Acquiring Websites - due diligence

I just bought my second website. The first one was a simple domain acquisition with no content. This website acquisition was much more complicated and expensive since I acquired:

1. A domain
2. Applications on the domain

My reasons for acquiring (not in any order):

1. I wanted the applications to deploy onto one of my educational websites
2. I wanted the highly rated site (in several search engines) to drive traffic and send "google juice" to my other educational sites
3. I'm trying to learn to make money from advertisements & affiliates (ie, not subscriptions) and this seemed like a good way to learn it.

It was not cheap but the the seller, whom I contacted initially to buy the technology that I had seen on the site, would only sell the website in its entirely, not just the technology. So I bought the website, pretty much at his asking price.

I went through, what I think of, as an appropriate amount of "due diligence". "Due diligence" means the process through which a potential acquirer evaluates a target company and its assets to ensure that the price is fair and that the buyer understands the assets appropriately. It is a legal term for publicly-held companies (and others with fiduciary legal obligations) that the management must go thru to not be reckless with the funds entrusted to them.

Actually, here's (simplified) what I've done.
1. Had initial discussions with the buyer. I approached him as interested in buying the technology on the site. He responded by saying that he was trying to sell the whole site. I asked "why" and "how much?"  He answered.

2. I considered his answers to why and how much to make a go/no go decision on the purchase:
- I wanted to pursue it at that level of asking price
- To think about whether he was "for real" or a dishonest or flakey person. If I felt that either of the latter were likely, I would not pursue it at all. I have decided to not deal professionally with people that are lunatics or lying (to me or themselves). I checked up on the info that he provided, reviewed his sites and their links to get an overall picture of his online activities and decided that he was a "good egg" and someone that I wanted to go thru the acquisition process with.

I cannot overemphasize how important making this decision is. The ONE time that I decided to buy with someone who seemed "too-amazing", I wasted a huge amount of my and my colleagues time and money on an acquisition that did not close since as we got into the details of due diligence, it turned out he was not just exaggerating, he was totally lying. I knew at the beginning that there was something wrong with his story and I wish I had, based on simple intuition, walked away.

3. I gathered all the independent stats that I could to evaluate it.
- many independent lists of incoming links such as those provided by www.webuildpages.com
- alexa etc

4. Check hosting status (including blacklisting) using http://www.dnsstuff.com/

5.  I asked them to supply to me:
- traffic by month for the last year with explanations of traffic trends
- data on referrals by country and domain
- disclosure on relationships for sites with links and sites providing traffic
- I had thought about the possibility of fraud here before when I looked at SEO due diligence.

6. Looked at other similar sites that might be for sale and followed some discussions to go from being a novice to an expert. I looked at www.sedo.com but preferred: www.sitepoint.com . In fact, they had a great free guide to Buying Websites.

7. I found a lawyer that I like, trust, is experienced with small acquisitions, and that I had good access to. This is nearly impossible. I was incredibly lucky.
8. Put in critical data in the purchase agreement in the "reps and warranties". This means that they, as part of the contract, represent that they've disclosed the truth about the data that they've supplied me (which I made part of the contract as an attachment).5. Staged acquisition with payment tied to deliverables.

BTW - if there is much interest in this, I could write more extensively. I think this is a huge new business growth area for me (acquisitions) and generally, there will be lots of growth thru deals on the web.

Focusing Page Rank by limiting content?

Analytically - Can new pages hurt?

This is a question that's puzzled me for awhile and which I thought I would put to a forum that I'm now active on: John Scott's V7N webmasters forum.

Before I get to the question about content and whether too much defocuses googlejuice, let's talk about his forum. He has some good quality content (his seo intro is fabulous). The forum has a policy of not only ranking contributors by number of posts (junior, senior, emeritus etc) which is addictive but he provides some perks along the way. The most visible one is that at 50 posts, you can have live links in your signature. Of course, there are oodles of people posting silly short comments to get their post count up....

I added this math seo puzzler on the back of this discussion: "Does adding new content without adding new links hurt your search engine position....."

My post.....I'd like to take this question towards the mathematical and away from the simplistic "go get some links".....

Assume that I have a 5 page site on widgets. Each page talks about different widgets. Say A Widgets, B widgets... right up to the 5th letter. But all my links come into my home page which is the A widget page.

If I add a sixth page but without adding any links, does that hurt my positioning on google for B Widgets?

Or, does adding new pages, while keeping the link count constant, mathematically reduce the PageRank (in the truest sense of the word) of my existing pages?

I've read extensively on this point and have learned about dampeners and matrices and such but nobody seems to deal with this question directly.The math suggests that the page rank from the total links in cannot be used over and over again for any given number of (even relevant) keywords. But then, why doesn't anyone discuss how to optimize from this question of having the optimal amount of content for the incoming links?

In my case, this is an academic but puzzling case since I am busy adding content (quality) and links as fast as I can to: Time4Learning.com. Still, I wonder if rather than going for learning games, Educational Games , and teaching games, I should make more choices....

Common SEO Myths

Many people believe, but it is not true:

1. You should not have any outgoing links because they dissipate your SEO power. Just like water pressure or electricity, any outgoing link will function as a "leak" and release the pressure. This is a completely false understanding of how the search engines work yet many people totally believe that they are "wasting power" by having outgoing links on their site.

2. You should have as few pages as possible on your site. Again, many believe that just like electricity or water power, the bigger the area covered, the less pressure or power is concentrated on the key spots. So your best pages will do better if you don't divide your SEO power across many pages. While largely untrue, there is some truth (I believe) that sites cannot just keep getting larger without diminishing the power of some key pages)

3. The google PageRank that we see on the google toolbar is an important measure of a page's power and the value of an outgoing link. In fact, the visible pagerank is a highly distorted cartoon which can be wildly inaccurate. I believe (and would welcome comments) that this is inaccurate in that:
- it is reflecting the number of incoming links but NOT the quality or relevance which is at least as important as the number of links
- the value of an outgoing link from a page is a reflection of it's relevance to the target page, quality, and the number of outgoing links on a page. If all else were equal, the links on a page with 10 outgoing links is ten times more valuable than a link on a page with one outgoing link. I have seen hundreds of people pay for links from the same page which means that the relative of power of those links is the original power of the page, minus some dampening effect, and then divided by the total number of links on the page.
- it is always several months out of date

PS - While not a myth since the pun is good, most people don't know that when the concept of pagerank was being developed, Larry Page decided to name the concept after himself. I've often wondered if Sergei Brin wanted it to be called BrinRank.

The Long Tail of Search

This is amazing. Time4Learning lives off the long tail so it was exciting to find an article on it:

Chasing The Long Tail.......How big is this phenomena? At Google's Universal Search announcement, Udi Manber put up a slide that stated that 20% to 25% of the search queries Google sees every day are search queries it has never seen before. Let that sink in for a moment. To me, that number was startlingly large.

While this is an amazing fact, it is this next one which I think is understated and of more business significance....

The sum of the searches on all the low volume terms = the sum of the traffic on all the high volume terms.

Comments:
1. This depends on definitions.
2. All the same, most people believe that the volume is in the big search terms, nto the small ones. So this is big news to them.
3. I believe that: the volume in small search terms > the volume in big search terms.
4. I have successfully figured out how to take advantage of this in natural search, but not in paid search. (more on my recent trials and frustrations in paid search later). Basically, even with broad matching, if you build enough terms, you can bid on relevant keyphrases at a much lower rate. I had figured this out when I was very active in PPC a few years ago. I'm now on my second consultant to try and resucsitate my PPC campaign and so far, he has not shown substantial progress. BTW - remember my seo joke?

There are basically two ways to pursue the long tail:
Write in depth articles. This provides you access to long tail terms simply through the natural combination of words that the search engine will extract from your article. The scope of this is somewhat limited, of course, as there are so many word combinations that can be extracted from one article.
Implement lots of pages all targeted at different terms. The trick with this approach is to make the pages unique and different from each other, so they are not seen as spammy duplicate content.

Posted by Eric Enge on May. 21, 2007 on Clickz as Chasing The Long Tail

PS - Note to self. It is way past time for me to figure out how to do trackbacks and other social bookmarking or referencing systems so that I can participate in the discussions properly.

LMS - learning management systems

I'm looking at LMS for some new content that we are creating. For one site, I've picked Joomla. That is really a content mgt and community system.

My more ambitious projects require my own cms. I'm reviewing them at http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=lms

Leading contenders:
- create my own
- joomla or jooml with lms
- druple
- moodle

I have a few sets of requirements. Quickly evolving....

1. Course mgt. I want the students to see the upcoming activities in a visual way. They should be able repeat what they've done .....

2. Student record keeping

3. Roles for admin, course creators, course teachers, parents, students. In fact, I want to be able to create new roles based on whether I want to give them access to:
- create accounts & grant permissions - globally
- create content
- create students
- look at records
- be a student
- ohmygodthisisgoingto be a long list...

ATutor is an Open Source Web-based Learning Content Management System (LCMS/LMS), designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind. Interoperable content for creating and reusing learning objects. Easily customizable. Put your courses online.

Google Page Rank, Personalized Search, DataCenters

For the last few months, I have been high fiving myself that for my key term, homeschool curriculum, I am almost always number one on Google.

Today, I wondered if that is only true for my search, since there are personalized searches giving different results to different people, and to different data centers. I tend to use the cool seo tool and it always shows me number one to. But it too might have become personalized since I use it alot!

So I tried a different free seo tool and found the following:

Google Datacenter - 66.249.93.104 - #1
Google Datacenter - 64.233.179.104 #1
Google Datacenter - 216.239.51.104 #1
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.99
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.147
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.104
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.99
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.147
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.104
Google Datacenter - 66.102.11.99
Google Datacenter - 64.233.189.104

Woa, I'm number one in every case. What have I learned?

Is it possible that my personal login was somehow communicated thru that search so that they knew what I was looking for? Not likely, so I'm number one in every case. I guess I'll keep high fiving myself.

Or, I could check out homeschooling curriculum.

Google Datacenter - 66.249.93.104 - #6
Google Datacenter - 64.233.179.104 #6
Google Datacenter - 216.239.51.104 #6
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.99 #6
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.147 #6
Google Datacenter - 66.102.9.104 etc
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.99
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.147
Google Datacenter - 66.102.7.104
Google Datacenter - 66.102.11.99
Google Datacenter - 64.233.189.104 #6

Homeschool Education - Googles rankings

Homeschool Curriculum #1
Homeschooling curriculum #8
homeschool #7
home school #17
homeschooling #18

home education - not in top 100 (overture reports 6057 terms)...interesting. My poor position here is interesting since this is part of the title of my home page, the most linked to page on my site and a PR 6. I wonder if this one link will make a difference?

Help Wanted - Blog SEO

I would like someone to show us (and to do it) how to set up a blog perfectly for SEO purposes and with a few google ads.

I am hiring three writers who will post once a week on a given topic on this group blog. They need to be instructed:
- are link swaps actually useful in 2007? Are a few good but not more than 20?
- is posting as comments on other blogs useful?
- forums?
- are pingomatic submissions useful?
- which software (wordpress or typepress i think) is best?

I would like the pages to be set up for the best seo. And I'd like all the extras worked in. For instance, what is digg & delicious and how are they used to help blogs? What is all this stuff that I see...

subscribe via rss, yahoo, google, newsgator, rssvibest?

This is how much work and $$$ from the right person?

HTML Correctness

Generally, I like to follow rules. I also like to run a profitable business. Does it make business sense to spend time on HTML Correctness?

My homepage fails some WC3 HTML tests. Lots of them.

My use of CSS was better.

Long ago (June & July of 2006), I researched the question of whether SEO Errors Matter and how HTML Errors & SEO related. At the time, I concluded that they do not.

Any research out there to prove otherwise? I hope so since like I said, I'm looking for a business justification to clean up my HTML. I like to follow rules.

SEO Research - link value

Is it possible that small business like myself could do original research on SEO. For instance, a terribly relevant question.

Do graphical links count more or less than text links?

Research Plan.
- Create some number of near identical sites in terms of domain names and page layout and content. Actuatly create three pairs of nearly identical sites. One page deep each.
- Split them in two groups.
- One group gets links to it that are graphical with images and alt tags that help position them. The links should be nearly identical in terms of position on the pages that they come from.
- The other group gets only text links using near identical keyphrases
- Run searches on them
- Determine if there is a pattern.

Level of Effort
- One hour to fully design the keyphrase and domain strategy
- One hour to explain to staff exactly what I want them to do
- Half day of staff time to put up the domains and place the ads
- One hour / week for 9 weeks to run searches on google, msn, & yahoo to determine pattern
Total - less than 2 man days.

At the end, I'll understand something important. I might even have a sellable report (would I pay $50 to someone who had done this reseach properly and could give me a definitive answer? I would).

Optimizing Content for SEO

Here are a few principles that I live by. I wonder if I could get some feedback on them.

1. When we create an article that is to be submitted to other sites, we first post it on our site since we like to create the pattern with google that we are the source. Does this actually matter? For instance, look at the experienced homeschoolers curriculum review or the article on Christian homeschooling or Christian homeschoolers.

2. When we submit articles elsewhere, we place about 5 links in them back to our site related to the topic and with logical links between the site where it's placed, the content, the anchor text, and the page it links to.

3. When we place articles on our sites, we mix the links so that only about half of them come back to our sites, the rest go to authority sites. We believe this establishes some sort of credibility.

4. We list all of our pages in our site index which is primarily for the spiders: the site map only get the info that we want the people to see.

5. Articles on our site are very focused and designed to answer specific questions for people (and do well on specific keyphrases in the search engines). For instance, a parent might want wonder, should I help my child by enrolling them in a Kumon Learning Center or is there another better approach?

Marketing to Moms

The heart of Time4Learning's marketing is convincing Moms to give us a try. This is why we have Maria Bailey, author of Marketing to Moms, on our board. And why we read her books and articles. I am bringing on some new writers and so it's time to repeat Maria's lessons (which I am paraphrasing).

What Moms Want in Advertising.
How to Sell to Moms...

1. Visible benefits to using the product
2. Pictures of cute kids (women love the aspirational family picture irrespective of how little it reflects their personal reality).
3. Solutions to everyday challenges
4. Ways to enrich their children
5. Safety information
6. Useful ideas or advice.
7. Value

A relationship with Support from their vendors.

Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization, a new topic to me, is (and I quote Gino's article):

"...the process of optimizing a website so that its content can be easily spread on the Net by the website’s own visitors to off-site social and online communities – basically making it “socially friendly”.

The most common example is adding social bookmarks, trackbacks and widgets to a site’s page, such as “add to delicious” links and the MyBlogLog widget."

In Gino's own blog, the key social book marking sites are discussed which to me, reads like a Top Ten List of Mysterious Words that I see on the web: Digg, Delicious, PopURLs, Reddit, Fark, Blue Dot...

My thoughts are that Social Media Optimization means packaging content in a way that it is easily disseminated and quoted across other sites and media. It starts with providing RSS feeds and Newsletters that are quote-worthy and quota-able with the rights clearly defined. Perhaps it includes creating google gadgets that people can put on their pages.

Gino also claims that: "search algorithms are evolving to include social media weight in defining a search-relevant site." I wonder if that's true.

In any case, I know nothing of these technologies although I did get someone to feed by blogs into site-burner which may or may not have any impact on attracting visitors or in building my google rank.

I''ll add looking into "social media optimization" on my list of todos. I wonder if having my spelling test software in a format that it can be used this way is an interesting approach....And of course, rather than manually logging into Gino's blog to say that i had read and commented on it, wouldn't it be nice to know the cooler way of doing it?

New Free tools

The latest and greatest that I use:

The cool seo tool is the best - Thanks Jim

The Webconfs seo site is stuffed with great free tools

Rather than just using overture, I use the Good Keywords interface to it.

Don't get too distracted by this quick article, go look at my best piece on free seo tools.

Lego Ergo Sum

Time4Learning relies on CompassLearning for most of our educational content. Sometimes, we like their updates, sometimes we are disappointed by them, and sometimes, we are over the moon.

Their update this past summer and fall was fantastic. The highlight of the new materials was a large number of vocabulary sections. Antonyms and synonyms and all sorts of exercises done in a fun multimedia manner. Fast paced but with just the right type of repetition so that the children really learn.

Each of these great new exercises (developed by those visionary jellyfish) starts with the announcement of Lego Ergo Sum. If someone could tell me what that means, they've earned free Time4Learning coffee cup.

(no, saying that it is Latin does not count). email to john at time4learning . thats a com.