Website Magazine Revamped!

If you aren't a subscriber of Website Magazine by now, what are you waiting for? It's a free publication for those in the industry and its full of web industry goodness! So if you've slacked on this "must read" magazine & "must visit" website, well your in time to jump on the band wagon right when they have quietly launched their newly revamped website! It's a sleek new look with a ton of great information right on the homepage!

Highlights of Website Magazine:

• You can subscribe to the magazine for Free!
• Create a personal profile and network with other subscribers
• Great opportunity to advertise to a niche audience via print, online, digitally and email
• Guest/Contributor writers offer great insight to WSM already knowledgeable staff
• Helpful and easy to read articles/posts are just what you need when looking for solutions and suggestions on topics of marketing, affiliate programs, social media, PPC, SEO and more.
• WSM Blog is updated frequently with the latest and greatest 'must know' news
• Affiliate program has a very nice payout (starting at $2 per subscriber)

Feel free to add them to your Twitter feed as well! Get the lastest & greatest delivered right in your timeline! Twitter.com/websitemagazine

Technorati Tags: Website Magazine, Internet Publication, Internet News, Affiliate Program, Advertising, Web Marketing

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,