Web Design
New Internet Marketing Goals
I’ve been doing Internet Marketing for a long time. I got really serious about it back in March of 2009 and I’ve done pretty well at it. It’s fun for me. I like figuring out puzzles, which is why I’m into Bejeweled Blitz and those types of games. They’re really fun for me because I get to figure out the strategy to them.
With Internet Marketing, I have some new goals now that I’m going to work on this year (a little now and more once ski season is out of the way – and I’m not saying I don’t like skiing or don’t want to do it… it’s the opposite – I like it so much that I make a lot of time for it).
Here are my goals for this year:
- Set up more niche websites using the TKA method.
- Set up more authority websites using the Secret Web Assets and SocialMonkee methods.
- Publish more content on my existing niche websites.
- Work on more video tutorials for another website I’m working on.
Last year, I kind of took a short break from all this stuff and just sort of let things sit. I did some work on sites but not much. They still did alright, which was cool but now I’m planning on getting really into things again.
My main goal with everything (all 4 things above) is to work on and create quality content and websites that will pass the test of time. I’ve seen how owning quality websites that rank well is owning assets. The best analogy is to compare it to real estate.
Top Ranking Websites are Like Real Estate
When you have a website that ranks well and when your goal is to run Google AdSense ads or do link building, then that’s like owning an apartment building. If you have an ideal location that people like, you’ll get top dollar rent from your tenants. They pay the going rate because they want to be there. If your website ranks well and is in a location where people want to be (at the top of the search engines), then you’ll get advertisers paying top dollar for ads and clicks.
My goal, then, is to have a whole bunch of these properties… which are assets. They grow in value and it’s your money making money – versus a liability where you pay out every month. The more assets you have, the more wealthy you are (wealthy = having your assets pay you more than your monthly expenses). Instead of buying property (eventually I will), I have virtual property on the web.
Last Goal
And then one more goal I have this year is to build my WorldVentures team. Getting discounts on travel and going on these awesome vacations will be fun. I can’t wait to build a team and help people financially. I’m going to dedicate a lot of time toward this.
-Tony
Google’s Disavow Tool
This is interesting.
If you have bad links (or what you think are bad links – not everyone is thinking correctly when they do this review) pointing to your website, you can now disavow them.
“I never knew ye!”
If you want to start disavowing websites, then there are some things you should know before you get the axe out:
- What is the Google Disavow Tool? (googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com)
- Google’s Disavow Tool – Take a Deep Breath (seomoz.org)
Maybe all these requests to remove links will stop.
Link Evaluation
I’ve seen a LOT of website owners go absolutely nuts trying to remove links. Is this a good idea? Well, it depends on what you’ve done. If you did WAY too much link building that didn’t look natural, then maybe you should spend your precious time trying to remove links.
Personally, I think that’s a waste of time. Instead, what you can do is spend more time getting VERY good links. Do guest blogging and write stellar articles on other websites – ones that would naturally get incoming links because they’re just so darn good. It would be much better to do that, I think. You would essentially be justifying these other links. In the end, I’d think you’d end up stronger.
-Tony
Related Search Terms:How to Survive Hosting Downtime
This is something I posted at Webstix but I thought it was something worth posting separately here. There are ways to minimize damage if your website hosting fails. It’s best to have some (most) of these things set up ahead of time. Once the website is down, there’s not much that can be done.
Tips to Survive Hosting Downtime (Webstix.com)
If you want to survive your website and email hosting not working, there are some things you can. Here are some tips:
- Have a backup email account.
I like GMail. I forward all emails I get to GMail. This protects me in case my laptop decides to die as well.- Tune your DNS records.
Set your MX (email) record in your DNS down to 1 hour (the “TTL” or “time to live”). This record is not like a website (“A” record) where it needs to be set high to have the website load faster. Email can take a few seconds longer. If you do this, then you can easily redirect your email to another host if necessary.- Have other means of communication set up.
This is where a Facebook page and Twitter account can come in really handy.- Have an updated list of your clients ready.
Have your in-house system / CRM up to date so that if your website and email are down for an extended amount of time, you are able to use another email accout (that GMail.com account I mentioned) to send out a note saying how people can contact you.- Set up additional DNS servers with another host.
One reason there could be an outage might not be the web servers themselves but it could be a DNS server failure. That’s why there are typically 2 servers listed. You can have more than that though. Set up 2 more servers that check the main server (automatically) and copy what’s there. Have these set up at another host. What will then happen is, these backup DNS servers will take over if the main ones go down.- Check your domain name information.
One reason your website might be down might not be the hosting at all. Your domain name might have expired. If you didn’t get an email notice about it, then maybe the email address used to register your domain name is not correct. Check to make sure it is. Domain Registrars send out a message once a year asking you do to this. Worst case, your domain name is not even registered to you or your company. Make sure it is is your name – not in the name of your website developer. We never do this.If you have these measures in place, then you should be able to better manage crisis situations like this. When you fail to plan, you plan to fail, right?
Website Monitoring
Of course, you might not know your website is down unless you have a website monitoring service. What they do is check for a word or phrase on a web page (your home page for example) on your website every 5 minutes. I use one called Site Up Time and I like it a lot. I can have messages sent to my phone (text/SMS) or an email address.
Website Mirroring
And then one more thing to do would be to set up a mirror. A website mirror is basically a copy of your website on another server. Sometimes they are used for staging purposes but are mainly used as a backup or another server that can be switched to (sometimes automatically) if another server goes down.
I could not find anything good as far as a website mirroring service out there. They must exist. Most of what I found was instructions on how to do it. It’s something you could pay someone to set up easily enough. If anyone knows of one, please post it in the comments area below.
-Tony
WP-Robot Review and Promo Code
A WP-Robot Review
I’ve been using the WordPress plugin WP-Robot for a little while now. I thought I would write up a review of this product since I have used other autoblogging type systems before (like WP-o-Matic and others).
Setup is rather simple. It installs like other WordPress plugins. I bought the developer edition. After install, it prompted me for the email address used so that my license could be applied. I then proceeded to the configuration options and to set up a campaign.
What’s really nice in the options is the help/tips that are there. Other programs will say that you have to register for an API somewhere and leave it up to you to find out where that is. With WP-Robot, the help mouse overs contain links of where to go to get the API key. This really speeds up campaign creation.
I personally like using Yahoo Answers for creating websites about a specific topic. Google seems to pretty much like those kinds of sites, too – even though you’re reusing content (so far, anyway). I was able to set up several of these sites (or replace the old tool I was using) very quickly. The new ones I made are already getting traffic. Pretty amazing.
In addition to just using Yahoo Answers, I’m now able to mix in Amazon products and eBay auctions on items related to the topic of the website. Images are imported from Flickr, too, which make the posts look even better. I like the flexibility of changing what are called "templates" within the system so that my WP-Robot sites don’t act and work like all the other ones out there.
Probably the most impressive feature of WP-Robot was not the software itself, it was the support that I got. I sent in a question to the developer and although it took him a little while to get back to me, I could tell that my issue stayed on his radar and he wanted to make sure every customer of his was taken care of. Since that was his goal, it’s really no wonder why it took a little while to respond and that’s perfectly fine.
The software is also very bug free. It’s well written and I can tell since I’m a programmer and website tester. You’re paying a bit for this software but it’s quality software and you’re getting good value.
If you are interested in WP-Robot, then I do have a promo code that gets you a $40 discount on the full version – use the WP-Robot promo code: TONYHERMAN
-TH
Thanks, Matt!
I just noticed that Matt Cutts replied to my tweet to him back in December – this kind of made my day:
I’m trying to get back into Twitter again.
-T
