Linking is important because it's half the battle in getting good rankings.

Links are more than just navigation. Links spread PageRank. They create Link Popularity. They generate Link Reputation.

The more quality links you get, the higher your site will rank in the search engines. ALL search engines.

You want to get links, plain and simple. It's not hard or mysterious. But then again, I've been on the internet since 1993. I have knowledge that you may not have.

So Neil's report contains no secrets for me. But what about you?

Do you know everything there is to know about linking? If not, download this free report, "Top Linking Secrets" by Dr. Neil Shearing. You've got nothing to lose… except shoddy rankings.

My Top 10 Market Research Tips

It's true. If you can drink beer, you can earn a living doing it. Here's all it takes to monetize a site for beer lovers…

Question: In your Dynamic Media podcast, you said things like food, booze, arts and entertainment, always prosper. So I decided to set up a Wordpress blog on beer. I want to have affiliate ads on there in hopes of monetizing them.

So how can I find out what beer drinkers are buying? How can I match their particular demographics, interests and life-style?

Answer: Here's how to tap the keg of profits. It's a very simple 10 tips of the pint that'll whet your whistle. It will certainly cure what "ales" you.

LOL… ok, enough goofing around. Let's get down to work and polish the mugs, before the patrons start sauntering in…

1. Best bet… go to Amazon and search for beer. Choose a department like "Home and Garden" or "Apparel & Accessories" and then Sort by Bestselling.

* http://www.amazon.com

These are the goods related to beer that America is purchasing right now. You've got everything from patio lanterns, to cookbooks, to home brewing equipment.

I always look for the best selling items. This is market research at its finest. America has voted with their wallets. So it would be wise to feature these items on your site.

Tip: You MUST choose a department, then click sort by Bestselling. Keep an eye on that button, as it defaults back to Relevance. Set it back to Bestselling after every search for accurate data.

2. Look at the Wordtracker Question tool and see what questions beer drinkers ask. (Multiply the search result by 54 for accurate Google search numbers.)

* http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions

By answering these questions you'll get articles for your site. You'll also find plenty of beer drinkers are interested in home brewing as well.

It's very enlightening to search phrases like, "how to stop" or "how to start." Let the world tell you what they want started, or stopped. These are often huge markets.

Tip: If the tool complains "something went wrong" it means you have to reload the main page and fill out a captcha. They want to prevent automated robots from using the tool.

3. Use Google's Keyword Tool to find related items and do your keyword research. Type your keyword, fill out the captcha and click the "Get Keyword Ideas" button.

* https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Then once it returns results, look for the "Choose columns to display" button. Select "Show All."

You'll get tons of keyword ideas, traffic and search data. If you sort by search volume, you'll see the relative popularity of each keyword phrase.

Tip: You can also use this tool to spider your pages. Choose the "Website content" button instead of the default "Descriptive words or phrases" button.

You can plug in any url in there, and Google will tell you what it thinks the page is about. If you use AdSense, these are the types of ads most likely to appear on your page. Change the words on your page and so will the ads.

4. Do a search in Google. But don't click on anything. Scroll to the very bottom of the page.

* http://www.google.com

Look for "Searches related to" beer, or how to brew beer. You'll find keyword phrases like; beer brands, types of beer, history of beer, beer making, beer calories, beer jokes, etc.

These make excellent articles for your site. You might also consider using them as blog categories.

Tip: Related searches also means a little LSI is going on. You might want to include some of these key phrases on your home page.

5. Try MSN labs demographics prediction tool. You'll get a breakdown of the age and gender related to your keyword.

* http://adlab.microsoft.com/Demographics-Prediction

So if you look at beer. It's geared towards a male audience under the age of 35.

Tip: You can also type in any url you want, to get predictions about any page.

6. Poke at the MSN commercial intention tool. Is the keyword, or url in question, informational or transactional?

* http://adlab.microsoft.com/Online-Commercial-Intention/

For example, when looking for brewing beer, 77% of people are looking for info. Change the phrase to beer brewing kits and now they're 76% transactional.

In other words, it's a buying phrase. Those are the ones you might want to concentrate on.

7. Go search online and in the magazine stores. Look at the other websites, blogs and publications for beer enthusiasts. What kinds of ads are they running?

Are they just contextual text ads or do you see banners, buttons and skyscrapers. The bigger the ad the more it costs. The longer it runs, the better it has performed over the months.

Search from the other angle as well. Go to the sites owned by the breweries.

What kind events are they sponsoring? What are they associating their brands with? Do you notice the demographics?

8. Go look at the SRDS (Standard Rate and Data Service) in your downtown library. You can't take it out, but you can copy some info out of it. I used my cell phone camera in macro mode. It will give you demographic breakdowns of all the dirt-world publications.

Alternately, you can do the "poor man's" version of the research by going to Wikipedia and Magazines.com. Yes, I know… it's not even close to the SRDS, but at least you can find out how popular the topics are and what types of readers they have.

* http://www.magazines.com
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magazine_circulation
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_magazines

9. You'll like this one. Go on a field trip. Tell the spouse you're doing research. Visit several pubs to get a feel for what's inside.

Most of them have brand name memorabilia on the walls like Guinness, Corona, Coors and Molson. You can find all sorts of wall hangings at eBay.com and AllPosters.

* http://www.ebay.com
* http://www.allposters.com

As an affiliate you could sell all the artwork and memorabilia. You could sell other pub related items like dart boards, pool tables and other games. Everything a guy needs to have his own pub at home.

How about brewing kits, beer making books, the history of beer or how it's made? What about CO2 systems, taps, kegs and glassware? I know a guy who spent over five thousand to have a CO2 system installed.

10. Finally… keep your eyes and ears open. Be aware of the advertising around you. Don't tune it out. Think of it as receiving a real-time degree in marketing.

Pay attention to what's being advertised on TV and radio. Check in the mall, the flyers and catalogs. People often buy what they've seen advertised. They recognize the names and brands because of the ads.

Ask yourself, when do beer ads appear on TV? Sporting events! Sell the tickets or jerseys of whatever game happens to be hottest and in the news at the moment.

TIP: If there's four teams left in the finals, sell their uniforms, jerseys and memorabilia on your site, before the playoffs are over! Switch from one sport to another as soon as the finalists are announced. Booze and entertainment are a profitable mix.

Conclusion

So this fourth of July, while you enjoy sipping a cool one, realize that if you can drink beer, you can earn a living doing it. That's all it takes to monetize a beer site. It smells like m-o-n-e-y

That's it for this edition my friends. Thank you for reading. Until next time, here's wishing you all the best for online success.

Michael Campbell

P.S.

You may have heard that Dynamic Linking doesn't work anymore. Google now spiders Javascript and it trashed the nofollow tag for PageRank sculpting.

So what can you do?

Good old fashioned link sculpting with regular links. Some of your friends already know how to do it. It's inside the private site.

Look for Link Sculpting 101 in the Dynamic Media Vault. Membership is less than a dollar a day. I hope to see you inside.

You can do link sculpting without nofollow or Javascript. Here's how to use plain old links.

I've been doing it this way since 1998. It works just as well today as it did back then.

There's no SEO tricks or black hat voodoo involed. It's pure white hat. Google publicly states. "Link to your most important pages with your Home page."

I show you how to link smart. To aim "link juice" where you want it by paying attention to how you link.

I'll show you how to link important pages at the right times. How the link juice spreads around your sites. And why it leads to higher search engine rankings in the process.

Here's a colorful linking diagram showing how it can be done.

(This graphic is just a thumbnail. To get the big picture and the explanation of how link sculpting works, you'll need to join my private site over at Dynamic Media. Membership is less than a dollar a day, so I hope to "see you" inside.)

A top listing in Google, is like diverting the flow of a river. It waters your crops and fields. You can have a lush garden with abundant harvests.

Without the water, all you have is barren land. Cracked and hardened soil.

Which would you rather have? A traffic drought or a stream of daily visitors?

Do not worry. Reaching a top listing is easy. Much easier than it was five years ago. The tools and information are light years ahead.

Once you know the methodology, it becomes easy to optimize pages on the fly. You become unconsciously competent. You evolve into a zen-like master, intuitively crafting one optimized page after another.

All it takes is to master the craft, is to study the Best Practices Guide.

According to Wikipedia, "Best practices is the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time."

You get best results with the least effort. It's repeatable and accomplishes the task… a top listing in Google.

Get the Google Best Practices Guide. Apply it and get ready to enjoy your lush garden and fresh abundance. The drought is over. Let the stream of daily visitors begin.

The nofollow links that we use to conserve and spread PageRank (PR) have been declared null and void by Google… or have they?

First Google's position - at least according to Matt Cutts - was that PR sculpting was ok. Advanced SEOs should take advantage of it.

Now Google's dancing another tune. The PR that would have spread to links by blocking others with nofollow, no longer happens. Matt Cutts says the PR just, "evaporates."

We'll that's not exactly true. It has to go somewhere. Unless they run an entirely different set of filters on top of the webmap that PR creates, then filter out all the nofollows… which is not very likely because its a slow process.

The only place PR can go is a feedback loop. After a dampening factor (to prevent infinite loops) PR leaks out back into the index, to be recalculated and spread among all pages in a recursive fashion.

The only trouble with that hypothesis, is that we haven't seen the massive change in PR distribution. If nofollow on internal links is so evil, why are so many sites unaffected in their rankings?

Think of all the huge 100K page sites like Amazon and majority of blogs like TechCrunch that use nofollow. There would have been massive sweeping changes across the entire web.

Cricket… cricket… cricket…

Apparently Google started discounting nofollow links a year ago. No one noticed.

So until you see any massive changes, maintain the status quo. If you have a site you're happy with, or starting a new site, and haven't been PR sculpting, don't start.

If you've been sculpting with nofollow or normal links, and it's still appears to be working, go ahead and keep doing it. You won't get any SEO boost by undoing all the nofollow links.

In fact, you might even break something in the process and loose your rankings. So if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Google's algorithm is like a fugitive. It's always on the run. It remains elusive, doing whatever it can to shake the SEO dogs off its trail.

The evaporating PR statement is like doubling back on the trail. The good bloodhounds will always pick up the scent. Which way did they go boys? Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

Further Reading:

1) Andy Beard's Internet Business Systems Blog (It's a good idea to subscribe to Andy's RSS feed while you're there. His content is always top notch.)

2) SEO Blog Nofollow is Dead (Quote… "Mr. Cutts attempts to ridicule the SEO industry by blaming it not to have noticed that nofollow has been abandoned a year ago and it hurts your site since then to PageRank sculpt your internal links with the nofollow attribute.")

3) Search Engine Land (The rise and fall of PageRank Sculpting.)

4) Matt Cutts Blog (Here the dust finally settles as Matt Cutts tries to set the record straight by saying, "I just want to reiterate that even though this feels like a huge change to a certain segment of SEOs, in practical terms this change really doesn't affect rankings very much at all.")

(What's odd is, they still kinda recommend sculpting, but not as a priority. Matt says, "The notion of "PageRank sculpting" has always been a second or third order recommendation for us.")

Sheesh… clear as mud… the fugitive just dashed across the creek and sprinkled black pepper to cover his scent. Which way did they go boys? Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

(If you read between the lines here… Matt doesn't say, PageRank sculpting "used to be" no… he says "has always been." Which a pretty ambiguous way of stating the present tense. But he also says sculpting was… or is… as in "always been" a recommendation.)

(So Google isn't saying they don't sculpt. It's just not a priority. What is a priority? According to Matt, it's good link-worthy content, a fully spiderable site, and then…. sculpting. He also states that we should link to our most important pages from our home page… which in itself is a form of sculpting.)

And for those of you keeping score…

I've been "sculpting PageRank" or "aiming link popularity" since September 1998, when I used to do it for SEO clients. By setting up multiple sites or mininets, I was able to control most of the offpage and onpage factors that contribute to higher rankings in the search engines.

If you want to read the original whitepaper that started the whole concept of "aiming link popularity" it can be found in Revenge of the Mininet. The first draft was published in this newsletter on July 24 2001, but it wasn't officially released to the public until March 1 2003.

Later that year - five years after I created the mininet concept - Leslie Rohde offered to "do the math" to prove my theories. Luckily the numbers don't lie, my tests were correct. Sculpting works.

With confirmation in hand, on May 28 2003, I released his whitepaper Dynamic Linking as a companion to Revenge. A few years later, the nofollow tag was implemented and people began calling it PR Sculpting.

Note that Revenge doesn't use Javascript or nofollow. It uses normal links to "sculpt" link popularity. And if you listen closely to the video on Andy Beard's site (link 1 above) you'll hear Matt Cutts telling you that it still works. Arrrooooh! Arrrooooh!

Want Revenge? You can download it below.

Please note: This is your very last chance to download Revenge of the Mininet from this page, before I tuck it away in the Vault… or put it back on the market. Either way, if you want to get it, go get it now. In a couple of days from now it will be gone.

Wishing you all the best for online success,

Michael Campbell

Question: I just watched a video by (brand name guru) and he says there are only three niches that will produce profit on the web: business, dating and health/fitness. What's your take on this?

Also, I know very little about affiliate marketing and have never done it. Can I be profitable with Goobert using Wordpress?

Answer: Yes, those are highly effective categories, but they're also highly competitive. Your offer would need to shine like the North Star in a crowded night sky. That means getting good at PPC, SEO, all forms of marketing and the science of advertising.

You'll also need to convert that traffic into paying customers. So unless you've got the sales and persuasion skills, and the biz smarts, why join that fight?

Proclaiming such a statement, "there are only three niches that will produce profit on the web" is stupid and irresponsible, no matter who said it. Perhaps those are the only markets they could succeed in.

Some of the most successful people that I've had the good fortune to teach, sold football (soccer) jerseys, music gear, bottled water, BBQ supplies, coins, collectibles, cleaning supplies, restaurant equipment, disposable catering supplies, camping and fishing gear, tickets, posters, die-cast replica cars, custom printing and even bird houses.

Brad - the guy with the birdhouses - monetizes five ways. A downloadable ebook with the blueprints. Shipping the kits, glue and all. Shipping the fully assembled and painted product. Videos on how to do the carpentry. And a private members site for bird watchers.

Last I heard, he was close to securing a distribution deal with a national hardware chain, selling the kits. He's also teaming up with some kids clubs to promote the birdhouse kits as a family activity, so they can build them and sell the finished product to raise funds for club activities.

So next time some ostrich proclaims there's only three profitable niches online, laugh in his face. Something as simple an uncompetitive as bird houses has made a fortune for someone who's good at woodworking, passionate about educating kids and teaching them bird watching.

(Did you like this question and answer? It's an actual post from my private site, the Dynamic Media Vault. If you want more just like it, come join us at DynamicMedia.com . I look forward to "seeing you" inside.)

Oh right… back to the story…

Brad started as a Goobert customer. He graduated beyond that and is now an Elite member of my private site. He phones me once a week to bounce ideas off me before he makes any commitments.

Yes, Goobert is simple and effective. All it takes is basic hosting, a Wordpress blog and about 30 minutes per day of your time. That's it.

There is no PPC, SEO, or anything like that required. You simply subscribe to Google Alerts, a few social bookmarking sites, and jump into conversations that are taking place.

With GooBert, you'll be getting traffic within days. How you choose monetize it - like Brad and his birdhouses - is up to you.

Wishing you all the best for online success,

Michael Campbell

Thousands of people like you have discovered GooBert. It's the fastest way to generate affiliate revenue.

All it takes is basic hosting, a Wordpress blog and 30 minutes per day of your time. So why not turn on the TV a half hour later and do something useful instead?

Be warned though, it's not only lucrative, it's highly addictive and fun. Get GooBert. The fast, fun and easy way to get riskfree traffic and generate affiliate revenue.

Look at this! New case study reveals how to get 892 visitors per day is just six weeks! "It's amazing how well your system works and how much fun it is too." ~ Jonni Good

Read Jonni's Amazing GooBert Success Story:

Make AdWords as Comfortable as Slippers

Did you get the word from Perry Marshall? He's starting a new bootcamp program for AdWords. It's a 30 day "summer school" and mentoring program, where you'll come out the other side fully prepared for battle… even if you're just a beginner.

Perry said, "If you are less than 100% competent with AdWords - if you possess anything less than total confidence; if the very mention of 'Google AdWords' makes you nervous instead of putting a smile on your face; if you cannot "wear" Google like a comfortable pair of slippers or your favorite T-shirt…

Then it's time to solve that problem RIGHT NOW.

Yep… Even If you're just getting started. You'll get personal guidance and advice about your Google campaigns from a world-class expert. (That's Perry.)

And best of all, look at this, "If you do the homework and you don't improve your Google campaign performance by at least 30%, and increase your sales by at least $10,000 per year - I'll give you a full refund."

Now THAT'S confidence. So if you're considering adding AdWords to your marketing, need a refresher course, or want to use AdWords effectively, take advantage of Perry Marshall's AdWords Bootcamp offer before it's gone.

Dave Kaminski of the Web Video University just published a 24 page white paper on how to profit from web video.

In this report, he shares how to get top rankings in Google, viral traffic, what cameras to use, three ways you can profit from web video right now, plus a lot more than I can mention here.

There's no charge for the report. It contains no fluff, no filler, no sales pitches and no B.S. But he's only making it available for a short time.

To get your copy now click, "How to Profit from Web Video."

Right now I'm listening to Jeffrey Gitomer's "The Sales Bible." The Ultimate Sales Resource. He calls himself the best sales trainer in all the world… I've always agreed.

I've read just about everything Jeffrey's written in the past ten years. That's why I was happy to find a new edition of the "Bible" in audio format on iTunes. I also bought the 45 minute presentation, "How not to suck at sales" which is loaded with gems of wisdom.

If you're into sales or selling of any kind, Jeffery is the best sales trainer there is. He'll certainly help you put more in sales in your wallet than you do now. Just go to the iTunes store or Amazon if you'd like to learn more.