Some people won’t use coupons, which I find so ludicrous. Really, why would one choose not to save money? I found a great source for online shopping coupons, and that is what I love about ordering things online - there are so many coupons available to ensure that you save money on your purchases.

CouponChief.com has hundreds of online stores in their system, all with several coupons and coupon codes available. With big names such as Best Buy, Staples, the Gap and Armani Exchange, the cumulative savings available on this site is impressive.

The online store I use the most is Staples, for office supplies and more, and they have a full listing of Staples coupons. If I want to use a coupon, all I do is click on the coupon I want, and then it sends me directly to the Staples website. When I have completed selecting my purchases, I proceed to checkout and the savings have automatically been applied to my total.

So check out this great source for online coupons at CouponChief.com!

This is a sponsored review for CouponChief.com

Posted: July 1st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

Yipee! I have won my own copy of Secrets of Successful Blogging from MattHuggins.com. The winners of his business book contest have been announced, and I am among those to receive a book.

I am very excited to read this book by Ted Demopoulos, and according to Matt it is a great resource for bloggers, giving them insight that can only be gained through experience.

To Purchase Secrets of Successful Blogging

Thanks Matt for hosting this great contest! Check out Matt Huggins’ blog to learn all about making money from your blog.

Posted: July 1st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 4

While reading Mike’s blog at Ordinary Folk I read of a new blogging movement that he, along with the bloggers at MeAndMyDrum and Brown Thoughts, have devised aimed at promoting community participation, and to identify bloggers that interact with those that comment on their blogs. Check out his post here about the You Comment I Reply Movement.

Mike created a great badge on his blog - and there are a few versions. I am using the girltastic pink version of the badge.

Why the You Comment - I Reply movement?

I have mentioned before that you blog in a neighbourhood, and that community participation is important, and that blogging and commenting on other blogs go hand in hand. The You Comment - I Reply movement addresses the fact that commenting on your own blog in response to other comments is an important part of blogging, and it sets the blogs in the movement apart from other blogs where comments may go unanswered. As Mark says in his blog, blogging is the one place where it is okay to insist on always having the last word.

When I comment on blogs that are “alive” I always check back to see how the blogger responded to my comments. And I am also more apt to return to blogs that follow this practice. It’s not fun talking to yourself, after all. So, if you want your readers to know that you won’t ignore them if they put in the effort to comment, then get the badge and put it up.

Posted: July 1st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 7

The seocontest, as I had intended, was an incredibly informative experience for me. It gave me the opportunity to watch how search engines react to different approaches in SEO, and I watched all search engines closely to see how they all worked, and under “duress”.

I thought I would give a quick rundown of what I noticed about Yahoo!, MSN and Google.

Google - I saw a very high importance being placed on number of backlinks, and I found that often number could trump quality links temporarily. The anchor text of those backlinks is not near as important as would think, though it does give a boost. Use of keywords in content and new content is also helps. Google has a bit of regard to the age of the domain, but this can be circumvented.

MSN is stodgy. Backlinks don’t appear to matter that much, though you will need backlinks to have them find you. They do not crawl near as often as Google. MSN is a very big fan of internal links, as well as content. My site always ranked very well in MSN, but I did not have many backlinks recognized to my site in MSN. MSN does not care about the age of the domain it seems.

Yahoo! seems to be all about domain age, and they really don’t seem to mind nofollow tags at all for backlinks. The domain age issue can be easily circumvented however using an old domain and a 301 redirect, and the change in ranking happens quickly.

So pretty abridged guide I guess, and I am sure I can do more lengthy reporting on all of the topics I just discussed, but generally that is what I saw.

If you want to add to this, or disagree… please comment!

Posted: June 30th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

If you follow Harry Potter at all, you know that Voldemort is “He Who Must Not Be Named”. He is the evil villain, and speaking about him gives him power. That is how I feel about comment spam.

There are many in SEO who see this as a viable way to increase links to your site, and some very popular SEO blogs promote it, as well. This is upsetting for me on many counts - both my SEO and my blogging sensibilities are offended by this.

Does comment spam really help your search engine ranking?

While Google uses the nofollow tags, Yahoo! and MSN do not. This means that these are considered to be viable links in these search engines, and while these two search engines are not near as popular as Google, and sometimes the butt of jokes by people “in-the-know”, some still use them, especially people who are not “in-the-know”. And many blogs do not utilize the nofollow tags in their comments, and more so now since the U Comment - I Follow movement gains the support of bloggers. This, meant to promote commenting on their blog, can also make these blogs targets for this type of spamming. These links, then, become viable links in Google and help to increase the ranking of sites in Google, as well.

So comment spamming, no matter how offensive to me and to others I am sure, is in reality a quick and easy way to help your rankings in the search engines.

But what are the other consequences of comment spamming?

For one, you get a bad reputation. Bloggers will soon come to recognize you as a spammer, and even when you wish to leave a viable comment on their blog, they may not wish to approve your comment. Word travels fast on the interweb, so don’t expect to get away with it for long, especially if you are exceedingly prolific in your efforts.

As well, by entering into an SEO campaign by comment spamming, you are wasting valuable time that could be used to do actual off-site search engine optimization or creating valuable content for people to link to.

And, in truth, you end up losing the respect in the SEO community. There is a blog I know of, and that many people follow that promotes this form of SEO, and the only reason I read is to inform myself on what not to do.

Why must we not speak of it and why do I speak of it now?

By speaking of it, more people become aware of how to undertake a comment spam campaign, and more people think it is okay to do this. After all, if it is working for others, why can’t it work for you as well, and it is hard to stay “good” when everyone else is being “bad”.

So what makes me think it is okay for me to talk about it anyways? Well, for one, I am clearly not saying good things. I am saying something that “should be named”. And I hope that by writing this I might discourage people and make them see that though this may help your rankings, you will lose in the end to those who have undertaken real link building campaigns.

Posted: June 30th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

I have had my Pink Internet Marketing blog on BlogCatalog since March 28, 2007. Since then, I have been finding blogs and have been found using this blog directory/blogging community site.

I think the most important rule of thumb I want to mention is this: If you want someone to favourite your site or join your community or visit your blog, you must make the initiative. I have on several occasions had people leave Shouts on my page telling me to do something that they have not done for me. But, if someone adds me as a friend or joins my community, I most certainly reciprocate, and many people on BlogCatalog do the same. In fact, if asked to do those things in Shout, I am even less apt to do so. And in many cases, I notice they have not even bothered to visit my blog at all, which brings me to point #2.

If you want to increase the number of people visiting your site, you must make the rounds. If they have the BlogCatalog widget, they will see your “avatar” or picture and may be intrigued to see who is stopping by, and might visit your site. Getting them to come back is a whole other story.

Pretty much all the features of social networking on BlogCatalog work on a tit-for-tat basis.

This small guide to interacting with other bloggers here can apply to all social networking sites and for blogging in general. You have to take the initiative, and people will probably reciprocate. If you want comments, comment first. If you want links, link out to other sites. If you want people to stop by your blog, you must visit their blog. It might not happen, but it will never happen if you don’t make an effort to participate, at least at first. I am sure Matt Cutts’ blog would get links even if Matt never visited another blog again, but I am sure he still does, because that is what blogging is about. You do blog in a neighborhood, and you won’t be invited to the block party if you spend every day in your house.

Posted: June 29th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

I have the Hack A Day feed on my iGoogle, and I was really shocked to see this among their posts:

Posted: June 29th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

Many bloggers hope for a high PR, it is important when wanting to review other sites and sell link space for business blogger and it looks good. But really, regardless of all those things, at the end of the day it means that people are linking to you, and that is a great feeling and that is what really helps you rank in the search engines. Google PR is just a little badge to say: You have links.

Sites without PR can rank higher than sites with high Google PR, but often this involves using massive link building strategies or some other approaches that I won’t bother discussing, as generally sites without Google PR are very new domains as newer sites don’t have links. You can’t link to something that did not exist a few months ago, after all. And Google search rank is based greatly on the number and quality of sites linking to yours.

I had mentioned this on another blog as comments, but I thought I would discuss this here on my blog as well with regards to Google PR. I don’t plan on getting very technical and mathematical, as really we cannot be sure of all the factors involved in how Google calculates PR, which is actually makes it a little exciting because if they did tell us, that would take all the mystery out of it and that would make life very boring.

But generally it is considered that Google PR is calculated along the lines of:

PR(A) = (1 - d) + d * SUM ((PR(I->A)/C(I))

Just kidding! I said Google PR made easy, right?

The Google PR of a page is calculated by the number of pages pointing to your page. For every page that links to yours, the PR is by the number of links off that page. Then the PR that goes to your page is divided up among the # pages linking off your page.

During the last PR update I had a number of pages and sites that were affected by the PR update, and I had tried many future PR predictor tools on many pages and sites. I found generally they were within 1 PR point of the actual PR of the page after the last update. This is useful, and it can be a relatively accurate indicator but not without flaws.

That being said, I started to think about the movie: Cube. Have you seen it? If you have not do not keep reading because I am about to give away the punchline.

So these people are trapped in a cube, and it turns out one of the guys trapped in this cube of death actually was part of the large army of people who worked to design the cube of death and mystery. So no one really knew what they were making, they were commissioned to all play small parts in the creation and building of it, but the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing, and then imagine thousands of hands. Get it?

Well, what if that is what Google is like? I wonder how many people who work at Google, even at the higher levels, could actually tell you how the search engine works. It could be in fact that very few know because it involves so many people and areas. Maybe the people who work at Google are like the people who built Cube, except without the cube of death and instead a search engine… ?

Posted: June 29th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

My #5 source of traffic comes from outer space, meaning that my blog has gone universal. Sure I still get a lot of earthly traffic, but it is good to know that I am reaching extraterrestrial life forms, spreading the notion of Pink Internet Marketing to the stars and beyond. Here is a screen capture in Google analytics for the past week:

My blog is very new, and up until June 15, I was not really looking for traffic I was looking to rank for the keywords shopautodotca seocontest. But since then my traffic has jumped considerably, partly because my posts have gone from not interesting to semi-interesting, but mostly because I have been a social butterfly lately.

I have recently been visiting Ordinary Folk, and he was kind enough to give me some link love, and as well I have been commenting on his blog. I am getting some traffic from this site featuring Gummy the Lovesick Alien. So ET phone home and let all the bloggers know that traffic comes by UFO!

Now really, though, this just goes to show the importance of leaving comments in blogs and using networking (making friends) to promote your blog. I am sure that I could have the same results by visiting any other blog, but I am already making the rounds to a few blogs and the responsibility is daunting!

But as I start to increase my blogging activities, I am sure that I will come to see more and more traffic coming from other blogs that I visit. This is encouraging because you realize that while Google will bring you traffic, you do not need to be really good at SEO and SEM to make your blog count. All you need is your blog, coupled with your ability to interact with other bloggers. Thinks of comments as mini-posts on other blogs, and don’t just follow the mentality of “the more you shoot the more you score”. Make each of these mini-posts count, and I am sure that you will see some increased traffic to your site in no time flat.

Posted: June 28th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 4