Google's Funny Five Minutes - This site may harm your computer.

I was just doing some research for my Easter eggs site and so I search for Big Green Smile to see what they've got on offer as I've just bought a load from Ethical Superstore to review.

So I search on "big green smile" in the mighty G and I get this, Including Amazon!:



EVERY site apparently is harmful to my computer!! I wonder who else has got this today?

The Time Is Right To Think Holidays - In An Affiliate Sense

I've never been one to follow current "conventional wisdom". According to most we're in a two year recession, the banks will fail and we'll loose our heads.

I feel the two year thing is a bit over-pessimistic. But if its anything like that then it gives any affiliate that wants to start now a great time to start building a holiday/travel/hotel site.

It in relatively uncompetitive markets you can reach #1 and fairly large (comparatively) traffic levels from scratch in just a few weeks - as I've already described here and here.

But what about the uber competitive travel markets? Well in June I started a Cuba Holidays blog knowing full well that we're heading into difficult times. But my theory was that the market would come back and now is the perfect time to get started.

Why, you're probably asking? Well in these markets to get anywhere will take a shed load of content and a fair amount of time for Google to start trusting it.

I've done no external (to my network) link-building and its already picking up sales from niche search terms. Without harping on about stuff, its having a wide range of relevant paragraphs of natural English text.

So I've left it fallow until this morning when I did a quick post about a new hotel that's been finished. But my strategy now is to gradually build up the hotel reviews, add some local news items and step up the monetisation.

I'm not expecting to make a positive return on it for a year (time / commissions > my minimum expected return), but that won't stop me plodding on with it. I've seen from past experience that to get anywhere with my usual blogging tactic can take time, but you can also get there in a few weeks.

For my Easter and Valentines stuff I did last year puts me in a fantastic position for this year (some awesome rankings achieved) so this year's work will be much lighter whilst I work towards next year's stuff.

So my advice to other affiliates is:

• Don't believe the current hype, have the courage of your convictions - if you believe in the market or niche then go for it;
  
• Have a pipeline of sites - start some now, work on them, a few months later start another and keep the life cycle going;
  
• Don't try and monetise from the off - look to build trust from Google and consumers. Overly monetised sites are less likely to attract links naturally
  
• I know everyone else says it, but do what you're interested in. The sites that I've done the most out of are the ones that I've had a good interest in. The ones that I don't have a buzz for have dropped out of rankings. I've seen it with other affiliates, some sites they've launched with a big fanfare they've just left as they hadn't seen good rankings and then given up;
• That's the next tip - not be a "confidence affiliate", if you believe in the site don't give up because you don't see the rankings or revenues - break the confidence negative cycle.

So, if you don't have a travel site, get one started, it could be huge at the end of next year - but go niche, be clever and think true, related, relevant, linkable content - don't just get any old crap on there.

Google SERPS - Skip Intro - Is That New?

I'm just doing some link building and competitor analysis for a client and found a site that's listed that has a crappy flash intro page (why do people still do those?) and its listed in Google with [ Skip intro ] which does just that.

But is that text a standard one, or is it taken from the anchor text that's present on the listed site. I don't have time to look at the moment, but I'm 99% sure its the former.

Anyone know any other sites this feature against it in the SERPS?

An Interview With Someone You May Not Know - Bill Morrow, Co-Founder Angels Den

This is an interview with Bill Morrow, Co-Founder of Angels Den - the site that connects entrepreneurs looking for funding and Angel Investors who have cash available to invest in companies that need funding. I knew they had a load of exciting things coming up (as I'm posting this Bill is in a meeting with possibly the most famous English person alive) so I'd thought I'd ask him a few questions (and for those of you who are wondering, Bills not going to talk about paid links or blog submissions!)

1) Hi Bill, first off, what the heck made you start a web business?

Angels Den was set up when we had trouble securing funding and wasted almost £15k on traditional angel networks co-founders.

We wanted to take the stuffiness and mystique out of investment funding. We are passionate about the fact that with a good idea and a good business brain anyone should be able to get funding to make their dream business a reality.


2) So if it was difficult to raise capital back then for an online idea when bankers were seemingly throwing money at the daftest of ideas, what hope do you think entrepreneurs have now, and how can Angels Den solve that problem?

Angels Den is seeing a surge of interest from entrepreneurs, as banks are increasingly cautious about investing in fledgling businesses. The site welcomed over 400 start-ups in December 2008 due to the desire to find alternative sources of funding.


3) Why do Angels register with you and who are these Angels?

Most investors are looking at their asset allocation at the moment in the hope of spreading their risks over a wide range of asset classes. With angel investing they can have a much greater control over their investments, they're not reliant on an fund manager to look after their investments, it's down to them. Angels Den helps these Angels find and filter suitable business investments in a way they'd find hard to do offline.

We have experienced a 31% rise in membership from high-net worth individuals, who each have a minimum of £250,000 to invest. In December 2008 alone, 268 angel investors joined Angels Den, almost a third more than in November 2008 – partly due to the current financial markets as well as a greater number of referrals from others in the industry.

To join Angels Den, investors must have at least a quarter of a million pounds of available capital to invest directly into early stage companies. Investors can reap huge returns from these new business ventures.

Angel investors are becoming increasingly frustrated with conventional investments and are looking for new ways to invest their money. People are telling us daily that they are sick of people losing money for them and would prefer some control over their business affairs.

They are looking for other avenues to invest their money other than the banks at present


4) What's the quality of the available investments though? It's all well having over 4,000 angels using the site, looking for suitable companies to invest in if the business plans of the companies aren't up to scratch.

It's been a process of educating the market, there's a best practice-type of approach to raising capital via Angel Investors. It's not like television depicts it. There's sound, thought-out personal and financial information needed, there's the ability to convey your skills and requirements as well as proving that you understand the angel investment process.

We provide a wealth of information on our blog which helps entrepreneurs get the most out of the site; we've provided tips such as:

• How to Approach Angel Investors - The Right Way


• How To Write An Executive Summary


• How to Approach Angel Investors


• How to Pitch To An Angel Investor


• How do Start Up Companies Go About Raising Money These Days?


• What Do Business Angels Look For In A Deal?


• How to Raise Business Funding

which have played its part in improving the quality of the business plans to a level where the number of deals done monthly has risen to a fantastic figure.



5) For those that don't know, what is the process for raising angel investment using Angels Den?

Entrepreneurs can upload a business summary for just £99, which are reviewed by the 2000 plus registered potential investors. Business angels view the applications and can request a more detailed business plan. Entrepreneurs can then submit a full business plan for £400. If a business angel is interested, Angels Den will set up a meeting. Angels Den then steps out and the entrepreneur and angel complete agreements, having only invested initially £499 in finding each other – a fraction of the costs of traditional matching services.

Once again, the figures speak for themselves as business plans submitted to the site have successfully secured at least one angel meeting and some have as many as seven angels to choose from.

The site has the largest number of angel investors in Europe.

Come along to 'what angels want' to find out how ….25th Feb


6) Give me a taste of these events. What actually happens? What's the atmosphere like, it's not full of stuffy people talking about suit lining?


The atmosphere is electric. Unlike Dragon's Den, it is not intimidating for entrepreneurs as they are able to engage with the Angel Investor. We are not looking to slay any entrepreneurs at Angels Den!

At our last Speedpitching event, on 6 Jan 2008, over 260 individual pitches were made.

14 entrepreneurs gave individual three minute pitches to 19 Angel Investors in a bust-gutting three hour extravaganza held in Central London. Many of our entrepreneurs came away with strong expressions of interest from not just one Angel, but a few.

We launched Speedpitching in May 2008 and we are the only company to offer individual pitches to a number of Angel Investors at a single event.


7) It seems like a great idea. But how do you get people to the site. I know about the SEO, ePR and Search Marketing side, but what else do you do to attract angels to make it worthwhile for the entrepreneurs and business owners to interest the angels?

Apart from the usal methods you've outlined above, we also do the usual PR stuff and a whole heap of networking. But I'm excited about the new Angels Den affiliate programme where we offer 10% of the fees for entrepreneurs this will be £9.90 for a validated entrepreneur registration and £49.90 for a validated business plan registration. We currently have great success attracting Angel Investors so we're not looking to monetise their registration, but we're evaluating whether we should. Obviously the ratio of entrepreneur registrations to Angel registrations is heavily in favour of the former so I doubt that there'll be any leakage to worry about.


7) You've gone for an in-house programme, why is that?

Well we're a growing business and we're reinvesting the majority of our revenues into the development of the technology and the events so we're trying to not let our costs run away with ourselves. Also as a B2B offering we don't anticipate having many thousands of affiliates register which would require a network to manage the process. We're looking for a good number of specialist affiliates that can take the programme further and would like to have a more direct relationship with them.


8) The majority of people I know think that the financial world ends in the City of London and over to Docklands. Isn't there a demand across the country? What do you do to satisfy their needs?

We are building a network of excellent partners across the UK and further afield and we are finding there is demand in many other places not just London. People were travelling from North, places like Plymouth and Yarmouth too to London for SP and from London up to the SP we ran in Doncaster



9) It's all good stuff, I can see why in the current market as people will be finding it difficult to raise "love money" or debt finance that angel investments is one possible route. But what about the future? How do you see Angels Den progressing over the next year to 5 years?

The Angels Den brand is becoming more and more recognisable among the entrepreneurial world including MBA schools, incubator units and links Chambers of Commerce, Business Links, IOD – many of whom are running Angels Den events.

We also have a magazine being launched in the near future which is going out to over 10,000 business owners and High Net Worth Individuals as well some extremely exciting news (huge, mega, immense) hopefully in the near future.

The aim is national coverage then world domination…..with more events, Speedpitching as a household name, more partnerships, Angel events, TV, Radio…

Last year, Angels Den completed over 134 deals, of companies securing funding from angel investors, at an average size of £220,000.

Almost a fifth of our entrepreneurs have secured funding - this is ten times the national average, a staggering success rate. This year we are aiming to make even greater advances in this area.


--//--

Well thanks Bill. I'm sure those that work in the b2b financial sphere would be interested in promoting the system then they can here or if they needed funding for a nice little web 2.0 project (or anything else) they can visit Angels Den to find out more.

Paid Posts & Paid Reviews CAN Hurt Your Rankings - Official

I'm just skim reading this brilliant interview (thanks Sri) with one of those in Google's Search Quality Team that looks out for dodgy methods or attempts to game the system by SEO professionals and noobie's out there. One thing that's jumped out at me is this question and answer:

What is Google’s policy about Pay Per Posts? Shall for example Polish services like krytycy.pl put into their guidelines the mandatory use of the nofollow attribbute on links in sponsored articles?

To quote Matt: “Paid links that affect search engines, whether paid text links or a paid review, can cause a site to lose trust in Google.” Not referring to any service in particular, if a webmaster wants to build up reputation and trust with Google, he or she should make sure linking on the website would not be perceived as deceptive. Let me add that the Search Quality team has made a substantial effort in paid linking detection over the last years and we keep on working on it.

You also may like:

Is reciprocal linking e.g. A<->B, B<->A a violation of Google Webmaster Guidelines?

If linking is natural, based on relevancy of content sites I don’t see a violation of any Google Webmaster Guidelines. I remember the case of a small vet site and a pet food wholesaler located close by, linking to each other. That seems pretty reasonable, since visitors from the one site could be interested in the content/offer of the other, right? On the other hand, if you think of a games community forum cross linking with a bride shop in Warsaw and an all inclusive hotel chain in South Asia, the chances are low that the links have been set for users. Obviously, the second example would be a violation of our Webmaster Guidelines. Let me add that the algorithms we have been working on are fairly precise in determining the relevancy of links.

You've gotta earn your stripes, not pay for them.

What Can "Crappy Link Building" Do For You?

I've pulled the post as I'd like more clients of theirs to check for a more complete analysis.

But basically looking at the stats for one large client about 96% of the links to the site weren't achieved by the service - which is fair enough. But the ones achieved were mostly irrelevant and/or PR0. Email me for the info if you like.

PC World - You Don't Have To Have A Brain - But It Helps

Server maintenance is a nightmare, everyone knows that. But if you do have to put up a temporary page and you run a £multi-million business then think carefully how you manage the impact on the search engines.

I wonder if the "technical" department spoke with their SEO agency about the impact of the downtime on there search engine performance?

Well, I would have advised them to at the very least not put "SITE CURRENTLY DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE" in the title tag. It may only be there for a day or two, but people searching for their brand may not visit the site direct (if at all) whilst that message is present in the Google snippet - they may at they may even go via PPC.


Depending how much money you want to throw at the situation there are infinitiely many more productive solutions than taking a number of sites down completely. Couldn't they temporarily move a copy of the architecture to new servers in the process?

Shocking!

Right Mobile Phone - An Interview With Someone You May Not Know - Neil McHugh

I used to do the odd bit in the Mobile phone market with some brand domains (others were doing it so I thought it was ok) but I could never keep up with the pace of the market. But having known Neil from previous Barbados trips and nice trip to see Real Madrid V Barcelona with the lads I thought I'd like to see how his & James Zielinski et al's mobile phone comparison site is going.


1) So, what's the premise behind Rightmobilephone.com - what does it serve to do for consumers?

The concept of Rightmobilephone.com is to simply save consumers time and money. The market has long been saturated and confusing. There is a long term financial commitment, ranging from 6 to 24 months so it is important that consumers do shop around for the best value package based on their individual budget and usage.

Shopping around is a bit of a nightmare as I am sure we have all experienced?

It means research, browsing all the individual networks, retailer websites, locating exclusive offers, tariffs, how many free texts, minutes, cross network calls, etc.

Our comparison platform aims to simplify the whole process by offering quick and easy access to compare over 300,000 mobile phone deals from all of the UK’s major networks and online retailers. The user can then filter these results to suit their own criteria such as monthly budget, preferred network, number of free minutes and texts, free gifts, cash back and so on. In total over a dozen search methods for users to identify a mobile phone deal that works for them.

In addition to the mobile phone contract and pay as you go comparison element we also offer visitors independent, impartial feedback on the mobile handsets via our mobile phone reviews. These are provided by our users who have posted comments, experiences and ratings for their own individual handset. The additional pre-purchase information helps consumers towards making an informed decision on the right mobile phone for their needs.

In summary Rightmobilephone.com is an independent comparison website offering help and advice when buying a mobile phone.


2) How many of you work on the site - who's in the team?

Currently a small but highly motivated team which is expanding, complimented by a number of contracted partners. (I) Neil McHugh (Sales & Marketing), James Zielinski (Development), Rachel McCormack (Creative), Jay Andolini (Content) and Steven Briginshaw (Accounts).


3) What makes Right Mobile Phone different from its competitors?

Our vision was to always build a brand that we could expand on in other areas, I think initially on visiting the site it makes a positive impact visually, smooth, bright, bold colours, with clear indicators on products and areas. We tried from the outset to make everything as clear and transparent to consumers as possible in the results.

From the beginning efforts have been made ensure speed is not an issue for our users when searching the site. You really can search our whole database in seconds. User experience has always been important to us throughout. We are always looking to improve the platform and encourage feedback from users.

There are thousands of unique handset reviews from our users and key handset information. Video content was recently introduced for mobile phone models and we have some further enhancements planned in the near future.

Generally I think we have a solid evolving platform which is wrapped in a versatile, friendly brand, providing users a valuable service. We are not sure it ever will be 100% complete, there is always another step, idea or suggestion but improvements and new elements are always exciting.


4) I've had a fair bit of success in the mobile phone market in the past, but found it difficult to keep up with all the new models, merchant offers, commission rates, reversal rates etc, so I stopped doing mobile phone stuff a couple of years ago - how do you keep up with everything?

Absolutely! That’s what makes it confusing to the consumer!

I have worked in a number of sectors online and mobile phones have to be most intensive in terms of product data, new models, tariffs, offers etc. It’s a very difficult task to manage, to the effect we will be recruiting more internally and externally this year. To date we have managed by developing some in house tools that assist us in day to day tasks. We have to focus on the core areas of the business which are the platform, the products and the customers. Managing everything else… is just simply long hours.

5) When we were in Barbados last year you spent a fair amount of time working through customer reviews. How much time do you spend on the site and can you ever switch off?

I did? ;) Its difficult to measure, there has never been nothing to do and I don’t think that will ever change. There is always an improvement, opportunity or something being neglected somewhere. We are all working very hard and often long hours, it is important to switch off, it’s difficult at times but it is vital and does provide an injection of productivity and new ideas on your return.


6) How do you handle negative comments? Do you tone them down a bit?

We do have to make some judgments, however to offer a true user opinion we try not to, if negative comments are backed up with a well structured review that has substance from a users perspective then fine. Obviously we have to consider possible defamatory comments that raise concern or simply the language used and edit where necessary. We provide users review guidelines and I’m pleased to say the majority follow them by providing comments on the handsets key strengths and weaknesses alongside the ratings.

This is also the same for positive comments, simply saying “this phone is fantastic” or the negative “this mobile is awful” is simply not enough detail to provide any real value to our users pre-purchase research.


7) I see you've built in a degree of SEO into the site. What resources have you used to build up your knowledge and how successful has it been?

There isn’t one resource that stands out to be honest, James and I have worked online for a number of years and I guess during that time collectively we have grasped some understanding of the do’s and don’ts. We read various industry blogs, watch what our competitors are doing and scour the net, we also take valuable feedback from others including our users. All that I guess combined with our experience of previous success and failures.

SEO seems so theoretical and mystical at times, we focus on relevancy and unique content amongst the other usual methods. We have had some success and failures, but learn lots from both, it’s never wasted effort or time. We are making steady progress, that’s all I say incase Google are reading. ;)


8) What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start to build a mobile phone affiliate site?

Don’t, and look out for further announcements from us in 2009 ;)

That and the competition is incredibly tough now. If you do then best to focus on a niche topic but even that now is extremely competitive. There are certainly easier sectors.


9) I take it the site is built from data feeds from merchants? What are your views of the quality of these feeds?

Yes our core data is drawn from data feeds, but not all of it. Although it adds to our workload we decided we needed control on a few elements. This ensures the site is not as reliant on partner data and allows us to be unique rather than displaying the same data everyone else is.

The feed quality is mixed. Some partners have managed to get it nailed without too many issues. Others can often fail or amend without notification which can be frustrating. Where possible we try to be pro-active to this by having systems in place to indicate any problems.
It really shouldn’t be as hard as it is sometimes, communication, reliability and consistency is key for us when working with our partners.


10) I'm always intrigued with affiliate's relationships with merchants and networks. Are there any that have really been "sold into" the site and work closely with you to increase your and their sales?

The networks and merchants have been really supportive and see value in what we are looking to achieve, the feedback has been really positive. We have a track record with most of them having worked on other projects. We are working closely and hope to build on that this year by drilling down into more detail, highlighting more USPs and value from our merchants, understanding more about the customer journey, conversions and analyzing areas that are working and others where we, the merchant and network can improve.


11) Are there any marketing tools, widgets or the like that you see would help drive more sales from your site but aren't currently available from merchants or networks?

More video content from merchants would be useful and more vision in terms of upcoming handsets, new tariffs and notifications of stock issues. However we have a pro-active view on this, we also need to assist the merchants and networks and enable them to work more efficiently with us by exchanging ideas, providing opportunities, ensuring we all add value.


12) The voucher code debate has been running wild lately. From my point of view it's been mainly focused on the FMCG rather than the mobile phone one. Am I wrong about this? Do you feel that there has been any leakage of your sales to voucher code sites?

I’d agree with you, I guess there has been some level of leakage but due to the nature of our main product (contractual) and the lack of any voucher codes I feel the impact has been limited, we sometimes see a voucher code for pay as you go handsets but not often.


13) Without giving too much away, what are your successful marketing channels? SEO, PPC, Social Media, Google Base, email marketing?

We are active in all of the areas, I think you have to be these days, you have to explore, sometimes by trial and error what works and what doesn’t. Whilst PPC is important we didn’t want to create a business that was reliant upon it and have balanced our efforts accordingly. SEO is another area of focus along with Social media and our Blog. Email marketing is something we haven’t done too much of to date and is in the pipeline along with (see question 8) and other activities throughout 2009.


14) I read somewhere that about 45% of the world's population has mobile phones. In fact I've got 3! Where do you see the market going this year?

Well in the current economic climate mobile networks and retailers have to offer more value which is good news for consumers. Mobile networks will diversify even more and package more products such as residential broadband, mobile broadband, laptops, consoles, residential telephone lines, perhaps even venture into television on mobiles and in the home, so more packages and value to retain and attract business.

Another channel that could open up would be to receive advertising on your mobile phone in return for a more affordable tariff. I also think recycling of mobile handsets will become more popular this year.

In terms of mobile phones and the affiliate channel, we are already seeing signs that mobile networks/retailers have installed a stricter approach to credit/mobile phone applications, resulting in higher decline rates. I would expect this to continue until later in the year, the mobile phone has become a necessity for many and demand will always be there, we just have continue to do what we do well better.

I would expect to see more video content used across the affiliate channel as well as an improvement in product data and as above more value for us to market. Finally, I doubt it will happen this year but with future technology in place I’d like to see the revenue share model arrive in the mobile phone sector. There is certainly an argument for it in terms of the true value of each contractual customer that an affiliate delivers to a network versus the current commission structures.


15) And the most important question. I'm hopefully going to have my stag do in Barbados next year (by hook or by crook) are you coming?

Absolutely, looking forward to it, as I said in Question 5, I think it is vital to switch off on occasions ;)



// Thanks Neil - some very insigtfull comments!

If anyone has a great website, something that sets itself apart from the competition and would like to be interviewed, then let me know.

For The Love Of Oral - YouTube Confused

Just looking at videos for the new Wispa TV Advert from Cadbury which has the tag line "For the Love Of Wispa" - I saw the recommended videos that Youtube think are related.

I know some women say they prefer some chocolate instead of some loving, but I didn't expect YouTube to support that stereotype.

If you watch it on the YouTube site they suggest "Oral" as a related video.

Interesting video BTW!

But surely kids are going to be watching the Cadbury video, should someone at YouTube manually disassociate the oral video?

Rafa Benitez Rant - Comedy Gold & An Opportunity

Sometimes us affiliates have writers' block. Sometimes we're short of stuff to write about. That's why I focus on industries that have a steady stream of new products to blog about. But now I'm starting a blog on a passion of mine - Man Utd.

The main reason is to vent my spleen but another reason is that there's always something to talk about and with over 300 million United "fans" around there world, the target audience is pretty huge to say the least. And of course it'll be pretty easy to monetise with Adsense for the international market (20 million in India alone I think) and gifts for the UK.

Things like the Spanish waiter's (Rafa Benitez) rant about Fergie is just great stuff that brings people online to watch what he said and read his contradictions:



I've got a pretty damn fine domain - Pride Of All Europe - just got to to do the template. I don't normally go for .com's as I use 1&1 hosting (in Germany) but it does give me a good chance to play with Google's geo-location setting in Webmaster Tools as well as utilising my social media / link baiting skills to drive some nice "clickers" as well as potential Sky / Setanta customers.

Blogging - The Best SEO Tactic - Official

First off, thanks Stephen for pointing this out to me.

There are so many tactics that SEO's and site owners use to improve their search engine rankings. One of the most daft is for them to pay good money to people to spam other websites asking for links. To me that's the same as naively spending money doing a load of broad match PPC with the hope of getting the odd sale. Or even worse, you could see sending out loads of unsolicited "link building" emails as doing broad match with no negative-match keywords. To me not doing link-building with a laser-sighted approach is just pissing money down the drain - just my take on it.

A better approach is to use the Spy Glass Link Analysis tool [can't be bothered with the affiliate link - I'm not greedy] (thanks Robert) to really get under the skin of the linking nature of your industry and just cherry-pick the sites you want to target and then follow the advice I've given before.

Having just done this and used the SEOMoz tool to get the link landscape you'll probably find that:

* Your competitors have wasted a lot of their time with free or paid directories that have no PR and are often not even cached by Google.

* Your competitors would have wasted their time with article sites that also offer very little benefit.

* Your competitors would have got most of their link-love from sites are authorities in their industry (Hitwise was a good one for a client's competitor) that came out of a business relationship, not out-right link building.

* Your competitors are talked about in blogs or forums - so offer something unique and interesting that will get the chattering classes interested.

* Your competitors have often registered with Dmoz.

In all, using this approach and supplementing it with the information in my other post, link-building should only take you an hour or two a month.

Overall, don't ask for links for the page rank, my method is to ask for links because they're good for the internet user and if they're "ego links" - think about if you get a kick out of having that link, think of the kudos.

So I've said what I think is crap, I've shown you what I think is good, so let's show you what Google see's as the best method for SEO. That's right. One "simple" method for SEO success that I've been talking about for years:

BLOGGING

In a recent Webmaster Help Groups call with Matt Cutts, he was asked:

"if you can do one thing to improve your websites positions on the SERP’s."

And Matt's answer:

Create A Blog

Just think about the inherent nature of blogs:

* Topic-focused
* Attracts links NATURALLY
* Light design
* Often good internal linking structure
* Regularly updated
* Links out
* Good KW architecture
* Variation of content

You've got the essentials of good SEO there in a tin!

So my advice (take it, leave it, but make your own mind up) is, don't waste money with mass-produced link building, be targeted with your link-affairs and create a good, well balanced blog - I out rank well established sites on competitive keywords with a site that has PR1 - just by blogging.

My Idea Of Heaven - Chocri - Personalised Chocolate Bars

As anyone that really knows me, I like to munch on the odd bit of chocolate every now and then! I recently came across a site called Chocri. The only problem is that it only operates in Germany!

Basically its a make your own chocolate bar!

First off you choose if you want it to be made out of white chocolate, milk chocolate or dark chocolate. Then you choose what fruit you want in it (I went for Banana). Then you choose what nuts you want - I was tempted to go for curried nuts, but I thought I'd choose a bit Gerbannte Madeln (what's that?) And then you can choose from seeds - ganze Chillischoten looks interesting. Then its time for some sweety stuff or some flower-type decorations. And I have no idea why you'd want to add pretzels to it!!


And how much did my dark chocolate bar with 4 toppings cost? Well just 4,50€ - a bargain!

Hopefully they'll be coming to the UK soon!

Lee Wonders ...

... who will be the first affiliate to buy a network?

Will it be this year ;-) 

And Welcome Back To The Land Of The Living - Just

Anyone that I've got as a friend on Facebook will know that I've been slightly ill recently! The plan was to get loads of work done between Christmas and New Year. 

I was supposed to do loads of client work and get my sites ready for Valentines Day and Easter but I only just managed to do a slight bit of work, mainly consisting of emailing. 

The thing is, I normally complain about merchants not getting stuff ready for us in time for the year's big events. First off PrezzyBox gave their Valentines details early and then yesterday Tesco chuffing started filling their shelves with Easter eggs! Which is about 100 days before the big event.

Now for some requests: Can we make sure big merchants get their creatives updated ASAP and ensure that we have up-to-date feeds avaliable?

I've had to get myself in the car and get some to review - which I'll do when I taste-buds become fully functioning again! 

2008 was a manic year, it was a year when I got shed loads done. But I see 2009 being just as hectic - especially as we're getting a dog and getting married. I'm just glad there's no kids to look after - I don't know how you guys do it!

And my New Year's Resolution? Don't forget your neice's birthday, don't get ill as much, remember people actually like to recieve Christmas cards and er, [think of something business related], make my sites more profitable [that'll do it!]

Have a good 'un!

Time to invoice ....