and the Net Effect Magazine

StomperNet sent me review copies of both Stomping the Search Engines 2, the second incarnation of StomperNets smash hit, Stomping The Search Engines and, The Net Effect, StomperNets new journal. Yup, you read it right, a print journal.
UPDATE: Stomping The Search Engines II & The Net Effect Journal are COMPLETELY FREE! If you want $538 in FREE material CLICK HERE. - I’ve browsed through them both quickly and so far I’m very impressed with both. I’ll go through them more thoroughly tonight and tomorrow and let you all know what I think of the complete package. Stay tuned folks.
PS

Rumor has it that something may be free…

All the best

Jim

UPDATE: 1

I’m digging into Net Effect Journal right now and, since this is a very long and in-depth monthly hard copy publication with  48 pages of 10 point typeface, I thought I’d start with the easy and short NOT SO GOOD list.

The Not So Good;

The Typeface is WAY too small. As I’m sure we are all well aware, launching a print publication is no small task, especially in cost. It would appear that Stompernet attempted to cut costs by squeezing in every word with the small sized font. In one section, the size of the typeface did seem appropriate though. That was on Jerry West’s contribution. A strange inconsistency that can no doubt be explained by the need to stretch his section to fill two pages. Jerry tends to be direct, practical and actionable which is no doubt why his article was not terribly wordy.

From Stompernet: (A note about the fonts - we blew wayyyy past our initial page count, so the font size wasn’t a matter of cheapness It was a decision we made to KEEP articles and pages and still not have to chop out 2 or 4 pages at a time- which is what journal layouts need to do.)

I could be wrong but, I believe I counted a total of 10-12 different typeface sizes, seven of which were present in Leslie Rohdes article.

There were also a handful of different ‘fonts’ used, I found that to be refreshing.

Now, on to The Good;

With it’s A list contributors, Net Effect is no doubt going to rock the Search Engine Marketing world. Whether or not it will rock the remainder of the world is what I find concerning. Fortunately, the large subscriber base that is sure to ensue should be sufficient to propel this publication forward.

The Contributors:

• Editor in Chief - Andy Jenkins (Awesome Andy as I like to call him)
• Managing Editor - Jayne Hallock (Super Jayne!)
• Publisher - Chris Watson (Cool Chris)
• Production Director - Dave Hallock (Super Dave)
• Advertising Manager - Chris Watson
• Contributing Writers - Dave Bullock, Don Crowther, Andy Edmonds, Brad Fallon, Tom Ham, Sherman Hu, Andy Jenkins, Audry Kerwood, Leslie Rohde, Mike Stewart, Dave Taylor, Dan Thies, Colin Theriot, Jerry West.

Up next, the content! Stay tuned for more!

UPDATE: 2

The contents are broken down into departments. Each department contains articles from contributors.

The Departments and Content:

• …/Research

02 It’s your EYES that BUY
04 The Keyword Heist Technique
07 26 Things to Test
09 Wanna Be Broke? Then Maybe You Shouldn’t Sell Cheap

• …/Traffic & Marketing

10 Ranking on Page One
14 SHOTGUN
17 Twittering Your Way To Free Traffic
20 The Ultimate Article Marketing
21 Anatomy of a Search Engine Ranking
25 Mad Skillz: We Haz Them

• …/Customer Relationship Marketing

29 Email Blastoff
32 The Social Media Survival Guide

• …/Technology & Business

36 How to Interview an Outsourced SEO

• …/Featured Articles

38 Speed Matters
42 Armor Piercing Email
IBC Your Monthly Action Plan

So what can I say beyond, all this stuff is super informative and is dead on accurate and up to date.

Stay Tuned for the next Update, Stomping The Search Engines II

Update 3: Stomping The Search Engines II Review

While the A list of contributors is a mere 4, the contributions are enormous. Andy Edmonds is the former lead of analytics for Microsoft’s Live Search team. Dan Thies, the overseer of the entire course and considered by many to be the world’s leading expert in keyword research and analysis. Leslie Rohde was the first person to reverse engineer link quality, and is the creator of Opti-Link, the first professional SEO software ever. Jerry West an SEO Guru and one of the most comprehensive marketing testers on the planet. I know each of these men personally and can tell you that each of these guys have real SEM chops.

So Stomping the search engines II presents 7 multi-part modules. Here’s the entire Table of Contents:

• Module 1: Introduction

* Benefits of SEO
* Short Term Tactics: Spam & Deception
* Short Term Strategies: Low-Value Sites
* The Stomper Way: Aggressive White Hat

• Module 2: How Search Engines Work

* Meet the Players
* Understanding the SERPs
* Search Engine Tech - Crawling
* Search Engine Tech - SERPS
* Search Engine Ranking Recipes

• Module 3: Keyword & Content Strategy

* Keyword Strategy Concepts
* Keyword Research & Discovery
* Mapping Keywords to Content
* Competitive Research
* Tools

• Module 4: Site Structure

* Site Structure Concepts
* Designing for Crawlability
* Anchor Text & Link Reputation
* Canonicalization & Duplicate Content
* Using Redirects
* Improving Your Indexing
* Review & Takeaways

• Module 5: Optimizing Content

* On Page SEO Introduction
* Getting Your HEAD Together
* Optimizing Page Structure
* Get Your BODY In Shape
* Creating Unique Content
* Robots.txt Tutorial

• Module 6: Link Building & Promotion

* Link Building Concepts
* Assessing Your Position
* Vertical & General Directories
* Link Targets & Link Bait
* Marketing & Promotion

• Module 7: Improving Results

* What To Measure
* How To Measure
* Planning & Processes
* Review & Resources

I’ve reviewed each of the course modules completely and well, again. what can I say beyond, this stuff is simply amazing. For a special FREE bonus, visit this page AND, rumor still has it there might just be something else for FREE. Stay tuned for more!

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sounds like “cool” and searches like semantics

Today marked the launch of YANSE (Yet Another New Search Engine) known as Cuil though, in this case, Google may actually take note. A collaborative development, Cuil, pronounced ‘cool‘, has some impressive brain power behind it’s results. Owned operated and developed by former Google search architect notable Anna Patterson who has previously sold Google a search engine and her husband, Stanford Professor Tom Costello, this search engine launches with an enormous amount of potential as well as more indexed pages than Google though unfortunately, with currently limited results.

When I searched for this site, SEM-Answers.com, Cuil.com found no results. Oh well. I must say that I do like the interface. The home page boasts a ‘green’ background as black is earth friendly from a power use standpoint. I especially liked the way Cuil displayed search results as columns instead of the traditional list layout. This will no doubt go along way to equalizing the efforts old SEO. Ironically, this feature may in fact cause Cuil to lack adoption as it was Googles Page Rank formula that in large part enticed so many SEO’s over to Google in the 1st place.

Cuil claims to be a contextual search engine, not a semantic search engine though one may question the ambiguity of the statement ‘we try to understand the world, not the web’ put forth by Costello. In any event, Ciul is said to have major backing ($33 million) and is expected by all to be a serious player. While not as complete a service as Google, a toolbar and widgets are coming soon. I think it’s debatable what is enough to launch a new search engine other than to ask, can the present offering bring further VC interest and, can it bring an offer from any current players in it’s market, which I think is fair to say that Cuil can.

In my opinion we should make no mistake about it, Cuil is going to knock the search world off balance on a regular basis.

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at&t stores loosen their grip, on sanity

The iPhone OS 2.0 software update and the iPhone 3G are both available at long last. at 225MB this new software package offers an even bigger punch. Also bring into play the wider distribution of the new second generation iPhone 3G and Apple is looking at another home run for shareholders even though rumor has it that Apples download servers are having a meltdown. Couple that with AT&T’s notorious level of service and you can imagine that lots of people have wasted yet another iPhone sick day off.

Unfortunately what most call-offers don’t realize is you can sink iTunes with v7.7 to your iPhone to check and get the download yourself, at home, after not wasting a day off but then, yes you guessed it, you need to download iTunes 7.7 for that. so, as they say here in t he great north east, ‘you can’t there from here’.

On a lighter note, Microsoft, not to be outdone by all the fanfare reported, if you are using iTouch, and you upgrade to OS 2.0 ah, yup, you guessed it, you get to pay again, WooHoo go iPhone.

PS,
if you were reading along out loud and not saying WooHoo like you were blowing a gasket and having a meltdown all your own then you weren’t saying it correctly, Please Try Again.

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Download Day Arrives

Today June 17th at 10AM PST marks the long promised FireFox 3.0 Download Day Release. Up to 5 million downloads are expected to occur which if reached, would set a Guinness World Record for the most single piece of software downloads in a single day. If the 1.6 million pledges are any indication, then they just may pull this one off. The new firefox has a great deal to offer such as being:

More Secure

• One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you’re connected to.
• Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.
• New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown.
• New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
• Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
• Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
• Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
• Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
• Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
• Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

• Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
• Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
• New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and
• Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
• Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
• Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
• Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
• Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
• Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
• Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
• Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
• Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
• Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
• Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
• Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
• Integration with Linux: Firefox’s default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

• Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
• Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
• Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you’re looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you’re seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
• Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
• Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.
• Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
• Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
• Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

• New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
• Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
• Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
• A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

• Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
• Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
• Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.

Until the starting release time is upon us, you will have to be satisfied with Firefox 3 RC3 (release candidate). You can get a really great sneak peak at what surwe to be the next smash hit for open source free culture.

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Behold the Brilliance

Apple, Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference is expected to release Mac OS X 10.6, named Snow Leopard, and launch a MobileMe online service to replace Apple’s .Mac service. WWDC is also expected to see the release of an Apple 3G iPhone able to synchronize with MobileMe. A Windows version of MobileMe is also expected.

What would an Apple developers conference be without rumors? The upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, beginning Monday, is no exception.

One persistent rumor is that the conference will see the announcement of a much-awaited 3G iPhone. Certainly, the iPhone is a major part of the conference, with nearly a third of all sessions devoted to the popular mobile device. Apple is now up to its sixth beta release of the software developers kit for the iPhone. Until recently, the iPhone was not open to outside development.

‘Snow Leopard’

There are also reports that a new update to the Mac operating system will be released. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW), “reliable sources” say version 10.6 will be released on June 12 and made available in January.

Reportedly, the Apple code name for the new update to Leopard is, appropriately enough, Snow Leopard.

TUAW said Apple will provide advance copies of Mac OS X 10.6 to developers at the WWDC. The OS update will, according to TUAW, only run on Intel based computers, which would signal the end of operating-system support for the older PowerPC-based Macs. Apple moved the Mac line to Intel processors about three years ago, and that move is one of the reasons cited by observers for the robust sales of Macs.

TUAW predicts the update will include “the usual bug fixes” as well as support for a new MobileMe service.

MobileMe

There have been reports on the Web that a new service, called MobileMe, will replace the current .Mac online service for OS X users, and will also be announced at the WWDC. Existing users would have their existing @mac.com e-mail addresses forwarded to the new address.

Predictions for the features of the MobileMe service include calendars that act like Apple’s iCal, contacts that act like Apple’s Address Book, and other parallel functions. Mac applications like iChat, iWeb and iPhoto are also expected to work with the new MobileMe.

TUAW reports that MobileMe is scheduled for release later this month or early next month, and that the latest build of the iPhone beta firmware, 2.0, will be able to accommodate the new service. iPhone users will reportedly be able to sync their contacts, calendars and photos with MobileMe.

As befits a company that is now Intel-based and boots Windows, a Windows version of MobileMe is also reported to be coming out.

Whatever is released at WWDC, JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg pointed out that releases are most likely to be platforms or tools that developers can use. If MobileMe comes out during the conference, he said, that would suggest that developers will be able to utilize it in some way, such as a platform for application development.

“On the other hand,” said Gartenberg, a longtime Apple observer, “this is Apple — and one never knows that they will do on a given day in June.”

Don’t miss out.

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one on one with an undefeated rear admiral in the white hat wars

If you never quite got around to reading SEO Fast Start, all new for 2007, then too bad because now there is an even all newer version fresh out for 2008. Don’t get too excited though, because not very much has changed from it’s last most excellent incarnation. You can download it here.

Dan is a master tactician in war on hats and In case you’re wondering, PPC Fast Start is due out for June 1st Check out his video on Adwords if you want a sense of how “different” it’s going to be.

SEO Fast Start Live Training June 25 & 26:

The first “SEO Fast Start Live” training is all set, for June 25 & 26 in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area. Addison, TX to be specific. The Crowne Plaza. If you want to attend, go grab the early bird discount while there’s still space - it’s just $97 a seat until next Wednesday, so all you have to think about is whether you can get there.

During this intensive 2-day training, we will discuss how SEO and PPC fit into the larger picture of your business… how to develop better strategies, tactics, and processes to maximize your return on investment from search engine marketing.

Topics will include:

• The “Fast Start” planning process
• Why “branding” is not a waste of time… Seriously!
• Keyword strategy & positioning tactics
• Content development and relationship marketing
• “Beyond the basics” strategies & tactics for Adwords advertisers
• Copywriting for Titles & Descriptions - selling the click
• Marketing, promotion, and link building that pays you back
• Social media strategies for traffic & links
• Lots of time for Q&A

Remember, Dan is the other guy who gives it away so don’t miss this opportunity to learn SEO the right way. Hope to see you there!

http://www.seofaststart.com/blog/seo-fast-start-releases-2008-edition

http://www.seofaststart.com/blog/seofs-live-june-2008

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Pearls of Wisdom From Stage

The StomperNet Live 5 Event wrap up had some really great pearls of wisdom tossed out from stage. With far more than 100 years cumulative experience they are well worth mentioning.

• Partner With People. You will never be more successful than when you can leverage other people’s strengths and time to combine with your own and free yourself up to innovate like only you can.

• Sell knowledge, not Time. You only have so much time you can make money, use it to make more money not the same money.

• Figure Out What Customers Want and Sell It To Them. Sell what’s selling, not what you want to sell them. Don’t try to invent a market or convince anyone your way of doing something is better until you can afford to finance it without going broke.

• Have A Plan and Just Get It Done. Figure it out 1st and then don’t hesitate to execute it. Don’t let analysis paralysis freeze you from execution.

• Outsource What You Can, Your Not Superman. So you think you can do it, of coarse you can, you’re an entrepreneur. Just remember you can’t do it forever, get a feel for the process then pay someone else to do it.

• Failure IS Just Another Test Result (My Personal Favorite). If at 1st you don’t succeed, try try again. Never give up never surrender! Battle stations, get those vipers out of my sky! We Are Stompers!

• Don’t Be Afraid Of Anything Or Anyone. Right On Man!

My own personal addition to the above would be to

• measure everything in marketing dollars.

Every $5 you spend is one less point of distribution for your marketing efforts. That new outfit you just bought would buy you listings in the most effective ways. You would know all that if you were a member of StomperNet.

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While there are many excellent and worthy contenders, two of which were removed from contention, for obvious reasons the choice is clear.

Howie Schwartz

Howie’s address was not only as fun as fun as it was energetic it was informative as well. The potential for profit and revenue streams seems as endless as your imagination and you can do it all in a highly decentralized non traditional manner. Welcome to web 2.0 everyone!

You find more about Howie and his plans for for us all at the Stompernet.com portal.

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April ‘08

That’s right! StomperNet is holding it’s 1st Live event of the year and you know who will be there! I’ll try to deliver live updates as I attend all the events so stay tuned!

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