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SEO 101 Nominated for 2011 Small Business Influencer Awards

SEO 101, our weekly SEO radio series hosted by Ross Dunn and John Carcutt, has been nominated for a 2011 Small Business Influencer Award.

Ross and John have hosted the series since June 1st, 2009 and some of the highlights of the series have included interviews with WordPress Core Developer Mark Jaquith, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, and a LIVE SEO 101 Roundtable for Affiliate Marketers at the Affcon 2010 Affiliate Marketing Conference in Miami, Florida.

“I am so amazed that our little radio show is up against such heavy hitters, and its great to see all of the support we are getting from the listeners.” Carcutt said. “It means alot to me that people care so much about what we do, we have a ton of fun doing it, but knowing that it helps so many people makes all the difference in the world.”

You can vote for SEO 101 by going The Small Business Influencer page under the News Outlets category.

“The Small Business Influencer nomination was a nice nod to our hard work but what has really blown me away is the support of our listeners who have been voting day in and day out to get us a win,” Dunn said. “I have no idea if we will stay at the top by the end of this contest but whatever happens I will be immensely proud of the support we have gotten.”

Voting closes on Wednesday August 10th.

WebmasterRadio.FM Meets Mommy Bloggers at SheCon

MIAMI, FL-Producers Brasco and Louis returned this weekend from the SheCon 2011 Conference and Expo exposed into the fascinating world of mommy blogging.

Arriving at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, Florida, we entered the expo floor to see several heritage brands, (Wilson, American Standard, and Chevrolet) brands new to us (Sleep Innovations and New England Coffee) and some familiar names to WebmasterRadio.FM and the AffCon Community (Unique Leads and Natural Skin Shop.).

Attendees to this inaugural version of the conference were given the chance to interact with keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki, Bravo TV’s Pregnant in Heels host Rosie Pope, Olympic Gold Medalist Swimmer Dara Torres, MediaEgg founder Aliza Sherman and the Cracked CEO Jack O’ Brien and GM Oren Katzoff.

After gathering some amazing schwag such as memory-foam pillows and chrome shower heads, we came back with a number of interviews to give you a sampling of what you missed.

Interview with Pregnant In Heels TV Host Rosie Pope
Interview with Cracked.com Editor-in-Chief Jack O’Brien
Interview with Wilson Racquet Sports USTA promotions manager Erika Offerdahl
Interview with Debbie Drury, Director of Brand Communications for American Standard
Interview with Demand Media Studios Online Marketing Manager Jennifer Lahotski

Find all of our roving reporting coverage from SheCon 2011 inside the specials section.

AffCon2010 – Denver, Conference Update

WebmasterRadio.FM is organizing a third affiliate marketing convention similar to our two previous shows in Denver and Los Angeles last year.

Re-branded and reorganized as AffCon2010 – Denver, the affiliate focused conference and tradeshow will take place at the Colorado Convention Center June 21st – 23rd. As with the previous conventions in the AffCon affiliate marketing series, working affiliate marketers are eligible for free full-access admission.

AffCon2010 – Denver is designed as a convention specifically targeting affiliate marketers. While there is a great deal of involvement from affiliate networks, managers, programs and merchants, the information panels and interactive sessions are primarily targeted to working affiliates. (Our definition of “working affiliate” is one who is promoting products or services on their own web pages through one or more unique affiliate programs or networks.)

Registration
We’ve made registration for AffCon2010 – Denver easier with a distinct registry process for Affiliates and another for Networks, Managers, Merchants and others. Those applying for free admission as affiliates will be asked a series of questions to determine their business and personal interests so we can match them up with relevant network sponsorship.

Accommodation
AffCon2010 has secured a large room block for the Denver convention and tradeshow at the Hyatt Regency Denver. The Hyatt Regency is offering a healthy discount on rooms for AffCon2010 attendees with rates starting at $164/night for a standard King sized or 2 double bed room. Book your room early to take advantage of this rate and to be placed near other AffCon2010 participants.

We’re getting another great agenda together and plan a larger show and a far more interactive experience. The two previous shows were considered tremendous successes and we look forward to hosting the affiliate marketing industry in Denver from June 21 – 23 at AffCon2010 – Denver. See ya there.

Twitter Hole Open for Hackers

Twitter has a hole in its coding which potentially exposes millions of accounts to malicious hackers. A security expert based in Florida says he has found a security flaw in Adobe Flash which could allow hackers to see the passwords of Twitter users.

Senior security analyst Mike Bailey of Foreground Security in Orlando says he found a problem in the way Twitter’s website is coded which could allow hackers to exploit a well known vulnerability in Flash.

Adobe has known about the exploit since it was originally found in 2006 and has taken steps to inform programmers on how to handle it. Adobe has also posted warnings for webmasters who use Flash however many do not know about them.

According to Bailey, it shouldn’t take Twitter too long to fix the problem by slightly altering the way its website is coded. Twitter might by now have already fixed the problem. Bailey claims to have informed the company and plans to discuss his findings at the Black Hat DC Security Research Conference in early February.

Ominously, he says that the microblogging service might have been vulnerable for over a year.

If a computer security analyst in Orlando Florida could find an issue at Twitter, it’s a safe bet that malicious hackers could as well. If they have chances are, you wouldn’t know about it, even if you yourself got hacked.

This type of exploit allows a hacker to access your password. Once the hacker has your password, they have your Twitter history and all the information contained within. If that information includes direct messages containing sensitive information, the hacker might have scored something. With the ability to spider freshly scraped databases of direct messages between users, sensitive information could easily be discovered. Fortunately, most hackers are keyboard warriors, not hardened criminals. They’re not going to use your information against you. Unfortunately, some hackers know hardened criminals well enough to do a lot of business with them.

There’s not a lot of safety for hackers in ripping people off. Hackers compile information which they tend to sell to others or trade within their communities rather than use that information themselves. Hackers might steal the information but it tends to be their commercial accomplices, the criminals who actually go to the bother of using it to rip you off.

In this case, a more likely scenario has the hacker pretending to be you. With your password, the hacker also has access to your account and can start Tweeting as you. By posing as a particular user, the hacker can prompt friends of that person to click on malicious links. Imagine the swiftness with which one posing as a popular person could create a rapidly growing bot-net using Twitter. Hackers might not perceive themselves as criminals but they do seem to enjoy making bot-nets. Bot-nets are also commercially traded between hackers and criminals.

Given the publicity this story has generated in the past twelve hours, it is very likely the folks at Twitter have taken steps to fix the problem. At this time, we have not received replies from tweets to @twitter and to @biz requesting comment.

ad-Tech New York 2009 Interviews

WebmasterRadio.FM sent a large crew to New York last week to cover and participate in the enormous ad:Tech NYC 2009 conference and trade show. ad:Tech NY09, which moved from its previous home at the Midtown Hilton to the expansive Javits Center on the Hudson River, was by far the largest and most well attended ad:Tech conference WebmasterRadio.FM has ever participated in.

Our coverage began the night before ad:Tech opened at the XY7.com NoBull3 party. Held at the only bar in Midtown Manhattan with a mechanical bull, Johnny Utah’s, the XY7.com NoBull3 event was a night of drinking, networking and bull riding. The big hook of the night was the bikini bull riding contest but the real contest was held between WebmasterRadio.FM personalities Jim Hedger, SEGuru and Johnny Brasco. Hedger won though Johnny Brasco disqualified himself by physically assaulting the bull in an attempt to beat it up. Charges were not laid.

Estimates of attendance ranged from 15,000 to 20,000. Seeing such numbers in a massive building like a baseball stadium or hockey arena is exciting. Spending time with such numbers at one of the biggest and most diverse industry conferences is inspiring.

For the first hours of the conference, such numbers can produce incredible line-ups at registration, including the approximately 90-minute line for registration.

Day 1 Lines at AdTech New York 2009
Jim Hedger takes us down the long Day 1 Registration Lines at AdTech New York 2009 being held at the Javits Center.

Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now ventured out of our home-base in the press room to brave the crowds on the trade show floor. Bryan gathered several interviews from the ad:Tech NY09 Expo. Dana Todd of Newsforce and I gathered a few dozen interviews from the WebmasterRadio.FM base in the press room.

PPC Management Tips
Marc Poirier, Co-Founder and CMO of Acquisio offers us some tips to managing your pay per click campaigns, including keyword evaluation, structure and landing page optimization.

Direct Marketing Educational Foundation Profiled
Terri L. Bartlett, President of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, which sponsors a broad range of programs for professors and students that bring direct marketing education to the college classroom.

Marin Software Advanced ROI Campaign Management
Marin Software Director of Marketing Matt Lawson discuss a new software release offering Advanced ROI-Based Campaign Management Features, plus the foundings of a new white paper.

Tracking Content ROI
ideaLaunch founder Byron White discusses tips to optimizing content and measuring content marketing success, leading to improved listing positions, increased traffic and decreased user acquisition cost.

Idearc Super Guarantee
Learn about Idearc Media and its Super Guarantee program, a national consumer guarantee initiative designed to increase spending in local economies by dramatically lowering the risk associated with hiring contractors,plumbers, auto body repair shops and thousands of other eligible service provider category based businesses.

Researching Affiliates
Clickbooth Senior Affiliate Strategist Brittany Kimel discusses how you should do your research so you will know what kind of affiliate marketing needs you have before looking for affiliates.

Maximizing Conversions with Call Tracking
Stephen Abbey, Vice President of Keyword Phone Call Tracking company Mongoose Metrics, discusses their work in implementing call tracking and web analytics integration, plus how to maximize conversions with call tracking.

Payment Engines
Bill Ranta, Director of Strategic Accounts for Litle and Company, makers of a payments engine engineered specifically to meet the needs of companies and organizations in Direct Response or DRTV, radio, print, Internet and Multichannel Retail such as catalogs.

Advanced Guide to Improving Quality Score
Alex Cohen of Click Equations discusses the white paper on The Advanced Guide to Improving Quality Score that they handed out to AdTech New York 2009 attendees.

Advertising in the Open
Adperio Founder, President & CEO David Asseoff discuss his companys rebranding, the meaning behing their tagline Advertising in the Open
and their involvement with organizations that proactively work to increase Internet security for consumers and businesses.

Social Media Risk Analysis
Chris Kieff of 1GoodReason.com discusses his recent blog post titled Using Risk Analysis to Start Social Media Slowly, where he offers two approaches to using this Risk Assessment for social media.

At Home Affiliate Marketing
Revenue Performance Magazine columnist Mike Evans discusses the fascination of excelling in affiliate marketing working from home.

Domain Tips To Drive Business and Save Money
SEDO CEO Jeremiah Johnson discusses his participation on the Adtech New York 2009 panel on Domain Tips to Drive Your Business Forward and Save Money.

Advertise.com ClickShield Technology Integration
On location from the Moss Networks VIP Mix and Mingle party, Advertise.com Founder and CEO Danny Yomtobian discusses how their ClickShield technology will be integrated with its Display Advertising Network.

Staying Connected with Clients
On location from teh Moss networks VIP Mix and Mingle party, Curtis Fullmer, Vice President of Affiliate Marketing at Adknowledge, discusses the importance of keeping connected with clients by attending conferences like AdTech.

Lead Verification with IDology
Jodi Florence, Marketing Director for IDology, explains lead verification. What industries stand to benefit from lead verification? the application of this technology, plus How is IDology different from other providers and customer results.

Attribution Metrics
Anto Chittilappily, Founder, President and CTO of Visual IQ, discusses how to use attribution metrics to measure the effectiveness of the marketing function of a company, how campaign managers would use it plus the how to customize attribution metrics.

Consolidated Marketing
MediaWhiz CEO Jonathan Shapiro, is responsible for overseeing the integration of MediaWhiz’s suite of marketing services, discusses how his company consolidates their resources to succeed in the online marketing world.

Non Traditional Ad Campaigns
Speaking with Jeff Bell, chairman of DOmedia, which plans nontraditional out-of-home campaigns or identify larger opportunities such as billboards and street furniture in major markets.

Discovery Process
Parse3 President Peter Latka discusses how his company gave away a Discovery Process, whereby strategists and developers provided a winner will an outline of business objectives, identified market opportunities, developed strategic initiatives, performance technology and resource audits and a summary the scope of the project.

Overlay Ads and YouTube Advertising
Scott Berman, Vice President of Campaign Grid, Internet Advertising Platform Designed for Candidates and Causes. He tells us how they were involved in the recent New Jersey governors race. Plus he tells how they used overlay ads and YouTube Advertising.

Content Based Targeting
AdSide VP Sales and Marketing Yael Yekutiel discusses a growing industry trend on how there is an important shift in how online advertisers and publishers buy and sell media is moving towards Content-based targeting, from the more traditional and highly popular Contextual or Keyword-based targeting.

40% Discount on ad|Tech SF Full Conference Pass

Register now for next week’s ad|Tech conference in San Francisco and receive a 40% discount on a full conference pass! WebmasterRadio.FM has been offered permission to publish a special registration code to offer our listeners and readers a very special discount.

ad|Tech San Francisco is one of the largest and most anticipated Internet technology shows of the year. As will all ad|Tech conferences, the show will be an eclectic mix of marketing, technology and technique. It runs at the Moscone Center from April 21 – 23rd.

The annual show in San Francisco is one of the most interesting of the nine international mega-conferences ad|Tech organizes each year. This year, organizers have lined up an amazing array of speakers, trade-show booths and evening events, including keynotes from Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia, a Wired.com interview with Kevin Rose of Digg, and a state of the industry round-table keynote from the IAB.

If you are interested in attending ad|Tech San Francisco, please visit the ad|Tech SF registration page and enter the special code: SFCONF2 to receive a 40% discount on a full conference pass.

Get a 10% Discount on SES Toronto with WebmasterRadio.FM code

Search Engine Strategies Toronto is coming up in less than two months, running June 8 – 10 at a new venue, the Sheraton Centre on Queen Street.

As the premier search marketing conference in Canada, SES Toronto is a must-attend show for all digital marketers doing business in Canada or with Canadians. SES Toronto is also one of the smaller, more intimate search marketing shows, one at which the audience gets to spend a lot of time with the speakers. In many ways, SES Toronto reminds me of SES Chicago except it is much warmer in Toronto in late spring than Chicago is in late autumn.

With a national population the size of the state of California and an affluent, well educated Internet user base, Canada is an often untapped gem of a market. SES Toronto is a key entrance point to that market for US and international marketers.

The fine folks at Incisive Media have offered WebmasterRadio.FM listeners and blog readers a 10% discount on advanced tickets for the event. Follow this link: (DS05 10% Discount) and enter the priority code, DS05 to enjoy a well deserved discount on two days of high-level search marketing education and networking.

Attention Affiliate Marketers! – Affiliate Convention, June 17 – 20, Denver

In cooperation with AffSpot and Ticonderoga Ventures, WebmasterRadio.FM is throwing a convention designed to make affiliate marketing businesses better. Taking place June 17th – 20th in Denver Colorado, the Affiliate Convention is being organized to offer the real stars of the field, the affiliate marketers themselves a conference of their very own.

If you are in any way interested in the expansive opportunities in the affiliate marketing industry, Affiliate Convention is the show for you. Affiliate marketing is now the fastest growing sector in digital marketing and one showing continued strong returns for those involved. While affiliate marketing has brought wealth to many over the years, the current economic conditions make affiliate sales even brighter as consumers turn the Internet and e-commerce to save money.

Free Admission for Affiliate Marketers, Lowered Costs for All
We are dedicated to building a better affiliate marketing community and bringing the best speakers, sessions and information to that community. As we see it, working affiliates are the cornerstones of the industry. The efforts of the actual workers, affiliate marketers, make all of us successful. Therefore, at Affiliate Convention, any affiliate marketer who can prove their affiliation to a major network will get free admission to the event!

One of the reasons we choose Denver as the launch pad for the Affiliate Convention series is the city’s affordability. Denver is a hub airport for several airlines and has some of the least expensive room rates in the country. All expenses added up, some conferences cost $2500 or more to attend. We want to build one that costs attendees as little as possible while offering more than any other trade show or convention serving the affiliate marketing sector.

True Thought-Leaders as Speakers
It is our intention to build a conference free of generic sessions, incomplete information or product-pushing speakers. Affiliate Convention is designed for Affiliate Marketers with an intermediate to high level of knowledge and experience. To that end, we have invited some of the smartest and in some cases, most controversial names in Affiliate Marketing to speak. Watch for names like Kris Jones (CEO of PepperJam), Harrison Gervitz (founder of GervitzMedia), Heather Paulson (CEO of Paulson Management Group), Andrew Cotton (Sr. Sales Manager with Yahoo Search Marketing), Jeannine Crooks (Blogger), and Monte Cahn (CEO of Moniker).

Topics of Importance for Affiliate Marketers
Moving far away from generic affiliate marketing conferences, Affiliate Convention is built for experienced affiliate marketers. Information and learning sessions at Affiliate Convention include, Actual E-mail marketing case studies, video advertising, advanced SEO, local marketing, how to look after your business and financial interests, and working with niche tracks. Affiliate Convention’s speaker and topic list is compiled to give you the best access to the brightest brains in affiliate marketing.

Register NOW
Register as quickly as possible. We only have room for so many attendees and we want your name on the list. Registration is easy and inexpensive. If you are a working affiliate, registration is FREE!
To register for Affiliate Convention, please visit this page:
Affiliate Convention Registration

Where is the Web Going? Ask O’Reilly

The Internet as we have known it has undergone two distinct evolutionary periods over the past 15 years. The first was the very adoption of the World Wide Web as the primary information platform for the vast majority of Internet users. The second was the adaptation of technologies designed to help Internet users communicate with each other and various institutions better. Within each evolutionary period, advances in technologies made the ‘Net more useful but true evolution comes from how that usefulness is employed, not expanded usefulness in and of itself.

We are at the tail end of the Web2.0 stage. Characterized by communication and participation, Web2.0 is best represented by social networking applications such as Twitter, Facebook and the previously bloated comments sections of blogs. Web1.0 would thus be characterized by the effectiveness of information distribution and retrieval.

So what will the next evolution, Web3.0 look, feel and sound like? It appears the next major movement forward will be characterized by new methods of interfacing with the Internet itself and by a renewed commitment to making Internet technologies truly beneficial to human-kind as opposed to simply more convenient.

A piece published in today’s New York Times by ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick takes a look at Tim O’Reilly’s address to the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco last night. In that address, O’Reilly identified five unique technologies he believes will push the Internet past the naggingly narcissistic stage of personal and professional promotion so prevalent in the Web2.0 phase.

To quote Kirkpatrick,

Two themes stood out: sensors will surpass humans in front of their keyboards as the primary data source on the web and Moore’s Law will need to be applied to humanity’s greatest problems.

In other words, five years from now initiatives from companies such as IBM, Google, CERN and Cisco will have pushed our own user habits far beyond the formerly pre-adolescent, “I’m here now so take a look at me”, phase.

What would happen in your daily Internet usage habits if your Bluetooth ear-bug acted in conjunction with your cell phone display as an spoken-word browser? Instead of lugging a laptop around or being tethered to a desk by wires, plugs and peripheries, Google’s iPhone voice search application combined with the iPhone’s ability to make sense of physical gestures might soon free the human body from desk chairs and introduce a new realm of workplace anyplace.

Similarly, what would happen to the world’s economic structure if data was freely available to consumers regardless of place? Given the inability of government and institutions to fully monitor themselves, could the freeing up of public data combined with instant communication with those institutions offer the public the ability to effectively police the mechanisms of modern society? In turn, could the availability of open data move the public past the counter-productive hyper-partisan atmosphere that characterizes political culture today?

It might if the public actually cared more about the actual state of society, economy and ecology. A trio of technologies being worked on by IBM, AMEE, NASA and Cisco might be the catalysts towards a better informed society that cares about itself more than it cares about celebrities like Britney Spears. Each of the innovations O’Reilly mentioned will provide individual consumers with far more information about their own consumption habits and the Earth’s biosphere than we’ve ever had access to in human history. Such applications can easily be applied to political, economic and personal life.

Web3.0 will combine the advances of the two previous evolutions with an extraordinary amount of information and far easier ways create and access it. It will make data gleaned from science more important that assumptions gleaned from supposition. Most importantly, the next evolution of the Internet might actually give individual users far more social, political and personal power than any generation has ever known.

As our global society emerges from the economic nightmare we currently face, a new social order will emerge. Many of the post-WW2 structures will fall to obscurity as their usefulness and necessity are surpassed or superseded by the restructured global economy and political order. Those changes will make complex thinking more important than our current obsession with the mundane. In the new world order, everyone is an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs need to think, act and react quickly if they are going to thrive and succeed. The spate of technologies that point to the Web3.0 evolution might be the tools that take us as individuals there.

The O’Reilly Web2.0 conference and expo continues today and tomorrow at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Affiliate Convention Videos

Two videos recently added to the Affiliate Convention website suggest a grass-roots revolution is taking place in the affiliate marketing space. The first video, produced by professional convention organizer Mark Lesnick outlines the programming directions of the newest conference he is involved with.

The Affiliate Convention (which is being presented in part by WebmasterRadio.FM) will be designed and programmed with affiliate marketers in mind. The show, which is free for working affiliate marketers to attend, takes place in Denver Colorado from June 17 – 20 and is the first of a series of conferences for affiliate marketers and affiliate managers.

“Some conferences cost over $1700 to attend,” says Lesnick early in the video, “As a fundamental difference, we believe that affiliates should not have to pay an entrance fee to attend the event”.

The show is being held in Denver in order to keep costs as low as possible for working affiliate marketers. Denver is the most central major city in the United States and is a hub airport for several national airlines. It also has lower hotel and accommodation costs than many other comparable cities.

“Think of Affiliate Convention as your home,” Lesnick continues, “it’s your place to negotiate for better revenue percentages; it’s also your soapbox, your place to state your issues. We want you to participate in Affiliate Convention as you will gain more for the industry and for your business.”

One of the goals of Affiliate Convention is to give affiliate marketers and affiliate managers a greater say in the way their industry works. The focus on the grass-roots of the industry reflects organizers’ appreciation of the hard work and planning that goes into a successful affiliate marketing business.

Mark concludes his video with a cheery, “We look forward to seeing you at Affiliate Convention, welcome home”.  More on the second video, targeted at Affiliate managers on Monday.

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