The Must-Read Guide to SEO Tools

by David Iwanow -

Family HeirloomPhoto Credit: Ken

There are dozens of SEO tools and platforms to choose from, and it’s hard to find out which one will meet all of your needs. It’s not a simple decision, but the first consideration is how much time can any of these tools save you, and by using them what is the increased productivity worth to you, or to your clients?

There are a number of tools I use to make my life easier and improve my clients’ SEO. Here’s what I like and don’t like about each of then.

Tools to Evaluate Backlinks

Link Detox

Link Detox is part of LinkResearchTools but can be used separately, and is the perfect tool for quick analysis on a websites backlinks to understand their toxicity. The upgraded tool now offers some wonderful Risk Breakdown reports and scores your link profile for your Link Detox Risk, which helps understand your site’s chances of being hit by the next Penguin update. The other benefit of using the tool is that you can export Google Disavow files ready for submission to Google. Between you and me, I don’t believe the disavow tool works (that’s a topic for another post!) so I use LinkDetox to flag what links I want to remove manually. LinkResearchTool is a subscription product, but you can also just use Link Detox as a standalone product, as I have found that I only use the full suite of features during quarterly reviews. To make using Link Detox reports regularly a bit more cost effective I have a platform subscription and just buy bulk batches of Link Detox credits when I run out as when you have a monthly subscription additional Link Detox credits cost around  €1 each.

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Are NDAs Even Worth The Paper They’re Written On?

by Zak Muscovitch -

Instagram N°1Photo Credit: Philippe Moreau

It may seem like it is a great honor to be asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. By presenting you with an NDA to sign, someone apparently believes that they have some very valuable, even secret information that they actually want to show you. They also think that you are so dangerous and/or clever that they couldn’t possibly show you this secret information without first obtaining your written agreement to not use or disclose it to anyone.

Often the signing of an NDA is the first step in buying or selling a website business — in fact, on Flippa, many high-end website listings are protected by an NDA. If you are a prospective buyer, you may want to find out about the seller’s traffic, revenue, customers, and other non-public information that would normally be considered private and confidential. If the seller is prepared to share this information with you in the hopes of ultimately selling you their website, the seller may present you with a NDA to sign.

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What I Learned From Being A Geek In The Adult Industry

by Ophelie Lechat -

Pile of CashPhoto Credit: 401(k)2013

Today’s post is by Brad Gosse, a self-taught marketer from Ontario, Canada. Brad started his web business in 1997, and has learned a lot from an unexpected source: his work as a self-professed geek in the adult industry.

Before Google, Paypal, Clickbank and even before Facebook, at the very start of the web, there was adult entertainment.

Adult entertainment was the main driver of early Internet technology. Streaming video, credit card processing, cheap web hosting even affiliate programs were all pioneered by adult companies. As everyone knows, sex sells!

That’s where I got my start.

In the late 1990s, if you wanted to make money online, the easy road was to sell adult content. I was a webmaster and I knew how to build and manage websites but it was hard to find people willing to pay for such services.

So I built a really small porn site, then another, and before I knew it my girlfriend (now wife Claire) and I had built thousands of adult websites, each generating traffic and revenue.

That’s what we did for over 10 years. Adult entertainment.

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Learn From History: Why The Internet Archive Is So Important

by Ophelie Lechat -

The RockpilePhoto credit:  ecstaticist

In 1996, visionary and research aficionado Brewster Kahle founded The Internet Archive. It’s housed in an unassuming San Francisco building, but stores some incredible data: the Archive currently boasts over 281 billion pages web pages and digital content, with billions more added every month.

The Archive’s mission is simple and yet ridiculously complex: To chronicle the history of the internet. All of it. Lofty as it is, this goal is critical to far more than just those among us obsessed with research and history. Maintaining a bona fide chronicle of the online world is also crucial to business owners keen on understanding trends, and studying what has and has not worked throughout different stages of the dot com journey. Thanks to the Archive, it’s still possible to learn from the internet’s short yet rich history.

First Things First: Google is Not an Archive 

You might wrongly assume that Google itself acts as an archive, since it’s essentially a dynamic homepage for the entire web. Since Google’s algorithms are not publicly accessible (and they can be frustratingly complicated to guess at), their data is proprietary and not preserved in the public’s interest — the days of Don’t Be Evil are long gone!

Compare that with the the Internet Archive, which is wisely set-up as a non-profit, and s0 maintains the interest of the masses, not of  a corporation. Google wants to sell ads; the Archive just wants to preserve the incredible creativity and storytelling of every web page it can capture.

Yes, this sounds very hippie-ish, but the integrity of an archive is as important as that of a library, so it’s crucial that we don’t rely on a private company for either one.

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How To Baseline Your Business In The Philippines

by Justin Cooke -

Business in the Philippines
A laptop and a GoDaddy account – That’s all you really need to get started on your entrepreneurial journey today.

This wasn’t always the case. Some of you are old enough to remember growing up before the internet…before cat pictures and Good Guy Greg memes captured our attention. Getting your business started took 6-7 figures up-front and there were very few opportunities to test your MVP before taking it to market.

The world has changed in many ways. We now have guys like John at EntrepreneurOnFire.com blowing up some of those tired old scripts. He took his laptop and a microphone, put together a cookie-cutter list of interview questions, and built his podcast out from a little-known blip on the radar to a virtual empire in less than 9 months. (Interviewing titans like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, and Gary V.)

Some things haven’t changed so much. You’re still going to need:

  • Personal Runway – Enough cash in the bank or income to keep you full of Ramen noodles and peanut butter sandwiches until your business can sustain itself.
  • Business Runway – Even a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) with Lean Startup methodology takes a bit of cash to ship.
  • Team Of People – Automation isn’t a cure-all. Exponential growth requires sharp, talented team members.
  • Connections – Forging strong connections with strategic partners will always be a critical aspect to growing your business.
  • Opportunity – Putting yourself in the enviable position where these things just tend to “fall into your lap”.

All five of these requirements are easily achieved in the Philippines.

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How I Stalked My Way To a Flippa Guest Post

by Ophelie Lechat -

Note: Ashwin’s guest post pitch cracked me up. He has some great tips on landing a guest blogging spot. Interested in doing the same? Read on: we’re always looking for talented contributors to the Flippa blog, and you’ll now know exactly how to submit a post.

This post was written by Ashwin Ramesh. Ashwin is the Chief Hustler at Guest Post Labs. You can follow the Guest Blogging Blog or follow him on Twitter.

Not that I feel particularly proud, but most of my guest blogging opportunities (unless it’s someone I know already) come from what some would deem as “cyber stalking”.

I’m going to be showing you how I landed this guest post on Flippa by reaching out to the right person and show you how you can do the same thing.

STEP #1 – Identify the blog that you want a guest post from

Before you even go about stalking your way to success, it’s important to first identify blogs or websites where you’re going to get maximum bang for your article.

I typically ask myself these questions:

a. What is a website or a company that is most aligned to my target customer base?
b. Who is an authority blog in my industry?
c. Which is the most socially active company or website in my industry?

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Why smart entrepreneurs are selling their money-making websites

by Justin Gilchrist -

Dolomiti - Santnerspitz
When you scan through the listings of sites for sale, you’ll often see some …. ummm … unique if not downright comical reasons that people give for wanting to sell their site or internet business. In fact, can you remember the last time someone listed their reason for sale as it being the “best strategic move to make”? Neither can I.

This could give the false impression that you need a reason to decide to sell, like something has to go wrong first, but if you’ve owned and operated a site for a long enough then knowing when to sell can actually work massively in your favour.

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Content Marketing: How to Handle Multiple Authors on One WordPress Site

by Joe Foley -

The Modern Couple
Many people who use WordPress for their websites are not the only writers on the site. In fact, many may not write anything at all. Instead, they’ll hire others to produce the content for them.

Having multiple writers on one site can be tricky business, especially if you have some users overseeing others and acting as editors. And if you have a complex editorial workflow system for your content, then it can get even trickier.

Out of the box, WordPress has a number of nice features built right into the software for handling a multiple author environment. Of course the most powerful tool is the roles function. The default roles in WordPress, from top to bottom, are the following:

Why AdSense Went To Shit In 2012

by Ophelie Lechat -

The Golden Age

Barely a day passes without more news reports of our foundering global economy. The impacts of the flaky financial markets impact business online just as much as they do our offline counterparts.

We’ve seen this first-hand at Flippa: ad network earnings for sites sold on our marketplace fell significantly in 2012. But we found that not all networks’ revenue declined by the same amount.

Average revenues for sites using AdSense fell by around 40% more than those using other ad networks.

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How To Write Your Own Terms of Use

by Zak Muscovitch -

I'm So Confused!

In my last post, I promised to share with you some tips for the creation of good Terms of Use documents, that people would actually read and that would protect you in case of legal trouble. Here’s what you need to know to get started:

1. Start with a good template

Surprise, surprise. Nearly all good Terms of Use start with a template. Even law firms use templates, though law firms often use templates created by people within their own firms. The main point here is that often much of the content of Terms of Use are fairly standard, or what is referred to as “boilerplate”, legal language, particularly when it comes to the most general provisions in a Terms of Use document.

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