Caydel’s SEO Blog

update - This is a case of Shoemoney getting massively misquoted in the press. Please see his response at http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/12/07/forbes-article/. I apologize for any defamation or damage to the branding this article may have had!

Shoemoney is going to get his account taken away. Here’s why.

If you have been paying attention to the Search blogs lately, you will have heard about the Forbes.com article on PPC arbitrage in which both Jeremy ‘Shoemoney’ Schoemaker and Michael ‘Graywolf’ Gray are both quoted. Now, I haven’t read the article itself yet, but I just came across this extract which Andy Beal posted to his blog:

Schoemaker insists he and others have in fact found a way to circumvent the crackdown. He says he uses techniques like “cloaking” to fool Google’s algorithm. Arbitrageurs know the search engine’s IP addresses, the fingerprints that reveal the source of any Web page visitor. So Schoemaker says he sets his web pages to automatically display legitimate content to the Google spider, while giving other users the ad-filled arbitrage page. Schoemaker says that makes him virtually immune to Google’s quality-regulation measures.

… Since then, he says he’s made more than $2 million by arbitraging search terms related to cell phone ringtones, teeth whitening and mortgages. “I love Google,” Schoemaker says. “They changed my life.”

So here Shoemoney is, admitting on a national-level that he utilizes cloaking to bypass Google’s crackdown on PPC arbitrage. This is in violation of the AdSense Terms of Service where it says:

Do not employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

If Google is really serious about cracking down on PPC arbitrageurs, they will have to ban Shoemoney. For him to announce to the world that he has, does, and will continue to effectively cheat the Adsense program by violating their TOS is a major blow to Google’s reliability. After all, $2 million is a lot to take out of advertiser’s pockets.

What do you think?

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I just thought I would quickly post about a few small changes I am making to the way I do things here at Caydel’s SEO Blog.

One of the most obvious things that people might notice is the fact that I have begun publishing only summaries of my articles via the RSS feed. This is more of an experiment for me; I am curious how it will affect subscriber levels, monetization, traffic levels etc. Please, leave a comment below, and tell me if you find this extremely annoying.

Additionally, I will be making some changes to the way I am advertising the site. Hopefully the new options are a little less intrusive and a little more effective.

If you have any comments about the RSS feeds, or suggestions concerning effective monetization, I’d love to hear them (as always!)

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I just read a very good, in depth post by Erik Vossman about how he makes money by selling gold and silver bullion on eBay. It’s a really interesting concept; if you can get the bullion from a mint or reseller at roughly market price (with a small premium on top), you can turn around and sell it on eBay for as much as 30% above the market value.

It seems like a good venture idea - with a weaker economy, people are investing in gold and silver at greater rates than ever before. Erik’s article is almost a year old, yet in that time, the value of both Gold and Silver have jumped by nearly 50%.

Check it out - it’s a good read, and provides some great information on how to get started at a low initial investment!

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ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse posted this morning that the Performancing Partners Ad Network will soon be launching non-site-targetted network ads. Rowse indicates Nick Wilson, in a private email exchange, indicated that there will initially only be 6-10 network ads running. The ads will be run in conjunction with an undisclosed affiliate network.

I for one am happy to see Performancing Partners start this. I joined the program the day after Partners was launched, listed some of my sites, and have been watching the evolution of the network over the last month and a half.

Their growth on the publisher side has been impressive, and rapid. They recieved a lot of attention when they were first launched with posts from a bunch of ‘A-list’ bloggers. Unfortunately, while their growth on the publisher side has been fantastic, the advertisers growth has not been able to keep up. This has resulted in many smaller publishers not recieving any advertiser interest yet. In my own experience, I have had three of my sites listed since the beginning of the program, and have not recieved any inquiries into the ad space.

The inclusion of network ads into their system while allow some utilization on the advertising space of these smaller publishers who have not had any direct purchases. While I doubt this will pay anywhere nearly as good as a direct buy, it will allow advertisers such as myself to finally see some return on the space invested in a Performancing Partners unit.

Update - the information has been posted to the Performancing Partners site.

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Here’s an idea for a Firefox Extension I would like to see.

Often, I will check the top 100 google results for a given keyword, trying to determine how a page is ranking for that keyword. I would like to see a tool that automatically places the result number beside each and every result. This way, I could quickly and easily determine what number it is ranking at with a glance.

That would simplify my life so much!

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One useful way to build some extra traffic to your site is to ensure that your images are optimized for Google Image Search. While ranking for terms in Google Image Search is unlikely to ever bring you massive amounts of traffic, the steps to optimizing your images for Google Image Search are extremely simple.

As an example, we will use the image of Barry Schwartz, Chris Boggs and Daron Babin at SES Chicago doing the Search Pulse on Tuesday evening.

Photo Credits SmallBusinessSEM.com

Note:I borrowed (stole) this image from Barry’s blog. Check it out - it’s always a great read.

The first two steps are simply common SEO sense - these should always be done on a site no matter what. These have the ability to influence your ranking in the main Google SERPS for keywords found in the title and description. The way they influence the image results is just the icing on the cake.

Steps to Optimize Your Images for Google Image Search

1. Use Descriptive Filenames - A filename can present you with your first chance to include keywords in your images. Title the image with a word or short phrase which describes what is in the image. For example, rather than using a camera-assigned filename such as DSC05443.jpg, use a filename like barry-schwartz-chris-boggs-daron-babin-SES-chicago.jpg. Notice the way that I have used a dash (-) between the words in the title - this is commonly interpreted by Google as a space in the filename. This is the most search engine friendly way of labelling images.
2. Use the alt tag! - the alt tag in your image link code will allow you to include some more keywords describing your image. Additionally, the alt tag text will be displayed by Google Image Search in place of the filename in each search result. Therefore, use that as well when linking your code. Here is an example for the image we are using: <img src="/images/barry-schwartz-chris-boggs-daron-babin-SES-chicago.jpg" alt="Barry Schwartz, Chris Boggs and Daron Babin at SES Chicago" />
3. Get Included in Google Image Labeler - The Google Image Labeller is game in which you and a partner collaborate to write tags for images presented. You recieve points when you both submit matching tags. The matching tags are then assigned to the images, and taken into consideration for the Google Image Search search results.

   In order to ensure that your images are included, access your Google Webmaster Central account, and go to the management page for your site. In the left hand bar, you will see an link which says ‘Enhanced Image Search’. Clicking this link will present you with the option to opt-in to the Enhanced Image Search features. This option signifies to Google that you are allowing them to use tools such as the Image Labeler to assist in the indexing of the images on your site.

These tips should provide you a boost in the amount of traffic you recieve from the Google Image Search. The first two steps will are common SEO sense, which should help your regular search rankings for keywords relating to the subjects of your images.

If you have any other ideas how to optimize your images, please comment!

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