The “they don’t support the troops” argument is for the weak who have nothing else bad worth saying about their target. Most of the population doesn’t even know what the hell they are supposed to be supporting or how. When I was floating around underwater for months on end I certainly didn’t give a crap who flew a flag or who displayed a logo. Those types of actions are meaningless symbolic masturbatory gestures that do nothing for real troops.

I agree the hard working men and women who support our country deserve respect. The support the troops movement stems from the despicable treatment of our Vietnam veterans. Being spat on, having feces thrown on you, or more recently protesting soldiers funerals are disgusting personal attacks on people. That behavior is wrong and should be illegal.

Not flying a flag, saying that national anthem, or celebrating Memorial Day is freedom of speech. As someone who spent ten years in the military please… feel free to not support us vets, thats the one of the freedoms we served to protect . Just don’t attack us.

Want to support he troops?

The do something that makes a difference. Go give some blood, send a card to a deployed soldier, send a care package, or just donate cash to the USO those things make troops feel supported.

Bickering over why Google didn’t show a Memorial Day logo… not so much.

Extra Tips on supporting troops:

Ever see those young guys at the airports in uniform with no rank on their sleeves? Buy them a beer or food or just say thanks in person. They are new, young, away from home, and usually responsible for the worst jobs. They are the guys who need it most.

Know someone in your area who has a spouse deployed? Go out of your way to help them out. Mow their lawn… help fix their car… whatever.. their spouse is gone, their might be raising kids alone, and its likely they have no family in the area. They need all the help they can get.. and bonus it helps their spouse whos deployed relax knowing someone is looking out for their wife or husband.

1. I have never seen a browser that didn’t convert the domain section of the request to lowercase. So if you hit me with a domain that have uppercase letters in it… its filtered.
2. You have to include the protocol portion of the URI dumbass. So if I see a referrer that say “www.mycoolsite.com” I know its bogus and its filtered.
3. For the directories that are faking traffic to me after I submitted to them. Please stop insulting my intelligence. I know my site isn’t on your front page. At least have your programmer change it so that the referrer portion reflects where my site is listed in your directory.
4. For those trying to fake a link to my site… You need to include a key or somthing that ids where I came from. So you can fake a link on the page if I visit it. Since I use a home grown command line stats script I don’t send a referrer to tell you what to fake.

Learn the latest outed hits..

Spamhuntress – shes a kook ( honestly who says “Spam my blog and I report your site to Google for banning. You’ve been warned!” to spammers ? ) out of Europe that fights web spam with a passion. I sometimes sometimes suspect she is a spammer herself thats just outing her competitors but who knows really. She features the latest and greatest techniques, sites, and spammers she’s discovered. You’ll get more recent stuff on here than you will anywhere else.

Strikepoint – A webcast out of Europe featuring DaveN and Mikkel. Most episodes feature DaveN outing someone thats doing something interesting so it makes for a good listen. Mikkel and Dave let slip much more in this than they do in any other place they publicly write on the web and they are pretty funny to boot. Seriously don’t miss it.

Blackhat Discussion for Beginners

Syndk8 – is a forum for blackhats that is fairly active. You won’t get the latest and greatest hits out of this but it will give you the basics. Its also great for making relationships with others, programmers are particularly appreciated here [ in fact I honestly don't know how you can be a black hat without being a programmer ]. As with all forums don’t waste your time too much on them after a certain point, the advanced answers you seek won’t be found there but from friends.

PHP – Honestly learn to program php ( or perl ) and at least try to look up you own god damned answers first. Then go grab a copy of the Orielly books “Programming PHP” and “The PHP Cookbook” to complete your primer.

Wastes of Time

SeoBlackhat.com – Complete waste of time to read in my opinion if your looking for black hat news. Mostly rehashing mainstream search news on a blog with very annoying colors. Comment shouldn’t be taken as a dig at Quadzilla personally, the blog simply sucks. Great domain name name though kudos on the branding.

But The list is so short!

The great thing about black hat is you don’t have as many people running around claiming they know wtf they are doing. So that makes for a short list with the best information coming from people outing others. So how do you get the good information ? Make friends.. make some tools.. and keep reading the new posts from whiners as there’s lots of them looking at stuff and often they give away the best info for free.

example usage: Tim has been really coming down with a bad case of dmozitis, he has 50 sites in the que.

DMOZed (verb) – The act of tricking users and webmasters that you actually care about customer service. Typical implementations include setting up website forms that work but do not actually store results, not responding to requests for service, and setting up cooresponding text indicating you care about both.

example usages:
- Man I totally DMOZed that site! ( After setting up fake contact us forms )
- I got DMOZed at McDonalds, the people didn’t even give me the coke I asked for.

It simply means other optimizers and I sometimes use techniques that are frowned on by search engines to generate traffic.

Think of it like this, say I hire a young ladies to wash cars topless at my car wash. Does the rest of the business community frown on this ? Sure, probably. Did I break the law or hurt someone ? No ( depending on the state/province that is.. lol ), some would argue I did indirectly but thats a different discussion. I simply used a technique that some find distasteful to generate traffic.

Further more blackhat doesn’t mean that you have to do something that is detrimental to community or user. In example, I have scripts that automate many tasks that I would otherwise have to do by hand, some would consider that black hat. However none of my scripts do anything that hurts user experiences, some people have those ( ie. ie blog spammers and people cloaking pages and redirecting users to porn ), but I do not.

so.. please please please try to understand what blackhat means, its just a tactic..

I don’t kill kittens, honest!

1. Search Engine Optimization is fairly straight forward there are no secrets.
2. Search Engine Optimization is marred by the fact anyone can discuss online and seem like an expert.
3. Online Marketing is where its at, and that should encompass SEO
4. The best blackhat stuff is not detectable by the search engines or people.
5. If you can’t program or pay someone to program you will be stuck using the same tools as everyone else.
6. Statistics and math are where its at. There are no fast answers in this business.
7. I’d rather spend time promoting my stuff than a clients. If I fail its my problem and at least I didn’t have to listen to my client
8. SEO is not a panacea for not having a product of your own.
9. Go to a conference its so much better discussing this stuff in person and honestly its more fun.
10. Forums are the suxors but you need to pick at least one to keep abreast of issues you may have missed.
11. Just because someone can argue well online doesn’t mean they know jack shit.
12. If you don’t have your own data to draw your own conclusions then you don’t know anything despite how much you read.
13. Don’t spend to much time arguing online. Its pointless. Spend that time proving or disproving your ideas for yourself.
14. If you want to make money with affiliate programs and your just starting out keep making sites. Make them big and small and in between but keep making them till your fingers bleed. Once you have a hundred then go back and see what is the most successful and then spend time on those.
15. The thing that is in the shortest supply online is creativity.
16. Don’t be afraid to be wrong and listen to the counsel of those who are honest.
17. Always try to find the successful mans networks, once you do don’t be an ass and out them just look and learn and if you feel like it warn them how you did it.
18. Google is not as smart as it seems.
19. Just because a search engineer is nice, smart, witty and reasonably honest doesn’t mean he isn’t your adversary.
20. Forums are good for getting clients. Help people out when you can for free and you’ll see what I mean.
21. What might have been true yesterday might not be true today.
22. Yahoo and MSN have traffic to send too
23. Don’t assume everyone knows what you discovered already when you study your stats. Save it for yourself.
24. Don’t underestimate how much your knowledge or programming skills are worth.
25. Read a book on marketing from a semi unbiased source. I prefer SCORE and the Small Business Association.
26. Remember its the world wide web and there are opportunities to be had in oversea’s markets.
27. Someone thinks you are an idiot.
28. Someone thinks you are a liar trying to fleece them.
29. If you charge for something make sure your potential customer knows that up front.
30. Don’t be afraid to tell someone you want money.
31. Get some exercise
32. There are two types of people in search & affiliate marketing, the Amway/Quixtar type hoping to get rich and keeping the faith and the business type which gets results and focuses on analysis, statistics, and sales.
33. There is always a guru willing to sell you a product to solve your problems.
34. Don’t be afraid to spend money for information, just try and buy it from someone who is honest and not a cult leader.
35. Write often, it doesn’t matter if your a sucky writer most people never take the risk of writing in the first place.
36. If you are a sucky writer get your college texts on writing and read them when you can. If you haven’t gone to college go and take a course in writing
37. SEO is not a replacement for a business plan
38. Be suspicious of a search professionals that run a forums, many are trying to build a cult following.
39. Read a few good articles on pricing strategies to make sure your not screwing yourself.
40. Initially you are going to fail in business often, make sure that if you succeed it is worth it.
41. Set goals and timelines for evaluations to determine if you business plans are working.
42. Don’t confuse business strategies with morality.
43. Read a book on ethics before you try to discuss them.
44. Integrity is not something you can get back after abandoning it.
45. Be honest but remember you are trying to make a sale so don’t give away to much. I know its a tough one to resolve sometimes.
46. You can’t convince customers they need a solution if they don’t know they have problem.
47. Don’t try to recruit potential customers by pointing out their problems unless asked.
48. Put yourself in a position where your customers seek you.
49. Treat your customers as if they were kings and queens. Its easier to retain them than to acquire new ones.
50. The cost of inaction is great.
51. A website, building, computer, or desk is not a business people are.
52. Luck favors the prepared.
53. Try your best not to flame people or sites. It does you no good and makes you look bad.
54. Most people are good.
55. A business budget, even a rudimentary one is required
56. Roboform is the coolest.
57. SEOBook was great I wish I had read it sooner it would have saved me a year or more of reading forums.
58. A Wall Street Journal subscription will pay for itself many times over.
59. On the web you can make money off of your mind but its still a lot of work.
60. I don’t care if you think there is a sandbox, I do and I plan for it so its not a big deal but it would be nice if I knew a way around it.
61. Don’t build your business on another business’s free services.
62. Its easier to sell a tangible good than a service.
63. Books that offer advice similar “Buy low, sell high” are crap. Always ask yourself “Is this to good to be true ?”
64. A good listener is well rewarded.
65. I hate its promotional “speak” and hyperbole but I actually found “How to win friends and influence others” useful.
66. Making a sale is a multi step process.
67. You have to spend money to learn things. Sometimes that means changing an ad layout on a successful page and losing money you would have made the other way. Sometimes it means buying someones knowledge.
68. If the web page is red white and blue, has four feet of text to scroll through, has red bold letters with yellow highlights, and has an offer where the seller is giving away $1300 of free items along with his great guide to X think of it as a tribute to the late Corey Rudl and close the page.
69. A bar full of internet marketers is a funny thing to watch.
70. Email sucks for real communication.
71. There is a big play to be made in local search and it doesn’t involve making a local search engine.
72. Reasonable good graphics can set your site apart from others
73. Usability and seo sometimes are the same thing

Post 100.. by the way :-)

What can I poor webmaster do to help this poor dog ?
Donate ? Link to it ?

Nah.. silly its just link bait. This type though really pisses me off, the guy took a great oppurtunity and wasted by poorly executing it. Had they spent a week or too correcting the glaring deficiencies in their site it might have been great.

Lets look at whats wrong with the site:

• Site is 12 pages of articles generated on keywords
• Articles are aweful and have zero informational value
• “Our products” link goes to Amazon
• Blog template is not intergrated with the site theme
• Empty forum filled with a zillion categories and no posts, and again not intergrated with the ste theme

Had the guy just had a one pager for the dog it would have been infinitely more convincing and effective. Then added all the other stuff later.

Lesson instant gratification kills oppurtunity