Article Categories

• Advertising
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Business
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Linking Strategies
• Marketing
• RSS
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Security
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• Kalena Jordan
• Matt Jackson
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

10 First-Time Coaching Website Pitfalls to Avoid

By Kenn Schroder in Featured

Mistakes cost. They cost you time, money and frustration - all things that can jeopardize the success of your coaching business.

And if, according to statistics, most coaching practices fail to grow to sustainable and profitable levels to begin with, why increase your chances of failure, particularly when your website - one of your most important marketing tools - is concerned?

If you can avoid these common pitfalls when building your first coaching website, you can put yourself light years ahead of the competition. You can also avoid the headaches, and save yourself thousands of dollars. The biggest payoff? You’ll build a rewarding practice sooner.

– Problem 1: Having a blurry vision.

Just like when you coach a client toward a goal, that goal needs to be clear, detailed and time-specific. The goal also needs to be well defined, so that the client can say, “Yes! I’ve attained this goal!” In other words, the goal is like a guiding light, helping the client to make decisions that will help him get closer to his goal - not farther away from it.

It’s like when a person says, “I want to be healthy.” While it’s a nice sentiment, those words don’t paint a clear or detailed vision of what the client really wants or needs. It doesn’t get specific enough to tell you what it means to be healthy, or how this state will be achieved, or when it is to be achieved by. It’s blurry.

Now consider your website: if your vision is hazier than the smog in LA, it’s tough to know what content to choose, what to write about, how to organize your site and, most important, what purpose it will serve. You will struggle to build it and in the end it probably won’t be very helpful.

– Problem 2: Not having a specific audience with a specific problem.

It’s not easy to get attention when you tell people, “Hey, I’m a coach. I can help you solve your problems and reach success!” Not only is a message like that general and ambiguous, it’s hard to sink your teeth into and really feel.

Such a general message is even harder to spread on the Web, because there are so many distractions and a visitor’s attention span is drastically-reduced. Websites that don’t reach out and grab don’t keep visitors for very long.

However, if your website is targeted towards a specific group with a specific problem - such as expectant mothers worried about their baby’s health; operations managers with low division output; overweight teens, to name a few - you would have an easier time gaining interest, holding attention and securing business.
– Problem 3: Selling coaching services when you are really selling solutions to problems.

Contrary to the intuition of many coaches, you are not in the business of selling coaching. You are in the business of selling a solution to a problem.

Case in point: People don’t hire a personal trainer to force them to lift weights or do cardio; after all, this takes a lot of work and effort. What they do want is for the personal trainer to help them look good and feel good. And so, they hire the trainer to help them go from lethargic, unmotivated and out of shape to fit, healthy and attractive.

Similarly, people hire coaches to help them solve a problem and obtain success - like turning a low-paying dead end job into a fulfilling, lucrative career. Thus, your website needs to be organized and written in language that talks about problems, solutions and results - that which people are buying.

– Problem 4: Not realizing that content needs to be written - and written well.

Many coaching websites go up without realizing that there needs to be this thing called ‘content.’ These sad sites usually end up bare, with a few uninteresting, empty-looking pages.

To present yourself as a professional, credible coach who can help people, you will need to write good content to:

* Explain what you do in an easy-to-understand way
* Prove to your visitors that you can help them
* Build interest in your coaching services
* Make visitors feel they can trust you
* Connect on a deeper level with visitors
* Encourage visitors to take action

Once you’ve done that, the rest is gravy.

– Problem 5: Not knowing what you want your website visitors to do.

As a coach, you are looked upon as the person to lead your clients to a better situation. And so your website will need to do the same: lead visitors upward and onward.

If you don’t have a clear sense of what you want visitors to do, your vision as a leader is weakened, and the desire to hire you as a coach is greatly diminished.

For many coach websites, you will want to lead visitors on to the action of contacting you to further discuss becoming your client. Your website must encourage action, and make that action easy to do.

– Problem 6: Hiring a friend or family member to do your site.
This always sounds like a good money-saving idea — at first. But in the end, asking a friend or family member to build your site almost always ends up as a big mistake, for several important reasons.

First, your website –which will surely require hours of a friend’s personal time - is not likely to be at the top of their list of priorities. Playing golf or going to the beach, however, will. In every case I’ve heard of, the website didn’t get done.

Second, if your friend or relative isn’t a professional, talented designer, chances are that your website won’t come out looking that great. If your pal is a pro, you can bet your unpaid dollar that they’ll be busy working on other projects first and putting your stuff on the back burner.

Third, does your friend know what works - and what doesn’t work — for coaching websites?

Unless your pal or family member is a website guru, knows the coaching industry, hasn’t any income needs and has free time to dedicate to you, you might be better off turning to a professional.

– Problem 7: Worrying about search engines too much.
While it’s important to bear search engines in mind for potential future growth and to enable prospects to find you easily, for many first-timers, search engines are given too much weight.

The reason is that your first efforts to get clients won’t be heavily Internet-based. The fact of the matter is that most coaches are not Internet gurus, don’t want to be, and prefer to do hands-on coaching.

Before you worry about search engines, you’re better off building a site with good, credibility-building content; smooth, easy-to-use architecture; and an image that your potential clients will relate to and find appealing. This will serve you much greater at the outset.

As long as your web designer is compliant with designing for search engines, so that your site will be accessible to them and that your basic tags are written, that’s all you really need to worry about.

– Problem 8: No project manager.
Whether you hire a designer or do it yourself, you’ll somehow need to manage the website-building effort. The problem is, as a coach, you’re not necessarily familiar with the website-design process; including the rights steps to get the job done to completion, and on time.

Many designers like to act as “employees” and thus don’t take the lead in terms of getting your website project done. Therefore, you are appointed as the de facto project manager and will need to stay on top of your designer, and tell them what to do, in order to get the job done - and done right.

You may want to pick up a book on managing the website design process, hire a mentor coach who knows, or be sure to find a professional web designer who will provide this kind of service.

– Problem 9: Not being able to easily update your site on your own.
If you’re a coach in business for yourself, perhaps for the first time, you’ll want to be able to make basic updates for two main reasons:

First, since many newer coaches have tight budgets, doing your own updates save you money that would otherwise go to your web designer.
You can make updates quickly, as needed, say in the middle of the night as you pump out your newsletter. Also, many designers don’t put a high priority on updates and they often get done later than desirable.

You can eventually have your VA do it.

Before working with a web designer, make sure you will have easy access to your website and can make simple updates like adding an article, updating your events page and adding a link.

– Problem 10: You don’t own your site and name.
In an attempt to make money from your continued existence and help ensure you remain a client, many web designers and design firms will register your domain name and host your website as if it were their own.

This is bad because if you choose to go elsewhere for your website development help, you may not be able to get your website and/or you may have to be a surprisingly large fee for it.

Ideally, you should own your website and domain name to give you the freedom to go elsewhere if need be, and to protect you from unexpected high fees.

In conclusion, bear these 10 pitfalls in mind as you develop your first coaching website. They will put you years ahead, save you thousands of dollars, and most importantly, help you build a profitable, fulfilling practice.

Author:  Kenn Schroder helps coaches who are struggling to attract clients. He provides web design, web marketing and search engine optimization to help you build a client-attracting coaching website. Get your FREE report and FREE newsletter to help you build a practice full of clients. http://www.CoachingSitesThatWork.com

One Agency’s List of Demands for Jerry Yang

By Hollis Thomases in Featured

For the next few weeks be prepared to be inundated by news about the recent and abrupt Yahoo! management change. The official Yahoo! press release from June 18th announced that CEO, Terry Semel, was resigning and co-founder, Jerry Yang, would be named the new CEO, with Sue Decker being promoted from Executive Vice President to President

A quick tour through the blogosphere shows a fast pumping rumor mill speculating about Yahoo!’s recent changes and the future of the company. Silicon Valley Gossip Blog, Valleywag, talks about Yahoo’s “18 months of misery” including Board of Director coups, executives jumping ship (8 in the last year), possible merger talk with AOL and MSN, and declining revenues… oh and not to mention Google whose sales are twice that of Yahoo!

But gossip aside, in the coming months, what will the Yahoo! shake-up mean to agencies and advertisers? What should we be prepared for? More importantly what should we be asking for?

On Yodel Anecdotal, Yang’s personal blog, he posted about his new role and set his future goals on increasing shareholder value, focusing on acquiring and keeping talent, growing stronger partnerships, and responding better to users, employees and customers. So, as an agency that’s been online since the Yahoo! glory days–helpingclients optimize their sites for organic search, managing PPC campaigns for search advertising and working productively and effectively online each and every day–we are providing this list of “demands” for the new Yahoo! regime:

1. Work Out the Panama Kinks Please
   When the recent Panama platform launched, our agency experienced an across the board loss in inventory and leads for our clients’ campaigns. While the reviews have been mixed and many advertisers and engineers applaud the new system, in the PPC trenches the story can be a bit different. We’re still struggling with managing the new interfaces (campaign set-up is laborious!) and the reporting just isn’t up to snuff.
2. Give Us A Dedicated PPC Rep
   Yahoo! customer service is notoriously slow. Requests for information, account set-up and budget changes go unresponded to for days and even weeks which, in this business, is simply unacceptable. If Yahoo! wants to increase its customer base and keep its current customers happy it better overhaul the customer service division and get proactive with providing its customers with information.
3. Don’t Keep Advertisers (or Employees) in the Dark
   Yahoo! doesn’t seem that interested in transparency. In fact, a recent Valleywag post mentioned that several employees and stockholders found out about the Semel resignation through the media outlets as opposed to an internal memo. We were also reminded of Yahoo’s habit of playing it a little too close to chest, when the recent Quality-Based Pricing system launched for all ad campaigns, with exactly one day’s notice to advertisers.
4. Post To Your Blogs About Your Search Services
   Build strong relationships through readable blog posts that keep all of the Yahoo! Search Service users informed and entertained with useful tips and solid information.

   The Y! Search Marketing Blog (PPC) seldom features truly useful posts and often reads more like a search news list of who’s who in search blogging.

   The Yahoo Search Blog (organic) rarely gives a glimpse into the search index updates. Posts are often short and sweet with no real substance. The latest Yahoo! Weather Report posting consisted of three whole sentences: (1) we’re rolling out changes - (2) you may see some changes as a result and (3) the update should be complete soon.

5. Ask Us What We Need and Want
   Oddly enough, last Friday, June 15th, one of our PPC Specialists received the first ever Customer Satisfaction survey from Yahoo! The survey was gathering responses about Panama, including a question that asked us to compare them to MSN and Google. So bravo for Yahoo! for finally asking its clients what they think. It would have been even nicer to receive the survey BEFORE Panama launched so that the system might have been built on user feedback at the start.

   To be honest, Google has never sent us a survey like this before either. Instead, they one-upped all the major search companies by asking a select group of agencies (we were included in this panel) to come to Mountain View campus and give feedback about AdWords, in person, directly to high-level directors and product engineers. So I guess that answers the Yahoo! survey question about how Google compares to Yahoo!.

6. Live Up To Your Values
   Yahoo!’s company values reads more like a list of things to work on than a list of qualities they value. Touting a commitment to winning with integrity, creativity, ingenuity, anticipating market trends and moving quickly to embrace them, respecting customers above all else, listening to customers, exceeding customer expectations and, internally, treating one another with respect and communicating openly means little when its nothing more than a pretty list.
7. Lose the Attitude
   Yahoo!’s financials, reputation and stock values show that folks are ditching it. If Yahoo! intends to compete it had better pretend to care, take some risks and try to recapture what made it cool in the first place. Yahoo! doesn’t seemto mind that its directory is old and outdated. It doesn’t care that users don’t use email addresses they’ve had for the past 10 years since they moved to fee-based POP access years ago. With no apparent continuity or focus, no real regard for users and nothing to set it apart as a viable competitor in search, in media or in technology, Yahoo! has no chance of surviving, much less thriving.

So Yang, we hope you’re ready to turn Yahoo! around and put your money where your mouth is. This agency applauds your ambitious plans for the coming years and, if successful, the lively and substantial competition it will present to other search companies, but at this point it’s hardly a contest, so show us what you got!

Author:  Hollis Thomases is the President of Web Ad.vantage, Inc., an online marketing company specializing in search engine optimization, ppc campaign management, and online media buying. Hollis Thomases is a contributing columnist to ClickZ as well as the SBA Maryland’s Small Business Person of the Year 2007

Different Hosting Prices for the Same Package?

By R. Kakar in Featured

A question that is asked quite often is “Why do various web hosting companies have different web hosting prices for the same package”?

Like in any other business, web hosting industry also has a small number of scamsters who want your business at any cost. They believe that they can sell you anything at any price “from Eiffel tower to the Kitchen sink”. Some of these will give you web hosting prices that are much higher simply because they think that they can convince you to pay more. Others will offer the world for very-little and hope that you will be satisfied with whatever they dish out.

However, a majority of web hosting providers may have genuine reasons for higher / lower web hosting prices. In this article we will study significance of the real factors that can affect the price of a web hosting package. Awareness of the same may clear the confusion cloud generated by huge web hosting price variations.

1. Hosting Support: This is perhaps the single most important factor that determines price. Hosting Companies that provide responsive technical support and are quick in fixing problems have a higher-ratio of “well trained employees” TO “customers”. Due to the costs incurred in maintaining a larger number of efficient support personnel, they usually charge more from their customers. “10 satisfied customers will automatically become a 100 in 5 years time”. Many web hosting providers who do not believe this axiom offer throw-away web hosting prices and generally their businesses do not last long.

2. Web Hosts’ Network: Most web hosting companies put their servers in different datacenters across the world. For a high quality network (with redundant fast connections and reliable back up power) a web host has to pay more to an advanced datacenter. In turn they charge you more for their hosting packages to maintain reasonable profit margins.

3. Web Server power: Another factor is the speed of the machine your website resides on. A Dual Xeon can serve pages and handle applications faster than a P-IV. Web hosts who spend less on fast reliable servers charge less from their customers.

4. Loss Selling: Sometimes hosting companies sell at loss to expand their client base and hope to sell other products at a later date to the same customers. For example, some hosts price hosting packages at lower than base cost and hope to sell services like web design, ecommerce solutions, search engine optimization etc. While there are benefits to attracting customers with unbeatable web hosting prices, it is still a gamble. If the gamble backfires they may not be able to maintain quality of service in the long run.

5. Over Selling: “The supreme gift of a good artist is to know when to stop”. Hosts that follow this principle usually restrict the number of domains-per-server to a decent number. This ensures that they can maintain ‘Quality of Service’ for their clients by offering sufficient server resources to each. It also means that this host will have to charge more to recover the amount they pay to their datacenter. Then again, there are providers who sell 400 accounts of 1 GB each on a hard disk of 80 GB !!! (You can smile at this point of our study) These companies hope that most customers will never use their full allocation of resources. What if the customers actually start using full resources allocated to them?

6. Web Hosting Features: Windows, Linux and other server operating systems have different base prices. Features like database support, JSP, scripting languages, SSL support vary from package to package. A web hosting provider who offers more features (in a similar hosting plan) is likely to have a higher web hosting price.

Points to remember: The adage “You get what you pay for” is generally true. Please be aware that leaving aside the scamsters, there do exist genuine factors that affect web hosting prices. The highest price may not give proper ROI (return on investment) and the lowest may not help your online business grow. Prioritize your needs, ask the right questions, avoid unscrupulous web hosts and choose wisely.

Author:  R. Kakar works with Centaurhosting.com (Website design India company) and has been actively engaged in SEO Services, Web Designing and Web Hosting for several years.

Video Website Uploading 101

By Seamus Caulfield in Featured

Video is already one of the most powerful resources available to help web publishers create their content. If you have never tried to use videos to enhance your website, you certainly should consider it seriously now. People naturally prefer and trust video content more so than text or even audio. Because of this it allows publishers to more easily establish a relationship with potential customers. Videos can also help your website perform much better in the search engine rankings while complementing your existing content, making it an irresistible offer for both you and your visitors.

One of the most important facts to remember when adding videos is to ensure that they complement the overall tone of your site. Most viewers are turned off by the idea of having to download and install additional software before they can view videos on a site. This can leave their desktop cluttered with otherwise useless icons of software that they may never need again, not to mention the time that they wasted in downloading it. Websites that require this can lose what may have been valuable repeat visitors.

But many webmasters shy away from uploading videos to their websites, thinking that the procedure is complicated and labor-intensive. However, it doesn’t have to be. Armed with the right tools, you can easily add quality video content that better converts your visitors into repeat customers by giving them an exciting multimedia experience.

But before you begin attempting to upload video, there are a few things to take into consideration. Namely, the amount of bandwidth that users viewing the video will need, the file types of the videos that you will be uploading, and the video software that you will be using to upload them to your website.

The term “bandwidth” describes the amount of data that is sent from your website. You must ensure that your hosting package gives you enough bandwidth so that you avoid overage charges. Videos utilize a lot more bandwidth than do other mediums such as text and pictures.

The format in which your videos will be displayed will affect the quality of your website’s videos as well. For instance, the AVI video format was one of the first types of video files made available online, however it is plagued with picture and sound synchronization problems that can make uploading the files a chore. MPEG files are popularly utilized by Windows applications but can be very bulky and Mac users can’t view them. Finally, WMV files can be viewed on both Macs and PCs but Linux users are excluded. The Flash format is probably the most reliable in this respect as it works problem free on each of the above operating systems.

The final consideration is probably the trickiest: which software to use to upload your videos? As stated earlier, it is always best to consider your visitors’ convenience when making this decision. All too often, there are complaints of sound and picture synchronization or of no video at all. You should also be sure that the video isn’t too long. This prevents a long wait as it has to buffer before it can be viewed.

The choice of software to use can be confusing, because so many have recently flooded the market. The ideal software is one that can shrink your file size without suffering your video’s image and audio quality and can make your file HTML ready for automatic upload with as little fuss as possible. Whatever software you choose make sure that it conforms to these guidelines. If you are new to uploading then you can’t go wrong if you follow these simple suggestions when buying a program.

Author:  Seamus Caulfield invites you to check out http://www.easywebvideo.ws for a user-friendly solution to video uploading. This unique software allows anyone to put video on the ‘net in 4 minutes flat.

Go Host Yourself - Starting Your Own Web Host

By Lakshmichandrakanth Thangavel in Featured

There are four things to consider when setting up your own hosting: 1) Hardware and software tools. 2) Hosting a server. 3) Bandwidth Transfer. 4) Mail Server.

Familiarity with the latest Hardware, software and platforms:

It is very important to be familiar with the hardware and software that needs to be installed on the servers. For example IIS when using Windows 2003 server is something we will need to be very familiar with, if we are going to be hosting sites on a Windows Server. In terms of Linux, this is a bit more complicated. A strong command and knowledge of SSH (Secure Shell Security) is needed. Then a strong background in Telnet Commands, then the knowledge in Networks and Security side such as routing, Firewall(IPS, IDS), Antivirus.

Software:

Web server: IIS for windows 2003, Apache for Linux. Database: MSSQL server for win 2003, MYSQL for Linux.

Control panel software: It is very necessary to offer administration tools for clients such as Cpanel, plesk, Ensim which offers a program called Web Host Manager.

Billing Software: It’s very necessary to have billing software installed on our web hosting website so that clients may place their order and renew it on time. Some of the popular billing scripts are Accounts, Modernbill, Clientexec, Whmautopilot, etc.

Payment gateway: Accepting online payments is must for any hosting company. Signup for an merchant account so that you accept online payments. Some of the popular payments gateways are 2checkout, Ccavenue, Authorise.net, Worldpay etc

Purchasing of Servers (collocation) / leasing of Servers (dedicated)
Office / Data Center Space

After purchase of servers, we’ll need office space or a Data Center to house these servers. If we choose in our office space, need to feed separate 100Mbps Bandwidth from High Bandwidth Providers. Some companies that offer bandwidth are: Verio.com, Cogentco.com and Twtelecom.com for cheaper bandwidth you can use. Otherwise we have to host our server in Data Centers. Data Centers are also offering two types of service,

1) Colocation is used to mean the provision of space for a customer’s telecommunications or computer equipment at the service provider’s premises. For example, a Web site owner could place the site’s own computer servers on the premises of the Internet service provider (ISP). Or an ISP could place its network routers on the premises of the company offering switching services with other ISPs. Businesses often colocate their equipment with a service provider in order to take advantage of higher bandwidth availability and backup power.

2) Dedicated Server, offerings from companies such as Eservers.biz, Rackspace.com, Cyberworldservers.com just to name a few. Each of those companies will allow you to lease a server on their connection, set a specified amount of bandwidth, and allow you to host your client’s websites on the server you lease from them.

Note: Running from Home: Although we’ll have more control over our servers, keeping them in our garage is really NOT recommended, unless we can ensure, among other things: uninterrupted power; climate control; security; and decent network connection.

Colocation: Your hardware is kept in a data center where you have 24/7 physical access and the data center merely provides electric and fast connection to the internet. Advantages are very flexible; you can build your own servers and determine how network is set up; easy set-up of a private network or a firewall; offers you free reign over hardware configuration and Disadvantages are expensive; you’re responsible for your own hardware (repairs and replacements)

Dedicated: if we rent: The data server owns the hardware and rents it to us. Advantages are they’re responsible for the hardware, software, security issues; faster repair times in case of hardware problem. Disadvantages are must depend on Web Host Provider; If Data Transfer Allowance is exceeded, a financial Penalty is assessed.

Bandwidth Transfer:

Bandwidth is the amount of data transfer that you are allowed to have for a hosting package. For example, Size of web Page: 48 KB Number of users who viewed the web page: 100 per day Total amount of data transferred: 48KB * 100 = 4800 KB per day Total amount of bandwidth required: 4800KB * 30 = 144000KB (144 MB) per month.

Bandwidth is the term that is used to denote the amount of data that has been transferred from your web space. The amount of bandwidth that you require while choosing a host depends on two factors: > The size of your site. > The popularity of your site. For our hosing we have to prefer Limited Bandwidth like 10-100 GB (metered) first and the go for Unlimited (Unmetered).

Email system:

Thing to consider in mail server 1) Perfect mail setup with virus filtering and spam protection. 2) Linux Mail server: Unlimited Mailboxes and Unlimited inbox Storage, Integrated anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall, Life time license free software. 3) Windows server: MS Exchange server / 3rd party Email systems - have to purchase a license, separate anti-virus, anti-spam and firewall.

Author:  Lakshmichandrakanth Thangavel is an Internet specialist and programmer living and working in India. He writes a blog at www.sathist.blogspot.com

SMX Seattle - The Penalty Box Summit (Organic Search)

By Susan Esparza in Featured

fter a break and a yummy cupcake, we’re back for our first Organic Search Engine Optimization session. Danny Sullivan is our moderator for today’s Penalty Box Summit. Speakers today are Peter Linsley (Ask.com), Aaswath Raman (Microsoft Live Search), Tim Mayer (Yahoo) and Matt Cutts (Google).Danny and the panel put on hockey masks (because it’s about penalties, geddit?) I cheer for the Ducks and inadvertently set off Danny’s rant about Orange County sports teams. Whoops. (Go, Ducks!)

Okay, back on topic–Danny explains that we’re going to be focused on improving the general level of understanding and applying penalties, not dealing with single site issues.

Tim Mayer is up first.

Tim comments first on an unfortunate misquoting of Yahoo’s commitment to search. Guess what? They’re really committed to it and they feel personalization is an important part. It was “unfortunate and [they're] obviously very committed to search”. It’s okay to be shocked.

He emphasizes that spam is about INTENT with which you use techniques and the EXTENT to which you use a technique rather than the specific technique you use. There are legitimate uses for almost every technique. IP cloaking for geographic targeting, for example. The important thing is be smart about it. Use it to help, not hurt, user experience.

The acceptable line varies by industry, some categories are more competitive. If you’re doing optimization, you should be appropriate for your industry. [Susan's Hint: You can use the SEOToolset and Free Tools to get a baseline on your competitors.]

Tim says that he has a link internally that can report a quality problem in the index. Webmasters can report spam through Site Explorer. About 70% of the spam reports they receive through the tool are legitimate spam, the rest is just noise. The tool also allows you to report spammy in-links so that you don’t get penalized by association.

Tim refers people to the Webmaster Resources. Come on, Tim. This is the advanced crowd. We already have those memorized. He goes on to discuss what to do for a re-inclusion request. Tell them “this is what I think I was penalized for, this is what I’ve done to clean it up.” They’ll review it pretty quickly.

Peter Linsley is up next. They just launched the new Ask.com last night. “For you livebloggers, go check it out”. Not right now, Peter. I’m blogging.

Peter talks fast. Here we go:

Candidates for penalty are: hurting the user experience and gaming the search engine. Areas for penalty are links and content.

Gaming includes: Cloaking, Keyword Stuff, hidden text, link farms, scraper sites–basically all SEO Spam 101.

Hurting the user experience includes: Dead pages, no content, dynamic content. Pages that are different every time damage the user experience. Pages with no utility at all are hurting the user experience.

Warning signs of a penalty: drops in traffic, drops in rankings (duh.)

Don’t let the spammers leverage your site. If you have a blog, moderate your comments, don’t publish your access logs, etc.

Re-inclusion requests are looked at case by case.

Peter mentions sneaky JavaScript re-directs which are the most irritating in the world.

…wow, you should see the CAPTCHA he just put up. It’s a math equation and there is not enough caffeine in the WORLD. I’m sure that Matt looked at it was all like ‘Oh, that’s EASY.’ Whatever, Matt. The point is, make sure you have a way to keep out the spammers. Don’t let them abuse you.

Aaswath Raman is up next. He’s going to review guidelines, why they use penalties, how they handle them and blah

He repeats what Tim said about spam being about intent and targeting the search engine for gaming.

Example: starwarsactionfigures.com links to starwars.com (okay) but also to cheapcasinohandbags.org (suspicious). So they evaluate to see if it’s just an affiliate or if this is a case of trying to game the engines.

On the page level — being useless to users (strings of keywords, etc) is cause for penalty

On the link level — in-links from bad neighborhoods and out-links to suspicious pages

On a general level — Deceiving users through redirects and misleading information

Suspicious or spammy behavior may cause a ranking penalty. More blatant or harmful spamming could be cause for de-listing. It’s like a venial or mortal sin–one means a single Hail Mary, the other send you to hell. That’s my analogy, not Aaswath’s.

webspam@microsoft.com is their email. They are working on better ways to improve their ways of getting feeding. All de-listed sites are automatically reviewed.

Matt Cutts is up last. He’s going to read a list of spammers. This should be FUN!

He says he was going to do a “you might be a spammer” joke. “If you’ve left 10000 comments…” but he thinks that we probably already know what spam is. Yes, Matt, we do.

If you can keep someone from spamming because there are better ways to make money, that’s the way to go but really, there will always be spam. So they try to counter it. They want to make the user experience as good as it can possibly be.

They alert webmasters that they might be having issues so that they can take action and correct the problem. When that happens, they can do a re-inclusion request and everyone’s happy.

Yesterday, Pat asked why the guidelines were so brief (You&A with Matt Cutts). As a result, the webmaster guidelines were beefed up LAST NIGHT. Good Lord, Googlers, don’t you ever sleep? Oh wait, it’s been in the works for a while. Wow, they’re all linked to a specific page on the actual issue. Yay, time for more dissection.

Matt likes that the new pages are written so they don’t automatically assume that you’re a bad guy. They explain how things can be interpreted as spam. The whole webmaster guidelines silo is much bigger and deeper now. Cool.

There are a lot of Googlers whose job it is to get feedback. Matt mentions Vanessa Fox and Adam Lasnik, specifically. These are the people you should mob if Matt is busy.

If someone reports off-topic porn, they want action now, so google reserves the right to do manual edits but by and large they want to take care of things algorithmically. Matt doesn’t say that he thinks there needs to be a scalable and robust solution but I know he’s thinking it.

They send out emails in 10 languages to try to help keep people in the loop if their site is in trouble. They distinguish between types of webmasters (as he said yesterday) and they do treat them differently. Mom and Pop shops that have trouble will get alerts so that they can fix it. They’re not really spending too much time on the serial spammers who know full well what they’re doing.

There’s a leveling off of keyword importance. Once is good, twice is better, 900 times you’re past that importance threshold and you’re probably looking spammy.

Matt says that as a search engine, they want a clean index, not just clean scoring (of pages).

Matt discusses the trouble a while back with people sending out fake emails spoofed to look like they were from Google. Email is not authenticated. Someone was sending out the fake emails with an .exe. Google will not do that. He wants to look into how they can authenticate their communications to prevent this from happening again.

They’re going to change the name of the re-inclusion request to something like a reconsideration request. They’ll take into account the kind of webmaster you are. If you’re clearly a novice, you’re going to get a little more leeway than if you’re a hardcore SEO. This whole crowd is screwed.

Danny promises to show us how Search Engine Land is spamming. There’s a CSS hidden text or something. This whole thing was confusing to me. The SELand logo is actually their background. He tries to get the text cache from Live Search, they don’t have one. He tries to get it from Google but they have a bug. He finally gets a text cache somehow and tries to show us the hidden text…but it’s hidden. This is SO AWESOME. They have a note in their CSS file that says ‘we’re not spamming, well we are but suck it up for another week until we fix it’.

Enough about Danny’s spamming, let’s move on to other spamming. What would people like to see? Should it be a free for all? Should it be tighter? Should it be like that new search engine with the Hawaiian name and be manual?

Q&A Highlights

If I mention your question without mentioning your name, comment and I’ll edit. I can’t see everyone from here.

Why is Penn State being ranked for Buy Viagra (because they’ve been hacked, not because Penn State wants to sell Viagra)? How come Google isn’t better about manually banning this kind of spamming?

Heh, Matt just said scalable and robust again. It’s his new phrase. They typically refer to take an algorithmic approach to removing spam but he thinks there’s room for using humans in a ’scalable’ way.

Tim chimes in to agree that humans can be ’scalable’. Aaswath says that ultimately the fix for Viagra spam will have to be algorithmic. Peter agrees and says that people could work every day for the next 10000 years and not even touch the amount of cleaning they’d have to do to fix the Viagra problem.

Danny does a quick tour of the SEs. Ask does well, Live doesn’t have any .edu links (Tim: But they’re not relevant! Danny: At least on the others I can buy Viagra.) Speaking of Yahoo, they have an .edu 404 page as their second result. Oh, now we’re going to that Hawaiian named engine. AHAHAHA. They’re not relevant and the ones that are come from .edus. I love this session!

Real estate, travel, home schooling… Different industries have different levels of normal. Link rules in real estate are different because reciprocal links are more common so they’re looking at that.

The search engines look at a larger set of queries so their ‘we’re doing well’ isn’t always the webmaster’s ‘doing well’.

Someone wants penalties to be announced. Don’t just penalize them, announce it and say they did something wrong. Lots of the audience agrees. Even more want a way to look up a way to see if their site has a penalty or not. Matt says ‘yeah, that’d be great but then you also tell the spammers which techniques are still working’. Tim reiterates, they don’t want to clue people in to what tricks are being missed by the engines.

Pat (feedthebot.com) wants the ability to know that his site is definitively under a penalty. How do I do a re-inclusion requests that actually get results?

Matt: We take them very seriously. Some people think you have to admit guilt but they’re trying to soften the message a little. You don’t have to grovel but you do have to try to be honest. If you don’t know but you fixed some stuff, tell them.

Open-sourcing the resolution process says Michael Martinez (I think?). Danny calls it ‘wikispamia’. Matt says having other people vouch might be interesting but there would always be someone out there try to game the system. He mentions that Neil Patel has 30 digg aliases, by way of an example.

Danny says there needs to be a way to say ‘this wasn’t an intent to deceive but I’m getting penalized anyway.’

In a discussion about DUI laws and how to build pages to explain them, Matt calls Wyoming unimportant. Then he has to bribe people with Google Webmaster t-shirts to not tell Wyoming about it. I didn’t get a t-shirt so I’m blogging it anyway. (I wouldn’t except that I’m bitter because they’re supercute long sleeved and black! There’s a heart on the sleeve!)

Danny says rather than monopolizing the engine reps for twenty minutes, give them a business card with the site on it so they can check it later. Matt chimes in and says that you can write it up ahead of time too. They like that.

Quick requests from the audience:

–We should be able to report spam in the SERP not in a separate form.
–Please let us know you at least got the message. It feels like sending messages in to a void.
–Full list of the actual penalties.
–Get more input from the webmaster about the site.
–Trusted webmasters (Lots of applause for that)
–Clean site badge.
–Trust API through Webmaster Tools
–Max Keywords per tag (Danny: Don’t use the tags. Et tu, Danny?)
–Stop being afraid of spammers and provide more transparency.
–Better train your ad reps.
–Ban Viagra (Danny: just give it away! You can afford it!)
–Details on time penalty
–Negative rank on the toolbar
–Caution about banning the entire servers
–Bad neighbor API (Danny calls that silly talk)

Last words:

Aaswath: We love you.
Tim: Give us feedback on features in site explorer. It’s digg-like.
Matt: We love you infinity times infinity, especially Wyoming. We’re trying to improve communication. Keep talking to us.
Peter: We love the feedback. At the end of the day, we just want to provide good results.

Awesome session.

Author:  Susan Esparza is a Sr. Editor and writer at Bruce Clay Inc.

11 Tips for PPC Success

By Mike Tekula in Featured

This list details some very important points to keep in mind when creating or managing any pay-per-click campaign. Is this all there is to know about pay-per-click advertising? Absolutely not, but for those new to PPC it should serve as good place to start. Additionally, pay-per-click veterans or at least the moderately-seasoned will want to touch upon these points now and then to brush up on their fundamentals.

1) Do your keyword homework. Use Google’s free Keyword Tool or sign up for a WordTracker account to find out which keywords are the most competitive. The more competitive the keyword, the more expensive your clicks will be. While you’re finding out which keywords are too expensive you’ll come across some that aren’t being targeted heavily by advertisers. Take a good look at these - they may be your keys to a successful niche campaign.

2) Don’t bunch your ad groups. You should be striving to separate your ad groups by keyword. Whatever your target, separate your keyword lists into closely related groups containing the same target words and write ads geared specifically to those words. Your ads will show up higher in results based on their quality, and search terms show up bold in results - a click-through rate booster.

3) Drive home your selling point. What’s your offer? Why are you better than the others? Remember that your ads are going to display with your competitors. The difference between a user clicking your ad and clicking a competitor ad is about 100 pixels on the screen - or a millisecond of time. You need to convince them that you are the one they want. You are better. Grab them.

4) Don’t send users to your home page. This is perhaps one of the worst things you can do to your Pay-Per-Click campaign. Internet users are notoriously impatient. Send them to your home page when they were searching for a specific product or service and see how fast they leave. Don’t waste your advertising budget - send them to optimized landing pages.

5) Optimize your landing pages. Your landing pages need to drive something home immediately for your users: “you have landed in the right place.” They need to know that, yes, this is what they were looking for, here it is, here is why it is better than the rest and here’s the easy thing they need to do to get it. In most cases you’ll need to create multiple landing pages based on your different ad groups and keywords, but look at it this way - if your users aren’t landing at pages geared exactly to their search phrases they’ll leave and take your advertising budget with them.

6) Don’t lie in your ads. People aren’t dumb. If you promise something in your ads you had better well deliver. Otherwise you’ll not only waste advertising dollars but damage your brand. Be honest, and focus on points that make you stand out from the competition. Grandiose ad text might bring in clicks, but if it isn’t the truth it won’t bring in conversions.

7) Your domain name counts. In most cases you can display a domain name that you own as the “display domain” but point the ads to a page on a different domain. Why does this matter? If you own a domain name that contains the keyword text it will show up bold and increase conversions. Enter the optimized domain as the displayed domain, point the ads to your landing pages and you can expect higher CTRs in most cases.

Utilize negative keywords. Google has a new Negative Keyword Tool that will allow you to find negative keywords that you should specify for your ads. Negative keywords are those that you don’t want your ads to display for. For example, if you’re selling “blue widgets” you don’t want to display your ads to those users searching for “free blue widgets.” If you don’t use negative keywords you are missing out on a chance to get more targeted traffic to your landing pages, and this can really hurt your conversion rates.

9) Test, test, and test some more. The greatest thing about internet advertising is the ability it grants you to measure your success. It’s easy to create A/B split tests with Pay-Per-Click advertising. Change one word, add a comma, include a value proposition. . .just make sure you only change one thing for each split or you won’t know which variable it was that made the difference! You’ll find out right away that this is a great way to optimize your click-through rates - just don’t forget that clicks aren’t everything!

10) Don’t focus too heavily on CTRs. Getting tons of clicks isn’t always the name of the game. In fact, if you aren’t using proper techniques to ensure that you’re getting targeted traffic and sending it to well-optimized landing pages you can blow through your advertising budget in no time flat. Remember that the success of any advertisement is getting back more than you put in. It’s an investment, not a cost - so do all that you can to better your rate of return!

11) Don’t pigeonhole yourself. We all know that Google AdWords is the most popular Pay-Per-Click service out there. Your competitors know it, your users know it - even your grandma might know it. It would be foolish to ignore Google as a venue for advertising, but don’t forget that there are other search engines out there who offer similar services. Yahoo!’s new Panama search system is catching on, and Microsoft’s adCenter is nothing to sneeze at either. Both companies are currently offering sweet promotional deals to new Pay-Per-Click advertisers to stay competitive so take advantage and diversify!

Author:  Mike Tekula handles SEO, SEM, usability and standards-compliance for NewSunGraphics, a Long Island, New York firm offering Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, W3C-Compliant web design using full CSS layouts and all things web design/development.

Creating Widgets for Your Websites and Blogs

By Doran Roggio in Featured

With a widget you can place the current information from your blogs and or/websites on other webpages, and your personal pages on social networks like myspace, ning.com and your private clubs. This is not only fun and informative, but an excellent promotional tool.

What is a widget? According to Wikipedia a “web widget is anything that can be embedded within a page of HTML, i.e. a web page. A widget adds some content to that page that is not static. Generally widgets are third party originated… Widgets are also known as modules, snippets, and plug-ins. Widgets can be written in HTML, but also in JavaScript, flash and other scripting languages…

Applications can be integrated within a third party website by the placement of a small snippet of code. This is becoming a distribution or marketing channel for many companies. The code brings in ‘live’ content - advertisements, links, images - from a third party site without the web site owner having to update.”

You have probably seen widgets on web sites you have visited. When clicked on the widget will take you to the source of the information. Although widgets have been around since the late nineties, they are becoming increasing more popular especially with the rise of social networking.

I first started playing around with widgets as a way to promote my own AC published content. While widgets are not that difficult, they can be a little tricky at first if unfamiliar to you. It took me several tries to perfect my own widgets and place them on my blog and social networking sites. They now work perfectly without any problems. As I add content to my AC page for example, the widget automatically updates to show the most current article titles.

If you have not had the opportunity to work with widgets or have attempted to do so without success this article is for you. With little effort you will be able to make the widgets and place them on the web pages that you choose. Once mastered the widgets are really cool and worth the effort.

Making A Widget

At widgetbox.com you can make a widget to place on your pages. You can customize the widget with size, details, title and colors and even list it in their blidget directory which gives more exposure to your blog and AC page (every little bit of promotion helps). You can make as many widgets as you want, I have one for my blog at Women-sense.com and another for my AC content producer page so far.

Go to widgetbox.com, on the left sidebar click on the button that says ‘Make a blidget’. This will open up a box that asks for the url where the information is being gathered. For my blog I just entered the blog url, (http://women-sense.com). Widgetbox.com automatically draws from the rss feed for that URL. Don’t ask me how, I have no idea but it works. For my Associated Content I added the actual RSS link which I found by clicking on the RSS symbol and copying the url address from the browser address bar.

Once you add the link to the blidget box it will open to a page that will give you customizing options. You will see your widget on the right hand side with your information from the RSS feed. You can opt to list article titles or titles with article summaries. Different colors as well as sizing and/or images are other options available. Fool with the options until you get it the way you want it to look.

When you finish setting the options and you are happy with the way it looks, click on one of the article titles to assure it is working correctly. When clicked it should click thru to the site your are promoting.

Registering and Getting The Code

If working correctly the next step is to get the code. Now you will need the code in order to place the widget your myspace page or other website of your choice.

Before getting the code the next step in the creation of your widget offers you the chance to list your widget in the blidget gallery. I opted for this and you will probably want to do so as well. It can only add to your exposure. Add keyword tags and click ‘publish blidget’.

Now you will then be asked to register if you do not already have an account. Don’t worry, the service is absolutely free. By registering you will be able to come back and make as many widgets as you want and add them to your account for editing.

Once you have registered you will now be taken to a another page with several options. Near the top you will see the title of the widget (example: AC Media) on the far right of the title click the green button that says ‘get widget’.

Placing The Widget On Websites

A drop down list opens up for you to choose where to place the widget. You will see there are many choices. If you are placing your widget on myspace, for example, choose that selection. You will be asked for your myspace email and password, along with what section you want the widget to be placed. Widgetbox.com will automatically place the widget on your myspace page in the section you desire.

Perhaps you want to place the widget on a site that is not listed. In this case you would choose the section that says, ‘get code’. There will be two choices to choose from, a Javascript and a Flash script. At this point you may have to experiment to see which code will work on the site you are attempting to place the widget.

Many sites do not allow Javascript. If you are working on your own webpages you can probably use the Javascript code. Copy and paste the code in your websites html, save and upload your page as usual. The widget should work fine.

For other sites like ning.com you want the flash script. Select all and copy the code for the flash script. Paste the code into a block where you are able to add information by clicking on edit/add in the box and paste the code. You are almost done.

Before saving you will need to add opening and closing div tags to the code in order for it to show up. At the beginning of the code place the <div> and at the end of the code include </div>.

Click save and close the opened text box and your widget should be displayed. If correctly done your widget will automatically update every time you add new content to the site your widget is promoting.

Author:  Doran Roggio is a freelance writer & online entrepreneur. For business resources visit Doran at http://atdorans.com and http://adsense-smarts.doranunlimited.com.

Web Hosting Options for Everyone

By David Odell in Featured

As e-commerce continues to change the way that people shop in our culture, the numbers and types of website hosting options has grown to staggering proportions. Trying to find the best hosting sites and the best website design templates can be maddening. As you begin to shop around for the website hosting option that best meets your needs, keep in mind that there are three basic things that you want to look for and compare as you compare one services solution against another. Business owners have more choices than ever before when it comes to website hosting options. As the demand has grown in recent years, so have the number of service providers. There are so many to choose from that finding the best hosting sites can be a bit of a challenge. You may find it helpful, as you begin looking, to make a list of your specific needs.

Use that list of needs as a template to hold up next to the service plans that you are looking at and see which services solution best meets the needs of your company. Trying to select a website hosting solution can be as difficult as buying a used car. The sheer volume of service solutions is staggering, and it’s getting bigger every day. A plethora of options, some vital and some not so much, flood the front pages of advertisers trying to draw you in. Deciding what features you really need and which ones are just gimmicks can be difficult. If you are unfamiliar with website hosting options it may seem like the best option is to open up the phone book and blindly point a finger to decide. Your best option is to make a list of what you need, and then consider the following criteria based on that list.
First, and probably most obviously, is price. While there are a number of free website host services available, you are probably not going to get the same level of services or support that you will from an internet host that charges you a small monthly fee. Generally these fees are low, and shouldn’t make a substantial dent in your budget. Most are fairly competitive on price, and only vary by a few dollars. If then, you determine that you are willing to spend this few extra dollars each month to pay for host support, what other options should you be looking at?
The second set of factors that you need to consider, after price, are the services offered. Different website hosting services offer a variety of service levels. Some may offer different packages, often with a catchy name like the silver, gold and platinum package. As they get progressively more expensive, the number of services available goes up. Whether it includes online support or 24-hour phone support, your website hosting service should provide a services solution package that works for you. If not, then you should keep looking. Once you have determined a budget for your website hosting needs then you need to begin narrowing down the pile to the best web hosting services that remain.

Different service providers all have unique packages to try and earn your business. For the most part, these packages differ only in the kind of support that they offer. Excellent host support can be the factor that ultimately wins your business. You need to know that your services solution will be there for you when you need them and that you can get accurate help in a timely manner when things go wrong. The amount of host support that you get is one of the biggest deciding factors in website hosting decision. Keep in mind that, the more you spend the more you get. The providers of services solutions often grade their support packages by how much help you think you’ll need. Of course, you then pay accordingly. Everything from live online chat support to actual personal site visits are available. While you don’t ever want to overpay for anything, it is important that you have the support that you need when things go wrong.
A third factor, also usually determined by how much you are willing to pay, is the amount of disk space that you are allowed. Some also include data transfer information in this package. As with everything else, the more you pay, the more you get. The best web hosting services are the ones that offer unlimited data transfer and disk space. This allows you to grow without worrying about over stepping your limit. You don’t want to be in the middle of a big sales month only to have your host server lock down because you drove too much traffic to it and thus maxed out your allowable bandwidth.
As you consider each of these factors, keep in mind that the best web hosting services for you are not necessarily the most expensive, nor do they need to be the cheapest. Make a good assessment of your needs and then make an educated decision. An affordable website host is out there just waiting for your business. When you find it, you will have just taken your internet based business to the next level. While cost is going to be a factor in every business decision that you make, don’t let a few dollars a month be the driver of this decision. Figuring out the best way to manage your website hosting needs will potentially save you a lot of time.

For most business owners, your time is worth much more than a few dollars a month. Make sure that you choose a services solution that will set you up to succeed. Generally, website hosting solutions are similar in price. Don’t let the difference of a few dollars a month sway you into making a decision that might leave you scrambling for answers the first time that you have a problem. Make sure that you are completely comfortable with the level of host support that is available with your hosting package. Your time is worth more than the few extra dollars a month that you may have to spend in order to get a quality service provider.
Author:  David Odell is the owner of: Web Hosting - Know How Pages

Choosing a Web Hosting Company - What Not to Do

By Lous Castillo in Featured

Choosing a web hosting company is typically a bargain basement search for most people. They get on the internet and they Google for “cheap web hosting”. Afterall, why spend a lot of money just to host your site? Right? No, Wrong! Let me tell you why.

The best way to explain this is by using a correlation. If you were to go and buy your first brand new vehicle. You wouldn’t go online and type in “cheap car” or cheapest car”. You have specific needs that you have to meet. For example, you may have a large family, drive a great distance to work each day or perhaps you don’t have a lot of money left over for insurance and maintenance so you want you a car with a reputation for reliability like a Honda or Toyota. In either case you didn’t think “cheap” first. You searched for a car that would best meet your “driving needs”. Once you found that vehicle then you would probably search for the dealer that would give you the best deal, or “cheapest” deal.

When searching for a web hosting company the same process should be followed. Why is that you ask? As important as that vehicle was in my earlier example your website “success” is just as important. If you took the time to design and create a website then I assume you want it to be a success. Each webmaster has his/her own reasons for designing their site and they each have their won definition for “success”.

In either case, the success of the website is based to a large degree on who you allow to host your site. Most people never think of that. They look at things like storage space, uptime, bandwidth, and a hundred other parameters. But they never consider the measure of Success they will reach or not reach. And isn’t that the bottom line for any online business? After all, it takes a whole lot more than those nuts and bolts to succeed.

Now if you were told that your level od success could increase 10-fold simply by selecting the right hosting company would you still be interested in the “cheapest”? Do you really care whether the uptime is 99.9999% or 99.9999999%?

Measuring and comparing “Success” gets down to the real issue. Using this baseline to separate all your hosting possibilities will allow the cream to rise to the top. You would want a web hosting system that “is the all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing system of software tools that delivers success”.

The majority of web hosting services don’t even refer to success. That’s because 99+% of their small business sites fail. They even have a term for the abysmal failure rate of small businesses online… its called the “churn rate”. What if you could set up your site with a hosting company that could get your website in the top 6%. Imagine the exposure, the massive amount of traffic you would eventually be getting. Translate this targeted traffic into “subccriptions”, “sales”, “link exchanges”"higher page ranking” and repeat visitors. Have I got you thinking now?

This is the same process I went through when I selected my web host. My first web host had all the nuts and bolts and it was relatively cheap. But in the long run I did not save anything because it cost me in lost sales. It took me a very long time and then a lot of money to build up my traffic which finally converted into sales. I could have achieved that same degree of success much sooner and for a lot less money had I chosen a better web host. One that provided all the tools from the start and GUARANTEED my success. One that could provide proof that they truly could deliver that success to me as they had for many others.
Author:  Luis Castillo is an experienced affliliate marketer who also owns a popular website and blog. You can find out more about him at http://www.Targeted-Traffic-Site-Builder.com and http://marketanybizonline.blogspot.com