Make Money Online | Marketing For Street Smart Entrepreneurs

SEO Slang Handbook

DeanHunt — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:51:37 +0000

There are a lot of terms and slang words in the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), do you know them all? Are you baffled by some of the terms? Well here is an SEO slang handbook:

Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink. For example:

< a href=”http://www.streetlessons.com/” >This is the anchor text< /a >

Back Link
Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.

Bot
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Conversion
Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.

CPC
Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.

CTA
Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.

Doorway Page
Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

FFA
Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.

Gateway Page
Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

IBL
Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.

Keyword/KeyphraseKeywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the ‘benefit’ of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Mirror
In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

PFI
Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine’s index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.

Portal
Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites (like Yahoo) that people use as their homepage. Most portals offer significant content and offer advertising opportunities for relevant sites.

PPC
Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.

PR
Abbreviation for PageRank - Google’s trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.

Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.

SEM
Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)

SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases

SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.

Spam
In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning.

Spamdexing Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine’s index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Spider
Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Spider Trap
A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and “ban”) spiders that do not respect robots.txt.

Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as “the”.

Black hat
This is Unethical SEO. Search Engine Optimization techniques that defy search engine TOS.

White hat
an ethical SEO method that follows search engine TOS.

Grey hat
an SEO using both methods.

Link building
a method of creating backlinks to your own website.

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The No Follow Text Links Debate - By the Psychic SEO

DeanHunt — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:28:45 +0000

Recently the world of SEO has erupted at the news that Google is stamping down on any webmasters who sell text links. Many sites have seen a huge drop in Pagerank, and some have even noticed a drop in search rankings.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is very much an industry where you need to stay ahead of the field to be successful. What works today may not work in 6 months, and therefore you need to have vision and be able to adapt to changes.

Back in 2006 I made a prediction that this would happen. Yet the majority of experts in the industry thought I was crazy. They were all enjoying the benefits of text link advertising, and there was no way they were willing to accept that it wouldn’t be around for many more years.

I couldn’t understand why so many “experts” were being so naive and short sighted. Weren’t they the ones who are supposed to predict things like this in advance?

In early 07 Matt Cutts hinted towards the penalization of text link selling activities, and some people decided to call me the psychic SEO.

So I have been asked to give my thoughts on Text Link Advertising, Google, and the big no follow debate. I appreciate there is already a lot of noise regarding these issues, but since I am one of a handful of people to see this coming, it may be worth a read.

To predict the future we need to look to the past! We need to understand why certain things happen, and what that signifies for the future.

So let’s go back to the early days of Google the search engine:

Google originally wanted the most relevant sites to be top of their listings, then, people realised how to manipulate Google, and relevant was no longer enough.

So then they looked for outside factors like links and trust.

This worked for a long time, but then link buying became mainstream…. here is the thing, Google doesn’t want the companies with the most money at the top of the rankings, the search engines are supposed to be about mom and pop sites having a chance etc… but the selling of text links basically said that whoever spends the most wins.

This may be ideal for the PPC model, but it certainly is not what search engines are supposed to be about. If it was, we may as well get rid of organic rankings and only have the paid ones.

That is the key word “organic”…. you see, when you spend $1k a month on buying your way to the top of Google, that is not organic, it is forced and manipulated, it means that all the kids with their blogs etc will not be heard. It creates a divide where the rich get richer and the rest lose interest.

That is not what the net is all about. It never has been, and hopefully never will.

So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Google are doing this. What does surprise me is why I was one of only a handful of so called “experts” to predict this so early, out of the entire industry, and why people are a) getting upset about it b) are surprised

That said, if text link ads are used as they were originally intended (to drive traffic), then I see no issue with that. So I am all for the nofollow tags.

So what is the next likely step in this whole mess?

For me it will involve paid reviews

You can get a few links in a paid review, and nobody has targeted them yet. Also, paid review links are lifetime links.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to create a set of algos to detect sites that sell text links, but since Google most likely hire rocket scientists, it was even more likely that one day they would be able to flag sites that sell links.

So here is my next prediction for 08.

Paid reviews will become more popular (early 08), by late 08, Google will try and ban or filter links from within paid reviews (but it will be much harder to detect)

By 09 the search engines will be like a social voting site. based on voting and social algos like Stumbleupon etc…

From the Psychic SEO

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How To Create a Robots.txt File

DeanHunt — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:30:19 +0000

Would you like to know how to create a robots.txt file for your website? Even better, would you like to know how to steal the best robots.txt files on the net? and how to hack into Google and The White house?

Ok, well read on…

Well first, I will explain what a robots.txt file is, and what it does.

What is the Robots.txt file and what does it do?

Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol.

It works likes this: a robot wants to visit a Web site URL, say http://www.example.com/welcome.html. Before it does so, it firsts checks for http://www.example.com/robots.txt, and finds:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

The “User-agent: *” means this section applies to all robots. The “Disallow: /” tells the robot that it should not visit any pages on the site.

There are two important considerations when using /robots.txt:

1) robots can ignore your /robots.txt. Especially malware robots that scan the web for security vulnerabilities, and email address harvesters used by spammers will pay no attention.

2) the /robots.txt file is a publicly available file. Anyone can see what sections of your server you don’t want robots to use.

So please don’t try and use the robots.txt file to hide private information or passwords.

Where should I put my robots.txt file?

It should be in your root folder. In other words, yourdomain.com/robots.txt

NOT: yourdomain.com/shop/robots.txt

Got it? Good!

How to create a Robots.txt file

Go to your FTP program or cpanel and create a new file. It should be a .txt file, and obviously, it will be named: Robots.txt

Once you have your new file you will need to edit it and add your rules for the robots to follow.

What would normally happen here is that you would get a series of complex rules and codes to follow, at which point you will more than likely be banging your head against your desk. But I am going to show you a sneaky trick to get a great Robots file in less than 30 seconds….

STEAL IT FROM SOMEONE ELSE

How to Steal Someone Else’s Robots.txt File

Step one is to go to church and ask baby Jesus to forgive what you are about to do, then, when you are free from guilt, hook up to the churches Wi-Fi (do churches have Wi-Fi?), it may be a more effective way of communicating with god.

Anyway, they key here is to find an authority website that uses the same platform as your site. So, for example, if you are using Wordpress, then why not copy the robots file from John Chow: John Chow’s Robots File

We already know that the robots file will be placed in the root directory, so we just add /robots.txt to the web domain.

Using the above example we have a great Wordpress Robots.txt file:

sitemap: http://www.johnchow.com/sitemap.xml

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /go/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /author/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /wp-images/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /backup/
Disallow: /banners/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /feed/

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Allow: /

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

We now replace the sitemap with our own sitemap, you may also wish to remove the disallow for Duggmirror, they saved my site once when it got Dugg.

Paste the above into your file and save.

Bam! You have a killer robots.txt file.

Here are some more interesting Robots.txt files for the geeks:

The Whitehouse Robots.txt file

The Google.com Robots.txt file

if you are really bored then you should read the robots.txt file at Webmaster World it seems to be full of stories, advice and articles…. weird.

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How To Get Text Updates of the Google Bot

DeanHunt — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:40:55 +0000

Tired of checking your Google rankings and index updates every hour? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get your server to send a text message to your phone when the Google-Bot is visiting?

Here is how you can do it:

if ( strpos( $_SERVER[’HTTP_USER_AGENT’], ‘Googlebot’ ) !== false )
{
// Send Alert To:
$mobile_address = ‘yournumber@txt.att.net’;

// Send Message
mail($mobile_address,’GoogleBot’, ‘GoogleBot is surfing your site!’);
}

Using a simple STRPOS to check the user agent for GoogleBot, if it comes back valid we just send the message. Now, each carrier has separate domains for their phone accounts. AT&T/Cingular for example use cellnumber@txt.att.net. Where cellnumber is obviously your cell phone number. Using this email address will send a txt message to your phone with an alert when GoogleBot comes to visit.

As seen on smmguru

Note: If you don’t have access to a mobile subscriber email account you can use an online gateway - http://www.txtlocal.com and sent a message to mymobilenumber@txtlocal.co.uk

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Newbie SEO Mistakes

DeanHunt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:58:54 +0000

Recently I did part one of my SEO mistakes feature.

Today I am going to look at another area that drives me loco.

Meta Keywords

There once was a time when you could spam a load of meta keywords into a web page and rank well, but shortly after this period of time the colour television was invented.

It really was that long ago.

Since then the meta keyword tag has become the ugly brother of the meta description tag. It is so ugly and useless than many experts don’t even bother using it anymore.

However, it seems some people are still stuck in the dark ages. They are spending hours panicking over their meta keywords tags… it is not uncommon to see something like this:

ok, maybe that is a bias example, and my lawyer has asked me to mention that parts of the above may be complete nonsense.

But you get the picture!

If you have to use the keyword tags (you don’t), then add 2 or 3 highly relevant ones.

Class dismissed.

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The Most Common SEO Mistakes

DeanHunt — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:50:42 +0000

There are certain things that I see in the world of SEO (Search engine optimization) that make my blood boil. Today I am going to share with you the noob mistakes that I see on a daily basis.

The Most Common SEO Mistakes - PART ONE

Ranking for a highly low searched term.

I see this all the time. People use this to ramp up the value of their sites at Sitepoint as well.

It goes a little something like this:

Noob: Hey Dean, I am great at SEO, I rank 1st out of 3 million results

Dean: wow, congrats. What is the term?

Noob: “Super Bloopers extra spicy widgets in the Texas area”

Dean: oh, you really are a dxxk!

Noob: 1st out of 3 million is amazing!

Dean: Do you know how many people out of those 3 million people WANT to rank for that term? one, you! How much traffic have you got from it?

Noob: er, I don’t know, how do I check?

Dean: arrrgggghhhhhh
(Dean contemplates suicide)

Listen, you can type a load of random words into Google and get 1+ million results, that does NOT mean that 1 million people are trying to rank for it.

Also, if your favourite keyword research program says that the term gets 6,000 searches per month, don’t take that as gospel. Use some common sense for once.

I rank for some keywords that sound useless, but they drive regular traffic to my sites. Rankings that don’t drive traffic are as useless as a solar powered torch!

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Google Loves King Kong’s Balls

DeanHunt — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:52:25 +0000

“I said get Ping-Pong Balls!”

Today I am going to be talking about misspellings and how they can boost your search engine traffic.

I tend to write quickly, this often means that a few spelling errors get through the net, but I have learned over the years that sometimes it can be best to NOT fix the spelling errors.

What???

That’s right, at times, a misspelled word can bring more traffic than the original word.

Why is that???

It is based on two universal factors:

1) Poorly words are easier to rank for, this is because they have less competition

2) We all misspell words

There are a group of people called “Black Hat SEOs” who use these two universal laws to their advantage. They use scripts to misspell words, and they get tons of traffic without doing much promotion.

I accidentally spelt a word incorrectly last month, and I had a ton of traffic every week for that poorly spelt word.

However, a quick word of warning from our lawyers: If you want to seem professional, then you should always use a spell check and ensure there are no errors.

On that note:

So let’s finish with a nice little poem about spell checkers. By the way, this poem gets through a spell checker perfectly without any errors, so don’t believe everything they tell you:

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect in it’s weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

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Avoid the Mother FxxKing Google Sandbox like an SEO Ninja

DeanHunt — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:49:39 +0000

Anyone who has created a website in a competitive niche will at some point have experienced the effects of the dreaded Google Sandbox.

“But Dean, there is no such thing as the Sandbox, it is merely a series of filters and trust rank algos that affect sites that have failed to build up enough trust.”

Shut up! Bloody nerd!

It doesn’t matter what we call it, the fact remains that it is as annoying as those tunes the customer service hotlines play whilst you are waiting.

In the giant battle of webmasters vs Google, the Sandbox is their nuclear missile.

However, today I am going to show you how to become an SEO ninja. I will show you the techniques that will make you invisible to Google’s nuclear radar. You will be sneaking your way up the “Buy Viagra Online” rankings before you can say Matt Cutts is a noob.

Are you ready?

Let’s go SEO ninja style.

Ok, so here is my technique to avoid the Google Sandbox: Act Natural!

Wait… is that it????

Yes, kinda.

Have you ever tried sneaking through airport security with 2,000 cigarettes in your suitcase? What is the key to not getting spotted? Act Natural.

Same applies to Google.

We don’t want Google stealing all our smokes, so we have to act natural, and in the world of SEO their are many ways to do this. So to explain things a little more easier, let’s presume that we have some sort of Sandbox fetish, and we WANT to get sandboxed onto page 60,000 for a crappy keyword.

Here is how to get sandboxed faster than Superman on Crack:

1) Build links from hundreds of directories: Well done genius, you may have gotten a few hundred worthless links, but you now have been sentenced to 9-12 months in the dark place. Building links from hundreds of directories is a clear signal to Google that your site sucks ass.

2) Build links with identical anchor text: So you want to be number one in Google for the keyword “Japanese Foot Fetishes?”, Don’t we all! But using “Japanese Foot Fetishes” for every back link will smell a little fishy. Think about it… if your article was randomly discussed by 1000 sites, would they all use the EXACT same link text? Of course not!

Some would link with just the www, others http://, others would add an “/” to the end of the url, others would not, they would use numerous different link texts, and numerous techniques. That is how things happen in the real world, so mix things up a little and learn how to FAKE being natural.

3) Over-use paid links: So you bought 100 links. Good for you. Do you not think Google is going to find it strange that 100% of your links are in people’s sidebars surrounded by other links, which then magically vanish at the end of each month?

Trust me, the staff at Google are deadly serious people:

They will kick your butt! So don’t go crying to Yahoo when they sandbox you.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah yes…

4) Overuse Article Submissions: do you think Google won’t find it weird that all of your links are coming from footer sections with identical content on each page? if you must use article submission sites then at least try to vary your footer bio.

5) Over using link trades: I appreciate it can be hard building links to a new site, so sending hundreds of emails to potential link partners may seem the only option… remember, act naturally. If 100% of your links are link trades then Google will smell your fear and will roundhouse kick you like Chuck Norris. My advice is to aim to do a max of 1 link trades per day. Don’t forget to mix up your anchor text either.

6) Use loads of duplicate content: I am not going to get into the duplicate content debate right now, but using blog posts from other people’s sites to make your blog seem more popular is not cool man. As well as possibly getting you shut down, it could be the fast track to the dreaded Sandbox.

7) Don’t treat the Sandbox with respect: When you hear the name “Sandbox” you think children, playing, buckets and spades. Google probably did this on purpose to lead you into a false sense of security.

This is your typical sandbox:

See that dog? That is Google’s filters. It all looks harmless enough…

But when the kid stops acting naturally, this is how Google looks:

Trust me, you don’t want to mess with that!

Summary: Acting natural is the key to avoiding the Google Sandbox, but I also believe it will help you with trust rank and your search engine rankings in general. So go ninja style and together we can avoid that mother fxxking Google Sandbox.

Dean

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Say No To Google Pagerank

DeanHunt — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:36:30 +0000

Over at DeanHunt.com there is a list of webmasters who are sick of hearing about Google Pagerank.

If you would like to join in the fun and get your blog/site linked to by hundreds of other bloggers, then follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Highlight the links below, right click, then click “View selection source”
Step 2: Paste the “Say No To Pagerank” list into your blog or site
Step 3: email me at: contact@deanhunt.com
Step 4: Get a mention and link here at DeanHunt.com and every other site that plays the game
Step 5: Update your list daily to reflect the new websites and blogs that join in

***
SAY NO TO PAGERANK, YES TO LIFE WEBMASTERS LIST***

Buzz Marketing Blog
Young Entrepreneurs Blog
No Nonsense Business Advice
Sell your blog
CS Developer
Aplliance Journal
Madkane Humor Blog
Find New Leads
PHPied
UK SEO Directory
Bikinifigur: Abnehmen ohne Hunger
Bob Meets World
BlueJar Webmasters Guide
All Sux Dot Com
CodingPad
The Next Post
Tech Blog
Reality Wired
Tom Wilson Google Blog
Price Filter
a few loose screws
Clickon Web Design
Woody Maxim
Crystals Quest
What Simply Works

***List Ends Here** - UPADTED DAILY *** Please update your lists

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Michael Anthony PPC Interview

DeanHunt — Sun, 06 May 2007 22:21:07 +0000

Will The REAL Michael Anthony Please Stand Up?

Today I am going to try and get to the bottom of something that has been annoying me for quite a while… If you are interested in Pay Per Click (PPC) then this could be the most important article you read.

For those of you who don’t know who Michael Anthony is, I will explain:

I occasionally post at the affiliate marketing forum a4uforum.co.uk at this forum there has been one member who has been causing quite a stir recently. This member is called Michael Anthony, and if what he says is true, he could be the key to making huge profits from Google Adwords.

However, Michael has split the forum into two camps with his aggressive style. The first camp believe that Michael is all bark and no bite, they don’t believe any of Michaels grand claims.

The second camp seem to like his no-nonsense style. They believe that Michael is a PPC expert, and that he is well worth listening to.

I am going to make a confession…

I was firmly in camp one for quite some time. But fortunately I was lucky enough to have a close business contact who had met Michael, he was able to confirm Michaels credentials. Today I am going to be interviewing Michael Anthony, with the aim of discovering…

Who is the REAL Michael Anthony?

1) Michael, what did you do before you had an online business?

I was a trader on the London Stock Exchange, then I owned a travel business.

2) You seem to have made quite an impact on the Affiliate Marketing / Webmaster forums. Is this something you are used to?

Making an impact? Yes, I speak my mind, and don’t need to be liked.

3) Could you tell us a bit about your affiliate marketing school?

As it says on our homepage, “The school exists to help improve both affiliate and merchant businesses and to ensure that all members improve their own lifestyles in any way they wish.”

I originally set it up as I was getting plagued by requests for help from forum members, who had read of my success on forums. As I was sending out the same advice again and again, it made sense to set up a website to share the advice for free. My Headmasters, the expert affiliates who help school students, are the affiliates who originally contacted me for advice over two years ago - most of these guys are now well on their way to becoming millionaires in their twenties.

4) Personally I do not use Pay Per Click much. Could you teach someone like me to start making a profit? And could you do this for any niche?

My Headmasters can teach anyone how to make money from Pay Per Click, but not for any niche. Some areas are so competitive, or the margins so low, that it’s uneconomic to use Pay Per Click to drive traffic. That’s one of the reasons that we have our Recommended Merchants at the school - to take the guesswork out of choosing a merchant to work with, these programs are tried trusted and proven.

5) What are the main mistakes that people make with Pay Per Click?

Where do I start! The biggest mistake is trying to rank in position 1, which is a certain way to lose money. Another is to bid on generic terms that convert poorly, and yet another is bidding too low. This is a huge subject, which is covered in depth in one of our forum topics called “Newbie Guide to Adwords”. Here are some of the main tips taken from that section:

* “The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.”

* Only use Google and Search Partners, NEVER the content network.

* Don’t target more than one country with the same campaign.

* Don’t use “accelerated delivery”, it just wastes money

* Ignore the traffic estimator, it’s wrong

* Forget ad position, concentrate on ROI

* Always use conversion codes wherever possible

* Monitor daily to start

* Kill non performers very quickly

* Don’t flog dead horses. If it doesn’t work after 3 days/100 clicks/£1-200 spent, it’s never gonna. Start afresh.

* Be very targetted in your adgroups.

* Keep adgroups to 20 or 30 keywords.

* Make sure you do at least 2 ads per adgroup, edit the underperforming one once a week.

* NEVER edit all your ads at once, (you will have no ads being displayed until they review the changes).

* When you find a profitable keyword, DO NOT tinker with it anymore. Let the good ctr and performance go for as long as possible.

6) How many staff /employees does it take to run the affiliate marketing school?

Just me. The headmasters help, but they are not employed by the school, they just take a profit share for the students or merchants that they recruit.

7) By all accounts, you are making a lot of Money online. (I have been to your private forum and see your own regular postings for amounts earned) Now, I can appreciate, you may not wish to declare exact numbers in an open website, but are you prepared to give any indication of level of income being generated by the business you set up.

8 ) What do you get up to in your spare time?

Kart Racing, gym, property, travel

9) Bearing in mind your phenomenal success, is there anything you would do differently if you was to start over again?

Be less cautious, and not have worked for someone else as I did during my city career

10) Whilst doing some research I stumbled upon http://lifestylemillionaire.com What can you tell me about this?

It’s a work in progress, which I hope to finish this year. I’ve read over 300 self help books and have found that they all lack something - they all value money rather than time. Time is the most valuable thing in the world, which is what my book hopes to get across - in a way it’s my version of everything I’ve learnt over the years, both from reading and personal experience.

11) Michael, you are noted for your “Positive Quotes” in Forum Postings - for example one I like is: “Rather than feeling that you’re about to have the rug pulled from under you, let me teach you how to dance on a flying carpet”

Perhaps you could let us have just a few of your favourite Inspirational Positive Quotes?

* Always do what you know you should be doing

* If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got

* If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re probably right

12) Do you have any recommended books, courses or resources related to Motivation / Business / Internet Marketing / Affiliate Marketing

* My own, of course!

* The Official Guide to Success - Tom Hopkins

* The 7 habits of highly effective people - Stephen R Covey

* Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert T Kyosaki

13) What would you like to be doing 10 years from now?

* Still healthy and fit

* Involved with business but not dependent

* 2 happy healthy children

* Life Family still together

* Lots of friends

14) For our Readers - what are the web addresses of your websites?

www.affiliate-marketing-school.com
www.lead-clearing-house.com
www.traffic-clearing-house.com

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