Brian Mark - Guitaraholic

Well, the Dave Pasternack SEO contest is almost over (thankfully), and there are lots of great ads. One even made it to the "Bonus" above the organic listings. These are some of my favorites, with links for my real favorite ads. Houston We Got a Problem Might Not be Rocket Science But Don't Trust Your SEO to Amatuers www.Wolf-Howl.com Nice one. Truly enjoyable. For top rank on Dave's name, it's anybody's game. For Insurance & Loans, It's SureHits www.SureHits.com Sure... and for Toilet Paper it's The New York Times. This one wasn't really a fav, but wasn't as bad as a few that didn't make the list. A Pasternack Tale Dave says PPC is the way to go, but I can rank high with quality SEO. www.top10seotips.com No way... you can rank high without spending money? Well, isn't that what the whole point of this contest was? SEO's wanted to prove they could outrank Dave for his name... so where's your site in the list? SEO Rocket Scien...

Every time I go to SES, I end up talking to Todd . Lately, I've also been talking with Rand , Ken (some guy), and Todd . What do the first two have in common that the second two don't seem to buy into as much? Linkbait. Todd and Rand are two very good writers, and the linkbait they produce is second to none. Ken and the other Todd seem to use more traditional SEO methods, although they're not totally ignoring linkbait. Nor are they ignoring rankings. I guess what it comes down to is this: Do you want to do linking strategies, or do you want to be creative and have links show up because of some (interesting / controversial / insightful) content? Either one takes work. So what type of linkbait could we come up with for power tools? Something viral, like doing stupid things on video with power tools, would obviously attract some attention. Buying guides and hands on stuff seems to get minimal attention, although they do bring a few links if done well. I've got a couple i...

My ego got a boost at SES this time (not that it really needed that - ego's don't sell products) when I was called a "True SEO RockStar" by an SEO RockStar . It's rather nice getting noticed by some of the people in the industry, and really validates what I do on a daily basis. Some other take-aways from SES so far. There is a lot of money in domain brokering. I heard about a .net domain that a guy bought for $149k. He also has a domain that is related to our space that he scored that has had multiple offers that he's rejected thrown at him. Podcasting isn't just for playing with any more. It's a real medium that even some nuts-and-bolt sellers are using to increase sales. Very few online businesses can do $1M/month in sales. According to a source, even the Nike.com's of the world fall short of that mark, making what I'm doing at ToolBarn even more impressive. I guess what people have been saying for years is true - the Internet creates a level...