From time to time I’m reminded that everyone starts at zero when it comes to web design and I try to pass on a tip or two to help those who are creating a site for the first or second time or are maybe versed enough to be considered novice at html but know nothing of php or other scripting languages. My tip in this post is: Stop using your email address as your means of contact on your website. My reason is selfish… I want to stop the spammers from obtaining more addresses to spam.

To that end I found a very simple program that will generate a php file to allow you to use a form on your site and not have your email address harvested. I tried it out and it was easy to use, has a nice help section and offers a free as well as paid version. The features are very cool and allow a beginner or novice to create sophisticated forms that can print to a database, auto respond and much more. The program is called The PHP Form Wizard.
As with any free program I offer this advice. If you use it and you are satisfied, purchase it and help out the developers.

I’m not a cat lover so maybe that’s why I thought this was funny. I would encourage anyone who puts stuff on their cat to send in a photo, hmmm… I wonder if putting my dog on a cat would count.

All too often when speaking with potential clients the subject of guaranteed rankings is raised. While the sales pitch is nice the reality is no one can guarantee a site can be ranked in a certain position for a certain keyword unless the ranking includes pay per click results. Sure I’ve read the sites that “guarantee” results and if you carefully read their pitch you’ll see dozens of loopholes that allow them to make the claim of guaranteed rankings. So let’s briefly put them under the microscope.

One litmus test I like to apply to any SEO company is where do they rank themselves? So taking that test and doing a search for guaranteed rankings on Google I used the top results. (Sorry, I’m not going to reveal the site, as the point of this post is not about bad mouthing a competitor) The title tag on the homepage of the first result, which should contain the keywords or phrase that the page is going after, is “Search Engine Rankings | Search Engine Ranking”. Doing a search on Google for the term Search Engine Rankings and then Search Engine Ranking pulls zero top 50 results for the top ranked site that guarantees rankings. Take that test to Yahoo and the results are the same, MSN does return front page results for the plural version and page 4 for the singular version. So if they were clients who had been told they would have guaranteed rankings for their main keywords and saw these results what do you think the reaction would be? Sure, they could probably show results on several of the secondary engines they list as part of their guarantee. Engines like All The Web or Lycos. While traffic is certainly generated from these type engines a consumer looking for SEO is expecting results on the big three and our conversations would tell you that most of them want to be front page, excuse me #1 on Google.

So the top ranked company for the term Guaranteed Rankings has nailed down a front page listing for one term on MSN and zero in the top fifty on Google and Yahoo, since I’m scoring this test I’ll give it a 30.

Another guarantee several companies use is performance based. “You only pay for top results”. Again this sounds great but let’s look at that a bit more closely. The guarantee is usually for a set number of keywords. While the number varies, 20 seems to be a frequent number that is used. So in essence if you only do pay for front page results and they are only concentrating on twenty keywords and if they perform twice as good as the example above you are still only ranking a few keywords on a couple of the main engines. Now you could probably convince yourself that 4 or 5 top 10 rankings is great but consider that a effective optimization company would be working on hundreds of keywords for your site that while most of them are not the highly competitive keywords they are also likely to be significantly less competitively allowing the site they are optimizing for to receive top rankings on probably most if not all of the main engines and the subsequent traffic from that wide of a spread. That is and always has been the true power of optimization, getting rankings on many keywords not just a few.

So if you’re set on getting a guarantee you may get lucky and have tremendous success, in fact I hope you do but whatever the results make sure you understand upfront exactly what kind of guarantee you’re getting and see what the company you’re considering working with has done for themselves… like the old saying goes “If you can’t do it for yourself how can I expect you to do it for me?”

Do you want to test us? Our main keywords are Search Engine Optimization Dallas, SEO Dallas, Search Engine Marketing Dallas, Web Design Dallas and Website Design Dallas.

Clicklab, a Web analytics and click fraud protection service, recently released research suggesting over 50 percent of all clicks coming from pay per click advertising are fraudulent. If true this number is far more significant than many industry insiders had previously thought and up to 30% more than previously published studies have shown and certainly more than Google or Yahoo, the two major players in the ppc arena, would admit to. Although some might recall that Google did underline the problem to the Securities and Exchanges Commission as a potential risk that investors should worry about during their IPO filing.

The study also revealed there are two categories of fraud, competitive where the clicks are meant to deplete a competitors daily ad budget and affiliate fraud where the clicks are meant to increase compensations.

So how are they doing it? Usually a program is created that will go to Google or Yahoo! and click on the same sponsored link. These programs then click through to the landing page which triggers the advertising or affiliate fee, abandon the session and then repeat. The same is true of the B2B offenders but their models will identify the competitor’s ad and start the cycle.

So how can you protect yourself against this abuse? Well there is no failsafe method yet but we have used tracking tools to help identify problem accounts and several are available through third party vendors. Some examples of this service are:

• Clicklab
• Adwatcher
• WhosClickWho

Besides using a tracking system, it is essential you stay in communication with the engine on which the fraud is occurring. Despite the negative impression pay per click fraud is having, Google & Yahoo! are committed to providing their service on the up and up and from our experience they will investigate all claims of fraud, they’ve got to, this is their cash cow especially for Google.

As more and more major corporations use ppc to advertise their wares this problem would seem to have a shorter rather than longer life. Rest assured when they start recognizing the dollars they’ve lost from fraud, they certainly won’t hesitate to use their influence in the political world to put an end to click fraud.

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Choosing keywords is one of the most important steps in the optimization process yet too many times I speak with people who only think their main keywords are important. I then like to ask them how they might search for a service or product on their own. It’s amazing to hear what terms they would use to find someone elses website but they don’t think to do the same when it comes to finding theirs.

One exercise I like to take when developing a keyword list is to look at the product or service from the viewpoint of many people who would be searching for different reasons. Like:

• Product or Service Specific Information
• Price Comparison
• Locale
• Buy Now

And so on depending on what it is I’m developing the list for. This exercise always produces variations that help me with a more rounded list which in return will bring a variety of visitors to the site and increase conversion rates.

So let’s try this briefly using Widgets as a product.
Product Information - Let’s say we want to find out the latest model of Widget available, so a term might be “latest model Widget” or if we want to know the history of Widgets the term might be “history of widgets”
Price Comparison - A simple one eh? “Compare Widget prices” or “Best Widget price” or “Price comparison Widgets”
Locale - “Widgets Dallas” or “Widgets Dallas TX” or “Widgets Texas”
Buy Now - “buy Widgets” or “online Widgets store” or “Widgets for sale”
Of course with each of these you should exhaust the possibilities but in the end you should have a very good set of “secondary” keywords that are very targeted and should translate into increased traffic and actions.

A large part of the challenge in managing a successful pay per click campaign is generating a conversion rate on keywords that translates to a bottom line result. While most marketers feel lucky to achieve a 10% conversion rate, The Info Group considers that a standard. iTKO developers of LISA a automated testing solution for SOA, websites, applications and more, has already seen their ppc campaign achieve double digit conversion rates on their keywords.

Childrens Medical Center is a internationally known hospital and support center and we are honored they have chosen The Info Group to provide search engine marketing services for them. More news to come!

The choice between a positive or negative ROI on a marketing campaign is a no-brainer right? Maybe not if you are convinced that top rankings for your big keywords are the only way to go. The reality is and always has been, at least as long as I’ve been involved with search engine marketing (1998), that the highest ROI keywords were the ones the client never thought of or at a minimum considered secondary keywords and not worth much effort.

Search terms are used in the same thought process online as people use them when shopping in a brick and mortar store. For instance if you were a sales clerk and a customer walked into your establishment and said I’m wanting to buy a dingy flopper, that would be a pretty clear indication you were going to make a sale. However if a customer walks in and says something like, I’m interested in learning about your dingy floppers, you would also have a clear indication not of a impending sale but that a sale is possible and will require you to educate and apply your best sales tactics to turn this potential customer into a paying customer. So this same thought process should apply online. When you are trying to decide what keywords you need to target you need to add intention into the equation. While you do want exposure on your “main” keywords, serious thought and effort needs to be put into all of your keywords. The true power of search engine marketing has always been bulk. The company that is gaining visitors from hundreds or thousand of keywords is converting more than the company gaining visitors from just a few keywords and statistics bear that statement out over and over again.

So while getting top rankings is an ego boost and will generate traffic, the more important question is are those keywords earning you a return on your investment? With search engine optimization becoming the norm and with only 10 slots on the front page of search engines, it’s time to look beyond egos and concentrate on what will really take your business to the top an effective overall search marketing strategy which delivers results that affect the bottom line.

We’ve all seen those ads or received emails trying to sell you hundreds if not thousands or millions of backlinks to your site all in a matter of minutes. Well just like the emails that promise you millions of dollars if you’ll just put up a few thousand, it’s too good to be true. Link building like every other aspect of an effective search engine optimization campaign requires research, time and patience.

It’s no secret that one part of the three main search engine algorithms (Google, Yahoo & MSN) is link popularity, or who is linking to you and how relevant is that link and how much weight will it be given. So to think that by simply buying links to your site is the magic bullet is a big mis-calculation. Let’s look at what should go into an effective link building strategy.

• Anchor Text - Yes, it’s critical that you “say” the right thing in the links that point to your page. Although this is not always under your control for those links that you can generate that do allow you to determine your anchor text it’s essential that you use your keywords in the text. So just as you’ve done when optimizing your meta tags or body content, consult your keyword list and develop short, keyword rich anchor text options to use when soliciting links.
• Research - Find sites that are relevant to your site, identify a page within their site to ask for a link to your site and then contact the site owner as ask them. Ok, you’re probably going to be rejected more times than not but if you’re site offers complimentary content, if the content is original and of value, you’ll be surprised how many site owners would be willing to offer you a link as a value to their visitors. Keep in mind, sites that are more popular will have a greater impact on the value of your link than sites of less popularity.
• Offer something - A simple link from a site may not be enough for a site owner so you might offer an article that is content rich which will be of value to his site and also allow you to gain that link via a signature box or if the site owner is generous maybe even links throughout the article.
• Time - It’s going to take time to not only identify sites that fit your theme but also to communicate and gain those links. If you go the article route you’ll also need to write those articles so your timeframe has increased even more.
• Patience - Once links are obtained you’ve got to now wait for them to be recognized by the engines. MSN is fairly quick at identifying backlinks, Yahoo is usually not too far behind and Google usually takes much longer.

So the next time you pull the credit card out to buy those 1,000,000,000 backlinks, think again, the chance of those having any major effect at all is minimal and even if they do, it won’t be long before one of the engines realizes what’s up and suddenly you’re left with no backlinks.