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I've Moved!

Visit my NEW blog at:

http://www.MatthewBredel.com

SEO: One-Way and Reciprocal Links

A few blogs ago, I wrote about Search Engine Optimization and some of the strategies to help make your website more search engine friend. I also talked about the external ways of improving your SEO by getting other websites to link to you. Remember that there is essentially 2 main types of links:

1) One-Way Links
2) Reciprocal Links

(Yes, I know there are circular links, three-way links, etc, but these can technically be included in the "one-way" links catagories...we will talk about that in a second). First, a reciprocal link is one where you are trading links one-for-one with another person: "If you put my link on your website, I will place your link on my website." This is the foundation of what people refer to as a "link exchange." Mind you, a link exchange can be more than just apples for apples. This can include: "If you put my website link on your website, I will link back to your from another one of my websites." Further, some people trade in circular fashions. This is an extension of the last exchange I talked about. Let's take a step back for a second a review the first two:

Reciprocal Link: Website A <-> Website B
Three-Way Link: Website A -> Website B -> Website C

So the Circular link is as follows:
Circular Link: Website A -> Website B -> Website C -> Website A

Now the big question is: What does it matter? First of all, there is a lot of debate on whether reciprocal links are really worth anything? Do they cancel each other out? Secondly, what is the difference between the Three-Way link and the Circular link and does that matter?

Of course, there is really no answer to any of these questions. What I do know is this:

1) One-Way links are better are Reciprocal Links
2) Three-Way links are better than Circular Links. There is some belief that Google, for example, is smart enough to recognize the full circle of links.
3) Any link that points to your site (reciprocal or not) is a good link.

You will not be penalized for who links to YOU. With that in mind though, who you link TO needs to be given some consideration. Rememder, you are SHARING your page rank with whomever you are linking to. Further, if you are linking to unrelated, non-working, or banned websites, Google may punish you for it.

But at the end of the day, getting links pointing to your site is always a good thing. I will go over some great ways of getting one-way links in upcoming blogs. Until then...

- Matthew Bredel

The Making *MORE* Money Online Resolution

There is no time better to start making goals and setting plan than the New Year! Let me help you will developing a money making plan that can work!

After spending two weeks in my Christmas basement drinking Egg Nog and waiting for Santa, I find myself returning to the real world and a new year. And to bring in the near year, it is always a great time to make money...EVEN MORE MONEY! I have spoken in the past about creating a business plan and sticking to it for any online venture. We'll, there is no time better than a fresh, new year. Resolutions! That is nothing more than a fancy way of saying "plan". I've got a resolution...I am planning on making my online business make over THREE times what it does now by June. Am I crazy and reaching too high? HECK NO! That is what making money online is all about and believe it or not, I think this is totally achievable.

Of course for some of you, making three times of nothing is still nothing, so that is not a very challenging feat. But this is a great time to change nothing into SOMETHING. So what is a reasonable goal for someone starting out online? Making a one year plan is too long, first of all. Split up your resolution (PLAN) into Quarters. A reasonable goal for the first quarter is to make a sale! Yes, this seems petty and kind of stupid, but is reasonable (especially for those of you who still have 9-5 jobs). A more aggressive goal for the first quarter is $20/day (That is $600/month). This is also very achievable, but requires a fairly focused effort. After you start getting those sales, you will find a momentum start to build up! Going from $20/day to $100/day is really not too bad. At this point, some of your SEO strategies are starting to help get your site on search engines and your PPC budgets can now grow a bit. So make that your second quarter goal!

After this point, I would leave it open. This may be the point to start a new venture or website. Maybe you want to get more aggressive on getting traffic or maybe the momentum of your website just continues to grow. It is really up to you at that point.

So where to start? The first month should be education. While in my basement over Christmas, I felt inclined to write a quick eBook (Secret2Succeed) to help those figure exactly WHAT to do and how to avoid some of the pitfalls of starting to make money online. You can get a free copy of it at TheWebReviewer.com. During this month of education, you need to study, research and develop a more formal business plan:

• What am I going to sell or promote?
• Who am I going to sell it to?
• What kind of landing page am I going to make? (Blog? Yahoo-Store? Website?)
• How am I going to promote it?
• Where I am going to get my products?
• What tools can I use to be more efficient and make money faster?

All of these questions have simple answers. You need to figure out what works best for you. There is still a lot of great money making opportunities on the world wide web to make money. And there is no better time than the present to make it happen.

Again, Welcome to 2007! And next year, I hope your resolution is as lucrative as mine!

- Matthew Bredel

Sharing Page Rank

There are so many mysteries about Page Rank. First of all, there is the mathematical definition of page rank:

Page Rank Formula: PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + ... + PR(tn)/C(tn))

Huh? This makes sense to about 8 people in the world. So let's not focus on this formula since it will just confuse you. Let's think more about a layman's definition of what Page Rank is. Page Rank is all about linking! It is a measure of how many people are linking to you and how many people you are linking to. For example, if you have millions of websites linking to you and you were only linking to say 10 websites (like Google.com), you will have a very HIGH Page Rank (9 or 10 out of 10). That is the holy grail of Page Rank and only a handful of websites have this. If your website is brand new and no one is linking to you, you probably have a 0 page rank. Page Rank (at least Google's Page Rank) can be found if you have the Google Toolbar installed in your browser or if you can enter it manually on a website like PageRank.net.

But don't be fooled what Page Rank is shown! The page rank that is being reported is probably out of date. Updates to page rank sometimes takes MONTHS. So, even though a website of mine might show a PR of 0, Google may know in the background that it is a 2 or a 3. I think Google delays this information to protect its own interests.

The other point that I want to make is that you may be Penalized for having too many out-going links. Page Rank is a bit like a disease. Your website page that has the most incoming links usually has the highest page rank. This Page Rank bleeds into the next tier of sites on your website. This makes sense, right? If I have a PR7 as my homepage, all pages linked to this PR7 will have a moderately high powered page rank linking to it, resulting in a higher page rank for that page. Probably not a PR7, but maybe a PR4. Again, anything that this page links to this page benefits from a PR4, so maybe it is a PR2. And remember, every out-going link penalizes you (or bleeds) some of your PR7 ranking.

So the point that I am trying to make is to pay attention to who you are linking to and on what page! Homepage links should be pointing to either your own pages (that you want to build page rank for) or relevant pages external to your site which you do not mind sharing your Page Rank with. But what do you do with the links on your page that you need, but do not want to share Page Rank with?

Just recently, Google (as well as the other major search engines) began to recognize the HTML call:

rel="nofollow"

This code is included into the {A} tag of a hyperlink. For example:
{a rel="nofollow" href=http://www.thewebreviewer.com }TheWebReviewer{/a}

(I use {} instead of <> because of it triggers the HTML CODE!)

By doing this, you tell the search engines (and Page Rank authorities) NOT to follow this link when it is spidering your website. Therefore, you preserve your Page Rank links for pages that matter to you and ignore all others. Such instances of pages you would like to ignore include:

• Privacy Statement
• Contact Us Pages
• Affiliate Links!
• Certification Seals
• etc.

Are you shooting yourself in the foot by no including the "nofollow" tag? Probably not, but any little thing will help and it is good SEO practice (and super easy to do!).

- Matthew Bredel

Taking a Vacation from Affiliate Marketing...

Three weeks in Australia! It was a nice three week pre-cursor for the holidays that are fast approaching...and frankly, it was a well needed BREAK! Back (many months ago), I wrote a blog about being obsessed with affiliate marketing (Click Here). Over the last few months, I kind of forgot my own advice and this trip away really shed some light on my situation.

For the first few days of my trip, I found myself on an island in the middle of the Whitsunday Islands. Beautiful place! Great Weather! No internet! YIKES! I honestly have to admit that I was truly freaking out. How was my home business going to function without me? What if someone emails me and I don't respond promptly? Will people stop reading my blog if I do not keep writing in it? I must have spent three full days worrying about this stuff. Finally, on the fourth day, we left the island and to much of the displeasure of my wife, I raced for the closest internet cafe that I could find. At the end, my sales were still there. I did get a few emails, but my autoresponder seemed to take care of that (and some even wrote a second letter telling me that there was no rush and enjoy the holiday). Sure, my blog was not updated, but really, did that really matter?

I realized a few things:

1) Choosing a business like affiliate marketing makes it fairly easy to leave without it affecting too much.

2) We (you) my readers are just people, and very understanding people.

3) I need to get over myself a little bit. My blog is fine but people are certainly not waiting by their computer to read it.

4) Again, YOU NEED TO TAKE BREAKS ONCE IN AWHILE!

I cannot tell you how long of a task list I have of things to do for my online ventures. On top of this, I still have my day job and family to take care of. Super-Dad? Super-Affiliate-Marketer? Super-Employee?...

Super-Stupid is what I was becoming. I have said it before and I will say it again...Online Marketing is very fun, but there is always something that can be done to improve your money making ventures. Whether it is write another review, SEO, PPC optimization, write an article, respond to an email, read a new forum, etc. etc. etc. And I was trying to do this all.

The great thing about online marketing is that everything does NOT need to be done today. Further, everything does not need to be done by you. At the beginning when resources (aka, money) is limited, then yes, you need to do a lot yourself. But as the business grows, you need to be willing to give up some of your handle to other people. (We'll talk about this in another blog).

So I did end up enjoying the rest of my vacation without worrying and have made a bit of an oath to myself to chill out, take a couple of nights off from my money making campaigns and veg in front of the TV for an episode of LOS, and put down the laptop during a Chargers game (L.T. is awesome, by the way!).

- Matthew Bredel

Off-Page SEO - Does it Exist?

People spend countless hours trying to make their website SEO-friendly, but it is not all about what's on-page. Off-page SEO is just as important...if not more!

For those of you who are skeptical that off-page SEO really matters, let us conduct an experiment. Go to Google and type "Click Here" in the search box. Yes, it is kind of a funny thing to search for (and no one will probably ever want to do it for any good reason), but it does prove a major point! So what is the first organic result:

Acrobat Reader

Huh? That is funny. Google thinks that the most relevant response to the keyword search for "Click Here" is Acrobat Reader. So let's go onto this page. In my last article, I wrote about important on-key factors that you should focus on to get high rank in Google.

• Does "Click Here" appear in the title? NO.
• Does "Click Here" appear within an H1 tag? NO.
• Does "Click Here" appear in the meta keyword tag? NO.
• Does the word "Click Here" appear ANYWHERE on this page? NO!!!

Now that is really strange. How can Acrobat get the number one position for a keyword that does not even appear on the page? The answer is simple!

How many times do you go to select a document that is in PDF format. Often enough, I bet, to make you realize that you do it. And almost always, right below this PDF, there is a little statement to the effect of:

Need Acrobat Reader? Click Here

Wow! And can you only imagine how many places on the web that this link is pointing to Acrobat Reader and the anchor text "Click Here" appears? Well, conducting a quick look at the Google backlinks tool, it appears that Acrobat Reader has over ONE MILLION LINKS pointing to this page (most of which have the anchor text "Click Here").

Now, of course you will not be getting a million clicks pointing to your website, but what this teaches us is that Google places some importance on both the number of people sending you links as well as what is written in the anchor text of this link.

So the first lesson here is to get people linking to your website. The second lesson is to make sure that the anchor text they are using contains relevant keywords (rather than something useless, like your URL!

- Matthew Bredel

Want to learn more about SEO and Home Based Business? Visit TheWebReviewer today!

****************************************************************
* NOTICE! I will be MIA for about 3 weeks! If I get a chance to post,
* I will...but I am not counting on it! Don't think I've quit, though.
* I'm just on holiday! See ya next month! (or sooner!)
****************************************************************

Sony PS3 Craziness!

I know that talking about the Sony Playstation 3 does not seem to have a lot to do with making money online, but then again, it has EVERYTHING to do with making money online (uh oh, not another RUDY rant!). Personally, I have little to no interest the the Sony PS3, but I decided to perform a bit of an experiment with tying affiliate marketing in with this Christmas' hottest item (besides TMX Elmo). I created a little website, and through a bunch of affiliate links, created a "Where to buy PS3" website. You can check it out here:

http://PS3.thewebreviewer.com

Now, I think this whole frenzy surrounding the PS3 is rather silly. It currently sells for over $1500 on eBay, people are fighting other people in lines that have lasted longer than 48 hours, and there are reports of even a death due to a mugger trying to steal the money of someone waiting in line. THIS IS NUTS! Sure, there are only 500,000 of these made, but can't people just wait a month or so after Christmas to get it without risking their lives or having to mortgage their house? Last year, a similar thing happened with the Microsoft XBox 360 (which you can now buy almost anywhere). Technology-wise, it is slightly inferior, but most of the superior features of the PS3 will only work with top-of-the-line TVs, receivers and games. Instead of spending $1500 on the PS3, why don't people buy an Xbox 360, TEN games and then wait until January or February to buy a PS3 for $500 (Notice: we have just spent the SAME amount of money and have 10 times as much)?

Sorry about the rant, but this is crazy to me. And doing a little bit of promotion on the side is making me realize how crazy this is! Yes, this website does bring in some money (mind you, though, that I have already developed a lot of traffic avenues through other ventures for it). But I am also learning a few other things:

1) No matter what your intentions are, people are going to get mad at you! I have received about a half-dozen angry people telling me that I am a slime-ball for creating this site. Why? Beats the heck out of me! If they don't like, then leave!

2) Secondly, I have received about a half-dozen angry emails telling me their technical opinions on this product and that I should not promote it. OK!?

If you want to see more angry-ness, go to http://www.hotproductsforum.com. Some people have been ripped off and have a right to complain. Others just want to direct their bitterness (over what, a toy?) at others.

3) I have received about 50 emails thanking me for at least giving them some additional ideas of ways to find this hard product online.

...And at the end of the day, that is what I focus on! No matter what your intension are when it comes to becoming an online marketer, be prepared for the good, the bad and the ugly. I pride myself in trying to be honest and provide good content in my blog, my websites, my email and my articles, but at the end of the day, some people just won't understand. Making money online can be fun, exciting and lucrative at times, but at the end of the day, it is still a business.

- Matthew Bredel

Want to learn more about making money online into a business? Visit TheWebReviewer today!