StuartLangridge.com

As the financial crisis has deepened it has become to clear to just about everyone on earth that too much debt is a bad thing. This applies to individuals, organisations, banks and governments. As ever more debt is being repaid, a very good thing, prices fall in a wide range of assets because of the downward pressure all those sales have.

What does that have to do with the internet?

If you are involved online, you must have been living under a rock to have not heard about the changes being made by Google to their search algorithm. These changes are being given cute names (Panda and Penguin) in the hope that stops the SEO community from finding their own names (perhaps Death and Destruction are appropriate).

Both updates have noble aims. The first, Panda, tries to weed out poor quality content from search results and remove much of the spam floating around online. The second, Penguin, tries to remove link spam (webmasters linking to other websites just to help them rank more highly). Panda treated me pretty well – my content must be pretty good on average. Penguin treated me pretty badly – my links must be much less good. Many webmasters have been hit by both. Being “hit” means that pages drop lower in the search results and less visitors go to the site – less visitors equal less money.

For genuine authority websites this is all pretty meaningless. If you happen to be the BBC or CNN, the number of pages and links is far too great for any real assessment and action, plus, they are able to drive much of their traffic from television and other places. Numbers may go up or down but finding a way to improve across the entire site will be near impossible.

For smaller sites this is all very meaningful. Small sites might have a handful of phrases and rankings from where most of their visitors arrive and by losing them, income may have slumped. I’m sure there are webmasters for whom these updates mean home repossession and career changes. Not nice.

As webmasters struggle to regain lost rankings, traffic and money, there are huge changes afoot online. Pages are being deleted or moved. Outbound links are being deleted. Emails are being sent to ask for links to be removed. The huge exponential growth of the internet might just be slowing.

Power And Money

If nothing else, these changes show the true power of Matt Cutts and the Google Anti-Spam team. Everyone has been playing a game whose rules are written by Google. Whether they play inside or outside of those rules, the rules provide some form of reference. Now as the rules move dramatically, millions (yes millions) of entrepreneurs and businesses are having to spend significant time, energy and money to continue playing. Mostly, we have not yet figured out exactly what we should be doing, so are working in partially darkness.

It also will be forcing many people to rethink their occupational choices. The internet (and Google) were the great liberators enabling millions of people to work from home, make their own rules and choose life. Since we all have regular bills to pay, there will be lots of people wondering whether they can take the risks they were getting used to.

Lastly, for those who still wish to work online or want to see their business continue, paid advertising seems even more important. Since Google is the number one location for online advertising, it could be argued that these changes are very good for business. Who knows?

Were They Right?

Something that we SEOers see again and again in Google updates is change. Generally, these updates seem to be set to 100 full speed ahead. Once they can see the actual results of their changes things are dialed down little by little, perhaps to 90 and then 80. As an example, the day after the changes I searched for “search engine” in Google. A link to the Google search engine placed at number 18 suggesting that their maths and reality might not be quite in sync. I just performed the search again and they have slipped to number 20.

If something so high profile can be so far out, it makes you wonder just how many other results might be wrong. Luckily for them, everyone knows to type the world “google.com” into their browser.

Here we are at the end of January and I am still pfaffing about trying to decide my goals for 2012. This is odd because I had kinda set my goals for the year back in November. Clearly something isn’t right about them or I wouldn’t still be thinking.

They take in the usual kinds of things, an income target, a few places I would like to visit, some specific projects I would like to advance and the like. So far, so very normal…

And then a couple of days ago I found myself reading this post by “Finch”. You may or not be interested in his travel plans, but one short paragraph really hit home.

“Like most affiliates, my gameplan for 2012 is survival. Don’t get banned from Facebook, don’t get sued for false advertising, don’t get swallowed up by the competition”.

Considering what has happened in the online marketing space in 2011, this is actually bang on. My goals for 2012 do this but without saying so specifically. They included several big jobs that will hopefully add new income streams from as yet unprofitable websites and traffic, moving into another online area entirely and working on making my current sites stronger and hopefully less likely to be dropped by Google.Ultimately, however, the maintenance and improvement on the status quo is the real game.

If, like me, you generate a majority of your traffic by natural search, then 2011 provides a number of lessons:

- Add new traffic sources where possible

- Improve the content on your sites.

- Separate out websites so that they are owned individually where possible (separate corporations perhaps?). Have less contact points connecting projects. This is something that builders and property developers have been doing for years to protect and insulate their real estate holdings.

- Manage accounts (especially AdSense) much more delicately. The days of just slapping some ads onto your page are looooooong gone.

- Monetise websites much less aggressively.

That is not a foolproof list I grant you. However, as the web gets steadily more competitive and it gets tougher and tougher for the ‘little guys’ to make a living, it seems reasonable to diversify and ensure there are as few single points of failure as possible in what we are doing.

Ensuring that we are still able to play the game – and be a little stronger and better placed – this time next year seems to be a very reasonable aim. Good luck to us all.

I noticed something in my Gmail account yesterday and it reminded me of a lesson I learned back in 2008. That lesson is:

Lots of things in social media “won’t make it” so try not to waste time on the wrong platforms and services.

I can recall back in 2008 spending lots of time on a number of social media platforms trying to understand which ones worked (for generating links and traffic) and which ones did not.

Two social bookmarking sites instantly leap to my mind. Both times I had been ‘building up a profile’, ‘being social’ and learning as I went. Then one day, that was it. They were offline forever. Their VC funding had run out and without it they could not pay the bills so the lights went off and the site went down. Permanently.

I can also remember working hard to build some landing pages for my sites on MySpace. One morning out of the blue, MySpace added an anti-spam buffer in between. In effect, the links were gone.

The lesson then is to only spend time on the big services with money.

Hang on! Wasn’t MySpace one of those? And the now dead Google Buzz too?

Yes they were.

For the last couple of years my rule has been not to spend (waste?) time on social media sites unless I absolutely have to.

And that includes Facebook as well. Something that people are learning now, as everyone rushes to use FB for business is that the platform is constantly evolving. This means that work put in to make use of a tool or service can be wasted when the tool or service in question is replaced, upgraded or becomes obsolete.

Remember ‘Groups’? I do. In the long run they were a waste of my time.

I firmly believe that if I had spent zero hours trying to make social media work in 2008 I could have built a complete online business using search engine traffic instead. Now that would be a 3 year old site with some authority, power and profits.

Beware of the social media time suck.

One of my outsourcers emailed me today. She writes for me and until now, we have had a monthly agreement for a pre-set amount of content. It went pretty well overall I think.

Anyway, she wrote to me explaining that she won’t continue the relationship because she wants to focus on her own business. Fair enough. Who can argue with that?

She wants to focus on her own PLR business.

What???

‘PLR’ stands for Private Label Rights and in terms of written content, it would normally take the form of an article written and then sold to a number of people. They have the right to publish it as they wish, so they can use it ‘as is’ or make their own amendments.

Under older versions of the Google search algorithm, this duplicate content was acceptable, then it gradually became more and more penalised.

However, in 2011, the updates known as ‘Panda’ have started penalising whole sites for one or more poor quality pages. Therefore, it would seem, that PLR is dead. Dodo.

I think it was probably dead in about 2009, but whether I am right or wrong about that, it is dead now!

Thus, it seems like an odd time to be focusing on a PLR business. Of course, the ultimate trick is not whether this content can rank in Google, it is whether the writer can find people to purchase it. I’m guessing that finding buyers is going to become progressively more difficult.

Just in case this is not clear, all those old PLR articles on your hard drive somewhere … you can delete them now.

Over the last few months I have been testing things on my Adsense account pretty hard. New content. Layout. A few colours. It is working well, but there is always more, correct?

A good friend, Ashley, suggested I make a change and opt-out of ‘interest based advertising’. I had thought that the oddities I had seen in my own adverts of late were geographically related – and they might be – but I was willing to give this test a try.

Suddenly – three weeks later – the bigger clicks are back. As a sidenote, it does seem to usually take between about 16 and 20 days for the changes I make to have an impact on the adverts being shown.

Yesterday’s whopper was £13.80. Not bad for one click is it? My previous biggest was £6.80, which I was obviously happy with.

Keep testing and keep tracking!

In December last I purchased a website. Since then I have spent approximately 1 hour working with it. Shameful I know.

I simply built some incoming links. In fact, I have spent so little time on the site that the previous owners AdSense units are still on it. Yep, really bad.

The site was purchased for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is in a niche that I would like to be involved in one day – health and supplements. Secondly, it was almost 3 years old. It has a little over 20 pages and I guess about 200 inbound links. Traffic was negligible and, one presumes, income even more so.

Those in the SEO world will know that ‘aged domains’ have earned a certain trust and a few hundred links – even low quality free directory submissions – have a certain value. I didn’t pay much for the site.

In contrast, a few months ago I decided to start running a few experiments with new sites. The first is in the ‘house and home’ arena. It seems like it might be interesting to compare and contrast a little because I think I have done just one or two things differently so far.

Health Site:
Now PR1. 22 content pages. Age – 3 years 6 months (to August).
Traffic in August was 19 unique visitors per day, coming from 65 sources (mostly Google) from 38 keywords.
It might be worth pointing out that when I bought it, it was PR0 and was generating a whopping 12 uniques per day. All I have done was build a couple of dozen inbound links.

House and Home Site:
Now PR2. 19 content pages. August was the site’s 3rd month online.
Traffic in August was 12 unique visitors per day, coming from 49 sources (also mostly Google) from 67 keywords.

Did you see that? Almost double the number of keywords generated traffic in a 3 month old site compared to a similar size 3 year old site. Is that normal? I’m not so sure that it is.

There are lots of other variables, I know. There’s no need to point that out. But ultimately, getting into the long-tail is not about keyword competition or the number of searches etc. It is about website quality and how Google judges that.

I know why it happened, it relates to my linking policies which are not exactly ‘the norm’ in the SEO world. I don’t plan to reveal it here either since I expect to have conference footage coming out soon where I explained it in full.

What I do want to say is that in my humble opinion, it is vital to observe, test and track online. If you aren’t doing that, you should question why you are in this business.

What tests are you running this week and month?

Over the last few weeks I have taken to listening to the podcasts at The Foolish Adventure while out for my evening walk.

I won’t lie, I’m enjoying their take on life and online business and agree with a lot of the things they discuss. I can recommend them to online entrepreneurs. Maybe even to you…?

Yesterday I was listening to episode 56, titled “How Important Is A Needs Based Business?”, when I heard something that shocked me. Izzy’s wife Noelle runs an online business related to scrapbooking. Until I started listening, I had never even heard of scrapbooking. Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure what it is…

Anyway, at about 20 minutes into this episode, Izzy says that he feels that “If he was starting today” … “we wouldn’t do scrapbooking” … “it’s too competitive”.

My mind essentially thought, “Scrapbooking! Competitive? WTF???”

In his defence, and this post is not meant to complain ‘cos I really do enjoy the podcasts, Izzy also said that he thinks that “the needs of scrapbookers are being met pretty well online already”. Fair enough.

My point though is that from my perspective, which has been heavily influenced by Tomaz and his keyword research methods (using SBI’s tools), scrapbooking looks to be a pretty open niche! I have seen much worse and regular readers will know that I am competing in much, much worse.

Using Tomaz’s 500/500 criteria for generally checking a niche out, there are 96 available keywords and using 1000/500, there are still 45 keywords. Plenty of niches do not look so good! And, of course, this is before his ‘cherry picking’ is used to weedle out the best 8-12 keywords from 8-12 related searches.

Now if an expert thinks that the needs are being met, it might be best not to rush headlong into this. But it does lead to a specific question…

If a niche like this is “full” and the needs of visitors are being well met, where is left for a newcomer to build an online content business? Certainly not “investing” or “stock market” like I am in, but any others?

Whatever you do, don’t answer below! If you know the perfect niche, keep it to yourself and get started. Don’t tell the rest of us

In my last post (here), I highlighted the value of good quality equipment and just how inexpensive it is these days, if you want to use video in your online business.

The above photograph – and I took many others just like it – was taken last weekend on a boat trip around the Grand Harbour in Malta. It was taken with the same camera that I was raving about last time.

The point, other than to post a nice picture, is to remind us all the value of using high quality images on our websites as well – and just how easy they can be to take.

We are all top line publishers now … if we want to be!

Of course, those that know me well know that I am not someone that uses images much on websites. This is something I hope to change. One cool gadget is all it takes

Do you use video in your online business?

If not, could you?

I ask because the last week has reminded me just what is possible these days with online video. It’s amazing just how far online video has come in such a short time.

Over the past three years, I have been involved in conducting upwards of 200 interviews. These were initially forced upon me by a previous employer. I wasn’t too pleased at first and it was a steep learning curve in terms of both technology and policy.

Suddenly, I needed to be competent and knowledgable in a wide range of European policy matters. This did lead to some farcical situations. For example, I can recall being given literally 1 minute of notice before I had to interview the leading trade unionist in Turkey. What do I know about Turkish trade unions???

But it quickly opened up a wide range of opportunities. I have interviewed a Nobel Prize winner, a Dutch prince, a number of former Presidents and Prime Ministers and lots of other politicians and government ministers. When combined with my EU policy blog, I can open lots of doors for access now.

Anyway, last week I conducted several policy interviews here in Malta with my newly upgraded equipment. The results amaze me.

I have upgraded to a Sony AVCHD camera / camcorder which I bought in the UK for a touch over £500 and an Audio Technica ATM610 microphone (with phantom power) and a heavy duty cable that I bought for about £140.

I bought the camera on the advice of a friend that works in TV and then had to shop around for a mic that would be suitable for interviews.

My friend tells me that the camera is the 2nd best for stills and the 3rd best for video that Sony has on the (home use) market. He also tells me that this technology is roughly equivalent to a broadcast TV camera of about 7 years ago. Just much cheaper and a heck of a lot smaller!

What does that mean?

The video below was shot last week. The subject matter might not be overly interesting to you, but take a look at the picture and sound quality. All that for under £700. Content creation is getting easier and easier… Could you use high-quality video in your online business?

EESC Vice President Anna Maria Darmanin

This week has reminded me – yet again – about the power that we wield as internet publishers.

Specifically, I interviewed – in writing – the President of the Committee of the Regions. For those that don’t know, this is one of the institutions of the European Union. I am the first blogger to interview someone at President level about EU policy. You can find the interview here.

What always amazes me is the access.

In full disclosure, I have interviewed President Bresso once before in an official capacity, but I did not try and pull any strings to get this interview. I looked online for the right contact people, introduced myself and my blog and asked. As simple as that…

It does help that I have interviewed a number of other people for my blog, because of the credibility it provides, but otherwise I did not do anything special.

To be honest, this is easier with blogs. In certain circles – and largely because of the influence wielded by the US political blogosphere – people often say that they want to ‘connect more with the blogosphere’. They do not generally say that they want to connect more with ‘static sites’, but that is simply trend related.

But still, I am just me. Nothing special. Why should I have access to interview Presidents?

Because of the power of the internet. Its a beautiful thing!!

My motivations for blogging about EU policy matters are not all that obvious, even to me. I do not get paid for it. And I don’t really see how it might lead to a job (because I don’t want one!), but it does help to open doors to occassional consulting gigs and a little travel within the EU now and again. So I keep going…

However, I do feel that my blogging gives me the opportunity to be all that I can be, to punch above my weight if you will. This is a little Jonathan Livingston Seagull I admit, but I feel it.

Can you use the power of the internet? I don’t know what field you are in, but there are almost certainly people in that arena that are experts at some level and are wondering just how they might become better known and ‘influence the debate’ (as they say in politics).

The eurosphere is actually still quite young and small. It is about politics and policy, so everyone really wants their opinion to be heard. Possibly the only difference with my blog is that I recognise that a great many people should be listened to ahead of me! So why not help them have that voice?

My first two interviews were actually a stroke of luck. I was asked rather than the other way around. They went quite well, the people were interesting and I learned something. From there I tentatively asked two more people that I knew, and they very gamely agreed. Gradually it gathered it’s own momentum.

As time passes, and as I rack up more and higher profile interviews, it becomes more likely that people will say yes. Which in turn provides even greater access in the future.

These are not people that will see me as equals. We are not equals. Yet, in time, I have hopes of being one of the main EU policy bloggers and this is certainly one way of realising that aim.

What can you do to help your online business? Who can you speak to to help? If you have an audience already, you are more than halfway there.