How many times have you looked at your best keyword search result page only to find that one of your competitors has outranked you? Just how are they doing this? Is there something I can do to leap frog them?

I scratched my head on this issue more than once before I finding someone with the answers. I am talking about Brad Callen. Brad has some good material on how to determine what your competitors are doing to get those high rankings in the search engines. He has even written a tool to reduce the amount of manual labor it takes to figure it out.

His tool is called SEO Elite. This tool does many things that will help you rank better than your competition. I have purchased this tool myself and use it to get my page rankings up. With his tool, you can determine where your competition is getting their in-bound links. You can find potential link partners and send out email invitations to link with/to you. One of my favorite options is to see where my pages are ranking in the various search engines with a history of past performance. This allows me to see how my latest change to my page has affected my search engine results rankings.

You likely already know how to find many of the things this software will do for you. However, how much is your time worth? You can set this software to start the research and walk away. While you are away doing other valuable tasks for your business, SEO Elite will be plugging away doing the grudge work of getting you the answers.

There is one thing I wish Brad had done differently with his tool. That is SEO Elite is a windows only application. I run Linux so I would love to see a Linux version of the tool. But I do not think that will happen anytime soon and besides it does save me a lot of manual labor.

Tags: competitor spying tools

I don’t know about you but I get really tired of having to come up with blog content. I have been running several blogs for some time now and its always the same old, same old: What am I going to say today?

Well, it finally hit me one day, that lots and lots of quality content already exists on the web. So, I could help my readers out and save myself from the daily posting game by utilizing some of the quality content already in existence. Don’t worry, I plan to give credit where credit is due.

Now, I have decided to share this long awaited solution with you. I call it “PostScout.com Automatic Blog Content”. Ok, so the name was not that good but I liked the concept of this software scouting out quality content for my blog so I did not have to. However, this does not preclude me from adding my own articles to my blogs, but boy it helps fill in some gaps when I am busy doing other things like taking my kids to band practice.

I was listening to one of the many Internet Marketing Gurus the other day. He was talking about parked domains. He said that he has hundreds of domains that he just lets sit there and then when he needs it he can start using it with immediate results. By having these domains active, his domains become “seasoned” meaning that they has been around long enough not to be stuck in the search engines’ sandbox. The search engine sandbox is a penalty that some search engines apply to new sites/domains. This can prevent these new sites from ranking well in the search engine results.

Well, I got to thinking what would happen if we loaded our parked domains with a WordPress Blog and the PostScout.com Automatic Blog Content service? This would help our sites by offering changing content which will make search engines take note. Now, I am not saying that this will skyrocket us to the top but if that site is just sitting there anyway, why not?

So, if you are curious about this solution and would like to find out a little more, then visit us at PostScout.com and follow our link to our Automatic Blog Content service.

Tags: automatic content, RSS feeds

If you are reading this article to find out just how to make money with a website, I am sorry to disappoint you. I can tell you some ways that have not worked though. I am still looking for that magic formula when the money just starts rolling in.

Website Ads

During my time trying to crack the formula for making money with a webiste, I have tried Google’s Adsense, affiliate programs, banner ads, Amazon’s astore, and other avenues for making money. I can not seem to get the maigc formula where the money just starts rolling in like the jackpot on a Slot machine. I have, however,  made some money with some of these approachs. So, let’s break them down!

Google Adsense

I have had very mixed results using Google’s Adsense. Sometimes the fuse appears to be lite for some great returns while other times I think the wick is wet. First let me cover some do’s. Do be sure to make the ad either blend with your site or alternately contrast your site. Going back and forth between these method can help prevent ad blindness by your surfers. Make sure you adhere to the Google terms and conditions or else you might find your site in trouble. Leave your surfers few choices of outs other than ads on pages you decide to use ads on.

Now for the don’ts. Reading between the lines of the last statement on the paragraph earlier, do not put ads on every page of your site. I have found this to be a very bad idea. What happened to me was my Click Through Rate (CTR) dropped tremedously. The result of the CTR drop was that Google dropped my Earning Per Click (EPC).  Pick your pages to place your ads on wisely. The best way I can think of to accomplish this is experimentation. I have found what I call “leaf” pages (pages at the bottom of a tree of web pages) to be the best choice for ad placement. But that is me, you might wish to try your branches or main trunk (home page) depending on your website’s subject.

Affiliate Programs

The easiest way I have found to get into affiliates is through an affiliate service. I have used ShareASale.com with some success. Again, I get mixed results with my affiliates. One minute they appear to be catching on fire and the next, not even warm ashes. I have used the ShareASale.com datafeeds to keep my website up-to-date with the latest product/pricing changes of the various merchants. This feature made it easy to stay on top of the chnages. I also used PPC ads that I purchased to send traffic to my affiliate pages. This is one of the best ways I have found to drive traffic to your affiliate pages but it comes with a lot of attention. You must stay on top of your PPC campaigns or you can find yourself losing money before you know it. Just watch your Return On Investment (ROI) [in other words your cost versuses your income].

Banner Ads

Most of the banner ads (image ads) I have used have also been through ShareASale.com. I used OpenAds (now know as OpenX) to serve my banners and my Google Adsense Ads as well. It was a little complicated to setup but once it is up, it is fairly easy to maintain. Maybe I should do a future post about how to set up OpenX. I have had limited success with banner ads on my site. I am not sure if it is because of my website’s subject matter or I have just done a bad job of setting them up? Guess that means more experimentation is needed.

Amazon AStore

Setting up the Amazon Astore is a relatively painless operation. It takes a moment or two to get acclimated but after that, it a breeze. I rather like the concept of Amazon worrying with what sales and me concentrating on my website! I have attempted to integrate the Astore into some of my affiliate pages. Only problem is, noone is buying anything from them.

Conclusion

That street of gold still eludes me. If you would like to see my attempts at success, take a look as here is my site ConcerningAging.com. Maybe you will have some insights that can help us both out. Good luck on your adventure for the gold. If you would like to share with us, please add your comments.

Tags: website

Many times I find myself looking for applications that fit my need with a price that fits my budget ($0 most of the time). Sometimes I find applications that fit my need but not my budget like Microsoft Office. I hope you find these choices help you and your family out.

Word Processing

The best word processor I have found is Open Office Writer. This both fits my needs and its part of a complete suite of Office tools to help me be more productive. You can try this one out yourself by visiting their website at: openoffice.org

I have used this software for many years now and have found it most satisfactory. You can’t beat the price either as this is open source software and is free to the end user. They would certainly not turn down any donations, I am sure if you feel so inclined but use it without obligation.

This software also contains a spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel) and presentation application (like Microsoft Powerpoint).

Database

Sometimes you find yourself in need of some data handling capability. When my needs turn to databases, I turn to MySQL. This is a full featured open source software package (spelled F R E E – which fits my budget).

If you have a need for keeping up with the company inventory or contact list. MySQL can help you. If you tie MySQL to OpenOffice, you have a force to reckoned with. You can put together a professional looking data entry application in short order using these tools.

You can find MySQL through their website at: MySQL

Desktop Operating System

If you are tired of an operating system that:

• is under constant attack by mal-ware (viruses, spyware, worms, etc.)
• is way too expensive
• is known to take over your computer at most inopportune times (like updates)

then it is time to consider other alternatives for your desktop. Today’s Linux is not just for Geeks anymore. Liunx has come a long way towards becoming user friendly. Upgrades and updates are becoming just the click of a button and initial installation is now almost automatic.

One of the concerns about changing operating systems is always what software will be available to run. The latest version of open source applications (several mentioned in this article) are meeting the needs of desktop users everywhere. Besides, you can always dual boot your computer to use that one piece of software you use once a year that must run under a specific operating system.

You can find many distributions of Linux available. My favorite one (Ubuntu) can be found at this web address: Ubuntu

Tags: mysql, office, OpenOffice.org, ubuntu

Recently, there was an announcement on www.ubuntuforums.org warning users against malicious shell commands that might be run accidently by unsuspecting or inexperienced users. I wanted to spread the warning by posting it here.

For the education of Linux users everywhere, here are some common examples of dangerous commands that should raise a bright red flag. Again, these are extremely dangerous and should not be attempted on a computer that has any physical connection to valuable data — many of them will even cause damage from a LiveCD environment.

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Tags: development, system admin