slamboard

I was sitting in a waiting room once many years ago and I ended up reading this fascinating magazine article chronicling one of Bill Gates’ regular retreats to his secluded cabin. I was a bit naive as I began reading. Once I got to the part about the dumb waiter that brings the cold soft drinks up from the ground floor, I realized that he and I didn’t have the same idea as to the meaning of rustic.

The founder of Thoof is on the same page as I am in this regard. He thought that Bill Gates’ thinking retreats were worth replicating, even if they had to be on a shoestring budget. He rented a one room cabin out in the forest and he was holed up there one snowy weekend trying to think of the perfect name for his new website. He was up all night tossing and turning. As the first rays of dawn creeped through the window, he suddenly was struck with an idea. He would let nature name his site for him. His plan was to go outside and listen for some sound in the forest that would be the name of a great new personalized news page.

He stood up, still wrapped in his sleeping bag and hopped over to the door. Opening was a bit awkward, but he managed it eventually. He then took the that one small hop for mankind….

THOOF!!!

All the hopping had loosened the snow on the roof and it all came sliding down on top of the founder of what is now known to one and all as thoof.com.

You may have noticed the Thoof badge on some posts around the blogosphere. The ranking lets you know how popular a particular article or post is on Thoof.

This blog is not a “do follow” blog. I had actually intended to install a plugin that removes the “no follow” tags when the trend was very popular. I had some technical difficulty and, being the lazy person that I am, I decided not to bother. It wasn’t just laziness though. I was a bit apprehensive about the idea.

I went ahead and installed the plugin on my personal blog. I even activated a spam filter and turned of comment moderation.

The idea behind the “do follow” movement, which is called “I follow” by some, is that providing bloggers who comment on your blog with an incoming link that has real SEO benefits will encourage traffic and also discussion. Most people, no doubt were most interested in the traffic, while saying that it was the discussion that made them happy. There is also a quid pro quo element. Bloggers who remove the “no follow” tags from their comments join a blogroll and make a point of commenting with some regularity on those blogs.

Here is the snag. People seeking to improve page rank for websites, whether they are a blog or just an affiliate portal or online store, would leave volumes of comments on these Do Follow blogs. These comments would invariably be painfully transparent in their lack of insight into the blog post subject. I left the majority of these irritating comments on my other blog. Sometimes I would remove extra links. Obviously, blogs with higher PR would be targeted more intensely by these comments that have been dubbed “human created comment spam”.

I think the line between bloggers who are being overzealous in taking advantage of the movement and bloggers or SEO types who are subverting it entirely is a bit blurry. I also think it is interesting that bloggers are getting disenchanted with the altruistic aspect of the movement just as a Google Pr update is inevitable.

Whenever I have a post that talks about an issue related to the iPhone, I almost immediately get an incoming link from what must be a reblogger.

Here is an example of a typical reblogger:

http://www.seodata.com/seoreblogger/

I think that these links should benefit the PR of my site, but I am not sure whether it does very much. If it proves to be beneficial, I might as well just blog constantly about whatever happens to be cool and eventually I will be cool. The Internet seems to get more like Junior High every day.

A quick Google search for Kimkins, Kimkins diet, or Kimkins weight loss is all it takes to see how pervasive the Kimkins.com marketing machine is. It’s hard for low carb newbies and other dieters to make an informed decision if they don’t know about the raging controversy surrounding Kimkins and its elusive self-appointed guru, Kimmer.

You can help change this! Here are some things you can do to make sure that Internet searchers get to read more than just promotional affiliate advertising about the Kimkins diet:

1. Using the phrases Kimkins, Kimkins diet or Kimkins weight loss, link from your own websites and blogs, as well as message boards or other social websites, to URLs that contain information about the controversy such as:

   http://www.slamboard.com/category/kimkins-diet/
   
   http://www.lowcarbfriends.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=502606

   http://community.livejournal.com/kimkinssucks/

   http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=338380

   http://pinchof.blogspot.com/2007/06/okay-some-kimkins-stuff.html

   http://kimkinsexposed.wordpress.com/

   http://kimorexia.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinssurvivors.wordpress.com/

   http://antikimkins.blogspot.com/

   http://kimkinsdangers.blogspot.com/

   http://www.kimkinscontroversy.com

   (if you know of any other relevant URLs, please let me know in the comments section so I can add them to this list)

2. Using social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us, bookmark relevant blog posts and web pages about the Kimkins controversy. Use the phrases Kimkins and Kimkins diet in your bookmark titles and tags. On this blog, you can click on the Digg button or the Bookmark button below every post and follow the directions to bookmark a post. Anybody can do this, whether you have a website of your own or not.

Kimkins has had excellent affiliate marketing and search engine optimization, and only an organized effort will help get the word out that everything may not be what it seems at Kimkins.com. Every link and bookmark counts!

Read my series about Kimkins.com here.

By all accounts, low carb blogger Jimmy Moore is truly a nice guy. He lost an astounding amount of weight following a low carb diet and started blogging about it in April 2005. He has made many public appearances.

Bloggers and Internet marketers could spend days examining Jimmy’s blogging, linking, and marketing techniques and it would be time well spent. The man is a brilliant natural Internet marketer who has built a huge following of dieters — targeted, motivated, repeat customers for the businesses Jimmy promotes.

My wife Catherine MacDonald, who was a founding partner of Kimkins.com, has a great deal of respect, admiration, and affection for Jimmy. As she and Heidi Diaz were dissolving their Kimkins.com partnership, Heidi attempted to smear Catherine’s management of the Kimkins.com affiliate program to Jimmy, and Catherine has never forgiven her for it.

Jimmy Moore’s association with Kimkins.com stretches back nearly to the beginning. Catherine, aware of Jimmy’s pull, contacted him about Kimkins.com as the site was launching and arranged for some links back and forth. Jimmy expressed interest in an affiliate relationship, and so when the Kimkins.com affiliate program was launched Catherine invited him to sign up right away. He did, and a successful affiliate relationship began. Using his very effective “pre-sell” marketing techniques, Jimmy routinely had conversion ratios of 1:30 to 1:40 on the traffic he sent Kimkins.com’s way.

Catherine’s association with Kimkins.com and Heidi Diaz ended in September 2006, and so I have no direct knowledge of the recent affiliate sales numbers. However, judging from his search engine rankings, the ramped up marketing blitz associated with his own switch to the Kimkins diet, and the hype that resulted from the recent Woman’s World article, I would conservatively estimate that Jimmy has pulled in at least $15,000 in affiliate commissions from Kimkins.com.

Yesterday, after I revealed the facts about his Kimmer interview here on the blog, Jimmy stepped up to the plate and openly admited that his first Kimmer interview was done through email, not in person or on the phone. He says that he had a long telephone call with “Kimmer” yesterday and they have a telephone interview scheduled for his podcast late next week — a case of strike while the iron is … uh, cold and with a well-prepared story. Jimmy asked Kimmer for an in-person interview to help clear up the controversy about her identity and weight loss claims, but she once again declined. To my knowledge, nobody interested in the Kimkins.com debate claims that they have met Kimmer/Heidi Diaz/Kim Drake in person.

If Kimmer/Heidi Diaz is truly who she says she is but for whatever reason will not participate in public appearances or video appearances, why not agree to meet Jimmy in person for an audio interview? She could show him some ID to prove that she is in fact Heidi Kimberly Diaz, and let him describe the meeting and vouch for her authenticity. They could have a no published pictures agreement, and Jimmy could be the first person who could say that yes, he has met Kimmer in person and she is everything she claims to be.

Jimmy is an astute marketer and is playing this whole thing very well — but as a decent guy with substantial integrity, he’s got to be having some serious doubts about Kimmer himself now.

I passed along some misinformation a while back regarding Google PR updates. This time, I will only say that people are talking in the Blogosphere about the possibility that it is going on right now. I am crossing my fingers. That is not my entire SEO strategy, but it is an integral part of it.

I have placed Digg buttons on all my post permalinks. I am hoping that some of the more topical entries will get some traffic benefit from this small change.

Another change that I am considering comes courtesy of Tyler Cruz. He didn’t invent Optimal Title but he brought it to my attention and I think it is a great idea. This plugin puts the post title in front of the blog title. Take a look around and see which high ranking bloggers arrange their titles in this way. There is an SEO benefit.

First and foremost Concentric, is a great source for affordable web hosting solutions. You get a free domain name with every web hosting account.

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Everybody is talking about iPhones. Some people are really excited. Other people are just hoping to make gains in traffice and rankings by talking about a very hot topic.

For the record, I have been blogging about it off and on for months…see?

I have to develop a strategy for promoting this blog. I have managed to increase traffic slightly with my piecemeal efforts, but the incoming links aren’t happening like they should. I just finished watching a great White Board Session on SEOmoz. It inspired me. There is nowhere to go but up as far as PR goes.

Oh, there is Zero…that would be bad.