So, every person qualified to teach you how to build a website that gets to the top of Google reads your site (like this one)- and you want to make money off your site- add a job listing board!

Job-a-matic makes it easy to do. I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but Ernie Schenck, advertising grand master, decided to do it on his blog: using Job-a-matic.

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Make More from Your Site with Job-a-matic!
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Why Job-a-matic?* Sell your own job listings. You set the price.
* Earn additional revenue with paid listings from Simply Hired
* Wow your audience with useful content
* Watch the money roll in.

We’re not a big fan of guestbooks- but a client asked us about having one in WordPress. Right now, the WordPress world is in a tizzy over switching to 2.1 or continuing with 2.0- but here is one that claims to work with WordPress 2.1:

Alleba Blog » WordPress Guestbook Generator Plugin
Plugin Name: Guestbook Generator
Description: Generates a guestbook for WordPress blogs. Once activated, click on Options > Guestbook Generator.
Version: 0.8
Author: Andrew dela Serna
Notice: Compatible only with WordPress 2.1. Support for older versions will continue but updates/upgrades will be focused on the newest versions of WordPress. Scroll down to download Version 0.7 which is designed for Wordress 2.0.X.

Features:

1. No files to edit. Just upload the plugin, activate it then run the generator.
2. Guestbook template seamlessly integrates with your current theme.
3. When changing themes, simply run the generator to create the necessary files.
4. Like a true-blue guestbook, entries are arranged from newest to oldest.
5. Remember the time when guestbooks were the “in” thing? Hopefully this plugin will bring back the ol’ days. Hehe.

I don’t share the authors romantic view of guestbooks- for the most part, I find them silly. Comments are just as effective- and when using the amazing “subscribe to comments” plugin, you can actually carry on a great conversation on your site.

Please note- a lot of themes are behaving badly with WordPress 2.1 right now- so it may not be your plugin that’s broken- it may be the theme. It’s a trial and error world for a bit. If in doubt, stick with WordPress 2.0 if you aren’t ready to invest some time in the upgrade. Always remember to back up your complete database- and all files, before making a change.

One of our new staff members pointed me to Seer Interactive’s site– and I liked what I found. Here is a company focused on getting real results from the web for their clients- much like us.

They dissect Nike.com as an example of how to be too slick for search- I’ve only quoted the first 2 mistakes- but, the whole article is worthy of a read.

If you are wondering how well you do on search- look at your keyword search stats- and see how diverse it is- if everything has your brand name in it- and none of your competition you should be instantly worried!

Overall, big brands typically screw up search in two big ways, and Nike is no different:1. Missing out on long-tail terms: If you are not familiar with the term “Long Tail” as it relates to search, you can get the basic idea from a blog post by the search Granddaddy himself, Danny Sullivan.

Typically, big brands want to target the big unbranded terms like “tennis rackets,” “golf clubs,” or “running shoes.” I do recommend that they target such terms as a way to position their brand in the minds of people who are searching, but they often miss terms like “golf club reviews” or “women’s trail running shoes.” Typically, these long-tail terms are the ones that convert best.

Even worse, in Nike’s case, it doesn’t show up in the top 10 for the term “Nike trail shoes.” That is a term that includes its brand name. This happens a lot with Nike branded search terms. If I were Nike, I would start on the branded terms because they are the easiest to rank well for given its existing Web assets. They are most definitely the low-hanging fruit, just waiting to be plucked. People searching for products using the word Nike in their search are already familiar with the brand and are probably calling out for you to show up—but there’s Nike, hiding from them on page 80!

2. All-Flash sites with no alternative version: Does it make sense to spend significant amounts of money on heavily Flashed branded sites—but not on driving people who know the brand to the branded site using organic (natural) search engine optimization… AKA free clicks?

So maybe you are saying… “Hey Wil, maybe Nike doesn’t want to use search at all in their marketing.” I thought about that. When I did a search on Google for “Air Max,” I got this page:

Nike is paying to be in a top position on PPC, which means that search matters as a way of gaining exposure, brand awareness, and possibly, just maybe, sales. But when I clicked on the PPC link for “Air Max,” I was taken to the Nike store homepage.

see the whole article here: Eight ways Big Brands Screw up Search – A case study: Nike.com

We’ve been railing on Crispin Porter Bogusky build websites for the very same reason- and a quick search on vdub rocks in Google has The Next Wave above them – except for the paid placement above.

There is no reason to pay Google for search results- if you take our Websitetology seminar.