I’ve come to realize that a year is about how long it takes early adopters to get sick of social networking sites like Twitter. It was fine when nobody knew what Twitter was, but now that everyone and their mom is starting to join, it’s become that annoying thorn in my side. The media loves to use terms like, “tweeted” and “twittered… every time I hear it, it makes me want to vomit.

Do I still have a Twitter account? Yes… for the moment. But only because I don’t fully hate it yet. Unlike Facebook, which I absolutely wish it would die in a fire, much like MySpace has.

So I have a client for which I’ve created multiple advanced reports and custom dashboards for under my own login, but when the client logs in, they can’t see my reports. So can I share these reports with them?

The short and sour answer is - no. Custom dashboards and reports are tied to the log and cannot be shared with other logins even if they belong to the same profile. Frankly I think it’s a ridiculous setup, but what can I do about it.

If Google changes their policy, or if anyone knows a work around (not counting a shared login), please share.

Yesterday Google had another external toolbar Page Rank update. Not that external Page Rank updates are all that important, but a recently PR sure does make it easier to gauge potential link partners.

Since I’m on the topic of Page Rank, allow me to explain a little bit about what Page Rank is, how it works and what the difference is between internal page rank and external page rank.

Overview:
Page Rank is one of the over 200 signals Google looks at when it determines a web sites ranking for a given search phrase. It’s purpose is to indicate how popular a web site by analyzing the linking relationships between sites.

Background:
Several years ago, Google became the first search engine to factor inbound, outbound and internal linking relationships between sites into their search algorithm. After analyzing these relationships, Google assigns a score to the page called Page Rank. Years ago, when Page Rank was in it’s infancy, it was one of only a few models (combination of related signals) that Google used in it’s algorithm. Once it became known that Page Rank was a primary influence factor, web masters began gaming the system to artificially inflate their Page Rank score resulting in a lower quality search index. To combat this, Google began devaluing paid links, reciprocal links and site-wide links, and created the “no follow” tag.

Today:
Today, new models such as personalization, time, geo-location, site metrics, etc. have begun to influence rankings so that Page Rank has become just one of many models taken into account. While links are still the primary driver of rankings, what most people think of as “Page Rank” is not the end all - be all of ranking.

Internal Page Rank vs. External Page Rank
Most web masters consider Page Rank to be the 1-10 green bar ranking in Google’s Toolbar. In actuality, this is 10,000 foot view of what’s really going on behind the scenes. It’s like looking at earth from space and saying, “Earth consists of water, clouds and land”. Yes, earth does consist of those things, but there’s a lot more to earth than just that.

For clairfication purposes, we’ll call the 1-10 toolbar score, “External Page Rank” and we’ll refer to the behind-the-scenes score that Google uses in it’s algorithm the “Internal Page Rank”.

So here is the main break-down…

1. External Page Rank is for consumers and does not affect rankings.
2. External Page Rank is on a scale of 1-10. (Example: PR 5)
3. External Page Rank gets updated every few months.

1. Internal Page Rank is for Google and is factored into rankings.
2. Internal Page Rank has a much detailed range. (Example: PR 5.38409)
3. Internal Page Rank is constantly updated.

Is external Page Rank still useful?
External Page Rank is useful for a quickly determining the quantity and quality of incoming links to a page. It can also give you a rough indicator of a pages internal Page Rank for a particular snapshot of time, however even a recently updated External Page rank may actually reflect an Internal Page Rank a month or two old.

I’m in a blogging mood today, so I feel compelled to share with the world an excellent way for marketing professionals to attain backlinks to their clients web sites. It’s simple, so this shouldn’t take long.

This method assumes your a marketing professional who is proficient with Search Engine Optimization and is at least somewhat involved in social networks like digg.

1. Get on Digg look for some diggers who have popular submissions in the Web Design categories.
2. Add the top diggers, then go through their friends list looking for friends who might have their IM contact info on their profile page.
3. Add them on IM, and start up a conversation. Offer to digg their content, and ask if they own any web sites. (Most are web masters, so most will own several web sites)
4. Take a look at their site, and see how their SEO looks. Chances are good that they could use some SEO help.
5. Tell them your an SEO expert (hopefully this is true), and ask if they’d be willing to give you a link on your site in exchange for a site audit and some SEO recommendations.
6. If they’re willing to barter some links, go ahead and ask them to add the link first. Most of the time you can get your perfect anchor text on a prominent page.
7. Now for your part of the deal… Check the URL structure, interlinking, page titles and keyword selection of the site. Give them a run down of their sites backlinks with Yahoo explorer and note the age of the domain using a whois tool. Using Google Adwords keyword selection tool, do a little keyword research and find some good keywords. Write up a new homepage title, give them your notes on the above research you did and explain to them the value of 1-way links and optimized anchor text. That’s it. You’re done.

Today I secured a site-wide, one way link from site with a respectable PR, in exchange for the above audit. The audit itself took about an hour. If you’ve established a good relationship with the webmaster, and offer to answer any SEO questions down the road they’ll usually keep your link up on their site.

There you have it, an excellent way of securing one-way links that doesn’t require too much work from you and benefits both parties. Try it out, and let me know how you make out.

I’m not sure I completely understand the title of this post myself, but I felt compelled to give Gmail a quick shout out on the great job they’re doing blocking spam. Seriously, email spam has become a thing of the past. So props to Google there.

Now for my rant… What’s the deal with all this traditional junk mail? Every time I get my mail, I sort through useless piles of junk mail searching for the one bill that has my name on it. Everything is addressed to, “Resident at address” or “Savvy Shopper at address”. Why can’t the post office do some spam filtering here. I mean, the PO has only been around a hundred years longer than Google.

Not only can’t I unsubscribe from this annoying junk mail, but I’ve even taken the time to list myself on the “do not mail” lists and other “no junkmail lists” to no avail. Junk mail is the one thing that physically upsets me - not because it bothers me that they’re wasting so much paper, but because it makes me not want to even check my mail anymore. I don’t know, I guess I’m just getting fed up with it all. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stop all this spam?

After several months of being ignored, DanCristo.com is back with a vengence.

Here’s a little explanation of where I’ve been…
Late August/early September, I started a nifty little web site called textReminders. The site took up an extensive amount of my free time up, which regrettable led my precious vanity blog being shelved while I figured out the ins and outs of programming in PHP. While learning PHP was a fun experience, I’m at the point where I want to start marketing the site now, and in doing so I want to share my marketing tips and tricks with my readers through my blog here.

Just so everyone knows, the direction of the blog will be one of a SEO/Social Media path. I won’t focus much on PPC, or anything like that. It’ll basically be a journal of what I’m currently discovering in the world of Internet Marketing, and right now social and organic SEO is what excites me. It’ll also be a personal blog where I rant about whatever’s on my mind - SEO realated or not.

So if you’re interested in learning how to successfully market a web site on little to no budget, subscribe to my RSS feed on the right and follow me on this journey.

Dan