However, in the hands of an expert SEO, a domain with as much content, community following, and proven revenue should be fetching more than $2000, don’t you think? The blogs generate more than 5000 page views per day and is also a respectable PageRank 5 with nice rankings in Alexa. Or do you think it was fairly priced, or bought too high? Love to hear your thoughts! You can see the eBay listing for the completed sale here.

Here’s the catch, he’s already made the money back within 2 days! The project started on June 10th and his update on June 12th shows that Chris is a nice guy, as he promises to donate all store revenue for the duration of the world cup to charity. It may not be big money, but surely inspires aspiring online entreprenurs just what is possible within a day!

If this is indeed a prank, it brings further question as to how reliable is Alexa’s ranking, especially for purposes such as the Text Link Ads Calculator?

P.S. Just followed a commenter on that particular post and found Thor Schrock who gave away that ShoeMoney has 1200 domains. How many domains does ShoeMoney really have?

The reason while test subjects are needed is because it needs to be tested out in the field, and your feedback can also be used as testimonials!

For more information, please make contact by leaving a comment with your Blogspot URL. Your blog will be judged to determine its viability as a test candidate! Thank you for your interest!

• SEO For MSN
• SEO For Yahoo!
• SEO For Google
• Tying It Together

Here’s another tip, if you are a blogger or just a website that has created a series, do consider creating a separate summary page (like this one) for the series! You can then use this one page to focus on promoting the series rather than all the individual posts. You can even use it as a landing page for any ad / promotional campaigns as well.

Extra: Aaron Wall previously pointed out another good resource by Dan Thies for learning more about gaming Google! (Warning: You need Flash to listen to this presentation)

The last post about Squidoo ended with a suggestion for Squidoo to focus on being a lens search engine. Aaron Wall also interviewed Seth Godin, and Seth explained that

[...] Squidoo for the lensmaster is a place to point to your blog or your company or your organization. [....] For a surfer, it’s more direct, more trusted and easier than a search engine in some ways. It’s a place to start, a place to leave, and easy directory. [...]

In the same vein that Squidoo is a search engine for lenses, Technorati has become the benchmark search engine for blogs. There are different benefits to optimizing for Technorati, and the process can be easier than optimizing for traditional search engines like Google.

No More Searching! Information Comes To You!
Everyone talks about how how blogs have changed the media and how information distribution has transformed. But the argument can be made that the transformation is more profound due to the syndication feeds like RSS. RSS is Google’s achilles heel in this comparison. Blog readers monitoring 100+ feeds are not uncommon. In addition, new Technorati search results can be fed to readers long after their initial search via RSS. Finally, Technorati also gets a tremendous amount of search queries on their site. Technorati search has transcended the traditional search engine confines.

Before we go further, this post assumes that

1. You are optimizing for a blog, not a traditional website.
2. You blog is being indexed by Technorati regularly and correctly.

How To Optimize For Technorati
The Technorati SEO game is simple with no mysterious algorithm to worry about. In fact, Technorati tells you how to win the game! Technorati’s search page tells you the top search terms every hour. If you are able to write posts containing those keywords, your blog will be instantly exposed to perspective quality readers yearning for a different point of view.

You don’t have to worry about getting on the result pages because if you blog it, and Technorati picks it up, it WILL show up! If the search term is an addictive topic, blog readers may navigate many pages of results just to read your post! A negative aspect is the fact that showing up on this search is a short-term exposure versus the length of time you might enjoy on the first page of a Google SERP.

After The Click-through
The challenge is on writing quality posts containing the popular search terms to get readers to subscribe to your blog. This essentially breaks the cardinal content rule of “writing for humans vs. writing for computers” but if done properly can achieve results expanding your readership.

Blog readers are a finicky bunch. Unfortunately, if your blog looks like the thousands of blogs out there with the same template, that content you spent an hour perfecting will often be dismissed without hesistation in most cases. Enhancing your content with a unique blog design / layout is a key trigger to retaining new readers.

What About Monetization?
Blog readers typically are not the type of visitors who click on advertisements, but don’t worry! The more important battle is to build a loyal community, because right behind that community comes a bunch of good will, link love (or link leaks), and track-backs that inevitably will help with your SEO efforts on traditional search engines! Yes, you noticed that eventually you are going back to Google, but this time around, you’ll be armed with a readership community and the links to back it up!

Squidoo has recently started payouts to its lensmasters. The top lens is currently earning around $30 per month. Which begs the question on what Squidoo has been doing wrong. Here are a few observations:

Squidoo lenses look like irrelevant parked domain pages. You may not agree with this evaluation but surf around the internet and you are bound to see some parked domain pages. Squidoo lenses seem to evoke a similar look and feel. The difference is that a parked domain full of advertistements may actually monetize better than a Squidoo lens.

Squidoo lenses have extremely poor ad placements. Unless you have your monitor at a very high resolution, you will not see any ads appearing above the fold. If the effect is by design, then the desired result must not be to convert the only Adsense ads that appear on the right side bar. The Adsense ads are also not blended into the content or the site layout.

Squidoo lenses have too many outgoing link leaks. A lens is meant to be an information aggregator on a particular topic. Readers can find many useful links from other resources on a lens that can distract them away from the page; never coming back. There are links out to Flickr photos, link lists to other websites. Smart lensmasters also litter the page with their own affiliate links (which don’t work because they are too obvious). Linking out is not a bad idea, but how many of these sites are reciprocating links back to the lenses? Which leads to the next deficiency …

Squidoo is losing the SEO game. Most lenses on Squidoo are unable to compete on search keywords and fail to rank high in SERPs. You can hardly find a squidoo lense without complimenting the search with the ’squidoo’ keyword.

Squidoo button layouts are poorly designed. Take a look at a Squidoo lens, you will see at the top of the article, a ratings tool, links to promote the lens to del.icio.us or submit to Digg. These features can help the lens get more exposure. But why would readers rate a lens or help promote it before they have finished reading? Scroll to the bottom of the page and you will notice that readers have no links to help promote the lens once they have finished reading. The design looks nice but it is counter-intutive and not user friendly.

Squidoo cares most about Squidoo. Compare Squidoo’s homepage to that of Digg, and Del.icio.us. (You may have to sign out to see what non-members see). All these web 2.0 sites rely on user generated content, but Squidoo’s promotion of user content is the least prominent. Squidoo promotional focus is on itself as it struggles to recruit lensmasters. Perhaps Squidoo should simplify and convert its layout to something similar to Google Search. This change may allow it to concentrate on being a lens content search engine / distributor?

The post does raise the interesting perspective of whether Markus is really able earning that kind of revenue. Do you have an opinion?