Last month, at StomperNet's "Live 8" seminar, we did a 90-minute presentation from the stage along with Jerry West, where we answered the worst, messiest, toughest questions submitted by the attendees.

The questions were great, and the answers were sometimes hilarious. But there are a few important questions that deserved a follow-up with more detailed responses.

This Wednesday, September, 16th, Leslie and I will be holding a free follow-up webinar called:

The 3 things most SEOs get wrong… and how to get 'em right!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 @ 6pm Eastern (US)
Register at http://dan.seobraintrust.com

After you register, we'll give you immediate access to both the "SEO Triple Threat" video recording, as well as my Day 3 closing keynote, "the six things you must know to survive online marketing.

What's the SEO BrainTrust? We'll let you know Wednesday evening.

Thanks!
Dan

PS – The SEO BrainTrust is now live and open for new members – click here to learn more and sign up.

Free Webinar: The 3 Things Most SEOs Get Wrong is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

We're doing a free kickoff webinar next Tuesday at 6pm Eastern (US), and since a lot of readers are in the information business in some form or fashion, I hope you'll be able to join us.

Truthfully, a lot of the information will be useful to anyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur.

I've known Andy since 2004, when I was invited to speak at a 2-day live training for the "Stomping the Search Engines" Apprentice program – which was very similar to the Guru Therapy program that we're starting up now.

When I met Andy, he was wearing… a kimono. I should have known that we'd become good friends, especially when I saw the passion that he brings to his work.

Fast forward to 2006, and it was an easy decision when he asked me and Leslie Rohde to join him in StomperNet as the first two faculty members.

I've learned a lot over the past few years by working with Andy, participating in the "re-engineering" of the company, and getting a chance to "mastermind" with the other faculty members. I doubt that I'd be where I am today, and capable of doing what I am doing now, if I'd kept on going it alone.

The truth is that I *need* other people in order to do what I do.

Spending time with smart and successful people is probably the #1 reason why I can create the kind of content that I create, and why I can help other people become successful. Guru Therapy is an extension of that.

Anyway, about the webinar:

First of all, we're covering six big topics, and I applied an amazing technique called the "Tom Sawyer Okie-Doke" to get Andy to cover four of them. Okay, all I really did was complain about how busy I was this week and he stepped up.

So you'll hear quite a bit from Andy on "his" topics, with me chipping in, interrupting, and sharing random epiphanies.

"My" part of the webinar is about some lessons learned from my recent Link Liberation promotion, and the logic behind why I spend so much time writing and researching, just so I can give SEO Fast Start to people for free.

I try to make SEO Fast Start, and everything else I do, as valuable as I can. That's a personal pride thing, of course, but it's also smart business in my opinion.

You see, there's a particular type of opportunity that exists in pretty much every market that you can only take advantage of if you're truly an expert, and really put in the time to make something of value.

I call this the Value Gap strategy, and it goes like this.

Any niche that's big enough and important enough to support infoproducts, is big enough to support infoproducts done well.
A really excellent overview product can be a springboard for dozens of products that drill down into more detail. For example, "How To Own Your Own Race Horse" leads to "Race Horse Nutrition Secrets." You get the idea.

There's always a demand for more in-depth information, but if your introductory information is garbage, you're not going to get there. It's a Value Gap, not a Garbage Gap.

That's why SEO Fast Start is the perfect lead-in for a very large information marketing business. I think it's damned good, but in order to get people to read it and apply what they learn, I have to keep it down to a certain size, which since 2001 has always been set at "no more than 100 pages."

Although I can't give you every last detail in 100 pages, a lot of readers will never need any more than what I just gave them for free. (And that's OKAY)

There are Value Gaps all over. Don't buy into the hype that the market for information is too crowded.

Thus, Link Liberation (and in 2006, the "link building clinic") is a logical extension of value into a segment of the market that just about *screams* for more value.

In fact, very often you want to specifically aim for the most crowded segments of the market, precisely because of the value gaps that are created by all the "me too" players.

With all the schemes and scams out there about link building, something of real value stands out loud and clear despite all the noise.

Once you see the larger picture of the market, it was obvious to me, in exactly the same way that it was not obvious to anyone else, that the market needed a good training program on link building.

But I digress, again.

Besides talking about my own business model, I'll also share some important test results from the Link Liberation promotion itself, about "free line" content, where to put the "free line" in terms of what content is given away, and how to optimize the whole thing.

I had a pretty good theory about what to do, but when I put it to the test, the effect was even larger than I had expected.

So I'll explain all that too.

Here's the full list of topics – This could run a couple hours, so plan ahead.

• How to do Profitable Lead Generation – why the promise of "Traffic" is completely empty without the right response mechanisms.
• The Real ROI behind target audience segmentation – how your list of subscribers and customers wants RELEVANT offers from you, and how to give them.
• The Moccasin Method and how "Storytelling" saves you from having to be a good copywriter (Thank GOD for that).
• When to move the free line, and when to pull it BACK (Your market will tell you)
• A "fill in the blanks," Spare-Time business Model for Lazy marketers (just add value and wait…)
• Using "Concussion" planning and the M.E.S. approach to fix multiple problem areas of your business all at once.

Once again, the webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 8 at 6pm US Eastern time, and it's always a good idea to show up a few minutes early.

Here's the link to register: http://gurutherapy.com/webinar/

Thanks!

Dan Thies

Coming to my free webinar next week? is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

I already sent something out to my newsletter subscribers about this, but thought it was worth a post too.

Yesterday was my last day on the job as a staff member at StomperNet. This has actually been in the works for a while, it's just taken some time to hand off a whole plateful of responsibilities to different people and work out all the details.

Actually, I've still got one more little project to finish but I'm doing this one "on the house" because it's the primary reason why I took the job in the first place.

I will still be a member of the StomperNet faculty, which is actually a lot cooler than working there.

For example, if a faculty member sleeps in until noon on a Monday, nobody's going to notice. If the Chief Experience Officer does that, they call and wake him up, long before noon rolls around. (like, at 9:01 am Eastern time – which is 8:01 here. Seriously.)

Having a job was fun sometimes, and sometimes it sucked. Mostly, it took too much time away from what I am actually good at and enjoy doing – like research and teaching.

What am I going to do with all my new-found time, besides hanging out in the StomperNet forums?

Well, about half of it belongs to my family. The rest will go into some new projects** that I've been trying to "find time" for – and some old projects that always seemed to get put on the shelf over pressing work responsibilities.

Meanwhile, the "new StomperNet" is just about ready for public consumption, and it's going to have a very broad appeal.

When they say that internet marketing is going to change forever, well, you could call that hyperbole if you like, but I've seen what's coming. If you have a web site, you will want to be paying attention on September 9th.

**(details coming sooner than later)

I Just "Lost" My Job – Woot! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

It doesn't.

I mean, once they get it all done, there will be:

1. One less spider crawling the web, reducing power and bandwidth needs of the web, and helping to combat global climate change. Not sure how much carbon the Yahoo bots were putting into the air, but it's probably more than all the gas-guzzling Hummers in service today.
2. One less place for the rank checkers to check their rankings. Not that this will stop anyone – you will still check your rankings at Yahoo and MSN and Live and Bing, just like you still check them at AOL and Google. Stop checking so much – it's good for the environment.
3. Plenty of laid-off or otherwise severed search engineers and the like, so that every big SEO firm can hire one, and pretend that they now have some special insight into Google. If they work from home, that's one less Hummer cranking out carbon on the Bayshore Freeway. Not that it matters once it gets repossessed.

So, although your SEO action item list is zero, at least Microsoft and Yahoo are doing their part to combat global climate change.

Now, you can do your part. No more "how this deal changes SEO" posts are needed. Save the electrons – who knows when we will need them.

We'll talk more soon.

PS – the rest of the stuff for my video studio arrives today. LLTV is coming soon.

How The MS/Bing/Yahoo Deal Changes SEO is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

Minor changes in the Keyword Strategy chapter. Significant updates in the Site Structure chapter.

I will be doing a free webinar this Wednesday evening to discuss the changes – get on the SEO Fast Start newsletter/mailing list to get an invite.

Thanks for reading!

Dan

SEO Fast Start – 2009 Edition Released! is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

Matt Cutts made some comments about PageRank sculpting in general, and Google's handling of the nofollow attribute on internal links, last week at SMX Advanced in Seattle. Here is my report on those events, and my conclusion about the shocking truth behind the "smoke and mirrors."

Please watch this video:

Here's a link Leslie Rohde's less entertaining but more informative review of the matter. I apologize to everyone. I think the "Scenario #3" Leslie describes is actually quite plausible.

It's also quite possible that there's something to the "null hypothesis" description from Barry Welford.

P.S. If anyone doesn't get the joke, it's probably my fault.

P.P.S. I should probably be pimping my new link building course that starts next week.

UPDATE:

Update from Matt – doesn't add total clarity at first: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ But the comments he added seem to indicate that Leslie's scenario (it doesn't evaporate, it goes off to the rest of the index) nailed it.

Google's "Operation BENDOVER" Exposed – Nofollow & PageRank Sculpting is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

I wasn't trying to hold out on you, but I wanted to wait until I got back from SMX Advanced in Seattle. I was there all last week to kiss hands, shake babies, and give a little talk about search engine marketing. Great event, by the way.

Anyway, while I was gone, the folks at StomperNet sent out a link to my little "teaser video" for the new course. They had an opening in their schedule, they wanted to mail out the link, and I said okay.

So, I am sorry if you didn't hear it from me first, but yes – I am doing a link building training program, and it's called Link Liberation.

I know you're probably pretty busy, so here are the bullet points:

• Go watch the teaser video first at:
  http://www.linkliberation.com/freeblueprint/insider.html
• The video is about some new link building strategies & tactics that I've been using with a handful of my students.
• If you want more info, you can click the link on that page for the "blueprint" video and companion report, OR you can join the Link Liberation mailing list. You can also join after checking out the bonus video & companion PDF report.

Now, if you are interested in joining this training program, or just hearing more about it, then I strongly encourage you to get on the mailing list – because there's some information I will only send if you "raise your hand," so to speak, and ask for it.

If you are certain that you want to join this training program, then definitely – get on the Link Liberation mailing list, so you can get the notification to sign up early. Space is going to be tight, and I don't want you, as a long time reader, to miss out.

Joining the Link Liberation list will NOT get you bombarded with double the emails – but if you don't get on that list, then I am going to assume you aren't especially interested in learning about link building from me right now.

I won't take it personally, not everyone needs this information.

Thanks for your kind attention.

Dan Thies
a.k.a. "The Link Liberator" (just trying it on…)

P.S. Yes, I am going to charge for this – but as you will see in the report, you can get a "sample" before we close the doors. (The price will be the same as the 2006 Link Building Clinic – just $795 – with a better format and more "stuff")

My Link Building Course for 2009: "Link Liberation" is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

I was present, to moderate the audience Q&A. There really wasn't much of that, because the panelists pretty much did all the talking, or arguing, howerer you want to put it. It was interesting, to be sure.

Matt appears to have come in to bail out Maile Ohye, who had said some stuff that didn't really match up with the Google party line, like saying that rel=nofollow should only be used to mean that you don't vouch for the link. After coming and saying that he supported everything she said (which I don't think he could have even heard), Matt responded to a question about pagination links, didn't actually know what kind of pagination links they were talking about, and said basically that nofollow might not work like people expect for sculpting PageRank. And, some other stuff which many folks have attempted to reconstruct.

First of all, the idea that 'sculpting' – especially the kind of radical sculpting that was being discussed – is not going to work like people expect, isn't really news. Second, Matt didn't really say anything especially clear, either in this panel or the "You&A."

Hopefully someone from Google will add some true clarity to this soon, but for now, relax and don't buy all the hype.

1. If Google really has radically changed the way nofollow and PageRank are handled, they didn't do it overnight – that's major development work. Months.
2. As recently as April 23, Matt had a platform to actually 'announce' something like this but didn't. Didn't say, 'but don't bother because we have a major change in the works.' He said, as he's often said, as I have too, as many others have, that spending a bunch of time trying to "sculpt" PageRank should be way way way down the to-do list.
3. Until someone says something definitive, what you are hearing is people who speculated being interpreted by others, and… you know what? That's not news. That's the blogosphere, and Twit-o-sphere, doing what they do.

A lot of questions were raised by that panel – like whether robots.txt even works, if you want to believe everything that was said, and put the wrong context around it. But it's a beautiful sunny day.

We'll talk more later. I'm going to go say goodbye to the seals in the marina.

Update from Matt – doesn't add much clarity: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/

Well, enough clarity in the comments there, for me to say that Leslie Rohde nailed it.

SMX: matt cutts, nofollow, 'pagerank sculpting' and hype from the waterfront… is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

In fact, it was a runaway success.

Almost as soon one 8-week course finished, another group would come in and sell out the next session. It took 7 months for things to calm down.

Since then, thousands of people have seen the "best of" videos – but nobody has been able to get the entire course.

I get asked about it all the time – "Dan, when are you going to do another link building class?"

Well, after months of preparation, I am ready to do another one – but I want to make sure that I'm not leaving anything out.

One of the students back in 2006 said I'd "put together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle" for them, and I wouldn't want to do any less this time around.

Please help me out if you can spare a few minutes. In return, I'll make it worth your while. (Hint!)

All you have to do is post your comments below – on the biggest questions, problems, and challenges you have with link building.

Redoing My Link Building Course – Need Your Help is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!

As is always the case with conference sessions – I have to cram a whole bunch of content into a very short speaking slot, because there will be 3 or 4 other people there dishing out killer PPC tactics as fast as they can.

For a StomperNet Live event, where I usually get to deliver 75-90 minutes to several hundred people, it's easy to prepare a presentation. I don't know if it was Mark Twain or not – somebody put it better than I can once upon a time – but the shortest presentations require the greatest preparation.

Too bad that doesn't apply to Twitter posts. Anyway, I could use a little help from my readers in narrowing down (or broadening if necessary) the scope of this presentation.

I'd love to hear your suggestions on topics, or knotty PPC problems that could really use an amazing tactical solution, in the comments below.

Speaking @ SMX Advanced on June 3 is a post from SEO Fast Start - the best SEO book is free, download it today!