The PPC Queen Gets Reviewlicious
My friend and ex-workmate, Anita Chaperon (PPC Queen), has just launched her long awaited (by me anyway) website called “reviewlicious“. After deciding to leave our SEO Mafia group, Anita kept tight lipped about her new venture – even after we sent the boys round.
Opening it’s doors earlier today, the site takes a new spin on the previously stagnant world of “squeeze page” internet marketing. With “Get Rich Quick” SEM and Affiliate e-books getting quite a grilling recently on forums and blogs, reviewlicious tries to level the playing field by introducing Social Media style ratings and reviews for online marketing products and services. Despite only just getting started, the site already features reviews for products ranging Aaron Wall’s SEO Book to keyword research service WordTracker.
An interesting section will be the Case Studies area, which currently appears to be aimed at offering “How To” guides. I’d personally like to see this develop into showing how real people used a product/service listed in the Reviews section and how/if it helped them.
Go check out the site and come back regularly, as I see this site growing in information and features very rapidly.
Oh, and talking about new sites – Lisa Ditlefsen has also launched a new blog at SEO-Chicks.com with a growing list of female co-bloggers. If you think I’m evil, wait until you see this lot at work. 
MSN Joins Retro SEO Club
A while ago, Ekky and I coined the term Retro SEO after finding several high profile websites using SEO techniques previously confined to the history books.
I’m pleased to announce that #3 search engine MSN has joined this prestigious club with their UK loans page. The Retro SEO judges especially liked the use of keyword spamming in the page title with: “Loans | Loan | Car loan | Consolidation loan”. We were also delighted to find a keyword list at the bottom of the page and some beautiful optimisation for “Compare … Loans”. This latest attempt at Non-Best Practice SEO comes after their “Search And Win” campaign last year which used hidden text and keyword stuffing on the landing page.
Sadly this probably would actually benefit you if optimising for MSN search results.
Certificate and membership card is in the post lads 
Becoming SEW Forums Editor
It was officially announced yesterday that Elisabeth plans to step down from her role as Editor at Search Engine Watch on Friday, to concentrate on her new career in the travel sector. I couldn’t believe it when I was first told over the phone, although the reasons for her departure became clear to me when I found out about the fantastic oppurtunity ahead of her. I’ve had the honour of sitting on SES conference panels, which Elis has moderated, and the passion and knowledge she has shown for the travel vertical is unequivocal. There’s no doubt that Zonder will be a big hit with her on-board to manage their online marketing.
Elis was the person who gave me the oppurtunity to moderate on SEW, she also provided the solid backbone from which the forum grew and that the moderators took inspiration from. Her senior role at a promising start-up will no doubt require a lot of time and work, although I have been told that she will still be hanging out in the forums when she can – just not so prominently.
After chatting with Rory (MD at Incisive) and Rebecca (Editor-in-Chief of SEW/ClickZ), I was thrilled to be offered the chance manage the Search Engine Watch forums after Elisabeth’s departure. As Elis said, the forum is her baby, and I really appreciate that she is entrusting it to me.
I officially begin my role as SEW Forums Editor on Monday and am currently building a list of ideas for how the forums could evolve. Hopefully my close proximity to Incisive Media’s headquarters in London will aid in progressing the development of the site. If you’ve got idea’s of your own for the forum, I’d love to hear your suggestions 
Oh, and you know where to go when looking for vacation rentals now, don’t you!
SEO Book bidding on SEOmoz
I was doing a quick Google search to try any find some info about an SEOmoz party for SMX Seattle that I’ve heard rumours about. I’m not a Premium Member mozzer, but was thinking of trying to blag my way in
When running the search I noticed that Aaron Wall of SEO Book was running a PPC ad on the name ‘seomoz’ term. Not unusual in itself although the ad copy is a little harsh!
Don't Leave Footprints In The Sand
When Matt Cutts writes a blog post about Google rather than his evil cats, it can often be a warning shot before a glitch in the Google matrix occurs. The latest of such posts has informed people how to report paid links and stating that his team were testing new filters to detect them – something which caused a bit of a stir in the SEO community. No need to panic though unless you’ve been a plonker with your SEO; you haven’t been a plonker now have you? read more…
Hacking Your Way To Number One
With the verticals that I work in, you tend to find the most aggressive forms of SEO – often by affiliates using techniques that the brands themselves would never dream of experimenting with. This goes further than the everyday world of Black Hat SEO, to a place where the lines of ethics and morality really do become blurred. The topic often crops up in SEO forums and blogs, although few people seem to know how it’s done. So let’s explore a couple of ways in which a spammy page on a trusted domain can rank top for a competitive search term.
evilgreenmonkey eats SearchMarketPro
After receiving some wise advise from a friend, I’ve taken the step to move all of my search ramblings under my evilgreenmonkey brand. SearchMarketPro and Ecommerce-Weekly will both be moved into evilgreenmonkey, which should mean more content in one place.
Sorry for the lack of newsletters so far, I’m currently working on some big projects which I’ll let you all know more about a little later. Those on my mailing list should be getting some more ramblings from me (and Guest Authors) very soon.
The projects I’m working on basically involve some Affiliate Marketing (thanks to help from Andre), and also coding a new web analytics software in PHP aimed purely at SEMs. The app will include the usual visitor reporting along with some more interesting data such as naming and tracking individuals (combine personal/order data with visit data), SEO competitor analysis, search result scraping though proxies and eventually PPC competitor monitoring. It will also integrate dynamically created robots.txt, block lists for rogue spiders/competitors and URL re-writes depending on who/what the visitor is. Any feature requests/suggestions are obviously more than welcome.
The Search Conference Groupie
I am a self-confessed conference groupie. Not only do I try to attend as many search marketing conferences as possible throughout the year – I also enjoy attending them and feel a buzz as the next event approaches. This may sound strange to some people, although I fear that I’m not alone.
After a job in SEM?
Standing tall above all others is never easy when looking for a new job, especially in a field as competitive as Search. One enterprising SEM has taken out a Google ad on popular SEO sites and pointed it to a Google skinned CV
It certainly stands out, but lets hope the Google lawyers are looking the other way.
Most site owners are constantly on the look out for ways to increase their online exposure. Increasing web traffic not only allows for higher brand recognition but also higher revenues. One of the most overlooked methods to achieve this, is to get content syndicated from your website and onto smaller sites or 3rd party aggregators. This provides targeted inbound traffic from the people who have read your content and click through to read more.
