Archive for February, 2007

I’m on a high, wanna know why?

Many of our existing clients have been increasing their monthly budgets…today alone we had 3 clients invest a lot more in our services than they had been investing. Here’s some additional that’s coming in for us from just a few days here:

• Yesterday once client increased his budget by a very large amount.
• This morning one client doubled thier monthly budget.
• And this afternoon another client doubled their monthly spend.
• I just got off the phone with another who is trippling their budget for one month, then doubling.
• Tomorrow I’ve got an all day meeting with another client who, if all goes well, will also be doubling his budget.
• Monday I’ve got another meeting with a client who might also be majorlly increasing thier monthly spend.

Please don’t think I’m bragging…though I have had a skip in my walk the past few days. I am happy, and I hope you don’t mind my sharing.

All these clients have been clients for between ~10 months to 4 years.

• One of these site has totally dominated his keyword industry for about 2 years now. Over the past year they’ve grown from 8 to 25 employees. They are a 100% online shop.
• Another of these sites is from a extremly knowledgable SEO….he’s awesome. He understand what we do, he can do it himself, but he just doesn’t have time. He’s now giving us more sites to work with. He’s a Ninja himself.
• Another one of these guys also dominates his industry and have just given us another site to work with.
• One client is a very old client with so-so rankings…they once dominated (Pre Florida), and are going from a tiny budget to a small budget (but I think I can get them back with this added budget…not too competitive market).
• Another of these clients also dominates thier industry. Their biggest competitor has tried to sign us on but we’re won’t work with competitors. This client has some really good SEO’s on staff who also work at the art of link building.
• Another client has several phrases in the top 5, but really needs more time ($) invested to crack the #1’s.

I think a large part of this success has been a mixture of increasing their rankings (which drives an increase in their ROI), as well as really good reporting and client communication from us to them. Most of these clients have been telling me that they love the reporting and new communication methods that they’re getting from us, in addition to the nice rankings.

We have 4 link building teams here. Each team has 4 link ninjas and one designer.  Clients are assigned to a team and they also communicate with the team leaders and have conference calls with the teams.  Each month we update the client reports as well.

I’ve got a sample monthly link building client report….it’s a bit dated (they’ve improved since Oct 06), but you can see we do more than just build links, we analyze several aspects of their website and backlinks and we provide a lot of solutions.

We’re also honest about what we’ve been doing with their time, as well as what ads we’ve been able to achieve for the client. I personally don’t know any other competitor who’s services are so transparent. 

And the nicest thing is that everything we’ve been building over the last year here has come together so nicely….personally I’m having a great time ….clients are happy, employees are happy, and I’ve never felt better…Man, I’m really feeling lucky!

.

I will be playing in the SEO Poker Tournament on March 24th at 4:00 pm EST.

as SEO Black Hat states:

It Costs Nothing to Join!

The SEO poker tournament is basically free to enter. You don’t need any money in your full tilt poker account. There are no hidden costs. All you have to do is agree to link to the winner for year from your page rank 4 or higher site. If you have a Page Rank 6 site, that link can be one off the homepage like in your “about”, “contact”, or “fun stuff” page.

Extra $5000 thrown in for Free!

Find our more and how to join in right here.

.

I’ve just spent the last 1/2 hour laughing my butt off….mind if I share?

I somehow stumbled upon a blog called "The Sneeze" put out be Steve ?

Full of killer funny stuff.

Check out this blog category called "Steve, Don’t Eat it!"

Here Steve eats: Potted Meat, Pickled pork rinds, Beggin’ Strips, Urlel-O’s from 1991, Brease Milk, Prison wine, and other strange "food" items.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten?

.

The biggest secret to getting your emails opened.
(underlying…. "how to get links too")

Spam Spam Spam - we get the shit every day - and tons of it. I spend hours each day weeding out my email.

To the simplest degree, when weeding through spam, the whole secret is finding what appear to be human - and written JUST for you.

Now imbedded in all my crap spam spam spam (mass emails or computer generated emails) are tons of "Link request emails".

Shit, if you’ve got a site, you get heaps of this crap. You do, I do, we all do……even that person you’re trying to get a hold of.

How many of us think when we’re writing to someone "I’ve got to create a subject line to let them know I’m Human, and I’m ME" - eh, sure, all internet savy people do…we do because we’re weeding through the shit too every day.

And ya know what, I can guess pretty damn good at just from looking at the subject line and identifying spam spam spam - and I bet other internet users are the same. Amoung spam from banks I don’t belong to, lotteries I won but never entered, the guy in africa who died and need help transferring millions of dollars, the Freakin’ "let’s trade links" crap….We can spot them without even having to open them…. Morons with subject lines like "Link Request" - ugh! Delete!

How many of us think "You Bastard, if you read my site you’d see nowhere for a "Let’s swap links" you #%@*&!"

Think it’s just you? - Oh No, it’s All website owners. The tipping point for this crap was back in 2004 - it’s worthless now from an SEO standpoint, and also from an email campaign standpoint - Big ole whopping failure all the way around!

Damn! Most of this is because of so many SEO people with only a little bit of knowledge (not rocket scientist yet) can be a really dangerious thing……and damn clients who dictate "Numbers, damn it, Numbers" (remember Chucks ole "pennies and Franklin’s")  - and can you blame people for filling the need of what the demand is for? How many of those sites succeed?…..

So how does this apply to link building you ask? Well…..
If you’re seeking links then you’ve got to send emails by hand that show that you are a human and you have something to offer. What you offer should be of value (resouce or other), and it should be specific to that person. (Short and to the point might also be a nice trait with emailing).

Emails that get through are ones that look to be from a human to me with thought.  I’d guess I’d be 99% more adpt to open and respond to an email that fits this criteria….

And ya know what? Writing real takes time…..yea Time! But ya know what, if you want your link stuff to stick, ya gotta go human.

And if you want to get your emails responded to, Ya better be human.

This afternoon I was consulting with a new client and going over our strategies with him. This client is in an ultra-competitive keyword industry and he was showing me how 6 out of the top 10 sites are using a counter program to gather tons of backlinks….shit, these guys have hundreds of .edu’s even using this damn stat counter program thing….

Then tonight I get another email from another client who sits at #2 for thier biggest phrase, when the guy at #1 is doing some serious blog "spamming".

Now I know the old advice is "Yea, yea, just hold on….Google will catch that stuff and boink it out one day"….but we all know that "one day" might be tomorrow, might be next month…might be next year…or might be never.

I know the first client told me the "counter stat" links have held these ranking for over a year. He also told me he told google about it last year, but my Don’t show your sites to Matt song wasn’t out then so Google also told him "hey you, stop buying those huge links next the gambling sites on those PR8 sites too" (this was not me….but once it could have been)….Google never did touch the listing for the "counter spammers" anyways.

Heck, there’s all shades of gray in the SEO world and just because their shade of gray is grayer than mine doesn’t mean I’ve got anything against them…shit it’s working…and for some of these phrases, I can hardly blame them for doing something that gets them to #1 today (if they’re not worried about tomorrow….when even that day comes).

Heck, I also know that some people are probably bitching about my work saying "those bastards are buying links!….their day will come too!"….I just figure my stuff smells better than most others, and that my stuff will stick longer….shit, if google’s going to bonk someone I’d think they’d take these guys out long before they’d touch my stuff….I figure (and I try to keep my stuff under the radar….and not to obvious to google…"is that really a link buy??").

So my advice still stays at "hey, if you’re thinking long-term, don’t play those games".

That the advice you give too?

Nater Tater Boykin

My wife was looking all around for Nate (our 3 month old) when she caught him at the computer just like daddy does when he disappears.

Were you looking for me Mommy?

I know for a few weeks we hit some bumps with some of our SEO tools, but most should be working pretty smooth now, and several got little updates as well (you’ll have to check them out to see the new changes (too many little edits to list)).

The only tool that sometimes gets stopped is the top 10 analysis tool, and if it happens just refresh the page and run again and it should work fine.

Come rediscover the We Build Pages SEO Tools - Free….to the public…..for now.