Peter Vatistas

For those of you who are serious about building extremely quality links and have a padded budget, I recommend checking out a service called Hosted Marketing Pages by Text Link Brokers.

Hosted Marketing Pages are an extremely powerful link-building method that are optimized pages with content relevant to your keywords. The Hosted Marketing Pages are hosted in Text Link Broker’s partner sites which are all above a Google PR5 and have between 10 and 10,000 links pointing to them.

The great thing about this service is these pages are optimized content based on your keywords. They contain embedded links that are natural looking - much more powerful than links located on the side of bottom of a page.

HMP’s (Hosted Marketing Pages) also give you more control over your online reputation. Because your adding many HMP’s across many domains with your optimized content, you build a stronger presence for your site and your reputation, helping to lower other (not so nice) pages in the SERPS along with your competitors.

So what do you guys think? Who here has tried HMP’s before and what was your level of success? Click here to learn more about Hosted Marketing Pages.

Want to talk about Hosted Marketing Pages in detail? Check out this thread in the Peter-V Forum.

It’s funny how private I’ve been about my SEO techniques and where I spend my money to help optimize my clients sites. It’s not so much that I tried to hide some secret SEO technique that makes my client’s sites rank #1 on Google, its more resources than anything (which is my secret weapon).

The most valuable thing I spend my money on by far is events, website memberships and books. Of course I buy links, I pay for analytical services, content and etc but those come secondary to my budget and many times I never spend a single dime on them.

So what resources I spend my money on and recommend?

SEOmoz - Get the premium membership, well worth the money.

SEO Book Training Program & the SEO Book - Either is fine, I find the training program is a lot like the book with updated content & a community presence.

For resources that is basically it; I’ve read probably close to 100 books on internet marketing and I’m a member of probably every SEO forum on the internet but with everything I know now the only two resources that actually teach me new things are the two listed above.

As for events (physical conferences, forums, etc) I recommend the following:

SMX: The Search Marketing Expo - $1395 for an all access pass.

SES: Search Engine Strategies - $1795 for a platinum passport.

PubCon: Search Marketing Conferences - $799 for a full pass.

Forums I recommend:

Search Engine Land

Sphinn

The V7 Network

Search Engine Watch

SEO Guy

Another thing I like to do is track the experts in search engine optimization. Here is a list of people I highly respect and follow religiously:

Aaron Wall

Chris Hooley

Andy Beal

Matt Cutts

Andy Hagans

Danny Sullivan

C.K. Chung

Lee Oden

Neil Patel

Patrick Sexton

Todd Malicoat

As an SEO I always try to stay up to date with techniques, tools and information. A few years ago I started my own Internet Marketing firm offering SEO, SEM, Analytics, Affiliate and Ad marketing services for medium to large companies and over the years I’ve compiled quite a list of SEO tools.

Within the last three weeks I’ve received over 150 requests for what tools and/or applications I use specifically for search engine optimization. Below you will find my list of tools, applications and services I use on a regular basis, I hope this information helps and keep the questions coming if they don’t! :)

Analytics:

Google Analytics
Omniture SiteCatalyst
Web CEO’s HitLense
StatsCounter

Keyword Research Tools:

WordTracker
Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool
Microsoft Ad Intelligence (Excel 2007 Plug in)
Web CEO
SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool
SEO for Firefox

Link Analysis Tools:

SEOElite
Web CEO
SEO for Firefox

Competitive Research Tools:

HitWise
Alexa
Compete
SpyFu
Quantcast
DomainTools

SERP Rank Research & Reporting:

Web CEO
SEOBook Rank Checker
Rank Tracker
Free Monitor for Google

SEO Web Browser Tools:

The Best SEO Plug-ins for Firefox

If you have suggestions on SEO tools please comment on this post, I’m always looking for tools to save me time and headaches!

I thought this was pretty funny:

While Google’s spider “crawled” the whatsmyip.org site it managed to record it’s own IP in the title and publish it in the Google SERPS. Funny stuff.

Google raises awareness for energy conservation by changing the Google homepage to black, “turning the lights out”. On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. I think this is a fantastic idea and really the first attempt I’ve every seen to raise awareness and actually start something globally.

I’ll be turning off my lights tonight, will you?

Click here to go to the Google Earth Hour page.

As you all know I am an avid user of Web CEO for my SEO/SEM solutions company. Although there are a few other tools and applications I use, Web CEO is by far the most powerful and stable application I have ever used in this field. I easily spend the majority of my day using Web CEO for just about all steps of my search engine optimization for all my clients.

Become an expert in SEO quickly and easily:

* Web CEO software package consisting of 12 potent tools to organize your efforts
* Professional Training Course in Search Engine Marketing to learn all the best practices

Web CEO is a full-range search engine optimization software with advanced site troubleshooting and web analytics functionality. Here are a few facts about Web CEO:

The choice of 440,000+ businesses.
Web CEO stands on guard of the rankings of IBM and Motorola. These companies have no right to make mistakes. What about you?

Simple and user-friendly.
Packed with powerful features, Web CEO still can boast an ultra user-friendly interface that turns a novice into an SEO expert right away after installation.

Completely Safe.
Employing Google API and cutting-edge human emulation techniques, Web CEO makes the optimization process absolutely safe for you and your site. Some of the important tools you will find in the package will help you:

* Get suggestions for new keywords relevant to your business and research your own keywords
* Get optimization advice and tweak your Web pages in friendly editing environment
* Create link partnerships
* Keep track of your site’s rankings and links
* Get comprehensive real-time visitor reports

I’m sure your looking at this like I just wrote a sales pitch but if you’ve read my blog before you’ll know I don’t sell a damn thing. In addition to that fact - WebCEO is free! Just download, install and get your rank on.

Download the free edition of Web CEO and get access to the Training Course now!

In addition to Web CEO’s awesome application and training program I totally recommend that you grab the latest copy of SEO Book by Aaron Wall. It doesn’t matter how much you know about search engine optimization/marketing, SEO Book is by far one of the best (if not THE BEST) reference and training materials available today.

That. Just. Happened.

A couple years back I signed up for Microsoft’s free beta version of Office Live which at the time I thought was pretty slick. Now after seeing what else is out their in regards to an online “Office” environment I knew that Office Live was not anything special. Google Apps is definitely the way to go for an online office environment and its very compatible with many general application including Office 2007/2008 and Mozilla Thunderbird (using IMAP).

I chose to migrate everything from my Office Live account (email, calendar, chat) to Google Apps (email, chat, calendar, docs) and host my domain at GoDaddy. I quickly found that the reference material available to do such a migration was non-existent and I had to find my own way. Now that I know exactly how to do it and have successfully done so several times, here is my step-by-step on how to cancel Office Live and transfer your domain to another registrar.

First off, go to here and fill out the information to receive your cancellation email with domain registration key.

1. Now go to http://www.melbourneit.com.au/cc/godirect/
2. Enter your domain name and registry key and click on continue.
3. Click on ‘create a new account’ below the text box where you are prompted for my account password.
a)     Fill up all the information needed:
i)      Contact Information
ii)     Login Information
b)     Other Information:
i)      The Country Code is “1″ for United States (for UK it is 44)
ii)     The email address you enter must not be related to the domain you are attempting to transfer/manage.
4)     After filling up all the information, check the box that says I have read and understood the Sign up Terms and Conditions. I agree to abide by the terms and conditions, as stated there in.
5)     Click Create.  Now your account is created.
6)     On the My Account Console page, click Logout on the right side of the page.
7)     Now you will be redirected to the Melbourne IT web site.
8)     Click Manage Domain Name on the right side of the page.
9)     Type your domain and registry key.
10)  Click Enter Management.
11)  Click Transfer management to Melbourne IT.
12)  Sign in using the username and password for your Melbourne IT account using the username and password, which you created for your Melbourne IT account.
13)  Click Continue after you have verified all the information on the page.
14)  Click on My Account console.
15)  Click on the link “View/Manage domain name” under the Domain Names.
16)  Click on your domain name (customer domain name) under the Domain Name section.
17)  Click on the Unlock Domain Name.
18)  To change name server, click on Change Delegation Details under Name Server Details on the right side of the page. Here, you can change the domain name server settings for your new service provider.
19)  To obtain new authorization code in order to transfer your domain, click Retrieve Domain Name (auth info) Password (on the same page on point 17).

Now you have all the necessary information and your domain is unlocked and ready for transfer. Log into your favorite domain registrar and begin the transfer with the credentials provided using the steps above.

From here I transfered my domain to GoDaddy which took about 2 or 3 business days; when the transfer was complete I pointed all my cname & mx records to Google’s names servers. Since then I have never been happier with my email solution and full online office experience.

Good luck!

I get a lot of emails from people whom want to know which applications I prefer in Windows. Although this is both a loaded question and a very broad one, I will try to answer this the best I can and will definitely update it from time to time.

Favorite FTP Application: WinSCP

Favorite Telnet & SSH Application: PuTTY

Favorite Internet Browser: Firefox 2 & Safari

Favorite Imaging Software: Adobe Photoshop CS3 - Open Source: Gimp

Favorite Instant Messanger: Application: Trillian - Web Based: Meebo

Favorite Text Editor (HTML, CSS, etc): Edit Plus 2

Favorite CD/DVD & ISO Software: MagicISO

Favorite Office Suite: Microsoft Office 2007 - Open Source: Open Office & Star Office

Favorite Compression & Encryption Software: WinRAR

Favorite Blogging Software: Windows Live Writer

Favorite AntiVirus/Malware Software: Eset NOD32

Favorite Email Client: Microsoft Outlook 2007 (for exchange) - Open Source: Mozilla Thunderbird 2

Favorite BitTorrent Application: Azureus

This list is way from a complete one and to be honest I have been moving away from Windows all together and replacing them with Mac’s. Sorry Microsoft guys - I have been bit by the Apple bug. I also have a laptop running Fedora 8 and I’ll make sure I write a favorite’s list for both Apple and Linux soon.

Over the last few months Aaron Wall from SEOBook has been making many anti-Google comments regarding SEO. Matt Cutts, Google’s leading Spam Engineer, has been faced with such topics like “SEO equals spam” and “How to buy organic ranks in Google”. I think it is important to get people involved in this discussion and try to make some sense of this. I of coarse have my own opinions regarding many of these discussions and arguments between the two but I would love to hear what you think.

I do think that Aaron Wall and his new wife are trying to stir the pot a little and get some linkbait. Aaron has a lot of knowledge in SEO and I don’t think he will just throw things out there with no thought. I also don’t think Aaron would do anything to piss Matt Cutts off considering Matt helped Aaron when Aaron was getting sued from a business/client of his…

Matt Cutts

Aaron Wall - SEOBook