December 22nd, 2009
I found this page a year ago and since then it has disappeared; it’s not cached on Google and Archive.org didn’t have it either. Luckily I found a post that had re-published the information (instead of just providing a link like 99% of the sources did). To ensure I have a copy and to help other people out I’m posting this information here.
Why is this useful?
This allows you to peak behind the curtain to avoid being throttled by Comcast (and other ISPs) by sending under their proposed limit, based off your SenderScore. Check your SenderScore
If you are getting a lot of 4XX errors (timed out/try again messages) in your server logs you’re likely being throttled.
If you are starting to send to a huge list (or you haven’t sent a message in the last 90 days) you’ll need to warm up the ISPs using this schedule:
- Send to 10,000 recipients on days 1, 2 and 3
- Send to 20,000 recipients on days 4, 5 & 6
- Send to 40,000 recipients on days 7, 8 & 9
- Send to 80,000 recipients on days 10, 11 & 12
- Send to 160,000 recipients on days 13, 14 & 15
- Send to 300,000 recipients on days 16 +
NOTE: Try to send your 10,000 in small batches each hour. Don’t send all 10,000 as fast as you can. From the list below you’ll get an idea on your sending limit per hour.
Mail to Comcast is queued and I see RL001 in my mail logs. What does this mean?
http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/RL001
Comcast has instituted rate limiting on all inbound mail traffic. This step was taken to protect our customers and our mail system from unwanted spam and malicious attacks. Any systems affected by this rate limit will receive a 4xx message (temp-fail) during the SMTP transaction. This message is designed to instruct the sending server to try again at a later time to deliver its email.
Our rate limiting policy is based on sender reputation, provided by SenderScore as well as authentication of the sending server, regardless of the number of domains from that server.
Recipients per Hour SenderScore*
3,600 0 – 15
7,200 16 – 25
14,400 26 – 30
28,800 31 – 50
50,400 51 – 70
72,000 71 – 85
86,400 86 – 100
*Subject to successful authentication
I hope this is helpful for those of you that aren’t using an ESP like mailchimp (or other services). Good Luck!
Tags: email sending
Posted in Email | No Comments »
October 27th, 2009
This is so easy to do that it’s one of the fastest and easiest ways to communicate changes on a webpage. I’m working on some changes in the copy of a landing page and wanted to see how the new text looked without messing with the code.
This works on all browsers and the results are immediate.
Step 1) Navigate to the page you’d like to edit.
Step 2) Paste this code into the browser address bar.
javascript: document.body.contentEditable = 'true'; document.designMode = 'on'; void 0
Step 3) Click on the text you want to edit and start typing.
Bonus You also can remove or change positions of images on the screen. The results vary but it might be useful to some extent.
Posted in Tools | No Comments »
August 21st, 2009
Recently I’ve pulled a nice competitive link report for each competitor for a specific clients. SEOMoz has a tool called linkscape which made it really easy (you need to be a pro member to access it). After pulling the individual reports I created a master document of all the competitive backlinks and sorted the results by link value. In the report many of the competitors had links from directories. Some of the competitors are fairly large players and a link in these directories is a big vote of confidence. They are definitely links to duplicate.
To my surprise I found some directories using redirects for all their listings. The two directories in question are:
http://www.galaxy.com/
http://www.toptenlinks.com/
I became interested in how they were redirecting their links and copied the link source by right clicking on the link. From there I entered the URL in this nifty Redirect Checker Tool
And guess what? None of the links in these directories are passing juice.
If they were using a 301 Redirect they would be passing juice to the websites in their directory. 302 redirects are temporary redircts and send the visitor on their way but search engines don’t assign link love.
That really stinks for all the websites in those directories. What’s the lesson here? Try to get good clean links without any redirects. If that’s not possible, make sure to check the type of redirect!
Tags: Directories, Link Building
Posted in SEO | No Comments »
July 30th, 2009
This is one of the best link buidling requirements list I’ve ever seen. If you are having a company or individual build links have them follow these rules. Most importantly, have them report the links they’ve built for you.
There are a lot of shady tricks out there and this list will help you avoid 99.9% of them.
GUIDELINES
1- One link per domain. No more than 3 links from the same Class-C IP address
2- Require One-way links only
3- Links should contain the target keyword/keyword phrase (we will supply the target keyword/keyword phrase) as text in the link anchor text hyperlink
4- Links must be permanent
5- Links must be in text, no graphics
6- Links cannot be from framed pages
7- Links cannot be through a JavaScript
8- Links cannot be through a redirect script
9- Links cannot be on Flash sites or pages
10- Links cannot include a rel=nofollow tag
11- No links using any automated techniques or black-grey hat techniques of blog comment spam, referrer spam or ANY other shady tactic.
12- Page containing link must not be excluded by robots.txt and the anchor text must not contain the rel=nofollow tag.
13- Linked sites must be in production and active . (Developed and not under construction).
14- No sites that require payments
15- No Scraped content, mirror sites, link schemes and sites overrun with contextual ads, popups, intrusive advertising, etc.
16- No link from: guestbook’s, social bookmarking, classifieds, dynamic links, link farms, link-exchange programs, forums, directories, articles submission, Free For All websites, hacker, pharmacy, illegal, pornographic or generally black hat sites.
18- Links must be manually submitted ONLY. No use of Automated software (e.g., Zeus, Arelis or others
19- We reserve the right to cancel any link if not found suitable.
20- Page containing link must be reacheable using normal flow navigation from home page and sitemap (if present)
21- Link page should be from English / German / French language sites only
22- Link page must already be indexed and cached by Google within last 30 days.
23- Links must be on pages with 20 outbound links at most.
24- Links should not be listed, illegal and other offensive websites (porn, gambling, spam, ban, or blacklisted).
Tags: SEO
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
May 12th, 2009
Maintaining a brand can be hard to do. Building a strong image and keeping customers happy is hard work. To complicate things, add profitability and stock holders to the equation. Maintaining that balance isn’t the easiest feat.
But that is something established brands have to worry about. Affiliates are like the guerrilla warlords imploring all kinds of non-traditional warfare in the market. This is where twitter sniping comes into play.
The basic idea is to find dissatisfied customers of an established brand on Twitter and provide them an alternative solution (with a link).
Step 1: Set up your Twitter search for an established brand
Step 2: Add the search to your iGoogle homepage; Check it every day.
Step 3: When someone is complaining about your target company provide them with a link to their competitor (with your affiliate code embedded inside).
Step 4: Rinse & Repeat
Tags: Affiliate
Posted in Affiliate | No Comments »
May 11th, 2009
In the old days Yahoo’s keyword tool (overture) would provide real dollar amounts for various keywords. The tool was invaluable in finding profitable keyword niches. Yahoo and Google don’t provide actall CPC data anymore. Instead they opt for ambiguous colored bars to describe “competitiveness”.
If you are looking to place adSense or other CPC advertising on your site knowing what to expect per click is important. Here is the work around for finding that data.
Step 1: Do an organic search for your target keyword.
Step 2: Copy the domain name of the top result
Step 3: Paste the domain here http://www.google.com/sktool/#
Step 4: Look at actual adSense Payouts for Keywords!
Tags: adSense
Posted in adSense | No Comments »
May 2nd, 2009
In a recent conversation with a designer the question “What’s wrong with the website now?” was asked in response to the idea of setting up an A/B test on the homepage. Because he designed the homepage and would likely design the new tests I had to tread lightly. In a hurry I explained that “nothing” was “wrong” with the homepage but a small variation might have improved results. Changing the hero-shot, the title, or the color of the call-to-action button all might perform better than the current test. Conversely it could also perform worst. I tried to explain that we just don’t understand exactly what makes customers click. The only way to know what they really like is to ask them, through an A/B test.
I’m not sure I answered his question or aleviated any of his concern but his sentament is common. The idea that any one thing could be the best version the first time out is a pipe dream. The idea that a professional baseball player could step to the plate and hit a grand slam on the first swing is a pipe dream as well. Let’s face it, the first version isn’t always the best (which is normal). Why not try hundreds of versions and pick the best one?
So in short, there’s nothing wrong with the website, just your process.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
February 4th, 2009
Lately I’ve spent a lot of time researching what broad match actually does in Google’s Adwords. Most of the time broad match does a damn good job. It finds misspellings, finds relevant combination, and gives me 500% more clicks then if I used exact match.
But there is a dark side to broad match. Let’s play a game. I’ll give you a list of keywords and you tell me what broad matched term Adwords was trying to match. Here’s the list:
-1040ez line 11
-1040ez print out
-1040now.net
-1040x free online
-1099 forms online
-1099 int online
-1099 misc forms online
-1099 on line forms
-1099 online
-1099 online forms
-2009 1099 online forms
-ajmain
-ajweb
-can i access my w 2 online
-can i print w2 online
-complete 1099 online
-download my w2 online
-download w2s online
-fill online w3 w2
-find my w2 online
-find w 2 online
-find w2 online
-find your w2 online
-form 1040
-form 1098
-form 1099
-form w2
-form w2c
-free forms online
-free irs online tax filing
-free online calculation 1120s
-free online irs form 1099
-free online w2 forms
-get irs five ditit pin online
-get my w2 online
-get w2 forms
-get your w-2 online
Did you guess “IRS Online”? This is only a small sample of how crazy broad match can be.
The lesson for me is not to rush in and kill off or lower the bid on a term like “IRS Online”. Instead it would be valuable to isolate the term by adding an exact match of the term in question. Simply adding [IRS Online] to your keyword list (while keeping the broad matched version) would tell you quickly how valuable the exact phrase is vs what Google is serving in broad match.
Step two is using an advanced keyword filter to find the raw query and what broad matched term triggered the keyword being shown. I can’t tell you how valuable this “keyword data mining” will be to the success of your campaign. While your competitors are lowering the bid you’re finding keyword gems and adding a myriad of negative keywords that tighten the performance of your campaign and provide awesome ROI in the long run.
I will add two more posts soon talking about Keyword Data Mining and the Advanced Raw Keyword Filter.
Tags: Adwords, keywords, online marketing strategy, ppc
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing - PPC | No Comments »
December 7th, 2008
My experience with marketing comes with mixed emotions. There are times I am out right embarrassed about marketers and their sad attempts to hock a product. No doubt, they are trying their best and their intentions are good. But they cheapen the word marketing. The first time I saw Marketing (capital M) was in one of my MBA marketing classes. The professor taught Marketing as a way to focus business strategy. analyze market share, leverage statistical models, scrutinize finances for competitive advantage, and exploit operational efficiencies. The curtain was drawn and I witnessed the machinery of real Marketing.
As a thought experiment I’ve made two classifications for marketing. Lower case marketing and upper case Marketing.
marketing VS Marketing
- bureaucratic approach to problem solving VS Problems Are Solved Organically
- no testing, no data, no analysis VS Always Testing, Data Driven, Continual Analysis
- “This is how we’ve always done it.” VS “Why are we doing it this way?”
- highest paid person’s opinion trumps all VS Ideas Come From Everyone and Carry Equal Weight
- very conspicuous and “in your face” VS Imperceptible, Subtle, and Efficient
- take advantage of people VS take advantage of market inefficiencies
- gimmicks VS real value
Any other ideas on lower case marketing VS Upper Case Marketing?
Tags: Marketing
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
November 12th, 2008
Firefox is the only browser that allows for 3rd party extensions. This being the case here are the best Firefox tools for SEO and web Analytics
SEO Tools
Pulls useful market research data right into Google’s and Yahoo!’s search results, including the following data near each search result.
- PR: (Google PageRank) an estimated measure of global link authority
- Age: age pulled from Archive.org, shows the first time a page was indexed by Archive.org’s spider. The theory is that if Archive.org found a page so did many of the major search engines.
- Links: (Yahoo! linkdomain) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a domain
- .edu Link: (Yahoo! .edu linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a domain
- .edu Page Link: (Yahoo! .edu link ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .edu links pointing at a specific page
- .gov Link: (Yahoo! .gov linkdomain ) shows a rough estimate of the total number of .gov links pointing at a domain
- Page Links: (Yahoo! link) shows a rough estimate of the total number of links pointing at a page
- del.icio.us: number of times a URL has been bookmarked on Del.icio.us. Heavily skewed toward techy / Web 2.0 stuff.
- Technorati: an estimate of the total number of links to a site from blogs
- Alexa: rank based on website traffic . Heavily skewed toward internet marketing and webmaster related resources.
- Cached: (Google site:) shows how many pages from a site are indexed in Google
- dmoz: searches the Google Directory to count the total number of pages from a site that are listed in DMOZ, and the total number of pages listed in DMOZ that reference that URL.
- Bloglines: shows you how many people are subscribed to a particular blog via Bloglines.
- dir.yahoo.com: is a site listed in the Yahoo! Directory or not.
- WhoIs: makes it easy to look up the whois data for any site.
WEB ANALYTICS
WASP is the Web Analytics Solution Profiler, a specialized Firefox extension aimed at web analytics professionals Buy! who want to do quality assurance and understand how their web analytics solution is implemented.
Note: The free version of WASP offers the unrestricted sidebar and statusbar info. Site crawls are limited to 10 pages. To crawl more pages you need to upgrade.
This project may be of some help for the following:
- Help debugging web analytics implementations.
- See which kind of web server the website is using.
- See the cookies set by website and 3rd party adverting partners.
Are there any other ‘must have’ tools that you use regularly? Please leave a comment if you do.
Posted in SEO, Tools, Web Analytics | No Comments »
