I’ve got big changes coming to Bonehead SEO and I hope that they’ll surprise you in a very good way.

Over the 13+ years I’ve worked online, I’ve always done so pretty silently, working on websites, either for myself or others, marketing, optimizing and more.

But if there’s one thing that has always stood out to me it’s that there’s A) a lot of misinformation out there about online marketing, SEO, and affiliate marketing in general and B) that a lot of people get really fed up with all of that misinformation so that they’ve begun to mis-trust many people.

And it’s no wonder.

If you’re like me, you’ve no doubt noticed quite a few of the “well-known” names online all of a sudden “leaving” the industry to focus on something else.

Ironically this comes shortly after the FTC announced that they’ll be cracking down on websites that they believe are using fake testimonials and under-handed tactics in order to make a sale.

I don’t know about you but I for one have wondered “WHY?”

If everything was so legitimate and worked so well for everyone why the need to suddenly shut down everything?  You can’t help but have a myriad of questions run through your mind as to what they’re trying to “escape” from.

And quite frankly, in some cases, it’s very disheartening.

That said, I want to let you know that the changes coming to BoneheadSEO will be very enlightening for you (at least I hope so).

I’m not changing businesses by any means but do want to make real, honest-to-goodness information available to those who really need it.

I’ll be flat honest with you and let you know that a vast majority of my income personally does NOT come from this website.  It comes from other sites and businesses that I own.

I know a lot of things.  And I mean a LOT.  You don’t simply work online for over 13 years and not pick up a little bit of something here and there.

And it’s this knowledge that I want to pass along to you so that hopefully your new year will be the one that you look back at and say to yourself  ”I DID IT!” and not have to look at your bank account and wonder where all that money went that you spent online buying product after product; idea after idea.

I’m not trying to be secretive or leave you in some kind of “marketing suspense”.    I actually haven’t made my final decisions yet as to exactly what it is I’m going to do quite yet. I’ve got plenty of ideas…and one of them will be the winner. But for now, I hope that you’ll simply just hang tight with me until the beginning of the new year when I’ll announce the final decision.

That said, I’d like to leave you today with a very inspirational video from Jim Rohn.  For anyone who isn’t aware, Jim passed away recently and is one of the foremost inspirational speakers of our time and someone that I certainly looked up to.  Although his talks almost always consisted of being involved in the MLM or Network Marketing business, his ideas can apply to any business.

Enjoy.

So stay tuned…subscribe to the RSS feed to make it easy for you to keep up to date and I’ll be in touch very, very soon.

Safer than drugs, but no less potent for those of us who need a fix of online marketing tips and ideas on multiple occasions.

But…one of the big problems is that aside from there being thousands to keep tabs on (and I mean that literally folks), we want the best ones.  The ones that are tended to on a regular basis like a well-kept garden.

Those that talk our talk, walk our walk and do it frequently.

It’s hard to find these – especially if you’re trying to do it on your own.

Enter—–>  The Big List.

The Big List is a listing of over 400 blogs that cover the SEO & SEM world.  And unlike a list that gets thrown together by some newbie programmer just trying to automatically generate content, this site offers hand picked blogs that have proven themselves to talk about the topics at hand as well as frequently tend-to-their-gardens (post).

Interested?  Just head on over to the Big List and take a look around.  I’m sure you’ll find plenty of information there to get that daily marketing fix you need.

Google Knol

At first, many thought it was a direct competitor to Wikipedia, however, the more you get to know knol (say THAT ten times fast), the more you begin to realize that it leans to more the side of a Squidoo or Hubpage.

That said, here’s some quick and easy tips to creating your own free Knol and what it can do for you.

A “Knol” is a “unit of knowledge”.  And you can create a Knol on any topic you can come up with.  Unlike Wikipedia however, where anyone can add to the content, with a Google Knol,  people can still add to your content but you have to approve it first…needless to say this will cut down on the amount of spammy content you might otherwise receive.

Here’s how it can help your business get better rankings.

One of the benefits to having a Knol is that you can, without regard, actually use it to promote your own products and websites.  If you’ve ever used Hubpages before, you know that they’re sticklers when it comes to linking up your content…even if it promotes your own site and Squidoo isn’t much better although it does allow for a lot more wiggle room.

Google Knol even states in their policy “You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services that are not otherwise prohibited by our Content Policy or Terms of Service, unless you are in Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan.  There are some commercial uses we don’t allow.  We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website.  We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads.”

And if you wanted another reason to start a Knol of your own, consider this.  When Google first opened up Knol it said that it would no follow the links on the Knol pages…however, this is no longer the case.

But don’t think that all of your links will automatically be followed by Google.  You now have to earn “trust” with Google in order to get your links followed.  They state that “they are now at a point where we “trust” a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a “follow” directive for links within such Knols.”

Some links however, will permanently remain no follow including:

• Links within comments
• Our [Google's] automatically generated links to “similar content on the web”.
• Brand new pages and recently-added authors are liable to remain “nofollow” for a period of time.

Although they don’t state what that period of time is.

Here’s how to start your own Knol…

Sign in using your Google account (or get one if you don’t already have one) and simply follow along with the instructions.  It’s a very easy-to-use interface that anyone can follow.

When you’re ready to start writing, you’ll want to use some general SEO techniques such as:

• Title – Like a web page on your site, use a keyword here.
• Sub-title – Like a sub-heading on your web pages.  Use additional complimentary keywords here.
• Summary – This is where a little bit of copywriting experience comes in.  You’ll want to entice anyone finding your Knol to read further…so make it appealing.
• Publishing Mode – your Knol will not be published until you actually tell Google to publish it.  On the right hand side of the page is a section that says “Author controls” where you can click a button to publish your Knol.
• If you don’t want to moderate comments on the Knol, change this under “permissions” on the right hand side.
• The default setting for a Google Knol is to give the Knol a Creative Commons Attribution license.  I talked about this at the very beginning of the newsletter.  You can change this to the other methods you’re given.

Now, in addition to the basic steps outlined above, here are a few more ideas that will move you ahead of the pack.

Google gives high quality Knols badges and awards.  Items such as “Top Viewed Knol Award”, “Top Viewed Author Award”, “Top Pick Knol Award”, and “Top Pick Author Award”.  But in order to get these badges, you need to keep your Knol “better than the rest”.

Here’s how to do that:

• Keyword optimize your title – discussed above.
• Optimize your content – just like your web pages use the keywords you want to rank well for at the beginning of your Knol.  Use keywords throughout your content and work in related words and phrases centered around that topic. When you link out to your own site, be sure that you use those keywords in your anchor text.
• Don’t try to fake your way through a Knol.  If you know about your topic, you’ll have a much better chance of getting seen.  If you don’t, I suggest you beef up on the topic you’ll be writing about.
• Use engaging elements in your Knol.  Use things like videos, images, audios, documents, spreadsheets, calendars and more.
• A Knol is NOT a blog!  A Knol provides high-quality information presented from all sides of the issue. It is not the place to blatantly promote your own products (although you can link to them), but rather it’s a professional resource that covers all facets of the information you’re presenting.  If you aren’t sure how to write your Knol in a professional manner, visit the Knol’s that have already earned badges and see how they spoke about their content, what they added, how they presented their information.  And then use that framework to speak on your own topic.
• Keep it updated!!!  Fresh content is a plus when it comes to a Knol.

Lastly read http://knol.google.com/k/peter-baskerville/how-to-write-knols-that-rank-top-10/14j3i4hyjvi88/19# which explains to you how to write a Knol that ranks in the top 10.

Additionally, here’s another top Knol tip for you that a lot of people aren’t currently aware of.  Google is currently experimenting with Text to speech on their Knols.  What this means is that right now, only a handful of high-quality Knols have the “listen” option which will read the Knol to the visitor.

Since Google is only choosing a small number of Knols to experiment with at this time, there are some tips you can follow to be sure that if and when this becomes an option for you that it reads well for your audience.

1. Don’t use contractions in your Knol.  Use “we are” instead of “we’re”, “you are” instead of “you’re”, cannot instead of “can’t”, etc.
2. If your Knol has some kind of image or chart this cannot be translated into audio.  So when using visual aids, be sure that a full explanation of that visual aid is available for those who cannot actual view it but rather are listening or have downloaded the Knol audio into an MP3 format.

The purpose of SEO is to get your site listed in the top ten search results without having to pay to be there and without it being a local listing (although this is important) for keywords that will get you targeted visitors who are likely to spend money at your store or sign up for your newsletter, whatever you want the goal of your website to be.

But, the average website owner usually doesn’t know the difference between all of these different listings.  So let’s talk about them so that YOU are an educated consumer.

First, the Paid Listings (PPC)

In case you’re not familiar, when you do a search at Google and get a page of results, oftentimes you’ll see listings at the very top of the page which are highlighted in yellow (at Google) and you’ll see listings down the right hand side of the page.

These listings (outlined in red above) while technically on the first page of Google, pay to be listed here.  Each time someone clicks on any one of these ads, the owner of the ad has to pay a certain amount of money.  The more competitive the term, the more money you’ll have to spend per click.  Now to be fair, there are lots of little nuances that go into a PPC listing such as (as previously mentioned) how competitive a term is but other factors are how much you’re willing to pay for each click as well as how much you’re willing to budget each month for those ads to run.  So while you could split hairs and say “Well, this is a top-ten listing.” you would be right.  But, in SEO it’s our goal to get you listed in top spots without having to pay to be listed there.

SEM which stands for “search engine marketing” is a way to not only get your site listed in the top ten results at Google but also helps you place ads in the Pay Per Click marketplace so that you can get traffic to your site while you wait for the search engines to pick up and start ranking your web pages.  Now I can’t speak for all SEMs but typically across the board you’ll find that no legitimate SEO company will count this as a “top ten listing” at Google; again, because you have to pay to be listed there.

Second, the Local Listings

I’ll be the first to admit that if you have a local business whether that be in your home or an actual walk-in brick-and-mortar business, a local listing is an absolute MUST.  Google has made quite a few updates to their local listings so that you now can show up for highly competitive terms whereas before you had to state a location in your search query.  These are what local listings look like in the search results:

However, again, when we talk about a top ten listing in a search results page, we’re talking about the listings that A) you don’t have to pay for and B) the listings that aren’t local.  One flaw to a local listing is that if you’re in an area that doesn’t have a lot of competing local businesses listed in the local business area, you’re listing will not show up as a local business.  Plus, a local business listing doesn’t take into account all of the different keywords you’d want to rank well for in a search results page.

Here’s a great example I did on a search for “bicycle tires”.  Now, in my local area there are tons of bicycle shops and most if not all of them sell bicycle tires.  However notice from the screenshot below that there are no local listings like the image above shown:

Now this means that even though you have a local business that does sell bicycle tires, the local business listing doesn’t show for that topic.  To be fair, this could be due to a variety of reasons; either local business shops in my area have not created a local business listing, or if they have they have not listed bicycle tires as one of their items, or, likely, there’s just not enough local businesses to warrant a Google local listing.

This is why actual top 10 natural listings are so important…

Third, Top Ten Natural or Organic Listings

This is the cream of the crop.  This is what SEO actually does for you is get you listed in the top ten positions of a SERP (search engine results page) without having to pay for it and without worrying whether or not your local listing is going to show up at all.  If you look at the image above, and you sold bicycle tires, it is the goal of SEO to get your site listed right there in the top positions where those other sites currently reside.

Can you guarantee those listings?  Absolutely not!  How come?  Because we, as SEOs don’t control the search engines.  We aren’t privvy to all of the factors that go into a top listing at Google or any other major search engine for that matter.  We do however, understand quite a few of the factors that can make that happen.

Things such as what keywords you’re using on the page, how your website is set up (is it easy for the search engines to move through or does it stop them in their tracks?), who is linking to you, how important those links are, and tons of other little details.

So the bottom line is, the next time someone promises you “Guaranteed Top Ten Listings at Google!” read carefully because you might be in for more than you bargained for.

The link operator allows you to see who is linking to you in Google’s eyes as well as who may be linking to your competition.  The way that you use Google’s link operator, is to just go to Google, enter in the word link and then a colon and then the URL of the site.  Like so:

The biggest gripe that people have had with the link operator is that it doesn’t show you a true count of links pointing to a website.  Matt’s explanation for this is that the reason Google doesn’t show all of the backlinks is that “spammers or competitors could use that to reverse someone’s ranking.”

Thank goodness there’s still tools available like Yahoo’s site explorer tool to get numbers of backlinks to any one site.

As it stands, even using Yahoo’s tool will only locate up to 1,000 backlinks for any domain, which still doesn’t touch the tip of the iceberg when you’re up against a highly competitive site.  Take for example, CNN.com who easily has hundreds of thousands of incoming links to their site.

But, even so, the Site Explorer tool will give you plenty of data to start working on your own link-building campaign for your site.

I can’t say I see eye-to-eye on Google about this restriction simply because the Internet is “The Internet”.  If our websites were meant to be private then we’d password protect directories, exclude directories and pages within our robots.txt files, and more which many sites already do.

My take on the explanation is that Google just doesn’t “want” to show you all of the backlinks because you would in fact be able to reverse-engineer how Google ranks sites.  And since the data that you receive from Yahoo! is based on information contained at Yahoo! then you still aren’t able to reverse engineer any data from Google.

He does however go on to say that if you want to see all of your backlinks for your site, that all you need to do is sign up and use Google’s webmaster central which is helpful to see more information about your own sites.  But as far as not showing all backlinks to any one given site, well, I could probably write an entire opinion piece on how Google tracks nearly every move you make but when it comes to information that should be available to the general public it closes up shop.

You’re an intelligent person, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.