OpenJason » News & Commentary

The real reason Google penalizes for duplicate content.

Jason — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 04:54:12 +0000

Every SEO and web-marketing professional knows that duplicate, or copied, content will result in severe penalties to your pagerank and your search positioning. We’ve learned from Google that this is a simply a function of quality control and that multiple instances of the same article convolutes and dilutes the internet’s content. Well, this is true… without a doubt. But Google certainly has alterior motives behind this.

SEO Firms become successful by studying Google’s results on particular searches. They learn techniques that “seem” to be affective. Some firms spend enormous amounts of time and money analyzing results and the page factors that produce top position results. This is a daunting task because

A: Google doesn’t update ranks or positions immediately, and

B: It’s a trial-and-error approach with each change made to the page content.

Unless you have a way to directly compare apples to apples, the research and discoveries made can’t be definitive and hover just above an “educated guess.”

Let’s assume for a moment that we were able to take two identical pages and place them on separate domains each with the same pagerank. We would be able to make small changes to one of the pages and definitively determine what’s successful and what hurts the pages’ rank and positioning.

We would also be able to take two identical pages and place them on domains with very different ranking to determine just how important and influential the domain itself is. For example, we place an article on a domain that is less than 1 year old with a very low rank. We then take the same article and place it on a domain that has been around for 10 years or more and has a great PR. We would likely see a difference in SEO with identical articles on different ranking domains. Furthermore, we would be able to measure importance of domain rank, age, etc.

In summary, the duplicate content penalty Google has implemented serves an extremely important function outside of quality control. It blocks people from figuring out Google’s secret sauce… the algorhythm.

Best Client and Project Management Tool Available

Jason — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:38:41 +0000

First and foremost – This post was not paid for by CPO or anyone affiliated with CPO. This is my true testimonial to a great company.

I’ve been a huge fan of Creative Pro Office for quite a while… They have recently a new version of CPO, which is awesome. I purchased the source code quite some time ago and recently received the beta version of the latest and greatest version. This has taken client and project management to a whole new level! HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT.

Additional to a great platform, the guys at CPO are EXTREMELY helpful. I had some issues, but Jeff was quick to respond… on multiple occasions.

If nothing else, definitely check out their technology… you’ll love it.

CreativeProOffice

Client Featured in New York Times

Jason — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:46:48 +0000

New York Times – http://ow.ly/2h1bN

Sound Sleep Sound Mind

Dr. Barry Krakow – Author of “Sound Sleep Sound Mind” and “Turning Nightmares Into Dreams” was featured in the New York Times Today. Congrats.

Also, be sure to pick up his book from Amazon here: Sound Sleep Sound Mind

New York Times – http://ow.ly/2h1bN

Rates Advertising Agency Albuquerque – Unethical and Dishonest companies in Albuquerque

Jason — Mon, 31 May 2010 13:34:25 +0000

UPDATED: RATES ADVERTISING is now operating as getfoundnm.com.

Ironically enough, they are using the intellectual property of Daynger, LLC . additionally they have copied content from a competitors site and have posted it on their new site.

This is hysterical… How can they call themselves an SEO company…. But use duplicate content… ???

Finding a good team to partner with can be difficult. Ive recently ended a year-long relationship with the R.A.T.E.S Advertising Agency in Albuquerque (Rates) for complete dishonesty and unethical behavior. Initially, the goal was to use them as a sales/marketing division of my company. We called this collaboration Socks Media.

Without getting too far into detail, RATES is a 2-man show. A man and his girlfriend who work out of their house. They buy lavish cars, suits, jewelry and go on expensive vacations. They only do this to give themselves an appearance of being bigger and better than they truly are. But the reality is, they have no problem taking advantage of their clients and partners… Burning all bridges along the way. Rates is an advertising company – Radio and Television Expert Solutions. But the services they provide are amateur at best and lack any sort of expertise or professionalism.

Donavan Lopez dlopez@ratesllc.com and Carolyn Bregman cbregman@ratesllc.com of Albuquerque, New Mexico have a reputation of snake oil sales tactics. They both think theyre much smarter than they truly are… and give into the temptations of greed. In reality, neither of them have any education. Heres a short list of the dishonest things they have done:

Charged triple the cost of office supplies and business cards to their own partners – pocketing the difference.
They billed and collected thousands of dollars from clients, then neglected to pay me for services rendered. When addressed, they allegedly made a mistake.
They lied to clients constantly to get money out of them.
After the separation, they continued to bill and collect for services they were not capable of rendering. They lied to clients, collected money not owed to them and then denied it.
They tried to sell partners products and services as theyre own… Then lied about it.

I caught Donavan and Carolyn red-handed. I have audio files and email that incriminate RATES left and right. They acted surprised and confused… of course. Im currently in the process of recovering over $100k in stolen intellectual property and over $10,000 in outstanding cash owed.

Who says that??
Donavan Lopez (), Creative Director: The only thing wrong with a stolen idea is… not using it. – and hes the creative director.

Carolyn Bregman (), Consumer Marketing Strategist – I have no problem over-charging people. Ill find creative ways to justify charging more money for less stuff, then Ill hold em to it.

Intuition is key. And your wifes intuition – listen to it.

Twitter for Marketing: Dead?

Jason — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:43:21 +0000

As expected, Twitter is huge. What was the original business model? Did the guys at Twitter ever think it would become what it is today? What is the future of Twitter?

Twitter has huge potential. And there’s enormous room for creative expansion. The platform in itself is flexible and can do some amazing things. But is it being used to its full potential. Absolutely not. Will it? Who knows … I’m sure there’s a strategy behind the future of Twitter.

But this it what I struggle with: In its current state, how effective is it in terms of marketing? Can a twitterer with 10000 followers create more hype than a twitterer with 1000? Simple logic would suggest that having more followers certainly creates more hype. But guess what … As of now it doesn’t necessarily work like that. It really depends on who’s following you, how they started following you, and the reason they use Twitter.
It’s not uncommon for a regular guy, with nothing good to say have thousands of followers. That does NOT mean that any of his followers listen to anything they’re saying.

Twitter currently serves as a platform for spam. So many people try to use twitter for shameless self-promotion and for their own marketing efforts, that they lose focus on the concept of Twitter. There’s several companies that facilitate the spamming activities. These companies make it easy to have thousands of friends and to send messages directly to each and every one of those friends – and this is done fully automated. It’s easy to filter these people out… Compare followers to number of people they follow. If the numbers are similar and hi, than they likely don’t use twitter the way it should be used.

In order for twitter to work for marketing, you need to have some foundation or previously established reputation. You need to actually be somebody who has something valuable to say or a person who is in the public eye. It’s highly unlikely that we’ll see anyone gets famous by using twitter.
So what’s the appeal of Twitter for the spammers?

Perhaps these people are getting a false sense of self-worth. It’s possible that the spammers feel like they have accomplished something by gaining thousands of followers and can compete with the big boys. Or maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye. Whatever the reason, I think this is an issue that the guys at Twitter need to address.

I certainly don’t condone or promote spamming. But at the same time, I don’t disagree with paying for large amounts of followers. Having big numbers of followers can and will earn credibility. When people see that you have thousands of followers, they assume that there’s a legitimate reason for it.
To wrap this up, I think Twitter isn’t as effective in terms of marketing as people give it credit for. There’s too much spam. I believe that in order for it to have high value, the Twitterer needs to have a well-established foundation. This foundation can’t be created on Twitter – the logic just doesn’t work.

I believe that we’re soon to see some killer new uses of Twitter… assuming we can get control on the spamming.

Twitter Easter Eggs

Jason — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:39:29 +0000

Twitter has limitations with creating custom profiles… backgrounds are difficult to upload and depending on your screen size, they’ll always look different. So, why not take advantage of this twitter craziness and throw in something for the user/viewer to find…?

Here you can see the profile on a regular 1280w screen. Then, when you open the page on a screen with a bigger width, you get a nice little easter egg that includes a 50% off coupon for all products.

The live twitter background

1280 px Screen

Twitter Easter Egg

1650px Screen

Windows Mojave Project – Pathetic attempt to defer the real reasons Vista sucks

Jason — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:53:08 +0000

By now everybody has seen the ‘Mojave Project’ all over the net, on T.V., etc… How ridiculous is that? Microsoft was stupid for

A. Doing this “experiment” in the first place (assuming it was real)
B. publicizing it as much as they have…

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doing this “experiment” and publicizing the “results” is nothing more than admittance of crappy product. Microsoft, you’re simply saying, “Our Vista OS sucks and everybody knows it!.”
Obviously the goal was to address the negative attitude towards Vista. Well, Microsoft… There’s a negative attitude for a reason. Vista sucks. I don’t think there’s some conspiracy amongst the people who have plotted the negativity towards Vista. Let’s just face it… it sucks. Big time.

What really blows my mind is this: I don’t think that major complaint of Vista is the UI. In fact, I think it looks nice… The real problem is how it performs.

Analogy: Let’s say I’ve been hearing all the hype about today’s best new basketball. This basketball is top-of-the-line and should be in every basketball players hands. So I run out and buy this shiny new ball and bring it home to play with it. As soon as I attempt to dribble, I realize that this ball is about 4 times heavier than what I’m used to. When I bounce the ball, it not only puts a dent in the floor, but it goes everywhere except for straight back up. Apparently this is a common problem with this shiny “Vista-ball.” A couple of months later, the manufacturer of the basketball releases a commercial reviewing a recent experiment… it’s called the “Mojave Project.” They basically took the basketball, painted it a new color and let people look at it.

Come on… you’ve got to be kidding me.

I’ve recently purchased another Dell laptop which came with Vista. I can’t help but say, “I hate this piece of sh!t” every time I turn the damn thing on. I often have meetings in coffee shops, which is a bad idea for you Vista users. Vista seems to have a mind of its own when it comes to WiFi connection… it’s really a shot in the dark as to whether or not you’ll be getting a connection at…

Long story short – Vista, you really do suck.

Tags: mojave, windows

Is Alexa Ranking Really that Important?

Jason — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:14:50 +0000

I’ve been in several discussions/arguments about the importance of Alexa. This is the conclusion I’ve come to….

Is Alexa Important: YES
Is Alexa accurate: NO

Think of it this way… Alexa is to Web Marketing/Advertising as Arbitron is to Radio Marketing/Advertising. Arbitron is a tool that determines which radio stations have the most listeners and who their target audience is. Radio sales people use this the data, which is far from accurate, as a sales tool to get new advertisers. So why do they use inaccurate data? Simple… because it’s the only data they have. It’s the only measurement that will help advertisers determine ROI (Return on Investment). Now, take that same principle and apply it to Alexa… Although it’s not necessarily accurate, it still has importance.

Rank Improvers

Visit this group

As always, give me your thoughts…

Tags: alexa, marketing, openjason, technology, rankings, pagerank, compete rank

Stupid Inquiries: Development Needed – no budget. Let’s Partner!

Jason — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:56:58 +0000

As a developer, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this: “I have a zero budget. You’ll become a partner and get paid with the profits.”

I got another phone call today from some prick who’s “not trying to sell me,” but has a VERY PROFITABLE opportunity for me if I do work for free and become a partner. This guy was some sleezy idiot who’s trying to put up a bunch “GET RICH QUICK BY INTERNET MARKETING” sites… He pointed me in the direction of some poorly built, worthless website that allegedly makes him 40k per month. He continues to tell me that he gets unreal amounts of traffic to this site and that he needs a good Joomla! developer to get the ball rolling. Being such a generous guy, he’d share the profits.

Come on. Who the F*** are you trying to kid? This prick doesn’t know a damn thing about internet marketing and doesn’t make 40 cents in profit, let alone 40k. Then, to sit here and lie to me about the amount of traffic this site gets, thinking he’ll be able to persuade me into a zero-compensation development project. What, did he expect me to say, “Oh yeah, sign me up… I’m interested. What a great idea… this guy is a real innovator in web technology.” – I ended up telling him I’d call him back later. Being the sharp business man he is, his response was, (in a condescending voice) “What time can I expect your call ?” Look asshole, NEVER. Don’t waste my time by thinking you’re going to swindle me into your ridiculous shenanigans.

Let’s apply this same concept to another industry.

What if I called an architect firm, or some custom home builder and started talking to them about a new hotel I wanted to have built. The hotel will be “the next best thing” in hotels. —

“Now, what I’m looking for is somebody who is willing to partner with me. I’ll do some of the marketing, but the firms needs to create the design, map out the blueprints, and hire the contractors. Oh wait, we’ll need some land to build on, so that’ll be your job, architect guys – go ahead and give up some of your land for my project. But don’t worry… I already have a name for the hotel already picked out. Now, when the hotel is all done, there’s gonna be quite a bit of ongoing maintenance and additional development initiatives. But wait, let’s not forget that the architect folks are responsible for making sure that the hotel gets listed in all the phone books and that the hotel has a significant presence in each and every phone book – it’s important the my hotel is the first that anybody sees when searching for “hotel.” Okay, let’s talk compensation. I don’t plan on paying you anything architect guys… instead, I’m willing to give you 25% of the PROFIT, which you won’t have any control of. This is MY project and my idea… so, 25% is more than generous. …. Final thoughts? Let’s get moving on the development. "

Call me crazy, but I tend to think that I’d get kicked in the nuts for doing something stupid like that. This kind of inquiry comes in all the time, I kid you not.

Do us all a favor, time-wasting pricks… stop calling – thinking that we’re going to jump all over your worthless ideas. It’s rather arrogant to think that ANY business owner or freelance developer is going to buy into your foolish plan, setting our own ideas and goals aside. Any free time I have goes to my own business ventures… not some sleezy, get rich scheme. A partnership with these idiots is like shoving pencils in my eyes repeatedly for 2 months straight. Moreover, if you can’t help it, and need to make that call, dickhead, at least do a bit of research in the industry… typically speaking, we’re not idiots and can tell right away that your site doesn’t make 40k per month. – DON’T TAKE ME TO A SHACK ALONG THE DITCH AND TRY TO CONVINCE ME IT’S A MANSION ALONG THE BEACH.

I know that many of the OpenJason readers know EXACTLY what I’m talking about… share some love.

Tags: development, sleezy, time wasting, fools, arrogant, php, joomla

Domains Yahoo

Jason — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:55:25 +0000

Yahoo Domains… quite possibly the best domain registrar out there. Why? Because it’s cheap, secure, and quick. Just as I like it. If you haven’t used Yahoo Domains, check it out. $1.99 is all is cost per year. But be careful, as they allow each user only one domain at that price. Additional to great pricing on Yahoo Domains, they also have a high cpc/ppc value… so write your post on Yahoo Domains and let those adsense checks keep comin’ in! Y

Tags: DomainName Yahoo, Yahoo Domains