Without doubt the best iOS5 demo I have seen yet.

So how would an Internet Marketer take advantage of this?

What can I do if I find one?

Or watch this video, and click on it at the end for more…

Is it any good?

If your family is like my family then you will know by now that over the age of one – your kids can work an iphone.   It seems the slider and pin number access is genetically built in to humans as its the easiest thing in the world for them.  I didn’t even need to show them… how to use the slider that is.
My young ones spend their time watching Peppa pig and Charlie and Lola on YouTube which is fine when I’m around – but when I’m not I won’t let them use it, as youtube.com can bring up any kind of search result for perfectly innocent queries for puppies and pussies. As an ipad 2 is on the way and kids grow older then I need to be comfortable with what they have access to.

In comes Parental Controls.

Firstly I didn’t realise the iphone and ipad comes with its own parental control system built in. Its called “restrictions”, under the settings menu. Using this you can assign blocks to certain apps and levels of protection based on classification. For example prevent movies over 12 from playing or prevent any appstore purchase.  Accessing any blocked app requires another PIN to be entered.
It doesn’t directly tackle the YouTube problem however and this is where Mobicip comes in. Mobicip is a parental control browser that comes with an annual subscription that prevents your kids from accessing anything they shouldn’t. More importantly they have an iphone and ipad app that can override YouTube and prevent the wrong kind of content from playing. The basic entry level app is £4.99 with an upsell to an annual subscription model.  Visit this link full details on setting up parental controls written by the founder of mobicip.

Great one to watch…especially if you know Dragons Den.

For the past few weeks I’ve been getting through this tome on my business trips around Europe and the one thing I can say with certainty is my back has suffered through carrying this book in my laptop bag. Its 589 pages…and its not a large font either. Nevertheless I couldn’t put it down and its not because Lord Alan is an especially funny character (he’s not), and its not because his annecdotes are especially humorous. Its because right from the early days in extensive detail, every part of this man’s business career is described to the extent that you really feel you are with him, behind him and completely ‘get’ his decisions. Its all clearly written by him and not some ghost writer as his manner and language is so recognisable. I’m amazed how he remembers it all to be honest – and in such detail – but he does… and very soon you begin to realise what a massive career Lord Alan has behind him.

I can never claim to be a fan and I would never want to work for this kind of character as I think his micro-managing style and dogmatic approach to everything would probably wind me up no-end. But you cannot help but admire and respect him…not just for where he is now, but for whole road, the long journey where at every step difficult business decisions are made which in retrospect look straightforward but at time when you are under pressure it must have been difficult to hold the line.

I love the early stories that reveal the strategies around the type of business Amstrad was. From buying record decks from one supplier and then putting them together with a wooden cabinet from another, package it, add your margin and there go. In fact Alan’s knack for ‘getting the price right’ was genius. What he would do is decide what the killer price for a product was – and then divide by 1.54 which was his formula for working out what the complete cost of the build had to be. As long as he could maintain this he was on to a winner (..or in Alan’s words “at the races”).

The story starts at humble beginnings and moves through the hi-fi period where he introduced the integrated tower system, the dual cassette decks and even dual video machines. From the hi-fi period he went on to the computer world right when the PC market started exploding. I for one was one of the first customer of the Amstrad PC1512. I learnt a lot about basics of retail (I run some ECommerce stores), entrepreneurship and his own marketing style such as “lead in price”. This is price advertised for product A, knowing that every one would want model B as its got this extra feature. For example the PC1512 was advertised at £399 for black and white, but the actually sold more of the £499 one which was colour.
I grew up with all his technology so I understood exactly where he was coming from, but I didn’t appreciate that Amstrad was really what made Sky such a success and then reading about the exploits whilst chairman of Tottenham is a book on its own. You wouldn’t believe the cr*p that went on behind the scenes and the flack that he got. If it were me I would have got out of that real quick.

His book goes through every story, and there is certainly some emotion in the writing where you can tell he really wants to get the reality of what happened out in the open and put right the public mis-perceptions by setting the record straight.

The book concludes with Alan’s being made a Lord together with stories around the Apprentice which bring the reader right up to where we are now.

As I said earlier I never really thought much of Lord Sugar, but now having read through the whole experience I have nothing but respect and admiration for a fantastic career which can be credited for some incredible achievements that well and truly changed the face of consumer technology today.

A great read for any entrepreneur, aspiring or otherwise…and of course all Tottenham fans.

You need to watch this video… it will amaze you. Its finally here… the ability to control objects using the power of the mind. At the moment its via computer…but I’m sure you can appreciate, this will grow massively.

As social media, web3.0, mobiweb and clouds advance forward as a raging technology tsunami – a job seeker might well be asking themselves whats the best way of getting my CV or resume to a recruiter in a way that I can give myself the best chance of getting noticed.

Naturally we’ve all got our paper based version tucked away in the coffee stained folder marked “Job applications” that of course is a few years old or at least as old as the last time you were in the position of looking for work.

Any design oriented person would have ensured that their name was in 34 point bold, the font styles were consistent and serif’less, the kerning of the letters would be perfectly formed together with a nice pantone #344 border around the CV ensuring that if the document was in a pile on someone’s desk – then the border would make it stand out and entice the reader to view it.

Line managers will soon turn to their trusty Google and query you.

Setup your online CV

Today – its easy and I mean really easy..to setup an online profile of you.  At a basic level you can go to wordpress.com or blogger.com (part of Google) and setup your own blog page.  You may be a little more advanced and have already bought your domain name (well done) – if you haven’t, get it now as an exact match… ie. “FirstnameFamilyname.com” .. or .org .net .co.uk .org.uk.  The next step would be to make sure you have a good profile on LinkedIn – in fact make sure your external URL has your name in it now.  (its a bit of landgrab – just like facebook was when it let you choose your public URL)

 <title>Paul Bannister | Expresso Coffee Expert | London</title>

<h1>Paul Bannister - London</h1>

<meta name="description" content="Check you drink the best -

Hire an Expresso Coffee Expert for organic roasted and green beans

 - Paul Bannister in London"/>

Since the advance of Google Caffeine – the focus on sites is around performance and social links.  In fact friend feed seems to be getting higher ranking than facebook  at the moment.  So its really important to ensure you site is optimised and if possible you are using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).   For further tips and ideas on how to optimise your site see this post Optimising your blog.

I thought in addition to all this it would be useful to create a check list of all the other signals that Google considers in its algorithm.  There are 200 of these that can be broken down into different themes for you to focus on.  You should use it as a checklist to run against your website to make sure you are appealing to Google and of course your readers.

This list is big reading and I found various key lists around the web mainly Vaugns List and this published by the Search Engine Journal.   I suggest you get on their mailing list as the site is good reading.

I have listed some of their key points below together with some tips on how to capitalise on it.

As a disclaimer its important to understand that this information is not from Google and its not the definitive answer, but a pretty good indication of the what the algorithm might use to deduce your ranking.

Domain: 13 Signals
1. Domain age – Age ranks better, because 1 you can link faster to it, and 2) Most top 10 in your nice are probably older.
2. Length of domain registration – Try and register your domains for longer than 1 year.
3. Domain registration information hidden/anonymous – Google likes to know your accountable
4. Site top level domain (geographical focus, e.g. com versus co.uk)
5. Site top level domain (e.g. .com versus .info) – My tip only use .com, .net or .org for international and .org.uk and co.uk for uk specific traffic.
6. Sub domain or root domain?
7. Domain past records (how often it changed IP)
8. Domain past owners (how often the owner was changed)
9. Keywords in the domain – Exact match domains matter!  If your keyword is in the domain it will rank faster than anything.
10. Domain IP
11. Domain IP neighbors
12. Domain external mentions (non-linked)
13. Geo-targeting settings in Google Webmaster Tools

Server-side: 2 signals
1. Server geographical location
2. Server reliability / uptime – Get a free monitor setup for 2 URLS at http://host-tracker.com

3. Setting in Google Webmaster Tools for location  – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Architecture: 8 signals
1. URL structure – Use proper words in your links that are meaningful.  If using wordpress use permalinks.
2. HTML structure
3. LSI (Latent Semantic Index) words
4. Use of external CSS / JS files
5. Website structure accessibility (use of inaccessible navigation, JavaScript, etc)
6. Use of canonical URLs
7. Valid code – check against http://validator.w3.org/

Content: 14 signals
1. Content language
2. Content uniqueness
3. Amount of content (text versus HTML)
4. Unlinked content density (links versus text)
5. Pure text content ratio (without links, images, code, etc)
6. Content topicality / timeliness (for seasonal searches for example)
7. Semantic information (phrase-based indexing and co-occurring phrase indicators)
8. Content flag for general category (transactional, informational, navigational)
9. Content / market niche
10. Flagged keywords usage (gambling, dating vocabulary)
11. Text in images
12. Malicious content
13. Rampant mis-spelling of words, bad grammar, and 10,000 word screeds without punctuation
14. Use of absolutely unique /new phrases.

Internal Cross Linking: 5 signals
1. # of internal links to page
2. # of internal links to page with identical / targeted anchor text
3. # of internal links to page from content (instead of navigation bar, breadcrumbs, etc)
4. # of links using “nofollow” attribute
5. Internal link density

Website signals: 7 signals
1. Website Robots.txt file content
2. Overall site update frequency
3. Overall site size (number of pages)
4. Age of the site since it was first discovered by Google
5. XML Sitemap
6. On-page trust flags (Contact info ( for local search even more important – Make sure your phone number is on the site), Privacy policy, TOS, and similar)
7. Website type (e.g. blog instead of informational sites in top 10)

Page-specific signals: 9 signals
1. Page meta Robots tags
2. Page age
3. Page freshness (Frequency of edits and
% of page effected (changed) by page edits)
4. Content duplication with other pages of the site (internal duplicate content);
5. Page content reading level
6. Page load time (many signals in here)
7. Page type (About-us page versus main content page)
8. Page internal popularity (how many internal links it has)
9. Page external popularity (how many external links it has relevant to other pages of this site)

Keywords usage and keyword prominence: 13 signals
1. Keywords in the title of a page
2. Keywords in the beginning of page title
3. Keywords in Alt tags
4. Keywords in anchor text of internal links (internal anchor text)
5. Keywords in anchor text of outbound links
6. Keywords in bold and italic text
7. Keywords in the beginning of the body text
8. Keywords in body text
9. Keyword synonyms relating to theme of page/site
10. Keywords in filenames
11. Keywords in URL
12. No “Randomness on purpose” (placing “keyword” in the domain, “keyword” in the filename, “keyword” starting the first word of the title, “keyword” in the first word of the first line of the description and keyword tag…)
13. The use (abuse) of keywords utilized in HTML comment tags

Outbound links: 8 signals
1. Number of outbound links (per domain)
2. Number of outbound links (per page)
3. Quality of pages the site links in
4. Links to bad neighborhoods
5. Relevancy of outbound links
6. Links to 404 and other error pages
7. Links to SEO agencies from clients site
8. Hot-linked images

Take control of your rankings

Backlink profile: 21 signals
1. Relevancy of sites linking in
2. Relevancy of pages linking in
3. Quality of sites linking in
4. Quality of web page linking in
5. Backlinks within network of sites
6. Co-citations (which sites have similar backlink sources)
7. Link profile diversity
1. Anchor text diversity
2. Different IP addresses of linking sites
3. Geographical diversity
4. Different TLDs
5. Topical diversity
6. Different types of linking sites (logs, directories, etc)
7. Diversity of link placements
8. Authority Link (CNN, BBC, etc) Per Inbound Link
9. Backlinks from bad neighborhoods (absence / presence of backlinks from flagged sites)   (It seems that this is less of a factor nowadays – as it would be too easy to affect someone else’s site.)

10. Reciprocal links ratio (relevant to the overall backlink profile)
11. Social media links ratio (links from social media sites versus overall backlink profile)
12. Backlinks trends and patterns (like sudden spikes or drops of backlink number)
13. Citations in Wikipedia and Dmoz
14. Backlink profile historical records (ever caught for link buying/selling, etc)
15. Backlinks from social bookmarking sites.

Each Separate Backlink: 5 signals
1. Authority of TLD (.com versus .gov)
2. PR of a domain linking in
3. PR of a page linking in
4. Location of a link (footer, navigation, body text)
5. Anchor text of a link (and Alt tag of images linking)

Visitor Profile and Behavior: 6 signals
1. Number of visits
2. Visitors’ demographics
3. Bounce rate
4. Visitors’ browsing habits (which other sites they tend to visit)
5. Visiting trends and patterns (like sudden spiked in incoming traffic)
6. How often the listing is clicked within the SERPs (relevant to other listings)

Google now measures CTR (Click Thru Rate) and reports it in Webmaster tools.  So clearly it’s a big ranking factor with Caffeine.

Penalties, Filters and Manipulation: 12 signals
1. Keyword over usage / Keyword stuffing
2. Link buying flag
3. Link selling flag
4. Spamming records (comment, forums, other link spam)
5. Cloaking
6. Hidden Text
7. Duplicate Content (external duplication)
8. History of past penalties for this domain
9. History of past penalties for this owner
10. History of past penalties for other properties of this owner
11. Past hackers’ attacks records
12. 301 flags: double re-directs/re-direct loops, or re-directs ending in 404 error

More Signals (6):
1. Domain registration with Google Webmaster Tools
2. Domain presence in Google News
3. Domain presence in Google Blog Search
4. Use of the domain in Google AdWords
5. Use of the domain in Google Analytics
6. Business name / brand name external mentions

Feedback below…

For people looking to get started online or even old timers – Steve and Tim who started commission Blueprint (probably one of the most successful Internet courses out there) have given me permission to give away one of their courses for free.  Whats the catch…there isn’t one.  Its just there for you to register and watch the videos/read the manuals and you can get started.  Its called ‘Mine Money Online’ – even as an experienced marketer there are some gems in there.  Then if you are ready to go further, you can go on to join one of their more advanced courses like IMA.  In the meantime its a no brainer.  Get it now while you can

I’ve now been using IMeye for over a week now – and its incredible software.   Here are some things I have been doing:

Firstly – unlike any other keyword tool, you don’t bother with any seed keyword.  You start with traffic and competition.  So I’ve been setting the software to the following:

I set the competing pages (pages in the Google index mentioning the same keyword) parameter to no more than 100,000 pages and competing titles (pages on the index with the keyword in the title of the page)  to no more than 30,000.  Then I add the column showing the highest Adwords cost per click.  This tells me if the adsense revenues are interesting or not.  If its at least $3 then its good, as you would normally get about half that.  Finally I put a filter on to show me any domains that are for sale or auction that match these keywords.  If not, I clear the filter and then do the following:

At this level of competition I know I can compete and using some SEO I can get into the top 10 in about 2-3 months or sooner.  Then I sort by traffic and start working my way down until I find strong traffic with words that make sense with something I can sell on or get adsense revenue.  When I find an interesting word I check it in Keyword blueprint (added free package to IMeye users) and see if I get a Goldstar.  This means that its very easy to rank – and also verifies the figures in IMeye.

Now heres the difference.  Its generally accepted that if you get an exact match domain – keyword.com /.org /.net then you will have an excellent chance of the being ranked very quickly.  The problem is most of these have gone…but if you can find one then go for it.  However if you find out what country the traffic is coming from, then you could buy an exact match from that country, and following this line of thinking I have now bought 4 domains, of which 2 are specific exact match.org.uk or .co.uk which are just for UK traffic.

If you are in Australia, France, South Africa or Canada you will be quids in, because the traffic is less competitive than in the US.  Even better is that you do some keyword research using Google Insights and look for local trends there, and then validate them using IMeye or your own tool you could find some real gems.

So to sum up, find the less competitive traffic and find out what region the traffic coming from.  You can do this by setting your keyword tool to relevant datacentre for that region.  Then look for exact match domains local to this area and start building links or use EVO2.

More info on IMeye

Link to the video on IMeye site