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By Kalena Jordan in Featured

Twitter isn’t having a good week. As well as suffering a mighty DDoS attack, it looks like they’re being sued for patent infringement.

TechRadium, a Texas-based technology company which makes mass notification systems for public safety organizations and the military, is suing Twitter for patent infringement. The scary part is that TechRadium may very well have an excellent case. The safety company has three patents relating to the delivery of mass notification:

1) Patent 7,130,389,  applied for in 2005 and granted in 2006, consisting of a digital notification and response system.

2) Patent 7,496,183,  applied for in 2007 and granted in 2009 – a method to provide digital notification; and

3) Patent 7,519,165,  applied for in 2007 and granted in 2009 – a method for providing digital notification and receiving responses.

Clearly, TechRadium find the Twitter service to be too similar to their patented methods. Here’s an extract from the actual lawsuit, filed in Texas on August 4:

“On information and belief, Defendant, Twitter, makes, uses, sells, or otherwise provides throughout United States and within the geographical area covered by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas the systems and methods described by the claims in the ’389, ’183 and ’165 Patents.”

TechRadium are deadly serious about this. They’re seeking a permanent injunction against Twitter for the use of their patented technology.

But this shouldn’t come as a surprise to Twitter. According to TechCrunch,  Twitter executives were well aware of their vulnerable position in relation to potential patent lawsuits. In a meeting in February this year, staff discussed the likelihood of being sued for patent violation, recording in the meeting minutes:

“We will be sued for patent infringement, repeatedly and often. Should we get a great patent attorney to proactively go after these patents?”

So with one of the related patents issued as early as 2006, why have TechRadium waited so long to take legal action? One of the deciding factors have been market erosion. With the ever-increasing popularity of Twitter, it seems that TechRadium’s paying customers are choosing to use the social media service in lieu of TechRadium’s paid offering, since both services offer basically the same thing.

TechRadium is losing business and they’ve decided the time is right to defend their patents. Also, it looks as though the crucial Patent ’165 was only granted to TechRadium in April, so they may have waited until they had all their legal ducks in a row before filing against the cashed-up Twitter.

We’ll keep you up to date with developments as the case continues.

By admin in Featured

Twitter is one of the fastest growing marketplaces on the Internet. The reason why so many people like Twitter is because it is actually the perfect communication tool for people who don’t understand and don’t want to learn about Internet technology and the technological geek-speak that goes along with it.

A few years back, I asked someone for his dad’s email address. The son replied telling me that you just email his name. The son was clueless that there was an actual email address behind the shortcut for his dad’s name. He did not understand email, and he did not care that he did not understand it. He was able to use it in a manner that was easy for him, and that is all that really mattered.

What makes Twitter so popular to the masses is that one does not have to be tech-savvy to use the service. The new user simply needs to locate the profile of the person he or she wants to follow, and then the user simply clicks “Follow”. From that day forward, anytime the person “Followed” posts (tweets) new information to his or her micro-blog, Followers will be notified about the message in the Twitter Timeline.

The only thing that is really difficult about Twitter is that new people seldom understand that they must “Follow” someone, before they start to receive messages from others. But once someone has chosen to follow a few people, they get the idea behind Twitter very quickly.

With its’ system of 140 character micro-posts (referred to as “tweets”), users are able to communicate information to other users. Sometimes the tweeted info is a random comment, but often the tweets mean something to somebody.

For the average consumer, they can log into Twitter to update grandma about the lives of the grandchildren and to provide links to family pictures.

Although the service has been available since 2006, the Internet marketing community was really slow to catch on to the value of the Twitter community. Most Internet marketers had never heard of Twitter until 2008. Even then, online marketers were slow to see any real value in the platform. But in 2009, Twitter finally hit its stride in getting the word out about its service, in large part due to the Ashton Kutcher vs. CNN Twitter Follower Challenge.

Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) challenged CNN (@cnnbrk) to a race to one million Twitter Followers. On April 17th, 2009, Ashton became the first Twitter user to reach one million followers. CNN passed the mark a few hours later, but Ashton won the race fair and square.

Understanding The Value Of The Twitter Community

In March of 2008, Twitter was estimated to have one million active users, according to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch (http://bit.ly/RICvf). But amazingly, over the course of the following year, Twitter was able to expand its user base by 32-37 times, according to which news source you trust for your data.

On July 30th 2009, the Philadelphia Enquirer reported that Twitter had “increased its user base by 37-fold to more than 32 million users worldwide, 18-20 million of whom reside in the United States” (http://bit.ly/dhAIE).

Now, the naysayers are fond of pointing out that Twitter’s attrition rate is quite large, with 60% of new users disappearing after signing up for the service. But if the Philadelphia Enquirer’s estimation is correct that “only 40 percent of first-timers become habitual visitors”, then the remaining 12.8 million users still make a viable and vibrant Twitter community.

Each individual user inside the Twitter community is capable of building his or her own community of Followers.

As Ashton Kutcher has taught us, building a Follower list is fairly straight forward – when people are interested in you and what you have to say, they will follow you on Twitter to see what you have to say.

To date, nearly 3 million Twitter users have decided that they care enough about Kutcher’s life to follow his personal tweets. Of course, I am sure it helps that he occasionally posts pictures of his wife, Demi Moore, in his tweets (http://twitter.com/aplusk/status/1366791709). Not only did Kutcher share a shot of his Demi’s derriere, he also proved that rich people have ugly furniture too.

How Can One Benefit From A Large Twitter Following?

Some of Twitter’s 12.8 million active users will benefit handsomely for building a larger Follower’s list, while other people will not.

It is pointed out by @ web2marketer, “It’s not about how many Twitter followers you have…the only thing that matters is – are they listening?” (http://twitter.com/web2marketer/status/2939696759)

This is the key, of course.

Some people build huge lists of Followers, but never say anything worthwhile or interesting. Some are only interested in building their Followers list for the sake of building Followers.

If no one wants to listen to what you have to say, it does not matter whether you have 1 Follower or 2.9 million Followers. If no one is “listening” to what you have to say, you will not make any money from your participation in Twitter.

On the other hand, if people are “listening” to what you have to say and “clicking” the links you tell them to click, then you have a good chance of earning real money as a result of your Twitter activities.

It has been said that the consumer needs to see or hear your name or your marketing message 7 times, before they will trust you enough to buy from you. Professionals in the direct marketing industry suggest that 82% of all consumers (business people or otherwise) will buy your products or services on the second to the ninth exposure to your marketing message.

Twitter allows you to carry a continuous dialog with those most likely to buy what you are selling – through the Public Timeline of the people following you in Twitter. Once people have started to pay attention to what you tell them, and once they start absorbing your marketing message, then gaining your Followers trust is made easier. Once people are listening to you, you can earn their trust fairly quickly.

An idea presented by @contentmanager is that television has had 80+ years to perfect its advertising model. Television seems committed to the concept of 42 minutes of content to anchor 18 minutes of advertising. These numbers translate into 70% content to provide an anchor for its 30% advertising. (http://twitter.com/contentmanager/status/3106295397) In context, he says that the 70% content is designed to attract attention and win trust, and then the 30% advertising is designed to earn profits and cover the costs of building content.

Understand That It Is A Numbers Game

As a successful Twitter marketer, your first goal is always to attract Followers (an audience). Your second goal is to win the trust of your Followers (your viewing audience). Only after you have won the trust of your Followers should you endeavor to advertise to your Twitter Followers list (to earn revenue). If you have earned the trust of your Twitter Followers, revenue is certain to follow.

But, as with anything in business, it is a numbers game. A certain percentage of the number of people exposed to your Twitter profile will become Followers. A certain percentage of those people following you, will actually read what you have to say. A certain percentage of those people will click your links. And if that link leads to a page where you can earn revenue, only a certain percentage of people will buy your offer.

For most people, the only certainty is that they need to grow their audience, and in the case of the Twitter community, they need to grow their list of Twitter Followers. In the numbers game, if you can increase your audience, you can increase your revenue. It is as simple as that.

If you visit our website shown below, we will show you how we can help you build your Followers’ list. But after that, it is up to you. It is up to you to gain the interest and trust of your Followers. Once you have done that, then the only thing that will matter is – are they listening?

Harold Hemmings is the owner of a website dedicated to helping people grow their Twitter Followers List at an accelerated pace. Learn more about his inexpensive service at Buy Twitter Friends: http://buytwitterfriends.com/

By Tinu AbayomiPaul in Featured

Posts that inspire comments from your audience can become part of what makes your blog more popular, and can keep it that way if the comments keep coming.

Right or wrong, the number of blog comments you have is seen as an indication of how successful your blog is.

Here are some ways to increase the amount of commenting that takes place in your blog.

1- Make it as easy as possible for visitors to comment.

That means taking down every barrier to commenting except spam control, until comments start to rise.

That includes:

  • letting visitors leave comments without logging in
  • removing all authentication processes such as captchas and verifying their email address,
  • turning off moderation, as well as letting readers know that comments aren’t moderated,
  • installing plugins or tools that will allow them to log in with Twitter or Facebook profiles or integrate their comments on those sites with your site
  • getting rid of anything else that slows down the commenting process. Until you have a high traffic blog, you probably won’t have to worry about anything other than the basic level of spam.

So keep a cautious eye, but get rid of restrictions one by one and see if the increase in participation after a week is worth a few off-topic entries. Not only can you delete those later, but, you can re-enable any of anti-spam measure the instant the volume of spam gets out of hand.

2- Find out what people want to know on your topic and write about that constantly.

If your sites is about pet lovers, and people want to know all about organic dog and cat food, write about it. It might not be your favorite topic, but if it brings you engaging traffic, make it a regular conversation point. Your site is there to serve your population – at least that’s what it should be about if you want your blog to help you make sales.

3- Stay on topic.

Even if you have a themed day that’s a little outside your topic area (like our Tool Time Fridays with Morgan Lighter) make sure all those posts can still relate back to your central subject.

For example, the other day, Morgan wrote about a tool that can turn YouTube videos into a format compatible with iTunes. Put that together with some of my tips on how to get traffic with web video and you have a whole new use for recordings you uploaded to YouTube and other sites.

If you have trouble coming up with something to write about, your topic may be too narrow. If you can’t seem to pare down the number of available topics to one over-riding theme, your topic may be too broad. It’s okay to shift or widen your focus to fix that problem, but once you pick a final topic, stick with it.

4- Post regularly to become part of your reader’s daily habits.

People are habitual creatures. They’ll most likely find your site and include it in their new habits through doing one of their old habits.

Today, someone got up, brushed their teeth, got ready for work, went to their office, read their email, then the news or their RSS feeds (or both.) If they found your site through some other blog’s feed they read, and decided to add you, whenever you have a new entry, they’ll at least read the headline.

That opportunity only comes up each time you publish. After that first six weeks, it’s not as important that you’re doing so daily. But you should be putting up posts in a predictable fashion IF you want regular commenters. Whether it’s approximately every 24 hours, or every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:21 pm isn’t as important as making it a regular occurrence.

5- Leave an open-ended question or query at the end of each post.

If you look at Chris Pirillo’s blogs over at Lockergnome, instead of ‘Leave a Reply’ above the comment form, it often says something like ‘What do you think?’

In addition, when you create a post, the last sentence of your post can be a question to your audience that allows them to continue the conversation. If all other barriers are removed from commenting, sometimes the issue is that you’ve done such a good job writing the article that there’s nothing else to add. Turn your fantastic monologue into dialogue by asking a question, point blank.

Leaving your post open to input stimulates conversation online in the same way.

Remember, blog comments aren’t necessarily a measure of how well your blog is doing. But a responsive community can help indicate whether you’re on the right track.

Tinu AbayomiPaul – Read the story of how I used blogging, RSS, social media and article marketing to keep a number one ranking on Google and Yahoo for seven years at http://trafficreality.com/evergreen today. I can teach you the same simple steps I used.

By Titus Hoskins in Featured

spnbabbleSiteProNews, a well established website geared towards webmasters, has recently introduced a new micro-blogging service called SPNbabble. Describing itself as “Micro-Blogging For Web Professionals” – SPNbabble.com lets you share your ideas with friends and colleagues. It also incorporates such popular services as Twitter and Facebook. To find out more about this interesting new platform, Bizwaremagic.com did an interview with Mel Strocen, CEO of the Jayde Online Network, which runs numerous websites, including SiteProNews and SPNbabble.

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

In what is believed to be the first major attack of its kind on the social networking site, Twitter has suffered a Denial of Service (DoS) attack overnight.

Although no user data was compromised in the attack, Twitter was inundated with so many requests that it couldn’t respond to legitimate requests thereby denying service to many users.  For the non-techies reading this who want to know exactly what a Denial of Service attack is, Dave Taylor has written a very un-geek explanation of it.

The strength of the attack on Twitter was enough to crash the popular micro-blogging site for over 60 minutes and has continued to cause ongoing connectivity problems for Twitter addicts ever since.

The Twitter status page tells the story:

“We are defending against a denial-of-service attack, and will update status again shortly.

Update: the site is back up, but we are continuing to defend against and recover from this attack.

Update (9:46a): As we recover, users will experience some longer load times and slowness. This includes timeouts to API clients. We’re working to get back to 100% as quickly as we can.

Update (4:14p): Site latency has continued to improve, however some web requests continue to fail. This means that some people may be unable to post or follow from the website.”

In their official blog,  co-founder @Biz stated today that Twitter staff don’t know or would prefer not to speculate on the motivation behind the DoS event, except to say that it appears to be a single, massively coordinated attack and that many other companies and services were also affected. One of the major services affected was Facebook.

News of the DoS attack spread very quickly and when Twitter finally came back online, the event even spawned its own hashtag #whentwitterwasdown so Twitterholics could humorously share what they were doing during the downtime.

Based on the sheer scale of the event, it appears the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) using trojans or zombie machines. Whatever it was, Twitter has some serious stability issues to iron out as a result.

By admin in Featured

If you want your webpage to rank well, you will have to have a couple thousand backlinks.

A backlink is an inbound html code that points to your website. You are probably wondering why you would want a backlink.

I will explain it this way: If you have many websites with one-way links to your website, the search engines interpret this in your favor. You want to make sure that your website is at the “hub of the wheel” so to speak — all the spokes, or links, are pointing to your website.

Your goal should be that the search engines view your site as an “authority site”. If a website provides excellent, interesting articles and other content, and has many readers, that website could be called an “authority site”. Websites mention and point to, or refer to, articles and videos on the authority site.

Let’s step back a bit and explain links in an example:

If Sally’s site links to you, then you have one inbound link. However, if your website links back to Sally’s site, the links balance each other out and nobody wins — that is called a reciprocal link. Don’t look for reciprocal links. You should look for links back to your website from other websites where you don’t have to link to them.

Now who is going to do that? Any website marketer who has been around for some time does not want reciprocal links. That website owner wants inbound links to his site.

Sources of inbound, one-way links:

Links from directories – Directories aren’t as popular as they once were now that people use search engines to find what they want, but directories still offer free inbound links. All you have to do is apply for them. There are several companies that offer free software. Just search for a directory submitter. There are several to choose from. You will find one that is easy to use and makes submitting to directories a snap.

Links from articles you write – There is probably no better way to get people to visit your blog than to write good articles. When you write a good article, you need to send that article to a large number of article directories.

They will post your article at no charge to you and most of them will allow you to put a couple of self-serving links in the “resource box”. The resource box is where you can advertise your website, tell them what they will find, and perhaps send them to your subscription optin page.

As you might guess, sending your articles out to thirty or forty sites can be a daunting task. I would suggest that you do a search for article submitter software.

You may find an article submitter that works very well and saves you hours of valuable time. You type the information into the article submitter once and it will automatically fill it in to the article site. It even keeps track of your username and password for those sites where you have to register.

You should spend the time to find a company that will do this for you. It costs me money every month to submit eight articles to many, many article directories. I think it is worth the money, but if you are just starting out, perhaps the free way is better.

Comment on “dofollow” blogs

Some WordPress blog owners have installed a plugin called “dofollow”. This overrides the default of “nofollow” that the blog comes setup as. If the blog has this plugin installed and activated, you will get a backlink to your website when you make a comment on that site. (Most blog owners aren’t aware that this may be a reason they don’t get as many comments on their articles as they could.)

There is software that I use that finds blogs that have the “dofollow” plugin installed. I look for them and I am more inclined to comment on those blogs because it gets me a backlink.

Search for a blog submitter. It is the software that you use to help find those blogs. Most blog submitters are free too. All you do is type in keywords that refer to your website and it will find blogs that have similar keywords.

Free directories you *must* know about:

Most blog owners and internet marketers have forgotten this one. It is right under their noses, but they haven’t listed their sites in local directories. Here is a short list of local directories that you must do tonight.

* Google Local

* www.yellowpages.com

* Yahoo Local

* Yahoo Yellow Pages

* www.superpages.com

* www.yellowbook.com

* www.atlantaataglance.com

* www.your nearest big city.com

* www.big city chamber.org

Even if you don’t have a physical address where you accept the public, you can still put your website on these various directories. You don’t have to show your physical address, if you don’t want it to show.

To summarize:

Every website marketer needs backlinks. The website marketer’s goal should be to grow their site in size to become an authority site in his area of specialty.

It is not difficult to get backlinks, but it is time consuming and laborious. I would suggest that you use software to help you speed up these repetitive tasks. Get free software called directory submitter. Obtain an article submitter product. Use a blog finder to help you comment on blogs that give you a backlink.

Lastly, don’t forget the obvious. Use the list above to get listed in the local directories.

You only have a finite number of hours, so spend your time effectively. For software to help you submit your articles to many websites, visit You can also join our newsletter and get frequent training emails at no charge

By admin in Featured

If you want to try something different online then this article will be of interest to you. This article is worthwhile if you want to make money writing articles, blogs etc online.

Currently millions of webmasters are looking to hire writers to help them out by creating content for their website, or for creating articles for promoting their website. Website owners are often preaching about the saying ‘content is king’. Though this phrase is very true, many webmasters find it hard to create this content due to other commitments (managing their website in general).

Many website owners want people to write content for thier website. Many of these website owners are willing to pay people on an article-produced basis – the amount of money the writer could earn will be different for each article.

The market is enormous. There are millions of existing websites and thousands more going up every day. Websites communicate with their visitors through the written word. Someone has to write all that text. Webmasters (those in charge of websites) do not have enough time to do the writing along with everything else needed.

So someone will get paid to write online and will make money writing the content, sales copy, articles, e-books, blog posts and whatever else is required.

2. The qualifications are easy to meet. If you can write in simple, clear, understandable English at the 5th to 9th grade level, then you can make money writing online. The emphasis is on speed, clarity and readability. No prior writing experience is required. Native English speakers are in demand

3. The demand is for unique text. Copying just won’t do. The Internet is a creation of computers and one thing that computers do very well is compare one page of text with another to see if they are alike. Any one page can be compared with millions of other pages in seconds. (Visit webscape.com to see how easy comparison is.)

Websites are ranked by the amount of unique text they have (pages indexed) plus the number of other sites linking to them (backlinks). TDuplicate text gets its value discounted heavily. To get high search engine ranking so your website appears on the first page of a search on your key words, you must have unique text.

The only way to generate unique text that is intelligible is to have it written by a human being. Machine generated just doesn’t make sense, is not coherent, does not communicate… is unacceptable. A person must write it. This is the way writers make money writing and why they get paid to write online.

4. It’s easy to get started. The text needed is contracted in fairly small contracts, consisting of a few days or maybe weeks of work for a writer. You get paid to write online by going onto one of the major auction-marketplaces and bidding on contracts offered. Win the bid, get the work and you make money writing.

If you enjoy writing then getting paid to write articles online is worthwhile and lucrative and can be done from the comfort of your own home. English language is a must when writng articles online as this is the main language online, when wrting you must be willing to work to short deadlines.

It is best advised that you build a portfolio of articles that can be used when writing online – so that you can show potential employers to try and impress them, to urge them to hire you. A payoal account and other payment methods will be beneficial for the writer. This is so that you can get easily paid for your writing work.

Being paid to write articles won’t be the most lucrative job at first (you might start up on around �3 per 400 word article created), but once you build up a good reputation and have hopefully improved your writing skills you should be able to up the price that you charge. If you find you are an expert in a certain high-paying niche, then it would make sense that you can charge more money for your writing services.

Make sure you check the regional job listing sites as regularly as possible so that you don’t miss out on any paid article writing jobs, and be sure to check out plenty of website-owner forums to find other paid writing jobs.

If you want to make money writing, there is no other market as large, growing as fast or as easy and flexible to get started with.

Ian Saxton – Use the link below to find out more: http://www.productsupplycenter.com/web206472

By Nelson Tan in Featured

businewssIn the years I’ve invested myself in dedication to the business of Internet Marketing, I’ve observed that though technologies and different fields of expertise appear and recede overtime like any other ever-changing business outlook, only timeless, universal principles remain.

The first and foremost characteristic of Internet Marketing is automation. Alex Mandossian once said that “Internet Marketing is meant to train us as lazy workers but high thinkers.” We are constantly thinking of better ways to attain 100% automation, which is near impossible, for thinking itself is already hard work.

By admin in Featured

What’s the best way to price social media advertising or marketing programs?

That’s one of those questions that screams for the ever-honest “it depends” answer. Maybe that’s because we need a new pricing model. Let’s first take a look at some current options and review their strengths and weaknesses in this context:

  • Cost Per Impression (CPM): It’s great for branding, which is the overarching strength of social media. But the value marketers get from social marketing isn’t just exposure — it’s something deeper.
  • Cost Per Click (CPC): The model that made Google what it is won’t do the same for Facebook, at least not on the same kind of scale. CPC is tailor-made for direct-response marketers, while social media is centered on building relationships. This is the classic “square peg/round hole” issue.
  • Cost Per Action (CPA): We should be able to put this to rest easily, as marketers shouldn’t be driving a relationship-building vehicle on a conversion track.
  • Cost Per Engagement (CPE): This gets closer, as some engagement metrics translate well to various social marketing programs, such as time spent with a widget or percentage of a shareable video viewed.

When you want exposure, traffic, conversions, or interactions, each of these four pricing models comes in handy. But social marketing, when done right, achieves something much different: relationships. How does that fit in neatly with these pricing models?

To that end, I’ll throw out a fifth model: Cost Per Social Action (CPSA). It’s for any action with a distinctly social quality that leads to either new relationships (such as through “viral” referrals or acquiring new followers and fans) or deepening existing relationships (such as through “likes,” comments, responses, and ratings).

The main benefit of CPSA is that marketers know they’re paying for something social and relationship-oriented. More importantly, marketers know they’re not specifically paying for exposure, traffic, conversions, or interactions (though those can all provide additional value). It’s an acknowledgement that social media is something else, so it’s deserving of a new model, one that stresses relationships above all else.

There are downsides too, and I’ll spend even more time on these:

  • It’s a new model. The alphabet soup is too crazy already. There are others too, like CPL (Cost Per Lead) and CPS (Cost Per Sale). So now marketers have to learn another?
  • Look at the publisher or vendor side too – they now have to sell yet another pricing plan? Then again, some publishers like VideoEgg have used Cost Per Engagement pricing to differentiate themselves. Could some differentiate themselves by promoting CPSA?
  • There are too many letters. Come on, at least simplify it to three letters so it stands a chance. Though you could argue that to stand out, maybe the four-letter version will differentiate it.
  • It’s vague. A social action can mean so many different things. Just looking at Facebook alone, can you really say that the same pricing structure can be used to cover everything from the number of fans accumulated to the number of virtual gifts sent? Then again, CPM covers everything from an impression on a portal’s homepage to an impression that’s highly contextually relevant on a blog. Similarly, CPC is used for search and contextual marketing, two very different approaches.
  • There are already even more specific social metrics, such as CPI — a Cost Per Install model for widgets. CPSA doesn’t account for enough of the intricacies of social media that are already being addressed directly.

What’s a social action worth anyway? The further anyone veers from reach and sales, the harder it’s going to be to tie this into marketers’ traditional metrics.

I’ll leave it to you now: is CPSA needed? Are some already using a version of it? Is this latest version of alphabet soup past its expiration date? Share your thoughts in the comments to address CPSA the way it should be: socially.

Do you have strong opinions and inside knowledge about the topic of this newsletter — and do you want to share your insights, observations and points of view regularly with the readers of MediaPost? To be considered as a MediaPost contributing writer, please send pertinent info about your credentials, plus several column ideas and one example of your writing on the topic, to pfine@mediapost.com. Please see our editorial guidelines here first.

By Andrew Plimmer in Featured

All too many website owners, unaware of the many wolves in sheep’s clothing lurking out there, have fallen victim to scams run by alleged SEO (search engine optimisation) businesses which offer unbelievable claims as to the levels of traffic and page rankings their services could provide them.

You know what they say about things which sound too good to be true, of course. Suncoast Internet had a little talk with one of these (again, alleged) SEO companies this week after finding that the company had been pursuing one of their clients.

An anatomy of a SEO scam:

The SEO company contacted Suncoast Internet’s client, telling them that they could get the client’s company listed at the top of search engine results for a primary keyword phrase (a search term that someone might enter into a search engine) that their potential customers were likely to use when searching for their business – for $1,000. As it happens, the client reported this offer to Suncoast Internet as the website designers; otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this right now. Suncoast looked into the details of the keyword the company was offering to help them promote and found that this keyword wasn’t being used by the client’s potential customers; or anyone else, as it happens.

If the client hadn’t had a healthy level of skepticism, they easily could have been duped out of $1,000 for a completely worthless promotional campaign.

If you were to search on Google, you’ll see that there have been a lot of other companies and individuals who weren’t quite so cautious and have fallen for these SEO scams.

How can you tell if an offer like this is coming from a SEO scam artist?

  1. Do your due diligence. Have a look at the page rank for the website of supposed SEO experts who’ve contacted you. If their site isn’t highly ranked, then run in the opposite direction. After all, what kind of results can you expect from a SEO company which can’t secure a high page rank for its own site?
  2. They guarantee that your site will show up in the first page of results or even as the number one result! Time for a reality check: the algorithms that the search engines use are closely guarded trade secrets meaning that no one outside of a few people at the search engine companies know exactly how it all works. Guaranteeing a certain page ranking is a sign of inexperience at best – and much more likely, indicates a scam.
  3. They phone you from what is obviously a very busy call centre. If their sales department is a room crowded with telemarketers trolling for business around the clock, you can hardly expect much personal attention being paid to your site.
  4. They promise to secure your site top rankings for long tail keywords which strike you as unlikely to be used by anyone. For starters, they’re trying to sell you a guaranteed page ranking (but we know better, don’t we?). If the keyword they’re offering you a top ranking for sounds a little fishy to you, look up its popularity with the (free) tool Google AdWords.
  5. Their services are offered at unrealistically low prices. There are some SEO scammers who lure victims by offering to optimize your site and run promotional campaigns for prices that sound entirely too good to be true. An effective SEO campaign takes a significant amount of time and effort for keyword research, reworking page content, building high quality back links and designing and implementing traffic driving strategies. It’s not something that can be done on the cheap, at least not well.
  6. They promise results in 48 hours (or less). If this could be done it would save everyone a lot of money and time. The results of optimizing a site aren’t visible at all for at least a few weeks – and for the results to really begin trending in the right direction, you often need to wait a few months.

Now, if you’re looking for a legitimate SEO firm:

Again, do your due diligence. Look at their credentials, find out who’s used their services in the past and what they have to say about the company. You should expect regular reports on how your keywords are performing and you should be able to easily get in touch by phone and speak to one of the SEO consultants to get their advice and input as needed.

The best SEO companies have years of expertise in the field and know the most effective SEO methodologies inside and out – and how to use them to get results for their clients. They won’t make you the outlandish promises that the SEO scammers will and they may not offer bargain basement pricing, but keep in mind that this is one service where you do get what you pay for.

Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast SEO company and web design and development specialists. For a free SEO analysis of your website go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/

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