I realize I am one of the few that still uses EPN. I’m not sure why. Over the lifespan of my internet marketing career it has been my most consistent revenue stream. Despite all the crap people talk (or used to talk) about them in the industry, in my experience with them they have been great. I even went to dinner with some of the team once and had a blast. Anyway…

A long time ago (too lazy to figure it out exactly, sorry) EPN pulled the plug on allowing traffic from 3rd party sites. A lot of us were making a decent chunk of change by promoting eBay on forums and social media sites (and other top secret places), but then EPN decided it was only going to allow traffic from domains that you owned yourself. Wanting to stay in their good graces, I adhered to this new policy and focused on my own sites. Well, a couple months ago, they decided to start allowing 3rd party site traffic again.

I figured for the handful of you still paying attention to this blog that have a dusty EPN account sitting around I would give you a heads up in case you missed that post.

Also, from what I understand, it isn’t as difficult to get approved for an EPN account as it once was. If you don’t have one, it might be worth attempting to sign up.

Oh, I should mention that while they are now allowing traffic from 3rd party sites, their policy is that you must still adhere to the policy of the site you’re driving the traffic from. So, if you’re posting EPN affiliate links on a site that doesn’t allow users to post affiliate links, you’ll be violation of EPN’s TOS, and that would be bad news.

That is all. Carry on.

It has been several months since the first incarnation of the monstrous, blood-thirsty Google Penguin algorithmic update, yet still everyone is talking about it. I suspect this is because many people are still not ranking and banging their heads against the wall trying to figure out how to bring their sites back to pre-Penguin levels.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of my dos and don’ts, I would like to point out that I believe the main reason I am still alive in the SEO game is not necessarily due to my skill or work ethic. In fact, really my own laziness and lack of ambition is probably what has kept my bestest sites afloat. Why? Because we all know that the overly-optimized have suffered greatly. Fortunately for me, about two years ago when I started making more money than I had ever made before doing this internet nerd stuff, I got distracted traveling and having a good time and spent very little time worrying about optimization anymore. Of course, I did work very hard to create quality sites that users would actually find value in in the first place, but I stopped aggressively link building and doing any sort of optimization like that on most sites after I got them ranking to begin with. The ones I did optimize like hell are the ones that tanked, which probably comes as no surprise to most of you.

Anyway, bla bla bla, TL;DR, inb4 eBook. If you’re trying to re-rank a site that was front kicked into oblivion by the last update, I suggest you stop. I am sure it’s possible, however, I doubt it’s worth the time. Don’t drive yourself crazy trying to save an old money maker like you’re emotionally invested in it or something. If you ranked before, you can rank again. If you’ve never ranked before and you’re a total noob (welcome, nice to see you), then I guess your good karma has brought you here.


Post-Penguin Dos

Make Quality Sites

Come at me PETA, cause I plan on beating this dead horse until there is nothing left of it. Please note that what you think is a “quality site” may not necessarily be a quality site. It’s not unlike how mothers of ugly children fail to see the cosmetic issues of their own children for what they are. The design and functionality of your site should be top notch and on par with with the sites currently dominating whatever niche you are trying to infiltrate. Get a second opinion. You may not think this has a lot to do with SEO, but it has everything to do with SEO. Do you want to be searching for effective blog comment targets for the rest of your life? Then you’re going to want to make a website that people take seriously and are actually willing to link other people to.


Engage

Sometimes when I preach about engaging via Facebook, Twitter, etc, I get responses like “well, what am I supposed to post about?” If you can’t figure that out, then, I mean, dang. Listen, the days of automating and spamming the shit out of everything are more or less over. Yes there are still people making some money doing it but they are living on the fringe of the internet marketing community, whereas before it was almost mainstream. In today’s SEO world, you need to freaking innovate. I don’t know what your websites are about, therefore I cannot come up with clever ways to promote them using social media. I will say that Twitter has a very handy search feature. It’s more powerful than many people realize. Use it to your advantage. Giving stuff away is usually pretty effective, too.


Dive into stuff you know and care about

It’s no secret that if you base your business around stuff you actually care about, you will find greater success and probably less grey hairs. In the post-penguin era, freshness is very important. Let me tell you from experience, it is very tedious and soul-sucking to constantly be updating sites about things you have absolutely no interest in but at one time figured you could make some good money off of. When it’s something you care about, you feel compelled to do it and it’s not a chore. Now, that’s not to say you should dedicate your life to building a blog chronicling the sketches you make of your dog…but you get the idea. Just about every interest you could have can be used to create a business, but the level of creativity needed to do so will vary.


Sweet-talk other webmasters

I am a long time fan of this. Anyone that knows me knows that this is bread and butter of my linkbuilding. The problem is, most people that attempt it try to streamline the process by writing some contrived copy+paste email pitch that no one ever pays attention to. Have a little respect for the webmasters you email and actually take the time to get to know the site you’re itching to get a link on and make sure the fact that you’re not just spamming webmasters comes across in your email. There are lots of creative ways to get their attention. Here is one.

Wow, this post is getting really long. Better stop getting cute with graphics.

Don’ts:

1. Don’t over-optimize. This should be obvious by now. Use significant keyword diversity when you build links, and forget about the shitty links. Seriously, just forget about them. Get related links from guest blog posts, related blog rolls, related communities, related anything, and mix up the anchor text. Use generic anchors.

2. Don’t copy your competitors. Sure, it’s a good idea to watch what they’re doing and investigate where their backlinks are coming from, but if you try to actually emulate their business, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Focus on finding your own path to success.

3. Stop complaining. Penguin (and Panda, for that matter) didn’t ruin everything, it just changed everything. Last time I checked, the first page of results is still full of websites, so, plenty of people are still cashing in.

4. Don’t depend entirely on Google for your livelihood. Many people learned this hard lesson recently. The bright side is that they also learned that there are virtually limitless other methods of generating traffic, and Google is really just one of them. The fact of the matter is what works today will not necessarily work tomorrow, and traffic diversity is the key to long-term success.

5. Don’t forget to BUY MY PANDA RECOVERY eBOOK!!!!

lol jk

During a recent Skype conversation, it came to my attention that some folks may not know that you can still leave a link-injected blog comment on many WordPress blogs that have removed the URL field in their comment forms.

One way, of course, is to just use html in the body of the comment. This will work on some sites, but it can also trigger spam filters or cause more scrutinized moderation. The alternative, and the only way to get the “name” field hyperlinked to your site, is simply to register on the site and create a profile.

For instance, let’s say you find a sweet target page on PENISPILLWEBSITE.COM where there are already a few comments, and one of them has their name linked to their website, even though the URL field is missing from the WordPress comment form. Try going to PENISPILLWEBSITE.com/wp-login.php?action=register

If the admin has not disabled registration (which should be the case in the above scenario since there is no URL field in the form yet there are visible names that are hyperlinked), you should be able to register. Just enter a username and email and it will send you a password to the email address you specified. Once you log in, you should be taken to your profile page. If not, just find it in the sidebar and go there. In your profile you can set how your name will be displayed publicly (your anchor text) and your website, which will be the site that is linked to your name when you leave a comment.

There you have it. As with most of my vague, half-ass posts, those of you with cyber-raping tendencies are probably already thinking of ways to automate this concept into something far more powerful and destructive. Godspeed.

PS This post is dedicated to Edmond Major III.

In any complex industry, there will be a lot of differentiation between actors, and how they accomplish or offer what may appear on the surface, to be similar services, goals and products.

SEO is no different. In SEO, we have various hats (black, white, offwhite, grey, blue) which represent the tactics, markets and styles with which SEO has been pursued.

For example;

Rand Fishkin may be very aware of high level Google search changes through conferences and social networking, while unaware of what link building tools thousands of SEOs are using.

Matt Cutts may be on the Google Web Spam team, and yet be unaware of spammy tactics people have been successfully exploiting for over 6 years.

Bob the Affiliate SEO may know of 10 different sources for backlinks, or behaviors in Google Bot which gives him a significant ranking edge, unaware of algorithmic tweaks and changes at Google.

In this sense, SEO has always been asymmetric. Everyone has different knowledge, and there are no standard methods in an industry based primarily around one search engine.

Which makes good sense as search results are a zero sum game. Zero sum games breed intense competition and differentiation.

This lack of consistent information has been the norm for some time, and yet from the earliest days of Google, everyone knew what Larry and Sergey planned with the search algorithm. We knew how PageRank is calculated. We understood the place of linking, and the value of anchor text.

While we didn’t know the equation, we knew enough variables to come up with best practices. Links good. Anchor text great. Keyword in URL, solid.

Then it changed.

Last year, Google released Panda update and recently Penguin update, turning everything we knew about SEO upside down.

Now with Panda, Google is judging our on-page factors, yet we don’t know what the variables are. With Penguin, Google is punishing link optimization, and again we don’t know what the variables are.

Compounding this, Google has hurt the rankings of many innocent sites with these updates, both of which are far from perfect or precise, or if I wanted to be less charitable, completely arbitrary.

So where do we go from here?

I think Rand Fishkin has won. I was already on the inbound marketing bandwagon before Panda hit, and I haven’t consistently checked rank position in almost 2 years.

Before Rand does his victory lap, let’s remember that every success contains the seed of a future defeat.

Inbound marketing is about to get a lot more attention. The people who are coming over from affiliate SEO to mainstream SEO are highly motivated, aggressive and much smarter than the folks typically found posting SEOmoz blog comments.

My guess is that in 12-24 months the whitehat enterprise SEOs will get a run for their money. SEOmoz, Raven Tools, they are all going to be in the cross-hairs of people who are very talented hustlers. Folks who will take all of the energy and millions of dollars they put into link building, and focus that into dominating content, analytics and social media.

Regardless, we should all be happy about the triumph of inbound marketing, because it signals an end to the dependence on Google and obsession with their (now) opaque algorithm.

Change is the one thing we can all count on, all of the time. With one hand, change gives, and with the other it takes away.

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About The Author: Anand works at CommunitySEO, a moderated web directory.

Connect with the author via: Twitter | Google+

So, since my last post (nearly three months ago, sorry!), there has been even more confusion in the SEO world as the new Google Penguin update has wreaked havoc upon webmasters around the world. Sentiments and general attitudes on SEO message boards are very negative. Some people are even claiming that it is now impossible to rank. Well, until the first 2 pages of Google search results for any given query become either blank or nothing but Google Ads, you had better believe that it is still very possible to rank.

I did not escape this last update completely unscathed. Like many others, I had EMD (exact match domain) sites with little to no anchor text diversity and generic backlinks (social bookmarks, blog comments, etc) that were slapped pretty hard. Fortunately, I don’t rely on those types of web properties to support my business. My sites that actually provide some type of value and regularly get natural backlinks are still doing just fine, many of them better.

I know the goodie-two-shoes people in this industry love talking about “user experience” and “providing value.” Believe me, I am annoyed by this as well. I don’t build quality sites because I like playing by the rules. I build quality sites because they make more money. I save my rebellious nature for linkbuilding.

But, haven’t cheap links been considerably devalued? Possibly even made to harm the rankings of sites? Sure. I’m not going to get into a whole talk about negative SEO. I’m going to talk about muthafuckin off-white hat SEO!

Too many people look at SEO and see only two approaches: A) Play by the book and try to get quality links. B) Break all the rules and XRUMER ALL THE THINGS and get as many links as you possibly can no matter how you get them.

For a long term business plan, A is the better approach of the two, and I think most reasonable people would agree. But that doesn’t mean it’s the BEST approach.

What do I do when it comes to link building? I focus on doing whatever I have to do, however sneakily I need to do it, no matter how many “rules” I have to break in the process, to get those quality links (without breaking the law). No, I’m not going to spell the process out for you. That would be stupid on my part. Even if I did, your mileage is going to vary. What I’m trying to communicate is the simple principles that I have been applying to my business all along: using somewhat devious tactics to get GOOD links that your competitors don’t have the ability to get. THAT is how you rank, sustain your rank, and get natural links as a result of having that rank. And I think attempting any of this without having a quality site in the first place is more or less a waste of time.

Now, good link building doesn’t always have to be sneaky. What it takes to get good links varies A LOT by niche. In some cases, assuming you have a decent site, one of the best ways to build links is to email webmasters and politely ask for them. Imagine that. But a lot of people don’t like putting in that sort of leg work, even though it really can pay off.

As far as specifics, look around this site. I’ve blogged about lots of techniques I use. Not all of them are still effective (maybe not even possible), but it should help you understand the way I approach SEO and maybe you can incorporate those principles into your business.

MOST OF THE SEO INFO OUT THERE IS GARBAGE. You probably already knew that, but I want to reiterate it. I don’t have anything to sell you here. Not that it would be a bad thing if I did, I mean, we’re all here to make money. But that’s not my motivation. My real motivation is having a blog that people read so that other people buy me drinks at conferences and give me access to beta test cool shit and stuff like that. If I was to be another parrot blog just regurgitating the same useless info about keyword density and making useless case studies, people might stop reading.

With a little luck, it will be less than three months before I blog again.

…And now for an entirely speculative post regarding the mysterious and ever changing Google search algorithm.

Take a look at any webmaster forum these days and you will find a whole lot of people hooting and hollering about negative SERP movement. Panda this, panda that, panda hit me with a wiffle ball bat. In the past few months, Google’s tinkering and pandaneering has had a major impact on the current search results and caused some of the most experienced SEO wizards to question their own strategies.

Personally, I have seen a lot of movement as well. Luckily, my lack of focus has left me with a truckload of websites in various niches on which I have used vastly different link building strategies on. So, while some of my winners became losers, some of my losers became winners, and kingofsp lives to blog another day.

Now, the more disciplined forum posters and of course the case-study gurus at places like SEOmoz are having a field day examining data and attempting to uncover the mysteries of this problematic panda. Everyone is looking for the common traits of affected websites to shed light on what factors (whether on page or off) are causing some websites to be slapped into oblivion.

And now for my speculation…

If I were Google

No, that is not an homage to OJ Simpson. I’m just saying, whenever it comes to matters of search engine algorithmic policy, the most logical way to start reverse engineering a search engine is to put yourself in the shoes of the engineer and think about what you would do in order to achieve a level playing field where dastardly marketers like us would have a real hard time gaming the system and user experience would benefit.

So, let’s say I’m Joe Google, and I am tasked with making the Panda update one that will cripple the “SEO industry” (since you know they hate us anyway). I know that if I make an obvious tweak like making all sites with a buttload of profile links become slapped out of the top 1000, it will only be a matter of time before the case study heroes figure that out and the information propagates like a virus across all of the SEO resources. So, what I would want to do is basically confuse the fuck out of everyone.

Website Grouping
Each time Google’s robots discover/index a new website, simply place it into one of several groups. Let’s say groups A-S. Make it so that each group has a similar yet unique set of rules that govern what overall “score” the site gets which will determine how it ranks with other sites.

For instance, let’s say Group C places a special importance on anchor text diversity. Over anchor-text optimization in Group C sites will results in -25 points from the overall quality score. Whereas over anchor-text optimization in sites belonging to Group L might only result in -10 points from the overall quality score.

You use the same basic principles that have already been in play, you just change the value for each item. On-page optimization is of higher importance for sites in Group D than those in Group F. Amount of unique content is hardly as important for Group M sites as it is for Group A, and so on.

Obviously it would be a little bit more complex than that to implement, but you get the general idea. The result is an algorithm that still values and rewards quality websites with a healthy SEO strategy, but it becomes nearly impossible to game. Consequently, a million case studies and a billion moaning and groaning forum posts appear. The only option left for webmasters is to actually create websites with value, which is what Google has yearned for all along.

Back to Reality

I have yet to seduce a Google employee, so this of course is still pure speculation. It’s just an idea I had and felt like bloggin’ about it. Hopefully some of you find it interesting.

Oh, and Google, you’re welcome. My min salary is $750,000/year. I will be telecommuting. Use the contact form if you have any questions. Thank you.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps not. Maybe you’ve heard people in the SEO community refer to “ALN” and had no idea what they were talking about. Well, in this post, I’m going to shed a bit of light and offer my thoughts on this particular “link network” after having tinkered with it.

Some time ago, I blogged about the pros and cons of blog networks, and I went into some detail about blog networks in general. Authority Link Network (aka “ALN”) is basically a blog network, but it is unlike any other one I’ve ever used. The main thing that sets ALN apart from the other ones I’ve tried in the past is that along with the paid option you would expect, there is also a “free” option.

Yes, the quotation marks around the word “free” imply that there is a catch. However, it’s a pretty dang neat catch. If you want to get access to ALN without paying, you simply have to add a blog or two of your own to the network. This pretty brilliant system makes it so that fresh, quality blogs are constantly being added to the network. Naturally, there are some guidelines for sites that are submitted to be accepted.

Criteria
- You can only submit sites that are built on the WordPress CMS, version 2.6 or newer. If you are running older versions than 2.6, finding a good blog network is probably the least of your problems.

- The “Hello World” default WordPress post must be removed. No brainer.

- The default blogroll must also be removed. Sorry, I know you like linking to WordPress Planet whenever possible.

- XML-RPC must be enabled. If you don’t know what this is, it doesn’t matter. Just go to the “Writing” section under the “Settings” tab in your WordPress backend area and click the box to enable it.

- The blog can’t exist in a subdomain or a subdirectory. It needs to be on the root of the site.

- You must use any theme OTHER than the default WordPress theme on the site. Don’t be lazy.

- Have multiple categories (every post shouldn’t be posted under “uncategorized”).

- The site MUST be PR1 or higher. PR0 sites are not accepted. Also, if you are submitting a site with a TLD other than any of the following: .com .net .org .info .co .ca .me .us .biz .co.uk .com.au .net.au .ws and .t, it will basically count as only half of a regular submission.

If it seems like they are a bit picky, that’s because they are. The strict guidelines help ensure that the network isn’t clogged up with a bunch of junk sites. There are some other obvious rules (you can’t remove articles/links that have been posted to your sites) and a few not-so obvious rules. You’ll have to read through their FAQ for detailed info.

If you don’t want to bother with adding your own sites to the network, there is always the paid option. The cheapest plan (called the “Basic” plan) currently costs $14.95/mo. Considering the quality of the sites on this network versus most of the networks I’ve seen/used, I think that’s an extremely reasonable price.

Click here to get started with ALN.

In typical OffWhiteHat fashion, I traveled to Las Vegas for Affiliate Summit, partied the entire time, and did very little of anything that could be construed as business if I am ever audited for the expenses.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to show up until about 2am Sunday night (Monday morning), so I missed all of the awesome festivities that night. I did however do some gamblin’.

On Monday, I met lots of interesting folks in the exhibit hall and saw some familiar faces. Among some of the coolest peeps that I can remember were the awesome possums from W4 and Audi from Convert2Media who kept the Blue Moon flowing. Here is the one and only photo I took in the exhibit hall, which I feel captures the essence of what was going on at the C2M booth:

Blue Moon!

The Affiliate Ball

Monday night was the night of the Affiliate Ball at the Crown Theater in the Rio. It would be my very first Affiliate Ball. For whatever reason, in past years I have found myself at other events while Affiliate Balls were going on. As the Affiliate Ball conflicted with the party at the Spearmint Rhino hosted by Ads4Dough this time, I was torn. Ultimately, my desire to relive my youth prevailed, and we headed to the Affiliate Ball eager to see the headlining act…none other than Nelly himself.

Darren, the man behind the event, was kind enough to give VIP bands to myself and mah woman. These bands gave you access to the VIP area that had free booze and a little more breathing room.

There were a couple openers, including Wickedfire’s own RobHustle. He did a bang up job. We took a photo together after at some point. I hope he posts it, and I hope my hair looks good.

I didn’t even notice when Nelly had taken the stage. At some point I looked up from my drink and was like, whoa, Nelly is on stage. He performed just about every song you can remember of his and then some. This was surprising as many were speculating that he would only do like one or two songs. The crowd, however, did not seem particularly impressed. While there were some very psyched people at the base of the stage, I got a vibe from the rest of the place that they were just not that excited. I guess internet nerds are too cool for Nelly. Whatever. I thought it was awesome.

Here are some pictures taken in there. Quality isn’t the best, as I still insist on pretending that my Blackberry is a real camera:

Me and mah woman

Josh Ziering aka Enigmabomb & me

Nelly on stage

From there, the lady and I gambled a bit at the Rio. As soon as we got two fresh drinks, we headed to the car, where she was in charge of making sure they didn’t spill while I drove us back to the Mirage.  At the Mirage, more gambling and much more drinking occurred. Also, sandwiches.

Unfortunately I didn’t even make it back to the conference the next day. It’s no fun when you have a 4 hour drive ahead of you. Maybe one of these years I’ll fly.

So, yeah, that’s about it. Affiliate Summit was fun as ever. I only wish I would have got there earlier.

Oh, almost forgot, one more pic:

Told you it would come out in the dark, bro

Howz about a little update?

Just yesterday I returned home from a pretty dang fun New Year’s (and then some) trip to London and surrounding areas. It was quite wild, if I do say so myself. I was in the company of a dear friend of mine who actually has a nifty travel blog. His adventures are generally much more exciting than mine, so if you’re into that sort of thing, you should check it out.

Here are some choice photos from my journey (taken with my high-tech Blackberry Bold 9900):

Me in Picadilly Circus

Happy New Year

The hustle and bustle of Cardiff, Wales on a weeknight

Goin' home (business class cause I'm a srs businessman)

Now I only have a couple days to rest before I must drive out to Las Vegas to do further irreversible damage to my body. This will be my fourth consecutive Affiliate Summit West. Crazy how time flies! Seeing as how I didn’t book my hotel until last night, I’ll be at the Mirage. Room number available upon request (send nudes first, plz).

See you there!

I spent this past weekend at Blog World LA, a conference very much like how it sounds, at the LA Convention Center. In contrast to most of my conference visits, I actually went to three different sessions at this one. Crazy, I know.

I went to a Friday session that basically turned out to be an introduction to WordPress. Unfortunately, I got there late, so I had to sit in the very front. By the time the horror of the reality of the session sunk in, it was already too late. I was already firmly planted front and center. I waited as long as I possibly could before I rudely evacuated. The time in between was spent on Skype.

Saturday I attended two sessions about video. Although I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it on this blog, I co-run a YouTube partner account that has seen some pretty significant success in the past couple years. We just recently started getting heavily back into producing content for YouTube, so I hoped to get some good info out of these sessions. Or at the very least, leave the room super motivated to create more videos.

YouTube Partner Success Panel

This was the first session I attended. Hosted by Paul Colligan, the panel consisted of Mike Rotman, Ed Dale, and Don McAllister. All of the above have been very successful using YouTube as a promotion vehicle for their respective businesses. Unfortunately for me, they all focus on using YouTube as a tool to promote their business, and not actually using YouTube to produce a passive income (via partnership/revenue share). Although I definitely understand the value in what they are doing, I was still disappointed. I was hoping for more specific YouTube talk rather than general online business promotion. If you understood the nature of my partner account, you would understand why building an outside business off of it would be rather difficult (and sort of silly).

How to Promote Your Video

I thoroughly enjoyed this session. This one was run by Michael Terpin, founder and CEO of Social Radius. Michael and his company have been responsible for the viralization of many prominent videos such as Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral and Scarface School Play (one of my personal favorites).

One thing Terpin stressed was the importance of sound quality in a video. Amazing sound quality won’t make a video go viral, but shitty sound quality will most definitely prevent it from doing so. It’s something a lot of people new to online video overlook. The guy filming the session recommended this type of mic for capturing the best audio (not that exact model, necessarily).

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Blog World is a very different animal from the conferences I’m used to, such as Affiliate Summit. Instead of small to mid size ad networks shoving free booze and strippers in your face, you get companies like Blogger and Stickam giving you glossy little info cards. I know that sounds boring, but it’s not so bad. And there are about 745% more female attendees than any affiliate summit. A lot of fashion bloggers and that sort of thing.

One impressive company in particular was the Ebay Partner Network. Great people, all around. The new head of the North America program, Julia Barrett, is pretty dang awesome. She’s also hilarious. I never thought I’d be openly advocating EPN on this site, but really, any doubts I had about the program or the people running it have been dissolved. I’ll probably build another handful of eBay sites before Christmas. I suggest you do the same. If you’re having trouble getting accepted by EPN (and you have quality web sites), contact me for help.