Viva Las Vegas

That’s it, I’m off! Well maybe not quite yet but I’ll be jetting over the ATLAntic on Sunday for a week of non stop drinking, gambling and getting jiggy with the wife. This is our first real time away from our daughter in 8 years. Having never been to Vegas before there are a HUGE number of things I’m looking forward to, not least of which being the chance to put my entire life savings on black! If my usual ratio of drinking to hangover sticks then I should start feeling better sometime around early September.

I’ve been reading up today and the only slightly worrying thing is the amount of tipping, jesus, with all the amount of money flying round the place you’d think that employers could afford to pay their staff? I just went to get some money changed and they’ve only given me 50’s, $50 is the right amount to tip right? We don’t really do tipping as a life style in the UK so it’s always a bit of a novelty when you travel somewhere that relies on it so heavily. Anyhoo, each to their own, I’ll be living life to the max, no expense spared, rolling it like a high one. My only hope is that I bump into one of the famous women on my “allowed” (the list of women I’m allowed to sleep with without the wife complaining) list whilst relaxing by the pool.

So if anybody is in and around Vegas next week and sees a rather dishevelled looking, very handsome young british man suffering from an intense hangover whilst being dragged around shops and attractions by an annoyed looking wife then don’t be afraid to say hello. And if anybody has any Vegas tips please feel free to share them in the comments?

Normal service will be resumed as and when my head can handle looking at a monitor again, in the meantime everybody keep it real and if you’re American then enjoy your 4th July holiday.

Kontera 100% Profit Share Offer

Great news everybody, Kontera (the in-text advertising specialists) are offering a 100% profit share for any new sign ups for the month of July. The means from now until the end of the month you’ll be earning 100% instead of the usual 50%. Even better news is there is now no traffic limits on signing up so if you’ve been too small in the past now is the time to give it a go.

I recently compared Kontera to AdBrite’s in-line offering and for my money I still value Kontera more (of course you could always run both!) so why not give them a go?

To take advantage of this offer you’ll need to sign up here.

How To Out Rank Your Competition By “Borrowing” Their Links

I think that most people are fully aware now just how important inbound links are to your search engine rankings. There is no disguising that it’s a large part of the equation, especially with Google. Unfortunately for us webmasters it’s also one of the hardest parts for us to hold influence over, there are certain things we can change quickly to help our chances but getting inbound links requires a whole lot more effort.

In saying this there is a tactic that I’ve been using for several years that has helped me outrank my competition for numerous phrases, some of them hugely competitive. It sounds obvious, but I steal borrow their links. This involves analysing who links to them and going and asking for a link, I’m a very firm believer of if you don’t ask you don’t get and you’d be surprised how often this works, sure you’ll need to link exchange sometimes but you shouldn’t take your eye of the goal here. If you can get a similar/better linking profile with better on the page content then you should out rank.

The tool I use to help me with this is WebCEO. It’s a complete suite of webmaster tools featuring link analysis, keyword research, on-page optimisation, file uploader, website auditor etc etc. A good featured free version is available but the specific feature I use for borrowing links is only part of the paid software. I made the plunge to spend money on WebCEO many years ago and I’ve never looked back.

So say for example I’m a Private Investigator and I want to rank highly for the search term “discrete private investigator”. The first thing I need to do is a Google search for that phrase. I now need to take a note of the top 2 results (www.salgadoinvestigations.com and www.lasker.co.uk). Now in WebCEO I go to the Analyze Link Popularity Tool and select the Linking Sites Overview tab. I edit the profile to only check for links in Yahoo (Google doesn’t give you a full list of back links and using only Yahoo speeds this whole process up). I then add the 2 sites from the Google search as my competition. When I click start WebCEO is going to go and process all the back links to those domains in Yahoo. Where it’s really nice is it gives me a great chart that I can quickly cross reference to see what links the top 2 sites have in common. The screenshot below shows some of the results, a quick glimpse shows that the number 1 website is relying heavily on link directories for its links. There is nothing to stop us from going and submitting to those same directories.

Even better WebCEO allows us to see exactly what page on each site the competitors link is on. For directories this allows us to quickly target the right category, for other websites it is a handy shortcut straight to the page where they are either putting links or link exchanging.

It’s now a case of going through the list of websites (starting from the websites that link to both the number 1 and 2 search results) and either asking for a link, submitting your website details, asking for a link exchange or doing whatever else you need to get that link. If this all sounds like hard work then WebCEO can export that report for you and you could outsource that actual link requests/submission. Whilst you’ll probably not get them all there is a very good chance that if they’ve linked to your competitors they’ll also link to you. Create a properly optimised page for the phrase “discrete private investigator” on your website that is well linked to from within your own site and you’re 99% of the way to pushing your way to the top spot for that phrase. Repeat this for a number of searches in your niche and you’ll have a linking profile that is the envy of everybody else!

Q: I’ve got a brand new site, what if nobody will swap links with me?
A: You have 2 options here, the long game is to wait until your website gains trust and then try again. My preferred method (which works if you have more than 1 site) is to offer a link from an existing older website that you own in exchange for a link to your new website.

Q: Most of the links look like junk, I don’t want to get penalised?
A: The great thing about this method is that by analysing the back links for websites that rank well in Google you can be sure that there can’t be a penalty for those links. At worst they won’t count but if there was a penalty then the site you’re analysing wouldn’t be ranking so highly!

Q: Is this a one shot wonder?
A: No, I would run the same report every month, you should then start to see your site and your competitors having more links in common. WebCEO will also show what links your competitors have gained since you last run the report, these are great sites to target.

The Weekend That Was

Saturday, it was that time of the year again. The lads bi-annual all day drinking session, a full day of male bonding and obscene amounts of alcohol. In a change from our usual routine we decided that we’d venture out of town this summer and instead travel to Ramsey. The original plan had been to go camping but the rubbish weather forecast had killed that idea on the Friday, seeing how it ended up maybe being stuck in a field away from civilised company might have been a good idea? Either way it was a great day out.

Not wanting to waste valuable drinking time we jumped on an early bus and were at our target town and looking for a pub by 2pm. Mission accomplished we settled down in some of the comfiest pub seating I’ve ever experienced. As we were planning a leisurely pace to the day I started with a bottle of Becks, Mikey followed suite whilst the other Paul (Kingtser) and Ady were knocking back pints of Carling and Bitter respectively. Forty minutes and 3 drinks later everybody was in a relaxed mood and the conversation was flowing. As is the way the decision was made to move before we got too settled, after all there were plenty more pubs to try. After a quick toilet stop (at the world’s strangest toilets, you could talk to the people in the beer garden whilst having a piss) we moved of to Bar Logo.

This place looked like a poncy wine bar of sorts. I like real pubs. Turned out it was a nice place, relaxing atmosphere, chilled drinks but the best thing of all, free food. The kitchen had seen fit to drop of a bowl of chips on our table. This isn’t normally the type of thing I’d get excited about but these were “real” home made chips, ya know, made from potatoes and deep fried. Enough to say we ordered food immediately. Nice marketing ploy people, free sample and bang we were caught. The food was excellent. Several drinks, a crossword and some other puzzles from the newspaper later and we were in the mood for somewhere a little more pubby so headed over the road. Things were starting to get a little messy by this point and a jug of some evil shit was ordered, no idea what the hell was in it but it was nice enough and had the desired affect. Seeing as how there was a dart board we played possibly the shortest game of killer and longest game of 301 ever. At some point I threw a 3 and a 4 on consecutive throws! Ninja dart skills!

From then on it was a quick “one” (or 3) in another 4 pubs, general talking shite, before heading back to Bar Logo where we were hopeful of having some chicks to look at. Everybody was on bottles now and the pace was picking up nicely. We’d approached that part of the day when times seems to speed up. Things had begun to get shabby on our way over and besides hand stands in the street there was arm wrestling and coin flicking antics a plenty. There were no chicks at the bar so at about 9:30 we decided a bus back to Douglas and a few local drinks before heading home would be the right way to end the day. Drinking around Ramsey was a very pleasant way to spend a day and the whole atmosphere was unspoilt, sure we had fun, were drunk but we were all in good humour. I don’t think we upset anybody. Even the inevitable pissed local looking for a fight at the bus station couldn’t put a damper on things. As drunken days out go it would take some beating.

Unfortunately as soon as we’d arrived back things took a turn for the worse. We headed to Bordello, a strictly over 25’s only bar where we’d enjoy the rest of our evening. We’d just spent an hour on a bus without drink and were all feeling in tip top form, if not a little thirsty. If there is a right level of drunk then we were that. That was up to the point where somebody (don’t know who) decided we should start on the shots of Tequila. You know, get the night moving along? What followed was a blur followed by a black out but involved much throwing of random shapes on the dance floor, all sorts of ladies getting offended (although none intentionally) and god only knows what else. I may have slipped into a coma. At some point during the night I lost the ability to speak, how I ended up in a taxi home is a mystery. I made it through the door some time around 2am (look I’m getting old ok) Of the other lads one made it home and to bed, one was found naked on his sofa the next morning and somebody else was discovered slouched in an arm chair wearing a sick bib. Me, I was OK by my standards, obviously sticking to bottled beer for most of the day had worked. The wife and daughter woke me up in the morning to laugh at me (because I fell through the front door waking them up) but other than a bit of teasing I could tell that I’d managed to dock without troubles. That’s quite an achievement for me There is nothing worse than waking up to the silent treatment without actually remembering what caused it!

So that was my weekend, Sunday I was fit for nothing other than dying on the sofa and catching up on some Sky+ programs. Yesterday I was just starting to feel a bit better and today I’m well enough to work again. Considering my normal hangovers last a week that’s quite a result. As soon as I get to see the pictures I’ll post a few up. The only question that remains is if John Chow can write about food and get it tax deducted can I do the same with beer and pubs?

Maybe I Was Wrong About Traffic Kahuna

When I was first notified (via spam) about Traffic Kahuna I was in a bad mood already. I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for yet another ground breaking service. I had a quick flick through the website and combining that with my impressions of their awful Comment Kahuna software I wasn’t impressed and posted about it. Sometimes I shoot my mouth off and I’m wrong.

Maybe I was Wrong About Traffic Kahuna
Since I wrote that 1 person has stood up to defend them in the comments but much more interestingly several people have contacted me privately to tell me how well they are doing with the Traffic Kahuna system. It is delivering them traffic and results, or in laymen’s terms it’s doing what it says on the tin. No hidden agenda there, if people are contacting my via e-mail then it’s not for the world to see, they just wanted to let me know I was wrong! I respect that. That’s enough to get my curiosity levels up, even enough to give it a go. Trouble is that it’s a closed shop at the moment so I’ll have to wait until I can give it a try and make my own mind up. In the meantime if you’re using Traffic Kahuna I’d love to hear about your experiences with it so far?