Banning A Referrer

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If you’re tired of getting spammed from a single referrer, rejoice. There’s no need to take it, and implementing a ban for a referrer is as easy as pie. That is, if you’re using mod_rewrite.

If you are using mod_rewrite, then you simply add a rule to your .htaccess files as follows:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} offender\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]

Merely replace the “offender” with the actual domain name of the offending website. Any referrer from that website will now get a 403 Forbiden message.

Problem solved.

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Google Crawl Rate Drops

Google is crawling the internet at a much slower rate than they used to, based on observations of data in Google Webmaster Central. It’s not on all sites, but I can notice a considerable decline on many. Google hasn’t made any commentary on the subject so far, but speculation is focused on several areas.

Possible reasons that Google’s crawl rate might have dropped:

1) New eco-friendly crawling schedule
2) Large infrastructure changes at Google (both hardware and software algo)
3) A big switch to using information gleaned from Sitemaps

I’m sure many other possibilities exists but all of these seem plausible, if not likely. Whatever it is, it comes on the heels of massive changes in Google’s program. Now is the time to remain calm and focus on core site metric improvement, rather than get bogged down in the meanderings of a third party.

Google is really up to something big these days. Hopefully we’ll all live through it!

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PR Sculpting

The idea of PR Sculpting has been in the “news” in SEO circles for awhile now. It’s not a complicated subject, so it’s understandable why people would go for it. The basic concept is you “sculpt” your PR through the careful use of “nofollow” tags. Of course, the basic idea of sculpting PR has no relation to the original meaning of nofollow, but that’s a story for a different day.

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Finding Technical Answers In Google

Google does a great job, for the most part, with many classes of search queries. But one class they don’t seem to fair well with is technical queries. I’m not sure it’s really their fault either, because they truly can’t understand the context of most documents they index. If you look for a very specific technical error, you end up at many of the same sites, with no chance of finding an answer.

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The Website Creed: Adapt And Innovate

The longer you sit around the internet, watching what goes on, the more you realize just how flexible you have to be to remain in the job. If you get bent out of shape by changes, you’ll end up burning out quickly. There’s no need to get emotional when you’ve built a business in Cyberspace. You’re alone on the frontier, with no map to guide you. That’s okay, with quick wits, well-honed instincts, and a clear business model, you can succeed. But along the way, you might just discover what I already have: I have to adapt and innovate, or I’m nothing but roadkill on the Information Superhighway.

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A Lot Of Internet Marketing Is Personal Marketing

The web is a great place for automation. When you start a website, you can easily envision how huge of a money making operation it will be. But you still have to get the word out, and try and market your website to everyone on the internet. It’s not easy to do, because the Web is a vast place, filled with hundreds of millions of functioning websites, with many being on the exact same subject. Unless you have deep pockets, or lots of friends in the right places, you won’t be able to launch big enough to catch everyone’s attention.

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Social Bookmark Links Are Overrated

I understand why people do social networking, and it’s easy to see how making the “front page” of a well trafficked social network would help a website. But the philosophy of “tagging” or submitting all of your own work to social websites is one I don’t agree with. First of all, it takes real time to do so. Secondly, the pages that link to you are of very low quality. Add to that the presence of the mis-used “nofollow” tag, and you get some very weak links.

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Making A Website Profitable

Making a website turn profitable is not as hard as you think. It primarily requires making the decision that your website is worthy of earning money, and a monetization plan that you can implement. All websites can earn cash, regardless of what subject they’re about, but certainly fields filled with active advertisers tend to monetize best. How can you be sure your niche is right? Using common sense, you can decipher whether advertisers exist for your website.

In any event, here’s what you need to make money with any website:

1) Cheap fixed costs. Look for a hosting package where adding a new website is not expensive.
2) A plan for consistent updates
3) At least three “partners” in revenue generation, such as Adsense, TLA, Kontera, Amazon
4) Your own PayPal account to sell ads to individual advertisers.
5) Decent organic traffic and strong search engine rankings

That’s it, folks. And believe it or not, you can get all of these “things” without spending a ton of money. It will take a plan, time, determination, and effort. But not as much of any of these as you think.

Just stay dialed in to fields that are actually growing, and you’ll have no problem at all. If you already have a website with a few hundred unique visitors a day and aren’t making money, you need a kick in the ass. Just add some damn advertising programs until your money goes up! Only stop when you’ve plastered so many ads on your site that visitors stop coming.

Once you taste some of that revenue, I bet you never look at webmaster-ing in the same light again.

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Return Of The Long Tail Traffic

The recent Google update that I’ve mentioned a few times in the last couple weeks is now starting to “firm up”, based on what I observe in my logfiles. As I’ve explained before, I’m not an SEO Scientist, but rather an SEO Chef. I don’t study SEO on a detailed basis, but rather make my moves based on observation. I’d liken the way I approach SEO to the way I approach driving a car: I don’t know how a gas engine really works, but it’s never stopped me from being a skilled driver.

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What To Do During A Google Update

The current Google update appears to continue on in full swing. I am seeing terms moving around like Mexican jumping beans on meth. Now is not the time to analyze what’s happening, or to make wholesale changes about what you think Google might like. Actually, it’s never a good time to try and appease Google, because what they like today they’ll probably frown on tomorrow.

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