BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB * Do it Better * Do it Faster * Do it RIGHT!* BB BB --------------------------------- BB BB BIZ BITS EZINE ISSN 1467-8020 BB BB --------------------------------- BB BB Edited & Published by Azam Corry BB BB http://www.NowSell.com mailto:azamc@nowsell.com BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB BB Founding Member of iCop http://www.i-Cop.org International Council of Online Professionals Ezine Publishers Association Member http://www.EzinePublisher.org ================================================================= Advertise in Biz Bits: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=bbads ================================================================= In this issue: 1. Intro 2. Dynamite Discounts and a BIG bag of goodies for you. 3. Everything you ever wanted to know about Pop-ups - Free 4. Feature Article: "A SHORT DISCUSSION ON LINK POPULARITY" By Robert Massa 5. Examples And Comment On Bob's Article 6. Your Free Tools at NowSell.com Scroll right to the end for your subscription details. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Your Privacy: I greatly value your trust in me. I will never, ever, under any circumstances give or sell your email address to anyone. Period! ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Discover How The Pros Automate For Profit!" Imagine how vastly more efficient your marketing would be if your * order processing * product delivery * affiliate program * follow-up responders * mail lists * ad tracking ... all worked together in one single INTEGRATED system? Experience the power of true automation with YOUR 30 day trial: AOL Users Click Here ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Jill, Well ... another summer is drawing to a close. I hope you've had an enjoyable one. It's like summer all year round here, so the weather aspect doesn't effect me. What does is the impact on business. Now as people drift back to their PC's, it's time to get down to some serious work and focus on the peak selling months ahead. Are you ready to make money? Today you'll hear from an industry expert on the truth about the current search engine buzzword, "link popularity." You'll also get the chance to grab a stack of goodies for subscribers only, and find out how to put powerful pop-ups on your site for free, amongst other things. I meant to get this issue out to you last week, but halfway through preparing it I got an urgent request to do a complete sales site. Something had to give ... Still, better late than never eh? :-) All the best, Azam **************************************************************** Please Recommend Biz Bits to Your Friends and Colleagues for me. Tell them to subscribe with a blank email to BizBits@NowSell.com **************************************************************** ================== Dynamite Discounts ================== Jill, I've got a BIG bag of goodies for you ... Sometime last year, June Yeap contacted me to ask what I thought about her new discount site, Instant eBiz Saver. In the Instant eBiz Saver Discount Vault you get exclusive discounts and special deals on Internet marketing tools. Taking a look, I found June had amassed a valuable selection of products and services that members could get at generous discounts. Unfortunately, I was so tied up with an offline project at the time that I never got around to letting you know about it. Sorry! Now back online full-time, I recently visited June's site again. Boy did I get a surprise ... Instant eBiz Saver Discount Vault is now HUGE! And not only that, but it's been getting rave reviews from top marketers like Jim Daniels, Neil Shearing, Brian Garvin, and Rick Beneteau to name a few. The number of quality products you get big discounts on is staggering. And even better, many of them are truly essential items for anyone marketing online (and from well-known sources). But as a Biz Bits subscriber YOU win double. After talking to June a few days ago, she's blown out all the stops and piled on loads of extra free bonuses just for you. And I mean LOADS - hundreds of dollars worth! Just visit the special page below ... you need to see this: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=f.ebizsav If you use AOL or the link above isn't highlighted, Click Here One last thing ... June says she plans to limit this to the first 25 subscribers only (well, it is a LOT of bonuses), so you'd better hurry up and get over there now! ----------------------------------------------------------------- "This One-word Ad Change Doubled Results" Click below to know! http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=090502s2.mscc AOL Users Click Here ----------------------------------------------------------------- ================== Free Pop-up how-to ================== You know, a lot of people say they hate pop-ups, but the simple fact is - they WORK. A small pop-up on your Web site inviting visitors to subscribe to your publication or displaying a special offer has been proven to dramatically increase responses. Now did you know that I have an entire section on NowSell.com devoted to pop-ups? It contains explanations with copy and paste code for all sorts of pop-ups and pop-unders, plus an online script generator. A few months back I completely updated the entire section, and it's already proven to be very popular. Check it out yourself here: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=f.pop AOL Link ----------------------------------------------------------------- "How To Create A Profitable Internet Business In Under 6 Weeks" GUARANTEED! Click Here: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=090502m.ys3 AOL Link ----------------------------------------------------------------- ================ Feature Article: ================ "A SHORT DISCUSSION ON LINK POPULARITY" By Robert Massa The reason this is titled a "short" discussion on link popularity is because the topic simply doesn't warrant more. It's just not that big of a deal. Like so many other things internet related, the term link popularity, sounded techie and that swung open the door of opportunity for many a self-proclaimed guru to come along and explain it. Naturally this lead to a thousand answers to every single question. SEO's can speak more and say less than just about any one group of people I'm aware of. Just read any two search engine forum topics or any two internet marketing e-zine articles of choice and you'll quickly see exactly what I'm saying. We all have the right to choose whom we believe, but what I tell you is not so much motivated by my desire to impress you with my Internet savvy, as it is motivated by my desire to see you succeed. So if I tell you that link pop is no big deal, but you choose to believe the guru du jour, that is your right, but I'm telling you the truth as best I know it and it comes from practical experience. As some of you may know, I'm somewhat of a placement "guru" myself. Evidenced by my obvious ability to talk a lot and say little. In order for me to share the "insider's secrets" with you, I need to get you to understand and accept a few basic concepts. Let's start with the most fundamental, yet most difficult to accept concept. LINK POPULARITY WAS NEVER INTENDED TO GET GOOD SITES IN. IT WAS INTENDED TO KEEP BAD SITES OUT. The people who program search engines aren't silly. In fact, it could be argued they are some of the most intelligent people on the planet. Well, they knew when they built in a system of determining relevancy based on link popularity, that just because a person linked to a site, that in no way was any indication of the quality of that site. At least not without knowing why there was a link to the site and that was what was missing from using link pop as a way to determine relevancy. The program had no way of knowing WHY there was a link going to a site. However, there was a way to make general assumptions and that's how the misconception that link popularity could help identify relevancy were founded. Things such as assuming that if a site had a link from say Yahoo or DMOZ, that the site would have been human reviewed and in theory at least, that would indicate the site would be much less likely to be spam. You could assume that if a site was somewhat of an authority on a topic, (again assuming that the number of sites linking to another site was any indication of quality), and that site was linking to another site, such as Microsoft.com linking to a software site, you could assume that the authority site, (in this case Microsoft.com), would not risk it's reputation by linking to a site without having verified it's quality first. As we can see with just these two examples, there is a lot of assuming going on for a programmer to feel that they had invented the Holy Grail of relevancy. Especially knowing what depths spammers and SEO's, (whatever that is), were capable of sinking to in order to get a top spot in a search engine. Is it possible that the programmers weren't aware of FFA, (Free For All), link pages? They weren't aware that there were internet marketers who would stoop to just about anything including link farms, IP delivery and the practice of the best spammers selling links from artificially Page Rank inflated sites to the spammers who possessed less skill in this area? Even if we can accept the possibility that the programmers weren't aware of these things, they certainly became aware of them very quickly. So, from this line of thinking we can see that using link popularity isn't any better at determining relevancy than the algorithms everyone already had which was simply counting keywords in the source code of a web page. What link popularity did do though was make it much easier to identify things like link farms, people helping people networks, fake authorities and hubs and then simply penalize or delete all the sites affiliated with those identified sources of problems. Voila! Not much in the way of helping to get good sites in, it doesn't really hurt anything, but it doesn't necessarily help either, but a huge leap forward in keeping bad sites out. Let's continue. PAGE RANK IS NOT DETERMINED ONLY BY LINK POPULARITY For any of you who have an interest in the topic of search engine marketing, just look at a few top ranked sites and look at their Page Rank. Within the first thousand sites or so, you will quickly see a pattern emerge, (did you get the joke here? quickly see a pattern in the first thousand sites ;) A pattern that would clearly indicate that link popularity plays a very small part of Page Rank. The old standard basics of site optimization play a bigger role in Page Rank than does link popularity. Knowing where to put your keywords in your source code so that a spider can read them is going to do more for your Page Rank than a thousand FFA pages. Next. ONE LINK FROM JUST SOME GUY OUT THERE THAT LIKES YOUR SITE WILL DO YOU MORE GOOD THAN A THOUSAND LINKS FROM LINK FARMS. Once you become so consumed with the lust for links that you start saying things to yourself like, "I know this directory was built by an SEO, (whatever that is), but it looks legit enough that I don't see how Google would catch it, so I'm going to submit to it just for the link popularity", you are starting to walk a very thin wire and it is only a matter of time before you really understand the first concept we discussed. If you just build a good site about a specific topic and build it so that most anyone could easily identify that topic, trade links with related sites that you like, apply for awards from established, legitimate award sites, run your site like you give a damn, be patient and everything will work out just fine. And finally. HOW MANY LINKS DOES IT TAKE TO GET A NUMBER 1 SPOT? If you have spent any time at all in marketing forums or reading marketing e-zines, you have very likely seen this question asked over and over. It always makes me laugh to myself because anyone asking this question is SOOO overlooking the obvious. The answer is 0 may be too many and a million may not be enough. Actually, the only logical answer would be another question and that again seems like it would be so obvious. The question is, what is the keyword. If you want a number 1 under the keyword gambling for instance, then you had better accept that you and a million other people want it just as bad. It is going to take time, focus, money, education a lot of good luck and even then, every single duck had better be in a row. You had best know what is needed to be done and then be sure it is done correctly. That's why the answer to the question "How many links is it going to take for a number one?" is that a million is not enough. Because it is going to take a whole lot more than just having a million links to your site. Granted, if you had a million links from topic related, non-affiliated sites you might have a better shot, but the point is, it is not just link popularity that gets those top spots under highly competitive keywords. On the other hand, if you want a top 10 and your target keyword is Chinese armchair, all it is going to take is that phrase somewhere on the page. Don't take my word for it, go to google and do a search. Look at the #1 and then look at the #2. Number 1 may a little tough to beat out because that horrendously long url actually IS about a Chinese armchair, so you may have to use some SEO trick like putting those two words in an H tag, but when you look at #2, you can see that beating that one out ain't gonna take much. THE CONCEPT There is one concept that is common to all search services on the planet, (including yours), and if you can get your mind wrapped around this one concept it will be like a bright light leading you through what are the darkest parts of the internet for you. Here it is. Any search service is going to try it's best to bring back what it feels like are the best results that it can find in it's own database for any specific search. It doesn't matter what system that service uses for determining what it feels like are the best results, the objective is the same. That tells you that the trick to getting top placements for any keyword is a three step process. 1. Determine how competitive the keyword you are wanting to target is. 2. Start at the bottom and work your way up, rather than the other way around. 3. Reverse engineer the top 10 sites on the least competitive keywords from your target list on your target engine and then find the common denominators. Once you see the patterns, build your site using what you learned. As you start getting top spots under the easy stuff, just keep raising the bar and before long you'll be getting the hard stuff too. At the present time, there are really only two approaches that search engines can take. One is to develop computer applications or manual systems to get good sites in and the other would be systems to keep bad sites out. The vast majority of those systems are being developed and applied for the purpose of keeping bad sites out, but either approach is for the sole purpose of answering the one ever-challenging question, what is a "good" site and what is a "bad site". What you think is good or bad has no impact on what results come up first. If you want those top spots, you are going to have to figure out what the engine thinks and you are going to find that link popularity is just one more little goodie the engines use to help them keep bad sites out. If you don't believe me, just get your site into Yahoo and watch your Page Rank go up. Now take that site and go stick it in about a dozen FFA sites and watch your site sink like a stone or disappear completely. For those of you that would say, "that is going to take too long", and "I don't want to work that much," all I can say is "welcome to the real internet world." Do you really think the internet cares what you don't want to do? If you are still one of those people who think of the internet as some easy road to riches, you better wake up and smell the coffee because it isn't! Like anything else it is going to take some work, some money and some focus and dedication to get what you want. © 2002 Robert Massa Robert Massa CEO SearchKing, Inc. The foundation and traffic generating center of the world's largest network of independent portals. Building a better web together. http://www.searchking.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- PLEASE RATE BIZ BITS EZINE AT THE CUMULI EZINE FINDER! Recent inactivity has caused our rank to slip and I need YOUR help urgently! It only takes a moment. Click Here: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=cumuli AOL Link ----------------------------------------------------------------- ===================================== Examples And Comment On Bob's Article ===================================== In case you don't know Bob, he knows his stuff. One of the top search engine positioning experts since the early days, he's brought high rankings and targeted traffic to hundreds of websites. You've probably seen his question and answer columns syndicated in some of the Net's most well-know ezines. Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested to know that my personal experience also seems to bear out what Bob is saying. For example, when I first set up eBookSaver.com, I landed the #1 and #2 spots on Google for "discount ebooks" and have retained them over the last nine months without any extra work. With only 56,000 sites coming up in a search, it's hardly a competitive term I agree. But the point is, I had only ONE inbound link, which was from NowSell.com (probably still the only link in since I've done no promotion!). In other words, the site had zero link popularity. But I was still able to get top listings. The same thing has also been noted by many people using Ken Evoy's SiteBuildit! to automate the creation of search engine optimized web sites (this awful on-off 19k wireless connection I'm on means I can't really use mine at the moment). Users are putting up brand new sites with no link popularity yet finding their keyword focused pages still getting top 3 rankings! You can learn more here: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=c.sbi AOL Link Bottom line on all this? Link popularity IS important. But it's far from everything. And it's quality, not quantity that counts. Quality links will help you. Bad ones will do the reverse. Regular keyword optimization still plays a larger role in site ranking. Picture search engines awarding "relevancy points" for things like keywords in your title tag, headings, etc. Link popularity is simply another way of earning (or losing) these points. The more competitive the keywords, the less the difference between the top pages, and the more important link popularity becomes as a means of increasing your "score" over other fairly evenly matched pages. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Now At Last I Can Really *SEE* How it's Done!" Using the latest video technology, Lee Benson literally shows you - in real-time - exactly HOW to piece together a successful Internet venture & churn unlimited profits online. 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Click Here ----------------------------------------------------------------- ============================== Your Free Tools at NowSell.com ============================== Promotion Tools: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=ns.prom * Keyword Research Tool * Meta Tag Maker * Automatic Search Engine Submit * Rapid Manual Search Engine Submit Tool * Position Analyzer to check site rank in the SEs HTML Tools: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=ns.html * Link Validity Checker * Multiple MouseOver image generator * Frames code generator * Simple CSS template * 216 Web color palette and codes * HTML Special character codes * Useful cut & paste Javascript, and more Pop-up Center: http://www.nowsell.com/bb/to.cgi?l=ns.pop * Pop-up window code generator ================================================================= Biz Bits Copyright © 1998-2002 Azam Corry. 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