I love experimenting with search engines. I guess I’m looking for the holy grail of SEO – something quick and easy that works. This time I’m going to check the effectiveness of article marketing to promote this blog. Details are:

Objective: To rank well (on the first page), in Google for the term SEO blog within 3 months of today

Method: Register a brand new domain, (in this case it is searchtempoblog.com), and then promote this new domain and the new WordPress blog using only article marketing.

Progress to date: Domain has been registered, WordPress blog set up, a few posts made, an article written and submitted to over 20 article directories. The only other links to this site is from the business domain searchtempo.com and from the mr-seo forum (I have a link in my signature). I also posted a story on digg.com last night that links to this site. According to my sever logs Google has already spidered this site, amazingly fast given this site is just over 24 hours old.

Updates: I will check rankings weekly and update this post with any new results. I’m not expecting Google to index this site for another 2-3 weeks. I will know when this happens from looking at the server logs and the SERPs. In anticipation of success I have ordered a few SEO Rockstar T-shirts. If you would like the artwork, please drop a line to john.hacking@searchtempo.com The artwork is for black t-shirts. The text is in white on a transparent background. The star is red.

Update 1: Pretty scary. Google has already indexed one of my pages. The page features a link to a youtube video where Matt Cutts gets interviewed. So much for the Google sandbox. It’s been less than 48 hours since the domain and web site was created. Maybe Google has a special Matt Cutts flag set. Now how could a blackhatter use that? I know, create a fictitious staff member called Matt Cutts. I’ll set up a Google alert on the domain name and see what happens.

Update 2: Google has being working hard on my new blog site. All the pages seem to have been followed an indexed (click here to see the results). I must say I’m impressed with the speed in which things are happening. I put a post on the mr-seo forum. It’s a very good forum and the MR-SEO podcasts are great too.

I still don’t rank anywhere on Google for my key phrase “SEO blog”, but I guess it’s only been 2 days and I should be more patient. I posted my article about blogging to another dozen or so article directories. I note that Yahoo has also spidered and indexed some of the pages. I won’t worry about ask, alta vista, msn and the other bottom feeders.

The articles are starting to work. I’ve had a handful of visitors to this blog from the anchor text in my article.

Update 3: My article about blogging has been indexed on some article directories by Google. Using the shoemoney serps tool, I also see that this site now ranks well for the term search tempo seo blog. It even gets a mention in alta vista, but not in msn. I’ll submit the article to another 10 – 20 article directories during lunch.

Update 4: I just got a Google alert on the domain name. I went and checked the web logs for search terms. It seems this site now ranks pretty well on the term demotivational posters. 25th in the world ain’t too bad, and I wasn’t even trying for that term.

Update 5: My article with anchor text to this site is starting to appear in my Google alerts. Hopefully this means I might start to get some page rank next Google update. Either that or this site will stay in the sandbox for a few months. Apparently there is some site called seomindcrimedue to launch in July.There’s nothing at that domain at the moment (you’d think thet would have a coming soon sign there or something), so I went and registered seomindcrimes.com and pointed it to this site. Maybe I’ll get a few visitors on the back of this launch and people trying to find the new site. Maybe Google will suggest seomindcrimes.com because it is indexed and the other site isnt? For $15US it’s worth a shot.

Update 6: The review I wrote on Brad Callen’s article submitter software has generated a bit of traffic. The review now ranks number 1 in Google for that term which is a bit scary considering Brad is supposed to be an SEO guru. Maybe the rumours are true? Blogs do have more weight than “normal” web sites.

I just realised my blog title probably isn’t doing me any favours so I’ve changed it to SEO blog – the key phrase that I want to get rankings for. Pretty basic stuff, but I forgot none the less.

Update 7: I got sick of checking my logs through the control panel so installed extreme tracker. It give very useful stats for the main page and you can’t beat the price.

Update 8: Extreme tracker tells me I’m getting a few hits due to my review on Brad Callen’s article submitter software. In fact the review rates number 1 in both Google and Yahoo for the term Brad Callen’s article submitter. Even higher in fact than the official web site. I’m thinking I may do some more reviews.

Update 9: I’ve been slack with the updates. I guess because nothing much is happening. I’m getting a few Google alerts coming in for the articles I’ve submitted and that’s about it. I’m getting a few hits for the term Brad Callen article submitter. Even mentioning that term here will probably get me even more hits.

Update 10: I’ve posted the article marketing lesson to a few video sites. The quality sucks even though I rendered it at 800 x 600. I must remember in future to make the text on the Powerpoint slide as large as possible and to zoom into the page.

Update 11: Just did a search on the term Australian SEO Blog. This site now ranks for that term in Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista.

Update 12: The instructional video about article marketing is getting good distribution. It’s true what they say, it’s all about content. I must think of more topics to screencast. I’ve also realised that a lot of guys have problems with cut scrotums based on the number of visits I have had over the last week:) This site ranks for the term cut scrotum and bike scrotum. Very interesting.

I had a nasty experience this week that lead to me ending up at the emergency ward of the local hospital. It is an embarrassing story, but an interesting story none the less.

I usually ride a bicycle to work and this particular day I had worn nylon swimming shorts instead of my normal bike shorts. These swimming shorts are the type that are lined with a white, mesh-type fabric.

To cut a long story short, I had a skin tag on the bottom of my scrotum about the size of a match head. It had been there for years and didn’t cause any discomfort so I had done nothing about it.

Unfortunately, during my ride home this skin tag had worked its way into a hole in the mesh lining of my swim shorts.

I was about to have a shower and pulled my shorts down. The next thing I know there’s blood all over the bathroom floor and a sharp pain in my crotch.

You guessed it, when I pulled my shorts down I ripped off the skin tag and about 2 cm of skin from my scrotum with it.

I had no idea that scrotums could bleed so much. In a calm, but shaky voice, I called my wife to come and help me.

Fighting back nausea from the sight of so much blood, she did a great job of patching me up using folded tissue and band aids.

I then waddled down the street to the local private hospital’s emergency department.

I told the triage nurse about my wound and asked for some stitches.

She asked me how it happened and in return I smiled a sick grin and asked her “do you really want to know?”

She paused for a few seconds and shaking her head said that she didn’t really want to. Trying to fight back giggles, she got me in to see the doctor.

He was very casual and professional about the whole story and suggested we try a special medical superglue. Holding the edges of the wound together he applied a bead of glue to the wound and held it together for about 30 seconds. The glue stung like hell, the gluing was even more painful than the initial injury.

He told me to wear jockey shorts for the rest of the week and that the glue would eventually drop off in a few days.

He was right. There was no swelling, no inflammation, and no pain. After three days I was back on the bike as good as new.

It cost me $250 for the treatment and I was in and out in 50 minutes. Medicare will pay all but $150 of it. I could have gone to the local public hospital but I didn’t feel like waiting for 7 hours just to have some overworked intern stitch me up in a very delicate place.

I’ll be wearing proper bike shorts from now on.

I was reading a book about web 2.0 and came across this site called Voki. It allows you to make animated pictures of yourself and record sound as well.

Get a Voki now!

Here’s my first attempt at a screencast using Camtasia. This is a sample lesson from the 2 day SEO training course planned for July – Dec this year.

I’ve just put the finishing touches on the SEO training courses to be held in Brisbane in July 2007. The blurb goes:

In 2007 Search Tempo will be conducting two-day training courses covering search engine optimisation and search engine marketing. The cost of these courses is $895 per person with a limit of 12 people per course. Here’s a sample lesson:

Having attended the Search Tempo SEO Training Course you will be able to:

* Key concepts of SEO

• Describe the major aim of search engine optimisation
• Explain the foundation concept of pages verses sites when it comes to SEO
• Describe recent changes in search engine ranking algorithms

* Keyword Analysis

• Explain why keyword research is the most important aspect of SEO
• Conduct keyword research using online tools to identify the most profitable key phrases for your web pages
• Use KEI analysis to identify potential keywords for a web page
• Analyse competitor SEO strategies and tactics
• Produce customised key word phrases for each page in your web site

* Meta Tag Generation

• Explain why meta tags are important and state which two tags are the most important
• Identify the most important Meta tag elements
• Describe the rules for meta tag creation
• Optimize the page TITLE Tag
• Optimize the page META Description Tag
• Optimize the page META Keywords Tag

* Site design and architecture

• Use domain names, page names, alt tags, file names, image names and manu anchor text to improve search engine rankings
• Describe the purpose of the robots.txt file
• Create a robots.txt file for your web site
• Link a robots.txt file to a web page

* SEO Copywriting

• List the five golden rules for SEO copywriting
• Write web copy that includes the correct key word ratio and the correct HTML tags
• Use online tools to calculate key word ratios
• Optimize the page text for better keyword placement

* Search Engine Submission

• Describe the search engine submission process, spidering and indexing process
• Describe a method of getting listed in Google within 1 to 2 weeks
• Create a sitemap using freely available online tools
• Link a sitemap to a web page for spidering by the search engines
• Create an automatic alerting system to tell you when Google has indexed your site
• Apply to get your web site listed in Google local search

* Getting Quality one-way and two-way links

• Describe the concept of Google PageRank
• Describe the 5 qualities of the perfect incoming link
• Draft a powerful directory listing description including key words in the anchor text
• Use blogs and forums to get one-way links
• Use blog and ping to get your new web pages indexed quickly
• Use free directories to get one-way links
• Use free software to automate the directory submission process
• Identify the important qualities of a link exchnage partner
• Describe how nofollow tags can be used to defraud link exchange partners
• Subscribe to link exchange programmes to get reciprical links

* Article Marketing

• Describe the 3 major benefits of article marketing
• Describe the standard format and structure for an article to be submitted
• Find over 50 article submission sites
• Draft a powerful article author bio/resource box including key words in the anchor text
• Use free software to automate the article submission process
• Set up automatic alarms to let you know when an article has been published or syndicated

* Black Hat SEO

• Define the term black hat SEO
• List 5 common black hat SEO methods
• Explain the concept of link cloaking and automatic content generation
• Describe techniques to minimise link cloacking detection and penalties
• Load a link clocker program with keywords and see the results

Brad Callen’s Article Submitter Software is a waste of my time. I just got an e-mail from Brad Callen of SEO elite fame. He’s promoting a piece of software called Article Submitter.

I’ve downloaded and installed it and I have found it to be a waste of my time.

The free version has 100 article directories in its database. The $67 version has over 700 directories in its database.

The only good thing I can say about this software is that it gave me the names of some high PR article sites that I wasn’t aware of. If you’ve got an hour or so to burn, give it a go.

If you truly want to automate the article submission process, get yourself a macro recorder like Hot Keyboard Pro. It’s cheaper than Article Submitter and a lot faster and you can see what’s going on and know that your article got submitted.

Note that I gain no benefit from mentioning Hot Keyborad Pro. It’s great software that I use every day for a wide variety of SEO tasks.

The trouble with the dedicated automatic article submission bits of software is they take forever to respond to what’s happening on the page. If the page changes, they get very confused.

Using Hot Keyboard Pro, I can submit an article to 3 different sites per minute without error. Here’s a screencast showing the process.

The Ultimate Blogging Survival Guide

This white paper will show you how to start generating traffic and inbound links into your blog. If you are looking how to jump start your blog and grow a viraly stimulating reader base then this survival guide is for you. This Ultimate Blogging Survival Guide will take you from blogging obscurity to a blogging all star!

Key things you will learn are:

1. 1. How to optimize for RSS subscribers
   2. How to bring natural inbound links into your blog
   3. Generating comments
   4. Increasing readership
   5. Using social media with your blogs
   6. How to write quality content

Download the Ultimate Blogging Survival Guide now!

Don’t worry too much about duplicate content penalties for the same article posted to multiple sites. I just checked one of my articles, and although the article was a word-for-word duplicate, because of the difference in page structures and surrounding text, there was only a similarity score of 56%.

WARNING: This may not be the case with sites that have the same infrastructure (article dashboard sites for example). In any case I’ll check a few article dashboard sites and get back to you.

The tool is available here. A screen shot of my results is 

The rise and rise of blogging as part of the web 2.0 phenomenon has taken the Internet by storm. Savvy web marketers are now using blogs as an additional weapon to generate leads, add credibility and improve their search engine rankings. Here are six reasons why you should consider blogging.

Blogging is fun! Yes, blogging can be great fun. Just open you posting window and go for it without the restrictions of corporate style guides and other impediments to creativity. Got something to say? Just say it. The other fun aspect of blogging is that people can post comments about your blog posts. You posts plus reader comments all become valuable food for the search engines.

It’s cheap. The most powerful blogging systems are free. WordPress seems to be the blogging standard and now comes standard with many cheap web hosting packages. For less than $100 per year anyone can get their own domain with blogging included.

I wouldn’t use one of the free blogging services unless you are really desperate. You can’t be sure if they will always remain free and your posts will be building up someone else’ asset rather than your own.

It’s fast and easy. If you can use notepad you can blog. The user interface is very intuitive and allows you to add and edit, text, pictures, videos, whatever you want. Want to change the look and layout of your blog? There’s literally hundreds of themes available that take less than a minute to upload and install.

It gives you products and services personality. People like to do business with people they like. By blogging you show your target market that there is a real person behind the company you represent. By reading you blog posts thet get an idea of what you’re all about – warts and all. The personal aspect of blogging is one of it’s most powerful characteristics.

Your blog site becomes another Internet asset. Some blog sites get thousands and thousands of readers each day. This traffic can be converted to hard, cold cash through Google Adsense advertising, affiliate programs and straight advertising space sale. Once you blog increases it’s Google PageRank, you also get the benefit of linking out from your blog site to other web sites you want to promote.

Search engines love blogs. It is said in many SEO forums that Google staff are great bloggers and subsequently Google spiders and indexes blogs more frequently that normal web sites. This may just be a rumour, but I have found it to be true in my case. If you blog every day there’s a good chance Google and the other major search engines will spider your blog every day looking for that new content.

Convinced? Give blogging a try. There’s stacks of free resources listed in article directories like this one that will help you get into blogging.

John Hacking is Marketing Manager for a Brisbane web site design company and Product Manager for a Brisbane SEO firm. He has just started an SEO blog.

As a new convert to article marketing, I was looking for ways to make the task of submitting articles easier. One very good product to consider is Hot Keyboard. It’s free to trial and it works very well. What I do is allocate article parts to special keys.

For example, control-F1 pastes the article title, control-F2 pastes the article summary, control-F3 pastes the article body, control-F4 pastes the all important author biography. Get the idea?

Using Hot Keyboard it takes me about 20 seconds to log into an article directory and post my article.