Twitter really seems to be gathering pace lately and if your new to it or if you just want to increase your influence heres a few tips I have picked up: -

1. Use it
There is little point in expecting people to follow your tweets if you only log in once a week. It has to be part of your day to day.
“But I am too busy”
Stop whining its less time consuming that IM and forums and to be honest youll get more from it.

2. Dont be a robot
Whilst I do agree that using some automation is ok you need to make sure you keep it personal. Don’t set autoreplies, new follows shouldnt get a link promoting something.
Try not to announce a stream of crap that people arent interested in, new post announcements? fine but in moderation please.

3. Help people when they ask
If someone tweets a request for advice help them, they are far more likely to reach out to you with help or a follow if you do.

4. Be happy not aggressive
Personally I prefer to read people who post witty remarks and point to cool stuff rather than look at a torrent of tweets from someone with a grudge against the world.
“Found a great post on how to use Tweetdeck here”
Is better than: -
“On roof now with rifle, soon revenge will be mine”
“Voices in head telling me to shoot”

5. Use the tools to make life easier
Twitter via the web is pretty crappy, Tweetdeck is a far better tool that allows you to have a dedicated application running. I also suggest adding the people you really want to follow in a group in tweetdeck then just watching that group. Saves you from the chatter and therefore from the temptation to stop following people who tweet too much!

6. Follow those that use twitter well
Dont blindly follow someone who has 20,000 followers, youll be lost in the crowd. Follow those people who are in your industry and who retweet good things from their friends. They will hopefully do that for you one day too.

7. Be genuine and pay attention
If you really want to be followed make sure you pay attention to what those people say, participate in their sites, it has to be a two way thing.

8. Extend
Make sure you update your Facebook status from Twitter automatically, add your twitter profile link wherever you can. Make sure people know your on there, dont rely on them stumbling across you from a friend you follow.

9. Retweet
If someone tweets something great help them out and retweet it for them, its hardly effort is it? And its the nice helpful thing to do

10. Ask for help
Got a question – ask people. As long as its genuine people will help you and the more you connect the more you will benefit too.

Thats my 10 – have any more – add them in comments!

I miss the old days of creating made for Adsense sites then sitting back and watching the free money roll in. The reason most of us had to slow down from doing that was that Google started banning accounts for very soft reasons and taking all the money back.

But today they opened up a new way for us to get free cash…

Google have announced that they have opened up their Adsense for Domains to normal publishers

And now ill show you what I will be testing so you too can have some free Google cash…

One of the reasons why Google may have banned accounts in the past was that the traffic didnt have any referrer (so Google didnt know where it came from) or it took a spammy path to get to the ad page.

Now Google lets us chumps in their Adsense for domains programme we have some advantages again: -

They expect ‘undeveloped’ sites so we dont have to have anything other than a crappy holding page with reference to the domains subject
We dont have to create crappy MFA style content anymore
Many people reach parked domains through a simple type in method – thats where people type in something like “cheapcarinsurance.com” in the address bar rather than searching for it.
So we can ‘gather’ our traffic from any crappy source (spam spam spam) and then as long as we clean off the referrer we make it look like type in traffic

So heres the plan
Have a look through your domains or buy a new domain like iwantacheapmortgage.com
Put a parking message on the page that includes the line “i want a cheap mortgage”
Add Googles Adsense for Domains code.
Hope their targetting doesnt blow as much as it did
Send traffic from any spam you can through a page that ‘cleans’ it

I would also keep your CTR down to something low for a while as Parked domains will have a really low CTR – we will have to find the level that gets us in trouble..

Let me know how you get on but thanks to Google we are back in the Adsense easy money game..

Over the past two weeks I have finally given into the pressure to use Twitter, its amazing how addictive it is.

So after just a few weeks I have come to a few conclusions about the best ways to Tweet.

1. Get a decent client
Many people use the basic web interface but that makes Tweeting a task like reading and replying to email. I have been using Tweetdeck which runs as a separate application and makes Tweeting quick easy and part of the days background.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know I havent posted in an age – generally thats been a combination of being really busy and really not caring. The site will soon be relaunched on the .co.uk version of the domain.

The site will be changing content too, gone will be the pointless crap and I will be doing more useful posts about seo and tutorials etc on the subject. Maybe then I will be Paul from SEOidiot rather than just another pointless idiot.

Many thanks to everyone who commented with suggestions on what I should write about this year, heres some of those suggestions and my responses / commitments for the coming months: -

Dave said:
Off the top of my head, you could show us an old example of one of your TV show sites. Just something a US newb like me could learn from.
Always, always, always: relevant traffic generation. I don’t care if its whitehat, gray, black, or blue.

I would love to run through an example – let me see what I can put together.

Chris said:
That is pretty much the stuff that anybody wants i guess. but that just shows that there are not so many good articles about it.
here it comes:
a step by step description of what you would do to start a simple project.
something like,
- where do you get your keywords and how do you choose them
- do use any tools if so which ones?
- …
i would really appreciate something like that.

I think a starter post on how I decide what to go after and how I choose things would be good too

Jason said:
I’ll take advantage of this since I got your email and normally I don’t bother with emails, but I thought I would give it a shot.

1. Adsense Targeting. I know people hate Adsense for the most part and tell you to get away from it, but I mostly build grayish white sites and can do them fast. However, I have problems with adsense getting me the right ads, even with a site/page fully optimized for a set of terms.

2. Keyword selection. I’m looking for some good tips. I pull my keywords from about 17 different sources with my own PHP script, but I am looking for the good keyword examples, like keywords with “buy, store, discount, coupons, etc.. ” What are the best “trigger” words to go with your keywords

3. Sites or ideas that: make money quickly ( fast burn ) vs. sites that make money long term and examples. This should be a weekly series. It would be awesome to follow someone each week was they do a “fast money site” and a “long term money site” and explain the differences of each.

4. Traffic. Whats the best places in general to get traffic ( drop links )? Please don’t be like everyone else and say ‘relevant authority sites’, what about a list of “here are some generally easy but good places to quickly drop a link” and why they are good ( indexing or traffic or link juice ).

Whoa thats a lot to go at there Jason… but some really great ideas thanks.
Adsense targetting – think I have covered that before but I will happily go over it again with some examples of it in action.
Keyword selection – tough one but I will do my best to work out what works for me and share that. Trigger words is more of an Aff thing in my opinion and targetted niche is more of an Adsense thing.
Fast v Slow – Yeah would be nice to put some numbers against these I think – whats fast and why, how fast is a fast burn. When building slow whats the timescale to start seeing some results? etc etc
Traffic generation – I hope to do some examples of traditional traffic v new social methods.

Chris said:

Hey,
I’d be more interested in hearing about the administrative side of your campaigns/link building.
What procedures do you have in place for tracking and logging all your link related data etc.

I have a bit of a stats habit I am afraid and I use simple data extracts and Excel to crunch the numbers. I would however love to do some posts about link aquisition and specifics on thinsg like link volume and pace as I know that I differ there compared to most people doing this type of thing

Garrett said:

I’m interested in hearing more about tips/tricks for automating tasks. For example, favorite scripts or tools that make your daily webmaster life easier (ie. link building/checking, competitor research, keyword development, etc.).

Maybe ill try to put together some simple scripts that could be used for that and also share some simple tips on where to get the data and how. Id also like to do some tutorials on scraping from a basic perspective (Watch for the Esrun taking the piss comment below – he knows how crappy my code is!)

Dink said:

When are you gonna do another Matt Cutts link juice cartoon?

Yeah I should do a few more link baits cartoons, maybe someone like Calcanis next time ?

Remember if you have any specific requests – get in touch

Thanks to you all again, some great ideas for me to go at there – look forward to writing the posts now!

Paul