Traffic Flow SEO

Going through the keywords in my web analytics program I noticed that month after month some of the keywords driving a large amount of traffic to the blog were around the phrases 'article spinning' and 'article rewriting'. So, I decided to collect all my resources for FREE article rewriting or spinning (whatever term you prefer) and create a single central sources for the SEO community. Below is that list for you to review. If you know about any sites or services that I may have missed please drop me a line or post a comment.

Online Service Solutions:

- Quick Content Wizard - site includes a rewriting tool and a content creation tool.
- Random Paper Generator and Article Spinner - pretty basic site, but may work for many.
- Free Article Spinner - good and fast.
- Article Changer - clean and professional interface.
- Free Article Spinner - basic, but does allow a density variable.


Software Solutions (requires download):

- EZ-Rewrite - useful and full featured.
- Jet Spinner - very professional, but free offering is very limited.

Good Luck and Happy Spinning!

I ran into an article on TechCrunch about the beginnings of the Internet and went to YouTube and found some fun videos you may enjoy...:-)

1981 primitive Internet report on KRON



Before the Internet: Online (was very purposeful)



and finally.....

1991 Compuserve Internet Commercial

A cool, free service offered from EmergencySoft is their search engine sitemap submitter. This online tools allows you to ping the 4 major engines - Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live and Ask (and data provider Moreover.com, which is a great additional benefit) to, as the site says to notify the engines about your new or updated sitemap file.

You can check it out here - Free Sitemap Submitter

Some disturbing recent news from Click Forensics for all those that run paid search campaigns. Here are some interesting bullets from a recent findings press release:

- The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1% for Q4 2008. That’s up from 16.0% in Q3 2008 and from the 16.6% rate reported for Q4 2007.

- The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, was 28.2%. That’s up from the 27.1% rate reported for Q3 2008 and down slightly from the 28.3% rate reported for Q4 2007.

- Traffic from botnets was responsible for 31.4% of all click fraud traffic in Q4 2008. That’s up from the 27.6% rate reported for Q3 2008 and the 22.0% rate reported for Q4 2007.

- In Q4 2008, the greatest percentage of click fraud originating from countries outside the U.S. came from Canada (7.4 percent), Germany (3.0 percent) and China (2.3 percent).

It seems like the battle against click fraud is growing and becoming a bigger and bigger problem for many people. Below is a heat map outlining where Click Forensics has identified threat locations.



While there is not a single source for bot or botnet traffic there are many flagrant sources that hide these networks and try to sell it off as legitimate traffic. Most of these networks parade themselves as second or third tier search networks. Some of better marketed organizations include:



What is interesting is that ABC Search says that it has search volume of 250 million plus searches a day (as per their website statistics - updated by the minute). While they do have some interesting partners like Yahoo (please note that if you dig deeper, this Yahoo partnership does not includes the US) and Ask which are both respectable partners, but they also have engines listed that were made with $20 PPC scripts with decent logos (no one would ever actually use Primo Search unless they were forced into it and accidentally typed something in). Redzee is also another engine that is an 'offical' partner and often sited for unscrupulous business practices (many times flat out called a scam) see Google results for a common search on, 'Redzee Search' and you will quickly see what I mean.

ABC Search Partners

So, where does that leave us? Well if these networks continue to grow and no one is actually using (or intending to use) them where does all this traffic come from? You decide.

My recommendations to combat this problem are simple:

1. Only use the big four search engines for PPC campaigns (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live and Ask)

2. Ask Yahoo, MSN/Live and Ask to only provide traffic from within their network and/or partners that do not include aggregators of second tier search traffic.

3. Use a third-party (trusted) click fraud monitoring company.

4. If you are in the US, ask for all Canadian traffic be turned off.

If everyone would do this it would go a long way in reducing the overall click fraud from bot traffic on the Web.

For more information on the recent Click Forensics press release click here - Industry Click Fraud Rate Higher Than Ever Reaching 17.1% in Q4 2008

For more information on click fraud in general click here - Wikipedia on Click Fraud

Also, just a quick side note to ABC Search. If you are going to claim that you are approved by 'ClickDefense.com' as providing legitimate traffic at least use a source that only identifies you as a client and bothers to update the copyright date on their site (last updated in 2005). Also, do you own this company? Disclosure would be nice as it appears to have been built exclusively for you.

Google recently announced their free Google Sitemap Generator (Beta). This new tool is a bit different than traditional offerings (free and paid) from third party vendors. Below is a little bit of information available from the site:

Google Sitemap Generator is a tool installed on your web server to generate the Sitemaps automatically. Unlike many other third party Sitemap generation tools, Google Sitemap Generator takes a different approach: it will monitor your web server traffic, and detect updates to your website automatically.

Google Sitemap Generator (Beta) is software that improves the ability of search engines to find the content of your websites. Once you install and configure Google Sitemap Generator on your web server, it analyzes the way that users access content, then builds Sitemap files that contain the URLs that you want search engines to find.

Google Sitemap Generator creates industry-standard Web Sitemaps and automatically submits them to the search engines of your choice. It can also create Sitemaps for Google's Mobile and Code Search services. In the case of Blog Search, Google Sitemap Generator provides analogous services, but rather than creating Sitemap files, Google Sitemaps Generator collects the URLs and periodically pings them to Google.

You can check it out, read more about it or download today by clicking here - Google Sitemap Generator

Just submitted a site to BOTW and they gave me a very weird 60 minute coupon. It provides 20% off any new listings as long as they are done in the next 60 minutes (it is currently 11:35am CST) - good luck and happy submitting!


Coupon Code: tm3z04

BOTW Coupon Link

While I really like online SEO applications, I have run across a great FREE tool for monitoring your Google rankings that is a quick download and provides some great looking ranking charts. It takes only a minute to download and uses almost no resources, so it is light and quick.

The software utilizes visually appealing graphical chart representations for positioning (previous, current and best) on keywords being tracked. The software uses mostly English, but does have a resource section (links to SEO news and information) that is in French hopefully that will not be a big deal for most.






Here are the feature list as per the website:

- Very simple and intuitive use.
- Follow the evolution of Google positioning.
- Software 100% free
- Simple visualization thanks to graphics.
- Very fast Update of Google positioning
- Light program, without installation.
- Includes an RSS reader & an integrated web browser.
- Website & RSS addresses simple to configure.

Check it out now at - FREE SEO Soft Software

Just found this new fun tool on the Digital Point Forums and thought I might share it with you. While not perfect, it is a pretty fun and free SEO onsite and off-site analysis tool with a great layout and design.

It checks everything from:

- Detailed site information
- Indexed pages within the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN)
- DMOZ listing
- Length of title tag
- Valid meta description
- Traffic to site
- W3C errors
- Google PageRank (PR)
- Site rank within Technorati
- Site rank within Quantcast
- Site rank within Alexa
- Site rank within Compete.com
- Links from Digg
- Links from Reddit
- Bookmarks on Furl

Check it out now at - SEO RUSH

While there are those that say pinging is a thing of the past, there are those that think it is alive and well and of great value to the online marketing of websites or blogs. While we are not going to jump into that debate now, I just found out that PingGoat is 'officially' dead and thought I would reach out to the pinging community with a list of additional pinging resources for their enjoyment:

- King Ping - Pings 60 different web services.

- Ping-o-Matic - Pings up to 26 different web services.

- Pingler - Pings up to 92 different web services.

- Autopinger - Pings up to 44 different web services.

- PingMyBlog - Pings 68 different web services.

- Feed Shark - Pings 36 different web services.

- pingates - Pings 59 different web services.

- Ping.IN - Pings 42 different web services.

- FeedPing - Pings 68 different web services.

- Ping That Blog - Pings 110 different web services (one of my favorites).

- BlogBuzzer - Pings 36 different web services.

- Feed Ping - Pings over 100 services.

Additional references:

- PingGoat - Dead link currently, but check back later as someone may decide to bring it back as it was quite popular before it went down.

- List of Ping Services - Great list if you want to do manual pinging.

HAPPY PINGING!!!

I may stand corrected, but I believe that most SEO/SEM professionals tend to not also be graphic artists and that leads to some really unsightly presentations. In fact, this lack of artistic ability can and often does create confusion in these presentations instead of bringing the intended insight (or sale).

Images like this tend to only confuse those who not as well versed with search engine marketing:




Where, images like these make it much more digestable:







So, if you are looking to 'spice' up your presentations with some free professional diagrams and images check out what Elliance SEO Services offers in it's free image repository. They have diagrams and images that cover just about everything you would ever need and are adding to the collection on a weekly basis.

Check it out here - SEO & SEM Infographics

Google recently announced that they have given up on Google Print Ads program. They announced it on one of their corporate blogs that even after getting 800 newspapers in the fold, it just was not hitting expectations and as of February 28, 2009 it would be shut down.

Yahoo, on the other hand also has around 800 newspapers within its APT program and it is reporting that they are doing quite well. In fact in a recent article in WebProNews it was stated that:

In fact, just a couple weeks ago, A. H. Belo became the first media holding company in the consortium to have all its newspapers on Apt. Other points of interest that Yahoo shared include:

- The cross-sell program (newspaper sales forces selling Yahoo! inventory) is seeing some good successes. Several newspapers have already sold $1 million in ads.

- The majority of the newspapers’ weekly sales revenue is now transacted on Apt.

- Apt enables the Newspaper Consortium to aggregate more inventory, and the platform’s superior behavioral targeting capabilities enable the newspapers to charge higher CPMs.

- Behavioral targeting has been accounting for a rising percentage of the Consortium’s total weekly sales, currently 70% to 80% of total sales.

- They’re also seeing a share shift to newspaper online ads, from outdoor and broadcast.

- Small newspapers are faring well, proving that ad revenue is not necessarily tied to circulation.

- To boost traffic to the newspaper sites, Yahoo! distributes local news headline links across our properties. The links take users directly to the full articles on the newspaper sites. As of December 2008, Yahoo! sends an average 17 million referrals a month to the 300 newspaper sites participating in the content distribution program. We’re very close to topping 200 million referrals. This means a wider local audience reach and more inventory for advertisers. A.H. Belo’s Dallas Morning News says that the headline placements on Yahoo.com can account for up to 27% of a day’s page views and up to 65% of a day’s unique visitors.

So, what does this tell us? It may just be a reminder that Google cannot guarantee success with all of their ventures or it may indicate that Yahoo may have lower expectations for their program or maybe, just maybe it says - one point for Yahoo. Game on....:-)

Reference Links:

Google says, "Turning the page on Print Ads" from the official Google Print Ads blog.

Yahoo says, "Yahoo Not Doing Too Bad in Newspapers" from article in WebProNews.

Just a quick heads-up that I have recently made some changes to the blog as it is becoming more and more popular (to date between 100-200 unique visitors a day, if you care). They are listed below:

- I am now allowing anonymous postings, but all postings will be reviewed before being posted and ANY posts with links in them that are not relevant to the post will be denied without any consideration for the comment content (sorry, but I can't stand the spamming).

- All posts will not have a visible link to any place that is linking to that post.

- Added the 'official' Traffic Flow SEO logo into the header (seems to look much better in Firefox than Internet Explorer - will look into that).

- Fixed the RSS feed problem.

I hope that these changes will foster an even better and engaging environment for the readers and participation on post topics.

While this may not be search engine marketing related (directly), it is an exciting day for me (and the world) and I wanted to share it with everyone for better or worse (hopefully most agree and it is for the better). I am a firm believer is CHANGE and am excited about the opportunities that the new Obama administration can bring and think the website is a small, but important reflection of the change that is coming.

Check out the updated site now at - WhiteHouse.gov site

For more on the Inauguration check out - Inauguration Around the Net

While looking at some new online tools I stumbled onto this great site to analyze who is actually hosting a site. I think this may be helpful for people who are looking for a good host and may want to check out who other people are using (especially if they are buying a script and what to see who everyone else is using as a web host).

Here is the FAQ from the site (for more information):

*** Why use Who Is Hosting This instead of Domain Tools, Netcraft etc?

Most webmaster tools struggle with one simple question: who really hosts a website?

Let's take an example. DomainTools or Netcraft might give you the impression that HostGator.com is hosted by The Planet. Obviously it's not - it's hosted by HostGator! - but they rent space in The Planet's datacenter/IP range.

Knowing the real web host is invaluable if you need to issue a DMCA complaint, libel papers or report a DDoS attack as a matter of urgency.

WIHT uses several data sources to provide more accurate results.

*** Are your hosting results 100% accurate?

As far as we know, there is no way to provide 100% accurate results. However, we use several data sources to find out who is hosting a website, including feedback from users. You can help by reporting bad results for us to investigate.

*** I'm pretty sure these results are wrong...

Most likely, it's because either:

1. This host is a reseller of a bigger hosting company, or they rent rackspace or an IP range. Our results may sometimes show the IP range owner (not the reseller), but we endeavor to identify both, where possible.

2. The site you requested changed their hosting provider recently and our data has not yet updated.

Found an inaccurate result? Please let us know.

*** I entered a domain, and got that same website as the web host. What gives?

This website is self-hosted, and the company responsible has their own IP range. Some common examples are Amazon and eBay. Unfortunately, we are unable to providemore detailed information about their hosting setups.

Check it out here - WhoIsHostingThis?



UPDATE! - 1/20/09

Found another great site with even more hosting detail information including maps and additional host location insights. The link can be found below:

Click here - Who is Hosting this Site - Khrido Free SEO Tools

I was happy to find an email today from Aaron Wall at SEO Book letting me know about his new SEO/SEM toolbar. While I am not a big fan of toolbars, I am a big fan of Aaron and his site, so I went to check it out.

After a few moments of looking through the capabilities, I downloaded it immediately and have to say I have NEVER seen anything like it. This toolbar literally does EVERYTHING! The list of features is so long that I am not going to even try to attempt to list them here, I am just going to provide link and let you check them out yourself.

Click here for the free - SEO Book Toolbar information and downloads

Ask.com has partnered with NASCAR and Hall of Fame of Racing to become the official search engine for the sport.

"As part of our strategy to go deeper into the highest-volume categories and provide the best answer, the first time, every time, we want to be the first place fans search online for NASCAR information," said Ask.com Chief Executive Officer Jim Safka.

My only question is why? There are millions on verticals that probably could drive more traffic (serious traffic) to the engine. Is it because of the NASCAR brand? What does that buy you, a little interesting press coverage?

I think Ask is an incredible search engine that is vastly overlooked by the masses for many reasons, but it is hard to keep up and try to figure out their marketing strategy as it is always all over the place and many times makes no sense at all.

I wish Ask would just wake up and:
- Provide more unique opportunities for advertisers
- Updated their PPC platform (come on let the LookSmart platform go already)
- Open up to the SEO community (indirectly that would go a long way to ultimately increasing legitimacy and winning over more search traffic)
- Provide more tools and insights (like Google Insights for Search or Microsoft adCenter Labs)
- Add unique information to search results (like Ask 3D used to - links, video, images, music)

While I do not really think that the NASCAR partnership is going to hurt Ask, it just seems like such a small win that it will probably not have a large impact on the overall search traffic and awareness - just my 2 cents, but I would have invested those bucks somewhere else. Good luck, Ask.

Link to official press release - Ask.com Enters NASCAR With Multi-Faceted Partnerships

Just a reminder - what you post can always come back to haunt (or help) you....:-)

Have you ever wondered if that site you are about to visit (or just visited) contains any malicious code that may try to infect your system? Well your concerns are over (hopefully, but if you are visiting many sites with malicious code you probably need some strong spyware and anti-virus protection also). Just visit Online Link Scan and type in the URL (remember to include the 'http://') and let it run a test on the site for you.

Check it out today at - Online Link Scan

Happy (and safe) surfing...:-)

I love nice looking and accurate free domain evaluation tools (as you can probably see from previous posts). I just found this on one a SitePoint Auction for on $14.99 and was thinking about buying the script. The demo site is located here - Check Your PageRank and offers a free look into any domain with very (currently) accurate results (including a descent domain value tool).

This site (tool) will evaluate (pretty accurately):
- Google PageRank
- Directory Status (DMOZ and Yahoo)
- Estimated Domain Age
- Amount of Traffic (Alexa and Compete charts and data)
- Social Bookmarking Status (Digg, StumbleUpon, Propellerand Reddit)
- WHOIS Information
- Amount of Backlinks and Indexed Pages (Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb
- Domain Value ($)

Check it out now at - Check Your PageRank

Microsoft has made some pretty large announcements over the last couple of days that have the potential to really have an impact on their overall search engine traffic.

- First, they are replacing (as of February 2009) Google as the default search provider in the browser and via the Windows Live toolbar pre-loaded on consumer and small business Dell PCs with the Windows OS. This agreement is for a period of three years and is similar to existing current agreements with HP & Lenovo.

- Second, Verizon Wireless has selected Microsoft to provide mobile search and mobile advertising services to customers on its devices effective the first half of 2009. The contract is for a period of five years.

Both of these deals follow the recent (October 2008) agreement with Facebook to provide integrated searches on Live.com into the Facebook search box for all US residents. This is a further extension of the partnership Facebook has with Microsoft that dates back to 2006 when Microsoft first started displaying their ads on the social networking site.

Watch out Google and Yahoo here comes Microsoft!

Google recently released a new, highly requested update to their Keyword Tool. Their Keyword Tool now has the ability to offer keyword suggestions for mobile campaigns. Just access the Keyword Tool from within any mobile-only ad group and you'll get shorter, mobile-device specific results. (Note that, at this time, mobile suggestions are not available in the stand alone version of the tool so you'll need to be logged into an account directly.)

For more information check out - AdWords Mobile Ads Help Center

It is not very often that you actually get a Google confirmation that their toolbar PageRank (PR) has been updated, but recently (actually December 30, 2008 at 10:51 pm) Matt Cutts confirmed that it was.

For more information and to see the actual Twitter comment from Matt Cutts click here - Matt Cutt's Twitter Comment

I thought PageRank (PR) was all but dead, but it seems no matter how hard Google tries to distance itself from its main ranking tool, it never actually gets that far.....:-)