Lately I have found myself getting less willing to share knowledge, insights and tricks in the ppc space or even some of the cool stuff I have learned in the SEO space…and to that end, I feel like I have chosen to hide underground for quite some time. This is clear by the amount I wrote last year…this year I would like to turn a new leaf, but we’ll see what I feel like I can share vs not.

I like sharing, but I have to admit that I’m not going to share super edgy secrets or expose any awesome loopholes that I find unless I’m physically with somebody and we’re chatting over lunch or if somebody has me in their IM list…I help as many people as I can via IM.

That’s where the ‘code’ comes into play. Lot’s of people know the code, but it needs to be repeated again and again, especially with so many awesome conferences just around the corner:

DO NOT SHARE anything “secret” that you learn from somebody else over lunch, via IM or email or at ALL without their explicit permission.

Why am I calling this the Code of the Underground Marketer? Because these secrets are supposed to stay on the down low – in the ground – so they can be exploited as long as possible without having search engine employees, engineers, algorithms, spiders or contracted reviewers learn about it or know about it.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to communicate with some awesome link builders, ppc rockstars and more over the past few years. I shared some secrets and not others. Of the secrets I haven’t shared because of ‘the code’, few of them have been found out by the sites themselves or the search engines as of yet – only a handful have been exposed.

The code has a hidden side to it…if somebody shares something golden with you and you blast it to the world via Twitter, Facebook, blog or any other medium where dozens of people find out about it at once…you get black listed and hated on for quite some time. It’s rare and difficult to get back into the ‘inner circle’ so to speak.

I wish I could truly call myself part of the ‘inner circle’…but I am far from it. Perhaps I am at the fringe. Maybe not though. I still have to find out a ton of so-called secrets on my own through rapid/vast/expensive experimentation. Buy a link to one website, wait and see what happens to that site before getting a similar link to another website in my portfolio that is more important. I have had a few websites penalized and banned in the past few years and the exercise of removing the bad and learning more about the good has been purely fascinating…at the same time, if I were part of the ‘inner circle’ or the ‘underground marketer’ I probably could have avoided all of the stupid tests I did.

Part of my experimentation, and what I think the real underground marketer is doing too – maybe to a MUCH MUCH greater scale, is managing a nice portfolio of several websites, bank accounts, adsense accounts, ebay accounts, servers, hosts, other affiliate network accounts and more. In my mind, one of the only ways to discover some of the most powerful techniques being used today is through sheer intelligence and a world of experience that came through testing and learning the hard way. Most places don’t allow multiple accounts (except banks, they’re always willing to open accounts for you) so you get creative and use relative’s names and account information if you can.

The bottom line, or what I want to call the Code of the Underground Marketer, is definitely that of not sharing what others share with you…and not sharing everything you learn…and always be testing.

Good luck in 2010 and have a Happy New Year living the Code!

semvironment has been going through a shiny new internal transformation lately…here’s the latest:

semvironment is now a one man show. I (James Zolman) realized that during this economic turmoil, it is easier to be flexible and strong as a service provider if the people that help me can maintain their sense of freedom to work for others while we have the strictest agreements of confidentiality and non-disclosure in place between our contractors and our clients. Every one of our contractors worked in-house for us at one time so they are trustworthy, smart and entrepreneurial people. Yes times have been difficult here, but every single one of my prior employees is doing great and not a single bridge has been burned because of these times. I am excited to press forward independently with the use of awesome ppc software, the best contractors and the best clients ever.

semvironment is focusing more on education and coaching. I am going to revive the blog a bit with at least a weekly blog post unless I am on vacation with my beautiful family. The blog will cover more SEM stuff while still emphasizing and maintaining a healthy dose of PPC management posts.

I am looking for small business owners, in-house teams, ppc management agencies, ppc software companies or individuals that want or need an external opportunity report. Basically, I would spend two or three days reviewing the account, the history and your analytics reports and write a report for you with ‘next steps’ for helping your team or you improve your ROI with paid search!

And a little plug about the latest for me (James Zolman) outside of semvironment:

You might have heard of Click Walrus a little bit in the previous blog post…I have been investing heavily in this attribution tool designed for small businesses, affiliates and bloggers. I’ll make an official announcement about it soon but sign up for updates early so you can be in on our alpha tests! w00t!

I am starting a personal blog at www.jameszol.com in the coming weeks. The blog will discuss a lot of different topics…family, business, computers, advertising…just a little bit of everything.

Looking forward to a bright and shiny future for everybody!

• Where Have You Been?
  I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since June…well, I guess I can believe it. Here is a quick summary of what I have been...

“With consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.

However, comScore forecasts that there will still be growth this holiday season, and that the online marketplace will recover somewhat in the next few months.

“Assuming the stock market doesn’t deteriorate materially during the season and that there is no apocalyptic news of major financial institutions, manufacturers or retailers failing, we should see online spending growth inch back towards positive as we get deeper into the season,” Fulgoni said.

comScore, Inc. calls itself a global information provider. “comScore maintains massive proprietary databases that provide a continuous, real-time measurement of the myriad ways in which the Internet is used and the wide variety of activities that are occurring online.

Mission-critical information relating to both offline and online activities is collected through comScore’s innovative use of the Internet as a timely and powerful data collection medium.

comScore’s products and services are utilized by many of the world’s leading corporations to better understand, leverage and profit from the rapidly evolving worldwide Web.”

Source: comscore.com

What does this mean for PPC managers and online advertisers? Well, if you’re an agency you may have already seen your clients’ budgets decrease with the sliding economy. If you’re an advertiser or a storefront you may be seeing more “window shoppers” and less sales. Even if you haven’t experienced any of these things, now is a good time to make sure you’re running a tight ship PPC-wise. Try targeting transactional keywords, listing your prices in your ads, and tailoring your landing pages to holiday traffic. You may have fewer chances to grab your share of online purchases right now, which means you need to optimize for maximum effectiveness.

Shane is moving to Hawaii to pursue a Master’s Degree in New Media. We’re going to run a satellite office for him from there. If you’re in Hawaii, we would love to chat with you – or if you want to come out on ‘business’, we would be happy to meet with you for a short time so you can expense it out for the rest of your time…lol! w00t! He has been our news blogger so we haven’t been covering that as well for the past 10 days – he should be back up and running by the end of August/first part of September!

I (James) am currently posting this from San Diego, California but I’m flying out to meet a client in Tampa, Florida tomorrow evening. I was in San Francisco on Monday to meet with another fantastic, long-time client and I will post about our visit when I get back next week! I’m in San Diego for a family visit.

We’ll be back to business and blogging like normal by Monday or Tuesday next week! I might post a few news/informative posts by Friday night – but watch for a big, meaty guide we’re releasing next week!

Currently a senior level student at Brigham Young University-Idaho, Holly will Graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management/Marketing in April 2009.

Holly has worked in a variety of marketing capacities, including on the market research team at the multinational firm, Melaleuca. Other notable work accomplishments have included her position as CMO of Shady Beans, a BYU-I business organization that donated considerable profits to the university, and a 17 month full-time volunteer service mission to the Philippines (Manila and Cavite), where she performed community service and gave religious instruction.

Holly enjoys learning about new cultures, designing her own clothes, cooking oriental food, and snowboarding with her husband, Adam. She is also fluent in Tagalog.

Holly was born in Chicago and has lived in 5 different States, but claims to be raised in California. She recently married Adam Anderson on April 12, 2008.

Rand just published a “Headsmacking Tip” this morning about the importance of researching and optimizing your blog post titles and content before hitting ‘publish’…and roughly 24 hours before he published the post, I wrote to our lead wordpress programmer about developing a plugin that let’s us do exactly that!

We planned on using the KeywordDiscovery API – and still will – but we wanted to capitalize on Rand’s suggestion and simply make the free keyword research tools easily accessible from WordPress while you are writing a post!!!

Download the Keyword Research WordPress Plugin here!

How to install:

1. Upload the file `post_keyword_research.php` to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Simply write a post and note the research links below your submenu and to the right below the ‘save’/'publish’ button.

Here are a few screen shots of where the research links show up (2 locations) – these links open in new windows so you can simply click on them while you are writing and begin your research! Hooray!

Under your submenu:

Under the “Save”/”Publish”/”Related” section:

The Link Builder simply tracks the websites and pages you link to and sends an email message to that website owner/administrator notifying them of your link.

Download the Link Builder for WordPress here

Then watch this video (update: haha – if you turn up your volume, you can hear a ‘darth vader’ breathing effect from my mic…sorry!) to learn how to configure and use the plugin:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can read the readme.txt file for installation instructions here.

UPDATE: Reminder - you MUST remember to edit your config file! And this is not a 100% automated tool – it is designed to be personal while simplifying your link building efforts.

Other Plugins that are built for SEO/Link Building from WordPress

Internal Link Building by SEOROI – This looks like it’s an awesome tool although it didn’t work with our admin/theme/template for some reason…haven’t had a chance to look at it but it’s received rave reviews so we recommend giving it a shot yourself!

All In One SEO Pack – One of our favorites. You control title tags, descriptions and keywords for every post and page or you can let the pack update them automatically!

Two Excellent Guides To Optimizing Blogs

WordPress SEO – The Definitive Guide To High Rankings for Your Blog

The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization – Aaron and Giovanna Wall of SEOBook.com fame wrote this awesome guide…a must read!

About the Programmer: The programmer that was our lead dev on this plugin is Simon. We own the copyrights, programming and design – but Simon is a fantastic resource and he is freakishly fast with WordPress dev stuff if you need him.

Take just a minute to remember what this day represents…

Just Kidding!

We’re proud to announce a new forum that is 100% dedicated to pay per click management - assuming you already know about pay per click advertising but have questions or want to bounce ideas off other pros in the industry then you need to register and participate at….

PAY-PER-CLICKMANAGEMENT.COM!!!!!!

Fresh, vibrant, green and fun!

Shane Snow is the genius behind the new design – and in fact, we have given him a new official title to add to his box of titles – lol – he is now our copywriter and creative director. That’s really where his best experience and expertise is…he has already rewritten some of our ads for clients and they are decreasing costs per conversion even more! I have asked him to start blogging about copy writing ads for ppc, landing pages, etc. Let’s hope he posts something awesome soon!

And if you’re reading this via feed, swing by the site at www.semvironment.com/blog to take a look at our sweet new design!