Archive for October, 2006

Fighting Spam and Winning

Thursday, October 26th, 2006

For over a year we’ve been black-listing spam hosts. This has been minimally effective - but some changes are in store to increase the effectiveness of our black list. One guy threatened to sue - until we mailed his spam email to his State Attorney General.

We did have two problems, however.

  1. We store the spam hosts for the spam and phish we receive in Microsoft Access, then upload the list dynamically to a MySQL database on our host. Later versions of Access (the shipping product for many years) has a bug in it that prevents this from working. Last January we worked with Microsoft engineers to get this working by switching in a dll from an Access version two levels back. Now Microsoft, with one of their “automatic updates” broke this again. We don’t know when or if this will be fixed. So we give you the list now in a static PDF form that we plan to update on weekends at:
    http://www.creatingnewworlds.org/stopspam.cfm.
    Hackers and Botnets can enjoy this free blacklist of illegal operators for their fun and games!

  2. The online tool we use to identify these hosts from the spam went down, probably from an attack from the bad guys. The tool is back up in a primitive form (http://www.samspade.org), so we can start trying to process our backlog with it.

We will also expand the ranking of our spam listing page. We’ve had great success in the past by using the blogs to create a blog swarm and build high traffic levels on pages. We will try that with this spam page listing now to get its traffic up.

If you don’t like this, sorry. The Bush Administration has been given the charge by Congress to stop and fine these guys. Apparently they aren’t doing it. Too many geldings and wimpys in Congress and the Administration. (You probably get to vote next month - vote a lot of these out.) The hosts have been treating this like a joke. That leaves it up to the users to stop it.

Join us in this war. Create your own black list and circulate it in through the spam blog comments to the hackers and bad guys. This eventually creates another botnet, but targeted at the bad guys. Get serious.

Posted in Blogging, Google, Search engine optimization, Spam | No Comments »

Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

Thinking of using Google Adwords? A new and updated version of our SEO book is now available at:
http://www.the-seobook.com.

The book is now 256 pages, and the PPC chapter is now expanded with more information for using Google Adwords for successful selling. Why not order it today? If you are thinking of selling something online during the holiday season and you are using a new web site, you’ll need Google Adwords to get the word out by then. Google will have trouble optimizing a new site for any quality ranking by the holidays unless you are using Adwords.

Posted in Adwords - Google, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

Google and PageRank

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

If you have installed Google’s Toolbar on your site, you will see a new menu bar with a PageRank icon at the top. It returns a value of 0-10 for any page you are viewing in your browser. The implication is that the higher this number, the more important your page is in Google.

PageRank is a value based on Google’s early algorithm for ranking pages. The concept was based on the observation of the founders of Google that in various printed research papers certain papers were referenced more than others. If a papers was referenced many, many times by other papers the referenced paper was considered an authority. The more back references to a paper, the more important the referenced paper must be. PageRank borrowed the same concept. The more web pages referencing a given page, the more important the referenced page must be. This early algorithm was patented and used in referencing web pages and defining authority sites. The more pages of high quality linking to your site, the higher your PageRank.

Unfortunately, those creating web pages were soon abusing this algorithm to force ranking on their own pages. To see the problem, try searching Google on failure. Today the algorithm is only one of over a hundred factors that control the ranking of results in Google. Moreover, the PageRank Google does use is calculated dynamically and is actually has a range much, much larger than the 0-10 you see in the toolbar. Periodically the value is reduced to a 0-10 value and projected in the toolbar. This is a logarithmic reduction - in other words, it’s a LOT harder to get that toolbar from 5 to 6 than from 2 to 3. The actual toolbar value, then, is a delayed value, is not based on any specific keyword phrase, and only one of many factors Google uses in ranking your page. It’s not a red herring and is important, but don’t aim too hard for it to the exclusion of other factors.

For good ranking, be sure you are targeting strong keyword phrases, develop your site as an authority on those phrases so that people link to you naturally, keep the site dynamic and constantly changing, and strengthen the interactive elements of the site.

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

Organic Engines or Paid?

Friday, October 6th, 2006

One question I often get is which way should I go - aim for the free or organic search engines or purchase a PPC (pay-per-click) ad in Google’s Adwords, Micorosft Live, or the Yahoo Search Engine Marketing?

The answer is generally yes; that is, go for both. The organic engines are free, but in Google it often takes 6-8 months to position a new site with any level of credibility. The advantage, however, is that’s free (except for your time for the optimization). As a result, your ROI (return-on-investment) is infinite. Traffic can vary with time, sometimes dramatically.

The PPC engines cost you something, but you are immediately on the Internet. There are other advantages as well. PPC engines such as Google’s Adwords or the Microsoft Live, are excellent places to test your site with various keyword phrases. With Microsoft Live, the cost is low but the traffic will also be low. Google’s Adwords will cost more, but as your traffic goes up the cost goes down and traffic starts at a higher level. In addition, the paid advertising includes multiple tools for measuring how your site is working. Finally, your paid ad is a trusted site to the search engines. A human being has looked at it.

Expect that with either route your traffic will gnerally be higher with the organic engines. Searchers put more trust in the free ads. One top ad I often see in the Yahoo PPC (which drives the CNN advertising) is from a company with very poor ethics and morals. As a result, the Yahoo PPC is really shouting at me that you can’t trust their PPC advertisements. This is less likely in Google, as the PPC cost goes down as the traffic goes up. A corrupt company will not get much traffic. This is not true in Yahoo, where it you have enough money you can buy the position you want.

Why not try both organic and paid? You might even keep two sites - one optimized for the free engines, another for your Adwords campaigns. Remember, unlike with classified ads in a magazine or newspaper, you pay nothing until they click through to your site. You pay for the click-throughs, not the impressions (ad listing).

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

The Importance of Branding

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

Branding is very important in web site marketing and the success of your site. A brand is a collection of images, text, symbols, logos, slogans, and design that represent a company or individual. It is so important in marketing that companies often trademark their brands (particularly logos or the company name) to protect the identity of the company. You purchase items at stores, often paying more for a branded product because you know and trust the brand.

This means that in selling a service or product with a web site, your site needs to brand the product or service. If your company is new, you show strive and work toward the branding of your product or service, using your web site to help with this.

Brands protect you from becoming a commodity. So avoid commoditization at all costs.
Sir Anthony O’Reilly, former Heinz CEO

I began to realize this with my own sites when someone mentioned to me that “I was all over the Internet”. I replied that was essential for my business. I had to show I could do it to build trust in those who would be my clients.

The real shocker came when my brother emailed and said a search on my name showed almost 400,000 pages, with my sites at the top. I was even more shocked when I searched on my name and found Google returned just under 4 million pages, and the top five were all referencing me or my sites. Google had essentially branded my name without me even knowing it!

What this means for your web site is that you need to decide how to brand your product or service and how the web site will carry that brand. For example, a city needs to brand their image, and then their web site can carry that image. For my own town of Tualatin, a major Bridgeport shopping center effectively branded the community. It was so successfully, in fact, that land near the shopping center has become very important to other developers. Restaurants and other stores are taking up the name and riding in on the brand, enhancing it further..

Posted in Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Web Design | No Comments »