Twellow, Twordy and Summize for Twitter!

The good folks over at WebProNews have introduce us Twitterati to Twellow! Twellow is the very first Twitter directory; a little overdue but none-the-less exciting to have! It launched just under a month ago and so far seems to have indexed just over 360,000 Twitter users. It's designed to aid twitterers "cut through the clutter" and enable users to find others with shared interests to follow and befriend, hassle free!

How does it work? Can you get listed? Want to check your listing? Well, great!

• Twellow.com snatches up messages from Twitter, analyzes & categorizes them. Thus making it simple for you to find users interested in like-minded topics.
• If you have a Twitter account (that is not private) you're probably already listed! To double check, simply search for your name. If you don't find your name visit their "Get Listed" page to get submit yourself.
• To edit your personal data Twellow recently added the Profile Editor option to their service. Verify your ownership, claim your profile and edit your name, bio, categories listed, location and url. (Twellows allows users to add themselves to up to 10 categories)

Subscribe to the Twellow blog to stay on top of new additions/changes to the service.

Also for fellow Twitterati! Have you tried to get your message to fit into 140 character limit yet sometimes you just can't? 'Tis time for Twordy. Say what you'd like and post it, a brief version will post on twitter with a link to Twordy for those who want to keep on reading! Easy enough for users to say what they'd like yet keep it in the short twitter format. Doesn't this go against the whole keep it short "micro-blogging" type of scheme that IS Twitter? Yes, but at times you need just a few more lines to fully express yourself!

Lastly, its official- Twitter has acquired Summize! What is summize and why should you care? Well Summize is a service used for searching Twitter and keeping up with 'trends' in real-time. For those who fell in love with the tracking option Twitter offered (I for one was addicted to tracking 'beta' updates) Summize will be an upgrade of what that tracking offered. The Summize merger now presents us with an official Twitter Search! If you're interested in knowing what 'iphone' conversations are taking place; simple enter your query and voila Tweets are at your finger tips! Look for more news on this merger or other Twitter news here!

Befriend Spiderbait on Twitter- find us here!

Technorati Tags: Twitter News, Search Twitter, Twitter Search, Twitter Tools, Social Networking, Mergers, Web 2.0, Free Twitter Tools

SMX Advanced 2008:Tips on Buying Sites for SEO

The session covering 'Tips on Buying Sites for SEO' at SMX Chicago 2008 reviewed the process of purchasing expired domains, contacting site owners, valuating sites and closing a site purchase!


Gab Goldenberg, Owner of SEO ROI; Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant with Stuntdubl; Jeremy Schoemaker, CEO of Shoemoney Media Groupd and Jeremy Wright, CEO of B5Media all touched key points regarding the "How To's" of buying sites for SEO.

Jeremy Schoemaker presented us with a video presentation. He reviewed the importance of finding domains that are expired but are also linked to from .edu and .gov sites. In his presentation he also highlighted the importance of dedicating a spider specifically for finding these sites and checking their value. Also, use caution when 301ing purchased domain names to your site; wait and space them out to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Jeremy Wright illustrated their metrics for buying sites! Capturing value is key when purchasing sites, therefore he says to keep in mind:

• We buy for eventual revenue purposes
• Potential, specifically unrealized potential is what we're looking for
• Core metrics: existing traffic, uniques, revenue, feed subscribers, Google PageRank
• Secondary metrics: age of site, "stability", age of domain, amount of content, existing SEO metrics, "staleness"
• Tertiary questions: Is it/can it be a blog? Does it cover a unique area? Does it add non-core value we can put a number to? Does it have a real rand name in its industry?
• Blog Valuation Calculator (internal tool, but built of our blog Modeling tool, which is public @ ensight.org)
• Compete.com (for uniques/traffic number historically)
• comScore (internal tool, measures our secondary criteria and puts a "multiple" we can run against our Blog Valuation Calculator valuation)

Jeremy also advises not to deviate from your playbook. If you are going to buy alot of sites, create a playbook to follow and don't deviate from it. Buy early, buy often and admit failure quickly. Lastly he reviews the importance of creating networks to compound value!

Gab Goldenberg, owner of SEO ROI summarized the principles, tursts and shared a brief case study for buying sites for SEO. Gab reviewed the importance of a sites footprint and how to identify/locate them. For example if a blog makes a post slightly off topic and ranks for those off topic terms then you know its high quality, learn how to check for blogs/sites footprints to ensure you get the most out of your purchase.

Internet Marketing Consultant, Todd Malicoat with Stuntdubl recapped the process of buying old sites.

• Contact site owners- be credible, brief and lucky
• Valuating a site - Check the domain, age, links, theme, traffic and revenue
• Negotiating & Closing a Site Purchase - Lowball (but don't offend), Get a price, Counter, Agree, Sign Agreement, Escrow Service and remember the Transfers (Files and WHOIS)

This post is based on notes sent by Dante Monteverde who attended SMX Advanced 2008 in Seattle.

Technorati Tags:SMX Advanced 2008, Buying sites for SEO, SEO Tips, Boost Web Traffic,

Link Building Techniques: SMX Advanced 2008

The session on Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques at SMX Chicago last week reviewed the how to build, attract and mold your link building campaign just right to better ensure acquisition of those ccoveted high valued links.

Over all Rae Hoffman (Todd Friesen), Sugarrae Internet Consulting; Roger Montti, Founder & Owner of MartiniBuster.com; Stephan Spencer, Founder and President of Netconcepts and Jay Young, Owner of Link Fish Media Inc. all hit key points regarding golden link building techniques.

Impressive Link Building Techniques

• Industry heavyweight backlinks: See who is bidding on Ad Words & do backlinks check
  

  linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "bookmarks"
  linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "links"
  linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "favorite sites"
  linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "your product or service"

• Take all you can get - even from those "Dot edu's" - desirable or not they are helpful!


• Search for Charitable Opportunities

  linkdomain:example.com site:.edu sponsors
  linkdomain:example.com site:.org donors
  linkdomain:example.com site:.org sponsors
  linkdomain:example.com site:.org benefactors



• Acquire links thru:
  - Big name Text Link Brokers
  - Blog Advertisers
  - Smaller, Specialty or Amateur Brokers

Link Bait - buy links to compete in highly competitive arenas, be relevant, vary the anchor text, do whatever it takes to get links!

Darker yet still effective methods to practice: Comment & Trackback Spam, Reciprocal Links, Three Ways, and Link Farms. (Note: Although this technique was discussed and may work we do not utilize nor recommend these methods because of the possibility of being banned by search engines.)

- Think outside the box
- Widgets
- Templates
- Template Sponsorship (Find a WordPress Template, sponsor it by having them embed your link in it)
- Contests (Offer a prize with the stipulation that the contestants must link back to you)
- Content trade (Offer to do articles for links)

This post is based on notes sent by Dante Monteverde who attended SMX Advanced 2008