or 3 articles in an hour.
Here’s two different ways you can use meta-improvement to increase your writing speed…
1. Track how long it takes you to write an article and use that as a basis for improvement. If it take you 2 hours to write one article, try shaving 5 minutes off that time. Then try cutting another ten minutes. Keep practicing and writing until you reach a speed that allows you to write at maximum efficiency.
2. Track how many articles you write each month. If you currently write 30 per month, shoot for 35, then 45, then 60. Before long you’ll be a content-producing machine.
This is just a simple example, but it demonstrates how you can can make large gains in a relatively short period of time.
Topics: Article Marketing, Self-Improvement | 2 Comments »
To Follow Or No Follow
By Mike Collins | March 26, 2008
This blog is brand new with only a handful of posts and comments so far, but I’ve already given a lot of thought to the content, structure, and mechanics of the blog itself.
One issue I had to consider was the nofollow tag. Wordpress themes by default attach the nofollow link attribute to all blog comments and trackbacks, and to get around it you have to install a plugin.
Seems like a pretty minor thing to consider, but you should remember that the decisions you make when your blog is young can have a major impact for years down the road.
For this blog, I decided to install the Do Follow plugin to remove the nofollow tag from all blog comments and trackbacks.
Here are my reasons…
1. The nofollow attribute was originally introduced as a way to stop blog comment spam. The thinking was that if spammers weren’t getting any PR link juice from their spam comments, they would stop spamming.
Well as anyone who has a blog with nofollow enabled can tell you, blog comment spam is alive and well. Nofollow has had no meaningful impact in the war against spam. Its just too easy for spammers to use software to blast comments to thousands of blogs in just a few minutes. Besides, even if the search engines ignore a nofollow link, there will still be human eyes to see it.
2. The Nofollow tag stifles participation, especially in newer blogs. Readers should be rewarded for offering useful thoughts and insights. Many times some of the best material a blog has to offer comes from discussion taking place within the blog comments.
3. Links are the lifeblood of the internet. They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing…links are meant to connect one page to another, one site to another. Take away the power of links and the internet loses its power too.
I’ve installed the Do Follow plugin and I invite you to do the same. Click here to download it now.
Topics: Wordpress Plugins | 2 Comments »
Easter Dinner
By Mike Collins | March 25, 2008
This year my wife and I hosted Easter dinner at our house (13 people in all) and WHEW! It was a lot of work.
But luckily dinner was out of this world and the weather was perfect. Just finished uploading the pictures from my camera…here’s one of my little girls posing in our front yard…aren’t they beautiful? =)
Topics: Home and Family | No Comments »