Over the past month or so, I have been noticing a larger volume of reports of advertisers claiming their AdWords accounts were compromised. Here is a recent thread at WebmasterWorld plus Jeremy Mayes, a seasoned PPC guy, was also compromised. There are many other newish threads with people reporting this issue and one of my accounts was even compromised a couple weeks ago.

Google handles this process very well. In fact, they alert you of the weird charges. They pause your account and ask you to change your passwords. They calm you and guide you through the security steps you should take. Also, they credit you for the false ads that the hackers created to generate leads to their sites.

But the number of these reports, from advertisers who I know are extremely careful about browser security and password security, has been climbing recently.

Tamar wrote a post about a month ago, named Google AdWords Account Hacked: False Ads & False Charges and Jeremy’s PPC Discussions has an excellent roundup on what to do when you have been compromised.

My concern? That there is a loophole that gives someone access to your account, without knowing your password. Maybe through the API, maybe through AdWords Editor or maybe through some type of web security exploit. I might be a bit over dramatic on this concern but I just have a feeling (that is all I have, a feeling, no evidence) that there is some type of loophole, somewhere

Keyword research is the first step we take towards SEO rankings but sometimes these market research methods have a poor effect on our sites because we don’t fully understand the concepts. Give me the facts - I’ll draw my own confusions! It is a complex subject and even when we think we know it well, we often trip over something simply because we don’t know it’s there. What you may not know can hurt your SEO rankings and sometimes a heavy hand with what you do know can too.

A problem that search engines encounter often is the design of websites that purely use advanced programming such as C++, JavaScript or CGI. If the navigation links within your site are powered by these advanced scripts alone, the search engine will not be able to fully browse your site. You need to provide links in basic HTML so that the engine can read your website. Its difficult to get SEO rankings for something that can’t be read and indexed.
It can take months for a website with a new domain name (.com, .org or .edu) to show up on search engines. Google has imposed an ageing delay on new websites so that it doesn’t waste time on indexing websites that don’t last long. If later you want to change your domain name, I suggest you rethink and use what you have instead. A cosmetic facelift of your existing web pages along with several new good quality SEO articles may serve you better in the long run for SEO rankings. When you already know all the ins and outs of your website, then it’s so much easier to revise than replace because of familiarity. If you think a better domain name is called for by all means buy it and put a blog on it, linking to your existing site. Best of both worlds and extra links.
Some internet marketers make the mistake of placing researched keyword requirements above that of article quality. It is necessary to use market research methods for keyword phrases because until you know what other people are targeting and what the competition is for some key phrases you may be mistakenly optimizing for SEO rankings on something you just can’t have. Once you have eliminated these saturated phrases, you have a better idea of what you may be able to use.
At first glance, it will still seem sensible to optimize an article for researched keywords rather than be concerned with artistic considerations, true relevance or honest, from the heart writing. However, bear in mind that not everyone will want to buy your product or idea even if it is suitable to everyone. You know that what you sell is saleable only to a certain target market. If you prioritize keyword optimization in your article just for SEO rankings, rather than writing the article for the sake of the product you want to sell and to provide information to your target audience, chances are you will attract buyers for a commodity that you do not have.

The keyword here is relevance. A person searching the internet for something he needs will filter out the search results by using their own theory of relevance. My suggestion is, write the article for the sake of your product and for your target customers information. Place the priority of keywords as a secondary consideration. It’s all about relevance. Sure, it would be a plus for you if you manage to pull in lots of traffic even if they don’t want anything to do with your site or products. But believe me, misleading a person on the internet is a risky business. Search engines analyze your hits and bounce rates and, if your traffic clicks away after seconds, they know your site isn’t satisfying them by showing them what they need.
Be specific with your keywords. Don’t generalize. The biggest disadvantage of internet shopping is that customers cannot scrutinize the product personally. What they usually do is find out from other sources what the product is all about, how it works, etc… When they decide to finally buy, they know in detail what they’re looking for and will most likely use a specific name brand as part of their search strings. Your keywords need to be able to match those strings in terms of number of words matched and how the order of those words match.

For example, when looking for bras, women need to order by using their torso and cup size. So, the bra size could be a 36 B or a 36 C. Then there are colors to choose from like red, burgundy and black. A bit more specific is the bra classification. Is it a half-cup or a push-up, or is it a sport bra? With these factors in mind, you can conclude that a woman looking for a bra on the internet can type in “black push-up bra 36-C”.
If you are selling products with criteria such as this, use this specific information for your SEO rankings. Do you have key phrases to match those kinds of search strings? Are the words in your key phrases arranged in the same order? The final consideration is the article where those keywords are embedded. If the article is just a small jumble of words full of keywords, the search engine will most likely discard your website in favor of another that has a good paragraph of relevant descriptive information. This will decrease the SEO ranking of your website for each search results page.

Various techniques are used for search engine optimization, or SEO. One way to group these techniques is with hat terminology: white hat SEO, black hat SEO, and gray hat SEO. White hat SEO is considered ethical SEO, while black hat SEO is considered unethical SEO. Gray hat SEO walks the line between the white and black hats of search engine optimization.

White hat SEO

White hat SEO is ethical SEO. It’s SEO techniques that search engines accept. White hat SEO techniques are beneficial for site visitors as well as for search engines. The goal of white hat SEO is to improve search engine result positions via methods that won’t cause search engines to penalize the site.

Successful white hat SEO is slower than black hat SEO and is an ongoing process.

Examples of white hat SEO techniques Continue Reading »
White hat, black hat, and gray hat SEO

Old school media people are increasingly vilified by those of us who wear skinny jeans and throw out references to social media as casually as we breathe, but I’m quickly discovering that they really have their heads on straight with one major point about links: they’re also good for traffic (ahem).

If you’ve never argued with a site owner about where exactly on a page they should place the link they’ve so lovingly agreed to give you for what is — naturally! — a reason borne only of sheer relevancy, you probably will soon.

For many, the primary focus of a link building initiative is indeed to move a site up in the rankings but why not kill two birds with one stone and milk a link for all it’s worth? How likely is a user to click on a link that’s a few page scrolls down on a site, in font so tiny that anyone with even a slight amount of myopia will immediately develop a headache upon trying to read it? If that link were instead placed in a nice prominent place on the site, it would thus be capable of potentially driving traffic to the site in question …. something that tends to make site owners dance like Gene Kelly on their way to the local animal shelter to volunteer.

Now obviously there are times when may not want a link to be visible, such as getting a link from a site that’s not that relevant to your area and where you fear you’d get called out if Google spam fighting chief Matt Cutts hand reviewed things. For our purposes here, of course, let’s assume that you’re doing nothing like that, since you’re all nice people who put quarters in the parking meter even when there’s time left on it.

Link placement on a page is tricky business, too, even though you might just assume that you could easily tell a site owner where to put your link in order to maximize its click rate. Human intuition is helpful here, as most people can determine the difference between a truly horrible section and one that delicately says “click me” with high accuracy. However, if you’re dealing with seriously high volume and quality link placement has the potential to bring someone utter loads of relevant traffic, it’s worth taking this seriously enough to do some research into click heat maps, eyetracking, human factors, and all that New Age-sounding stuff.

During the course of any day, my link builders will show me links that are truly poorly placed, ones in tiny font at the bottom left corner of the screen in some weird zone that is barely noticeable unless you happen to be looking for the link that you asked for, sadly. These links will pass juice, hopefully, but the odds of someone clicking through to the targeted site from this are quite slim. A nicely placed text link in a paragraph near the top, well that’s another story, potentially.

When you’re going after a link, hopefully you’re doing things like trying to make sure it’s placed on a page with decent page rank, one that’s indexed, one that’s been crawled since John Lydon was Johnny Rotten, etc. Think of what your call to action should be, and figure out where you’d tend to look to find it if you were a user and not some dirty little link buyer. If you’re going to all the trouble of being nice to the site owner and negotiating (not to mention taking the risk of link buying), why not specify exactly where you’d like the link?

In my experience, many site owners are quite happy to do whatever it takes to get that $100 out of you so they can buy more geeky T-shirts, but some of them, especially the old school ones who wrote their site in Cold Fusion and still brag about it, aren’t going to be easily persuaded to do anything nice for you. Now is a good time to fake some Southern charm.

Eyetracking and click heat research tell us that users of a site tend to view content in an F-shape, moving across a page for two horizontal lines near the top, then down to what could the left nav with proper placement. This same research tells us the least likely places for a user to look as well, and that’s mainly anywhere other than the above-referenced F. Bearing this information in mind, it makes sense to specify where you’d like your link, gaining as much prominence for it as possible, provided it’s relevant, of course. If you’re doing anything sketchy, all bets are off with link placement, as I’ve said earlier.

Obviously you’ll get links for the simple fact that they do tend to help a site move up in the rankings, which should technically bring in more traffic anyway, but if the site you’re getting that link from is a high volume one and everything is on the up and up, you really should go the extra mile.

Looking at the last several posts here at Marketing Pilgrim it looks like Google is getting pretty busy. While the rest of the world sits and wrings their hands about the economy and the end of the world as we know it, Google continues to invest, experiment and further cement its iconic position.

Now it is getting involved, albeit indirectly through investment, in getting internet connectivity to the under developed areas of the world. The company that is behind the latest effort to help make the internet truly global is 03b Networks which was founded and is run by Greg Wyler who is described in today’s WSJ as a 38 year old telecommunications entrepreneur. The ultimate goal of the company is to put as many as 16 satellites in the sky that would work to provide internet service to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Latin America by the end of 2010.

While this is not the first time this has been attempted the simple fact that Google is investing some undisclosed portion of the initial $60 million raised (the total cost to pull this off is stated at $65 million) makes it a bit unique. Not to bore you with the details but the idea is to get the signals to local service providers (not individual users) and they will then distribute the signal out over cellular networks or their own networks.

While Google is busy looking to handle the hiring of special high powered lawyers by the government to fight their deal with Yahoo! they are behind the scenes doing other things that will ultimately lead to more internet users to receive ads. Even though it is “behind the scenes” it actually appears on the front page of the Marketplace section of the paper along with the story about the potential US lawsuit against them. It’s the efforts like this one that go “almost” unnoticed but when one steps back and sees the larger world impact it shows Google may end up being bigger and more diverse then we can imagine. Think about it, in certain countries one day they may only need to dial 888-GOOGLE to get internet connectivity, phone service and access to all the goods and services they would ever want.

Sounds far-fetched I suppose but is it really?

Many webmasters / online marketers make a common mistake when they begin doing business onlíne. Often times, people do the processes necessary for their success - backwards. Rather than starting at the beginning and working forwards, they start at the end and work backwards. As a result, they waste more money and resources, often breaking the back of their business, well before they start to see any real success in their business.

In my years of helping online marketers promote their businesses, I have seen business models that seemed to have all of the elements necessary to ensure great success. And unfortunately, I have seen many of these perfect business models fail miserably, because their owners failed to honor their business with a realistic promotional plan. Continue Reading »
Successful SEO Begins With Keyword Research and Analytics

Just ten years ago if you wanted to profit in a niche market it was typically an expensive and risky undertaking. First you had to do the research to see if the industry was big enough to support you. Then you would setup a shop of some sort, whether it was a storefront, mall kiosk, or kitchen table, run a mail order company and tons of little classified ads to bring in the business. It usually took at least six months to see if a profit was likely in your future and finding good suppliers for specialty items could be just as demanding as selling the stuff you managed to get hold of. Thanks to the Web, those days are long gone.

Today, with a little basic information and $50 you can have a nice niche thing going. Or with that same $50 and some hard won insider tips you can OWN any niche you want. That’s what we’ll focus on.

First things first, spend wisely. Setup a budget early on and find ways to stay within it. Use free tools whenever possible and when you do need to spend money on something, make sure it’s a bargain.

Okay, now for the good stuff. Let’s start with finding our keywords…

Part One: Finding Keywords

Finding Keywords 1: We can use a free tool to do this part. Go to Google Keyword Tool and type in a common word or phrase that describes your niche (check the Use synonyms box to get the best variety of results.)

Finding Keywords 2: Now click on the “Approx Avg Search Volume” header to sort by the average monthly volume. You are going to take each of the search terms that look like good possible keywords and run a search on Google for them. But lets keep track. Take a sheet of paper (or Excel doc) and jot down the keyword, then the “Approx Avg Search Volume” and finally the number of pages returned on Google.

Finding Keywords 3: When you have that information for a good handful of keywords you want to come up with a success potential ratio for each. It’s easy. Just divide the “Approx Avg Search Volume” by the number of pages on Google. This is your success potential ratio. The higher the number; the better.

Example A: Approx Avg Search Volume (6,500) / Matching Pages on Google (100,000) = .065 is your Success Potential Ratio

Example B: Approx Avg Search Volume (9,750) / Matching Pages on Google (233,000) = .042 is your Success Potential Ratio

Example B has a lot more searches performed but with even more competition than A. Long story short, this means the keyword from Example A is likely our best bet to target.

Part Two: Securing Domain Names

Securing Domain Names 1: Now go to your favorite domain registrar (like Godaddy.com, Register.com or whatever) and run a domain registration availability search for the keyword phrase with the highest Success Potential Ratio.

Securing Domain Names 2: Use dashes! And don’t feel like the splits need to be perfect. For example, if you have a possible domain that is three words long, first try it without any dashes. That will be gone, I can almost guarantee. Next try separating each word with a dash. Maybe it’s taken, maybe not. If not, grab it! If it is taken, don’t despair. Try just one dash between the first two words and let the second and third run together. If that version is taken, move the dash so it is between the second and third while the first and second run together. Chances are you will find one that works. And the best part is the search engines read it as the same keyword!

Keep in mind, this domain and resulting Website is for SEO purposes NOT branding. Who cares how long it is or how many dashes it has? Certainly not you. The search engines will love it!

Securing Domain Names 3: A word of advice… Get your domain name as quickly as possible. The older it is, the better in Google’s eyes. And they actually run date scans on domains using a Whois registry so they know the exact date and minute the domain was registered.

If you haven’t used one, check out AllWhoIs.com or BetterWhoIs.com and enter any domain name. It tells you all kinds of stuff, including the owner, registrar, date or registration and even the owner’s home phone and address if that’s what he or she used to register.

Securing Domain Names 4: As for the domain type, .com is best bet and .net and .org extensions also do well. I don’t bother with the others and I really strive for .com whenever possible.

Part Three: Deciding on Website Type

Deciding on Website Type 1: Do you want a blog or a regular static site? For quickest results I recommend setting up a WordPress blog (free technology with thousands of free templates.) Google loves blogs because they are fresh, dynamic and already nearly perfectly optimized for their spidering bot.

Deciding on Website Type 2: If you do go with WordPress, I also recommend installing the free WordPress plugin “All in One SEO Pack” by Michael Torbert. It’s amazíng and totally free.

Part Four: Finding Web Hosting

Finding Web Hosting 1: There are tens or thousands of companies you can go with or you can even just host your site at WordPress.com.

Finding Web Hosting 2: Personally I like to maintain full control of my site for future expansions and customizations. And I have so many niche blogs in service that saving even just a few bucks is a big deal. I use the starter blog package available at Vortex Host for $25 per year. It’s also got push button WordPress installation, which is nice. So I’m up and running in about five minutes.

Finding Web Hosting 3: But again, there are literally tens of thousands of hosts to choose from. Shop around and stick with one you really like. It’s much easier to track each of your niche blogs with a single host (control panels, stats, etc.)

Part Five: Optimizing Your Site

Optimizing Your Site 1: So far we’ve covered how to select the most profitable keywords, purchase unbeatable domain names, use the Website type most revered by Google for quickest results and how to get reliable inexpensive hosting with bonus features. And we have only spent about $35 ($10 for the domain and $25 for hosting.)

Optimizing Your Site 2: Now we move onto the actual optimization part. I will laundry líst the things you need to keep in mind for a competitive edge and recommend a tool bargain if you decide you need one.

Use two of your most important keywords per page; the primary and a secondary.

Use your main and secondary keyword in the page or post title.

Try to make each page about 500 words in length or more, using at least five paragraphs.

Mention your main keyword about four times on the page as follows: Once at the beginning of the first sentence, once in the second paragraph, once in the third paragraph and once towards the end of the final paragraph.

Mention your secondary keyword about four times on the page as follows: Once towards the end of the first sentence, once in the third paragraph, once in the fourth paragraph and once towards the beginning of the final paragraph.

Add your keywords and META descriptions to the WordPress plugin “All in One SEO Pack” and let that do the heavy lifting for you.

Optimizing Your Site 3: If you have an SEO analyzer tool, use it. This is a tool that goes through you site just like Google will, and does the same to your top competitors that dominate your search engine of choice, then tells you EXACTLY what you need to do to steal their top positions.

Optimizing Your Site 4: If you don’t have a tool like that but think it would help, you can download a free tríal version of one of the better ones at iBusinessPR0M0TER.com. If you decide to buy it, you will have the same tool that makes eBay number one all over the world. And for about $250.

Well that’s it. You can dominate any niche you want with little time, effort or expense. Why do I feel so confident about it? This is the exact process I have used to dominate over fifty niches from Bass fishing to coin collecting and, of course, search engine optimization.

Above all else enjoy the ride. Best of luck!

What is going on with e-commerce websites? It appears that online entrepreneurs spend so much time worrying about website traffic that they ignore the customers who actually want to buy something.

Recently, I tried to order a product we spotted at a trade show. It was perfect for our application so we did a Google search to find the manufacturer and a líst of dealers who sold the item.

Almost all the websites that distributed the product had proper contact information and invited people to call, which we did. After six frustrating phone calls to dealers we still hadn’t found anyone willing to answer the telephone. Since we had to leave a message almost everywhere we called, we decided to try California even though we are located in the east, and it was far too early for any reasonable person to be at work.

We finally got in touch with a friendly salesperson in Boston, who was very helpful but unfortunately the company was out of stock. Despite not being able to fill the order, we kept their information on file because they were friendly, accommodating, and dealt with all our questions. They tried their best to meet our needs but if we would have ordered using their online system and found out later that the product was back-ordered we would have been very upset since we had a deadline to meet.

Next we reached the manufacturer who told us he was too busy to check if he had any stock, and maybe he could get back to us by four o’clock. Just as we were ready to give up, the phone rang; it was the owner of the California dealer, who had the product in stock, took the order, and shipped it out the same day.

Businesses, especially website businesses cannot run on autopilot; customers are people and they expect to be treated like human beings. Now it is not always possible to answer every phone call the minute someone calls, or to have every product in stock when people need it, but the more human interaction you can build into your website the better your sales will be. To paraphrase that old saying about horses, “you can lead search traffic to your website, but you can’t make them order.”

Why Should Anybody Buy From You?

Ask yourself this simple question: why should anybody buy anything from you? You probably aren’t the only company that sells your product or service, and even if you are, there are most likely substitutes available from competitors.

When potential customers find you on Google they are also finding all your competitors. So unless you sell a totally unique, non-fungible (non substitutable) product, service or brand that is also the lowest priced on the market, then you best give people some compelling reason to buy from you.

The product we were looking for was available from a dozen different website businesses, spread all over the United States and they all sold the same product at the same price. In the final analysis we purchased from the supplier that was the furthest distance away in a time zone three hours earlier than us; but we purchased from that supplier because we were able to talk to a someone who answered all our questions in a friendly, intelligent, and engaging manner.

It’s what used to be called customer service before businesses were turned over to database programmers, number crunchers, and search savants who think of human interaction as something to be avoided.

The Human Touch Creates Confidence and Sales

Websites are a very efficient method of lead generation and potential sales as long as you engage your audience with a presentation delivered by a real person who explains as much as possible about the things you sell, and how you sell them. And that includes things like delivery, which is one of the major complaints and points-of-contention that online customers have. Nobody likes surprises, especially when they cost time and money.

Web sales success has little to do with features, benefits, or technical advancements, in fact a barrage of features and specifications is just as likely to confuse visitors, and paralyze their purchase decision. The one tactic that overcomes this problem, that inspires confidence in your advice, trust in your ability to deliver, and convinces people to purchase, is information presented by a real human being.

You Can’t Always Handle Things Personally

Understanding you cannot always be available, the next best thing is Web video. A video provides a complete, consistent, error-free, professional presentation of the information you want customers to receive. Hiring, training, and managing staff is expensive, and their handling of customers is often unreliable, resulting in a negative impression of your company.

Lest We Forget Tricky Dick

And that brings me to the Web entrepreneur who thinks that they are so charming and persuasive that they are going to be their own Web-video host.

Anybody who studies audience behavior is familiar with the classic case of the 1960 Presidential debate between Nixon and Kennedy. Most people who listened to the debate on the radio thought Nixon won, while the people who watched on television thought Kennedy won. This was a seminal example of how auditory and visual performance influences content, impression and response.

This lesson has been well learned by politicians but has somehow escaped the attention of business leaders and Web entrepreneurs.

Human Motivational Optimization

Web entrepreneurs’ obsession with search optimization, and their fascination with technical solutions to human problems, has created an e-commerce environment that is decidedly remote and unfriendly. Sales are a motivational exercise in people-problem solving: people buy things that fulfill physical, emotional, and psychological needs. The answer is to adopt a Human Motivational Optimization approach to the presentation of your website material.

What is Human Motivational Optimization? It is a mindset used for designing Web experiences for human beings, not just search engine spiders. Continue Reading »
What’s Wrong With E-Commerce Websites?

Just as soon as Google makes Google Chrome available, I’ll take a look and let you know my thoughts on Google entering the browser space. In the meantime, here’s a screenshot (floating around the blogosphere) so you know what it will look like.

NeeTeeVee reports Google is going to be adding video sharing tools to Google Apps for businesses this coming Monday. Paid users of Google Apps will be allowed to upload videos with no time restrictions but a maximum size per upload of 300 MB, for a total of 3GB per account and unlimited video views.

The tool is not going to give Google App users live video broadcasting or video conferencing capabilities, but users can tag, star and comment on videos. Video creators can also thumbnail important parts of the video, in order to highlight key points in the video. In addition, the videos can be embedded on other sites, used as a Google gadget and download an MPEG-4 version of the video.

Postscript: Google posted a press release with the official details on this new service:

Google Video for business is available now in English to Google Apps Premier Edition accounts at no additional cost. Each Google Apps Premier Edition domain gets 3GB of Video storage per user account. Existing Premier Edition administrators can enable Google Video for business immediately from the Google Apps control panel. A version for Google Apps Education Edition customers that allows faculty and staff to upload and share videos with students will be available on September 8 for free trial until March 9, 2009, at which point it will cost $10 per user, per year.