Search Engine Optimization

StarSoftX, Another Copyright Violation and Pay Pal Scam

A few months ago we had a problem with a website which had pirated our content, and was using it to perpetrate a PayPal fraud (see the following posts: "SCAM ALERT!!!!! Beware of InsyncSoft.com" 3/29/2004; "How To Avoid Internet Scams" 3/30/2004; "InsyncSoft, Doteasy, and Plagiarism" 4/5/2004; and "Doteasy Hosting, and Copyright Issues" 4/14/2004). The content replaced our name with that of the fake company's, and supplied fake contact information, but was otherwise literally identical to our own site. At that time, we attempted to get the hosting company Doteasy to take down the violating site, to no avail. Despite the obvious and open theft, which was in direct violation of their own posted policies, Doteasy refused to help us.

About one week ago, it was brought to our attention (by an investigator working out of Florida) that it had happened again. This time, the fake company was named StartSoftX, and was being hosted on RightDNS.com. Without much hope of success, I emailed RightDNS.com, explained the situation, and asked them to take down the offending website. To my surprise, I received an email almost immediately requesting details to verify the theft, such as what pages on that site were stolen, and what pages on our site they were stolen from. I replied, and the next day was shocked but extremely pleased to find an email from RightDNS.com saying they had taken down the offending website and notified the owner of why.

This blog post serves 2 purposes: 1) To again issue a warning against internet scams and to let everyone know that the PayPal "process payment" scam is alive, well, and still claiming victims; and 2) To commend RightDNS.com for ethical behavior, and prompt and courteous service.

Anyone who is seeking a way to earn money at home, and is tempted by the great offers they see for internet jobs, is encouraged to read "How To Avoid Internet Scams", posted 3/30/2004. There are legitimate business opportunities on the internet but a little caution goes a long way.

Anyone who is seeking a reputable hosting company is encouraged to consider RightDNS.com. They have proven themselves to be responsible, responsive, and very ethical, and if they treat an outside business with that much respect, then it should follow logically that their customers will receive comparable if not superior treatment.

As a further note of interest, it seems that my copywriting is extremely popular in the copyright violation community. Just to see the results, I typed in a complete sentence from the index page of our software development site into a search on Yahoo! 5 results show an exact match -- only one of them is our own website. The others are all copyright violators: KnowledgeCentric, Vesta Soft, Star Soft, and Atrium Soft. We will continue to pursue all available action against these thieves to protect our intellectual material, but the damage done to our company is mainly by reputation, if anyone should think we were somehow associated with the con artists. A more permanent solution is to put an end to the scam, but that depends on the informed consumer. The only way that scams end is when they stop being profitable.

SEO – A Short Course

Anyone who does business on the internet today has heard of SEO (search engine optimization), and many have tried their hand at it themselves. Most find, however, that they don’t get much response from their efforts. This leads to a dilemma for a start-up business: Is there any way to capitalize on internet traffic without paying big bucks for a professional SEO?

The answer is, yes and no. As with anything in business, you can’t get something for nothing, and most people who own top listings for competitive search engine keywords have paid dearly for that privilege. However, there are some simple things that can help make your new website more friendly not only to search engines, but also to your customers:

1. Remember that your customers always come first! Make your site easy to use and easy to buy from, and you will win a loyal following. Simple, straightforward sites perform best all around. Clearly labeled navigation, informative page content, secure online purchasing and ease of ordering are some key elements to a successful website.

2. The KISS rule: Keep It Simple, Silly. Remember that not every potential customer has broadband internet, many surf the web behind firewalls which will not allow downloads, many have vision problems, and many do not have sound cards. Your pages should load quickly and cleanly in any browser (the most commonly used resolution is 800 x 600), your content and navigation should be in a larger type (font size 2 or greater, 10px or greater), and don’t rely on Flash movies, sound, or downloads.

3. Your index page is hands-down your most important page, for search engines and visitors alike. You have 10 seconds or less to convince someone to stay on your website. Give them a brief text summary of your company, your website, and your products/services. Two or three paragraphs is plenty; save the detail for the inner pages.

4. Do use meta tags, but use them properly! Meta tags consist of the title, description, and keywords, although there are other tags possible. For SEO, the 3 listed are the most important. Keep them simple and brief. The search engines that still use them have character limits, and also have strict spam rules, so don’t use a keyword more than once. Be specific: “insurance” is unlikely to get you any rankings, but “California life insurance” might, as it is a less competitive term.

5. Don’t use frames. Frames are a convenience for designers, but most search engines hate them, and so do most site visitors.

6. Don’t use a form for your landing page. Forms have little or no useful text content, so they won’t help your rankings (unless you want to rank well for “name and address”!). In general, they do not convert well to sales either. If you want a form on the first page, make sure you still have a couple of paragraphs of informative text.

7. Make sure your site has at least 5 pages of content. Search engines reward you for “site depth”. Many internet consumers will look for certain pages such as the About Us page and Testimonials; these help lend credibility which helps convert to sales, while giving you solid site content. And don’t forget your site map!

8. Every page should, ideally, link to every other page. This makes the site very easy for your visitors to use, and gives the search engine spiders a road map. When possible, increase the value of your text links: Instead of “Contact Us”, use “Contact the Women’s Network”.

9. If your site is dynamic, make sure you still have a few static pages. Many search engines still can’t “crawl” dynamic pages, so they can’t give you ranking for them. Your index page and your basic informative pages should be in static text.

10. Avoid anything “tricky” like hidden text, pages of irrelevant links, or spamming your site in any way. These tricks are well known, and if you’re caught, you will be sentenced to search engine Siberia!

Following these simple rules won’t guarantee you top search engine rankings (in fact, very few things can do that!) but they will help you to create a website that is informative, easy for your customers to use, and contains the key elements that search engines require.

SEO offers some of the best ROI in advertising for many industries, when done properly. If the time comes when you are ready to go after internet market more aggressively, don’t be afraid to hire a professional to help you out. Search engines change the rules at a dizzying pace, and only a professional can really invest the time needed to keep up. Just do your homework first; as with many other industries, internet marketing has its share of companies that make unrealistic promises. A little research can save you from a bad experience, and make sure you get the most value for your money!

Once Upon A Time At Yahoo!...

Webmasters and online merchants today are in a somewhat unique position: Many ranking reports look great overall, with rankings all over many of the search engines. Traffic, although down in some cases, is still holding steady at respectable levels.

So why can't they convert to sales?

There is one obvious omission in many ranking reports: Yahoo! Web, the primary search results for Yahoo! at this time. Yahoo! has gone through so many changes, many people have found themselves disappearing off their listings. Obviously this is bad, but that's not all. Yahoo! spent the past couple of years quietly buying up search engines. If you don't get Yahoo! Web, then you also don't get All The Web, AltaVista, and in most cases Lycos. You also don't get MSN, which is currently using their results. Yahoo!, MSN and Google command more than 90% of the search engine traffic, and get roughly equal numbers of visitors. Lose Yahoo! and you've lost 2/3 of the traffic. MSN has been promising to unveil their new, proprietary search spider for months, but so far, no sign of it.

So why does a site lose Yahoo! Web, when they've never had a problem on Yahoo! before? In order to understand, a little Yahoo! history lesson is required:

Once upon a time, you submitted your site to the Yahoo! Directory, and it would show up in the search results. True, it cost $200, and then $300, and then they made that $300 a recurring annual fee. But you still had the listing, and it was almost always worth far more in sales than you invested in it.

One day, Yahoo! decided to use Google results as their primary search results. Yahoo! Directory became a separate set of results, although if your site appeared in both Yahoo! Directory and in Google, then the Directory description would be the one used with the Google results. Slightly confusing, but what it boiled down to was, if you had Google, you had your Yahoo! listing.

A day came when Yahoo! decided that they did not wish to use Google for any of their search results, so instead they started using the newly-purchased Inktomi database as their primary search results. Inktomi was a paid annual subscription, so it seemed that the days of any free Yahoo! listing were over. However, Inktomi's fee was very modest, and if you paid it, voila! There you were, in the search results!

Still with me? So far, so good. Still pretty easy to have a Yahoo! search result listing.

But then Yahoo! decided that Inktomi should change, and become more than it was before, and introduced Overture Site Match. This was an interesting metamorphosis. Yahoo! had purchased Overture, and Site Match is a Pay Per Click program managed through PPC giants Overture. However, it consisted initially of all the Inktomi results, although it was structured almost identically to LookSmart. As they expired, they had to renew under the new terms.

But Yahoo! had enough love to spread to more than one set of search results, so they also commenced with using their own free spider. Free listings were once again available! This was good, but also confusing. The free listings were to be combined with the Site Match listings. No preference would be given to Site Match listings, raising the question of just why you should pay for it? Site Match was expensive and unproven, so SharpNET (in company with just about every other major SEO firm) chose to see what the free crawler could offer.

So, the current state on Yahoo! is that in order to be listed in their primary search results, one of two things must happen: You must subscribe to Site Match, or their spider must pick you up. There is no guarantee of ranking either way, and many grumblings have been heard about the poor quality of search results (many spam sites appear to be getting listed). The spider crawls so slowly (every 8 weeks, instead of the usual 3 - 4) that it took weeks to see if tweaks to the optimization were doing the job, or if something new had to be tried. In fact, it wasn't until this month that ranking reports began to reflect work I'd done back in June.

So what is the verdict? It's still a guessing game but a few trends seem to be emerging:
1) Branding sites perform perform well even without "SEO friendly" domain names
2) Older sites perform better than younger ones, even if they aren't great sites
3) Once you grab a ranking or two, you're in -- it may take a couple or three more months, but suddenly those will explode

What does this mean to the webmaster? It means type your exact URL into Yahoo!, and see what comes up in response. Find the pages that the spider is already looking at, and optimize those in the normal way. And don't be surprised if your carefully constructed SEO site doesn't perform up to the level of a competitor's 3-page (2 of those pages being forms), 4 year old spammed site (the one they forgot even existed).

And again, remember: In internet marketing, the wise never rely on one sole source of advertising. Don't count solely on Google, or Yahoo! Web, or email, or any other single technique. Because you never know when it's going to be abruptly taken away from you.

Another Major Google Ranking Algorithm Change Imminent

Looks like we're in for another wild Google ride, and if early indications are accurate, this one may rival the November 2003 Google ranking algorithm update for shaking up the rankings and shaking down some of the top place holders.

Google, as any good SEO company knows, rewards sites for content. Specifically, for relevant, informative, non-repetitive and routinely updated text content. This matches well with their stated desire to give the highest rankings to the most relevant sites. Therefore it would seem that the sites with the most pages would rank the highest, and in many categories, that has seemed to be true.

The problem is, having what one person described as a "mega-site" does not necessarily mean you have a relevant and informative website. In fact, many people have pointed out that unless that huge site is a directory or a major discussion forum along the lines of WebProWorld, repetition is inevitable. Some, most or all of those pages are so repetitive as to be considered spam. These pages are ranked all over Google, and are crowding out many smaller, worthy sites.

Webmasters and administrators are now seeing a new Googlebot crawling their sites, and are reporting associated changes in ranking. The changes would appear to be good news for the owners, webmaster and SEO's of smaller websites: Webmaster of "mega-sites" are reporting dropping rankings, while webmasters of smaller sites are reporting improvements.

From the point of view of most webmasters and most web users, this is almost certainly good news! Smaller businesses lack the resources to create giant websites, pay for hosting, and maintain them. Web users don't appreciate seeing a bunch of repetitive spam pages in the results when they are trying to find unique, useful information.

The November update last year led to some major changes in website design and marketing, including the demise of most link farms and other exploits. If the new Googlebot performs as expected, this too could lead to some very positive changes on the World Wide Web. Sites would most likely be more streamlined, eliminating the padding and getting straight to the point. Repetitive pages would disappear. Hopefully, search results would yield more unique information and less repetition.

As both an internet marketer and an internet user, I welcome anything that can cut down on spam. If this new ranking algorithm works, it is to be hoped that search engine users will respond favorably, and that MSN and Yahoo! are taking notes.

Yahoo! Listings: Where Do They Come From, and What Do They Mean?

Deciphering the puzzle that is Yahoo! these days is no easy trick for the search engine marketer. Yahoo! used to be a very straightforward proposition: You submitted your site, paid the fee, and hopefully got listed. It was the most-used, most popular search engine in the world, so a good listing pretty much guaranteed the kind of success that fueled the dot com boom.

Yahoo! today is a completely different beast. Although it clings to its status as a very popular search engine, it is fighting neck and neck with Google and MSN for first place, and many smaller engines have gained significant ground in the number of users. Getting a Yahoo! listing certainly can help your website, but just what is a Yahoo! listing these days, how do you go about getting a good one, and just how much good does it do?

LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT YAHOO! LISTINGS:

1. Yahoo! Directory: The old soldier, Yahoo! Directory listings used to be the coveted listings that could make or break your internet business. Although you had to pay for them, they were worth their weight in gold. Getting a listing was more than just paying your fee; in order to be accepted, the site had to pass through a rigorous human editorial process, and in the old days, Yahoo! editors could and did reject sites -- it happened to me several times. Before submitting, you had to make sure that all your links worked, that your site had some depth and was useful, that it loaded up in all different browsers (I had 3 different browsers on my desktop to check sites with), and that it wasn't a copy of any other site. These listings were the first ones that showed up in a web search on Yahoo!, and a first page listing all but guaranteed tons of traffic.

Today, Yahoo! Directory still charges a fee. Sites still have to pass through a human editorial process. However, what do you really get from your listing today? Yahoo! defaults their search to the web results, not to their directory results, so your listing does not automatically get seen. If a searcher does not click on the "Directory" tab, there's a decent chance they'll never see your site at all, no matter how good the Directory rankings.

For all intents and purposes, a Yahoo! Directory listing today would seem to be useful primarily as a highly relevant backlink. Not a trivial advantage, but paying $300 annually for a backlink is probably not cost-effective for smaller businesses.

2. Yahoo! web results: In the old days, once you ran out of Yahoo! Directory matches for a search, it would default to web results provided by Google. Then, they made the Google results their primary search results. Last spring, they severed their relationship with Google and started using Inktomi results. Finally, a month later, they started using a combination of Inktomi results (until your annual Inktomi subscription expires, and you can't renew it), "organic" search results (based on Inktomi's Slurp! search spider), and the new Overture Site Match (a sort of PPC hybrid that functions much like LookSmart, and replaced Inktomi).

These listings are a source of great frustration for internet marketers and searchers alike. The results of many searches are heavily spammed, with a sadly high percentage of bad sites showing up on the first page of search results. Excellent sites that would seem to meet all of the listing criteria are often buried with no explanation. No one can figure out if the spam sites are coming from the old Inktomi database (which had often been accused of being spam-friendly), from the Slurp! search spider (also frequently accused of being spam-friendly), or from the paid Overture Site Match listings (which no one can really figure out).

Yahoo! encourages everyone to submit to Overture Site Match, but in return they offer no guarantees of listings or rankings. They insist that Site Match results carry no more weight than organic results. That being the case, there is precious little incentive for people to sign up for Site Match, which is a paid inclusion program.

On the other hand, numerous posts in industry newsletters and forums are citing cases of people who had paid for Site Match listings for a while and then cancelled them. Universally, they say that as soon as they cancelled Site Match, they lost their top rankings. Their sites were still listed, but virtually invisible. This would imply that doing Site Match does in fact guarantee you some rankings despite Yahoo!'s claims to the contrary -- although the other thing frequently mentioned is that people have paid for Site Match and seen absolutely nothing in return.

IS IT WORTH PAYING FOR A YAHOO! LISTING OF ANY TYPE?

That's a judgement call, and your advertising budget will determine the answer.

Site Match is getting mixed reviews at best, with many people very unhappy with the cost and lack of results for their money, along with the ambiguity of the listing in general -- or in other words, what exactly are we paying for here?

Directory results are lonely orphans, relegated to a back corner and only pulled in when they also have a strong ranking in the web results. If that is the case, the description given by the human editor is the one that will show up, and this could have the advantage over a spidered description. They also still show up on other search results, including Google, because it's such a highly relevant backlink. However, again, the $300 annual investment is not going to pay off for many smaller businesses. Compared to other available forms of advertising such as co-registration, for example, it simply doesn't give the same return on investment.

THE FUTURE OF YAHOO!

Yahoo!'s future seems cloudy at this time. Rumblings of discontent with their search results are growing, and not just in the industry. Average internet users, formerly loyal to Yahoo!, are starting to complain about the poor quality search results they are getting in many cases. A few are even starting to mention moving over to Google, and other lesser-known engines, in an attempt to find better results. If they find what they are looking for, they'll tell their friends, and pretty soon you've got an anti-Yahoo! viral marketing campaign going on which could seriously hurt Yahoo! down the line. This is particularly true if MSN's new proprietary search spider ever gets launched, and lives up to its hype once it does.

It would seem wise for Yahoo! to start taking some of this seriously, and put some serious effort into improving their search results. Update the Slurp! spider so it's less spam-friendly, and so that it crawls more often (8 weeks is a bit excessive). Be more critical with the Site Match listings. If they want Site Match to stay alive, they need to find some way to encourage people to invest in those listings, which for a start means being very clear about what benefits you get through Site Match that are not available to you in any other way.

And finally, revive the Directory results in some way and make them more prominent, and more relevant. There is obviously a value to be had from having sites reviewed and approved by human editors. Yahoo! Directory will die a slow death if it doesn't get some kind of life support soon, and that would be a sad end to something that used to provide one of the most valuable search resources on the web.

Turbulent Times in Internet Marketing, and the Rise of Co-Registration

It is certainly an interesting time to be in the field of internet marketing. "Interesting", of course, can be both good and bad. The past few months have seen some drastic changes in the marketplace, even by speedy internet standards.

To summarize the current internet marketing trends:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), long the linch-pin of internet marketing, has become even more challenging at present due to the instability of Yahoo! Web results, and MSN search results. This instability is due to the fact that both search engines abandoned their former partnerships (Yahoo! with Google, MSN with LookSmart) in favor of creating their own search spiders. Unfortunately, these spiders are not yet ready, so both search engines are making do with what I would term "patchwork" search results. Rankings are highly volatile, and many consumers are not pleased with the inconsistent results.

2. Email marketing continues to fight a battle for existence, as the prevalence of unwanted spam, or bulk, email continues to draw ire from email users worldwide, resulting in a spate of anti-spam legislation. This legislation, unfortunately, has an adverse affect on many legitimate opt in email marketing campaigns. In addition, fear of spam has led to 2 factors that threaten the future of opt in email: 1) Many companies are afraid to send out legitimate campaigns, for fear of being branded as spammers; and 2) Many consumers are reluctant to sign up for ANY offer, for fear their email address will be sold and sold again, and they will drown in spam.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC), or pay per performance, continues to be a very stable industry, capable of generating consistent business for those who pay for the sponsor results. Overture formerly ruled this world, but now Google AdWords has made strong inroads as well, establishing themselves as viable competitors.

4. Co-registration, known familiarly as co-reg, is climbing rapidly up the ladder and going from neglected last resort, to a strong contender. Co-reg now has firmly established affiliate networks that generate thousands of visitors each day. Due to the cooperative nature of the program, companies can advertise and generate leads for a fraction of the cost of a dedicated lead generation campaign. As long as co-reg maintains its integrity, look for this to become more and more popular.

As always, the key to success for internet marketing companies and their clients is to remain abreast of current trends, and to remain flexible in their outlook and open to new approaches.

www.sharpnetsolutions.com

SEO, Email Marketing, and Ethics: Part II

Yesterday I discussed some of the issues that plague email marketing, in terms of what is "ethical" or "unethical", and how some tactics are perceived both inside the industry and outside of it.

Although the term "spam" is most often associated (negatively) with email marketing, it's just as prevalent in search engine optimization (SEO). In one form or another, people have been spamming the search engines for almost as long as SEO has been in existence! Common spam techniques past and present include: Spammed domain names (www.spam-spam-spamspam-spam.com); spammed meta tags ("spam keyword spam keyword spam spam keyword); spammed text ("we offer spam, spam, spam, spam and spam"); doorway pages (spam site 1, spam site 2, spam site 3... spam site 3,742...); hidden text (if this background was black, you wouldn't see all the hidden spamspamspamspamspam!); and link farms ("here's a list of 831 totally unrelated and worthless websites we've linked to!"). The one thing they all have in common is that all of them exist solely to try to fool the search engines into giving top ranking to a website that might otherwise go unnoticed.

However, although many of those techniques are annoying, are they necessarily unethical? Granted, search engines punish you for them these days, and most visitors aren't thrilled by them either, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're "wrong". There is nothing technically unethical about buying a spammed domain name, provided the site actually offers that product or service. Spammed meta tags became so common that most spiders don't even read tags anymore, and after all they don't affect the visual appearance of a website. Spammed text content probably does more harm than good, because with a large number of quality sites available, most web surfers aren't going to waste their time digging through poorly written, obviously spammed content to find what they want. Hidden text doesn't hurt the visitor because by definition, most will never even know it exists. Link farms? Worthless, in a way, but harmless basically. Three pages of links you don't care about doesn't really harm the rest of the site. One could even argue the same for doorway pages: Who cares if multiple versions of a website exist, as long as they really do offer the product or service?

The problems arose because some of these sites did NOT really offer the products or services, or did not offer good quality compared to others. However, they choked those worthier sites out of the top rankings by employing every trick in the book to grab 7 of the top 10 placements on any given search engine. Search engines did not appreciate being exploited, and web surfers howled. The spam techniques were considered unethical at that point, because they were actively working against the stated purpose of the search engines (to provide useful and relevant search results) and the stated desire of web surfers (again, useful and relevant search results).

Enter the infamous "re-indexing", where search engines not only shake up their search results, but frequently tweak their ranking algorithms as well, in their ongoing effort to keep one step ahead of (or behind?) the exploits. Spammed meta tags were one of the first to go, along with spammed text content and spammed domain names. Hidden text was next on the block. Link farms are currently receiving the same treatment. Far from being beneficial, these tactics will now, at best, do nothing to help your site, and at worst can get your website(s) blacklisted.

However, many techniques still exist that exploit various aspects of search engine technology, one of the best-known being cloaking. Whether or not it is unethical can be difficult to say, although from the point of view of the search engine, it breaks their rules, and hence MUST be considered unethical. For the user, as long as they get relevant and useful results, that's a harder call to make. SEO professionals, by definition, try to get the best possible rankings for their clients, and the more they get, the better. Therefore, it could be argued that there's nothing unethical about just doing their jobs.

In my opinion, stated repeatedly in this blog, the best policy is to stick as close to the search engine guidelines as possible, and to offer a quality website. Don't break the rules, and don't encourage others to do so. The guidelines are in place for very sound reasons in most cases, and they have a great deal to do with site relevance and usability. Obviously, the soundest approach is to make sure that your website is, in fact, relevant and user-friendly! Otherwise, all the rankings in the world will not help you sell your product or sign up clients for your service. Your site needs to be informative, easy to navigate, and provide a good way for the visitor to contact you.

In SEO terms, the most ethical way to approach it is to make sure that the site you are sending visitors to is actually worthy of the rankings that you are attempting to gain. If you have to resort to tricks and subterfuge for ranking, then the odds are that the site itself doesn't deserve them. Instead, consider adding some quality text content to the site, trying to get some relevant backlinks, and cleaning up the meta tags so that they have some actual relevance. There are plenty of ways to help a site gain rankings that can only benefit the visitor and the business owner, so there can be no ethics questions involved!

SEO, Email Marketing, and Ethics: Part I

A topic which surfaces periodically in the industry newsletters is the question of "ethical marketing", particularly related to email marketing or search engine optimization (SEO). Some people say that there are "black hat" SEO techniques, the "bad" techniques done by "bad" people, some say that anything which is done to a site to try to raise ranking is bad, others feel that anything goes in the rankings wars. Similarly, there are some who believe only "spam" (bulk) email is wrong, some who believe ALL email advertising is wrong, and some who feel that they can and should do anything they want via email.

As an internet marketing professional, I can't agree with the purists who feel that no marketing should be done via email. I also cannot agree that websites should not be thought of as marketing tools and manipulated accordingly. On the other hand, I soundly denounce those who feel that internet marketing is a free-for-all.

In this article, we'll discuss email marketing. Is it a legitimate marketing technique, the root of all internet evil, or somewhere in between? Is there any way for legitimate email marketing to continue, but shut down the spammers?

"GOOD" EMAIL VS. "BAD" EMAIL

Good and bad are subjective terms, and it's not really possible to lay down clear boundaries of what is good or bad for marketing purposes. However, I think that all parties could agree that it is "bad" marketing if the end effect is to annoy a lot of people to the point of doing damage to the advertising client. Spam email annoys people. A LOT. If a marketer repeatedly sends out spam email blasts for a particular client, then people who hate spam will associate it with that company. This, then, is "bad" marketing, by almost any standards. You've annoyed millions of people, your client has gotten a bad name, and nobody wins.

Spam is also "bad" marketing because it harms the marketing community, and their clients, as a whole. The technique is so hated that it has launched an entire new industry devoted to stamping it out. This has led to spam filters, anti-spam software, anti-spam legislation, and endless complaints to ISP's to get websites shut down. If it really is annoying and totally unsolicited email, that's one thing, but innocent victims often get caught in the net. Many legitimate emails get blocked by overzealous spam filters, and many email campaigns generated through validated opt in lists generate complaints or threats under new laws. Spammers could care less as long as some of their email gets through, but those of us who play by the rules are finding that legitimate advertising options are being taken away, through no fault of our own.

Validated opt in, or permission-based, email wears the white hat in this battle, but it too has some problems. For starters, some people get signed up on opt-in lists by other people, as a joke or for more malicious reasons. They are understandably angry at receiving unwanted email. Other problems arise if legitimate subscribers opt out of a list, and continue to receive email for weeks or even months.

For ethical, "good" email marketing, good list management is absolutely essential! All opt in subscribers should be verified by sending a confirmation email. Opt outs should be honored as promptly as possible. The list should not be over used, to the point where legitimate email becomes spam by sheer volume. If you have an opt-in list for your customers, don't sell that information unless you want to risk losing a customer. Never release any of their information without their consent.

If you're a business owner who is considering an email marketing campaign, think seriously before you go with a bulk email marketer. The prices might look attractive, but the fallout could be deadly. Odds are, most of your email won't even reach its intended target, since it will be filtered out first. That which does will probably be deleted without being read -- if you're lucky. If you're not, they could complain to your hosting service and get your website shut down. Your company's good name will suffer.

The more people try to block spam, the smarter the spammers become. The only way to put an end to spam email on a permanent basis is to make sure that no one can make any money doing it. Don't pay someone to run bulk email campaigns, and don't purchase anything through spam offers. If it doesn't pay, they'll stop playing. One final thing: If you receive an email which offers something illegal, then report that company IMMEDIATELY. Examples include promising prescription drugs without any kind of doctor validation, or promising to repair someone's damaged credit.

Google and Yahoo Face Off

Yahoo! and Google have had a love/hate relationship for most of their respective history. Yahoo! was the undisputed leader among search engines for a long time, boasting the most search traffic. Their claim to fame was their human-edited database, comprised of sites that had been personally reviewed by an editor to make sure they fit the requirements, and were worthy of listing. Even if you paid a fee, listing was by no means guaranteed; I had more than one site rejected during Yahoo!'s glory days, forcing me to go back and re-work the site. The advantages to the searcher were obvious: Each site had, at some point, passed through a personal review to determine its value and relevance, so the results lacked the horrible spamming that plagued the automated search engines at that time.

On the other side of the fence was Google, the consummate automated search engine, an upstart start-up that began in someone's garage. From a small personal project, Google grew into a hugely popular search engine, featuring a database that anyone and everyone could get listed in, free of charge. On the downside, this meant that a lot of total garbage was getting listed. On the other hand, many small businesses could not or would not pay Yahoo!'s listing fee, so Google offered a more democratic and less commercial set of results.

Came the time when Yahoo! and Google forged an uneasy partnership. Yahoo! used Google for their "secondary search results", meaning that after all the Yahoo! sites were listed, they'd put up Google sites. Sometimes you'd see them (Yahoo! only had 43 sites that matched your search), sometimes you wouldn't (Yahoo! had 43,000 sites that matched your search!).

A couple of years ago, the internet underwent a sea change. Google climbed to the top of the heap, unseating longtime king Yahoo! from dominating the search engines. Yahoo!, bowing to the current reality, forged a new deal with Google. Now Google's results would be listed first and foremost, and Yahoo!'s own paid results would be the secondary listings, requiring a switch to a different set of search results entirely. If Yahoo! and Google both had a site listed, the Yahoo! description and category would be appended to the Google listing. Since Google also owned the primary listings on AOL and CNN, it was coming close to taking over the world.

In the last 4 months, that has all changed again. Yahoo! broke off their relationship with Google, purchased a number of other search engines (including Inktomi), and used their technology and databases to create their very own Yahoo! spider. This spider now provides primary search results for Yahoo!, Directory listings are still in a separate directory, and Google is out of the picture entirely. Google is poised to go public at long last, an IPO dangling on the horizon, and talks about new and innovative search strategies they are pursuing to keep their hold on the market. Yahoo! counters with similar talk. MSN threw their hat into the ring, and will be debuting their own spider later this year, along with new features.

The latest major shift resulted in more lost ground for Google. CNN will no longer use Google search results, and will use Yahoo!'s new spider results instead. How much of an impact this will have in the bigger scheme of things is uncertain, but neither search engine giant wants to lose any ground at this point. With their IPO looming, Google would obviously prefer not to show any loss of territory or dominance which could affect stock prices.

It seems inevitable that a final, epic battle of the search engines will be waged, and only one search engine can emerge the victor. Will Yahoo! regain their triumphant hold on #1? Will Google reclaim their recent dominance? Will MSN be the spoiler, who sneaks in the back door while the other two are busy destroying each other?

At least for now the end cannot be predicted. The only truly positive thing, from the search engine consumer's standpoint, is that the rivalries have spurred all the engines into making revolutionary and innovative changes to search engine technology and strategies, offering ever-more possibilities for the internet user, and vastly broadening the capabilities of search.

Flash and SEO

One of the longest-standing issues between web designers and search engine marketers has been the question of Flash. Flash, an animation program from Macromedia, can be very versatile and exciting in the hands of a good programmer. Flash can be used to animate banners, create movies, or create an entire website. When done well, in an appropriate industry, a Flash site can really get a great response from its visitors.

Marketers, however, hate them, and with good reason. We search engine marketers don't have the luxury of looking at a site for aesthetic appeal; we are forced to look at it from the inside out, with the eye of a computer program wtih absolutely no appreciation for artistry. In order for a site to perform well across the broadest possible range of search engines, it needs to supply the kind of information that excites computer programs. This information includes text, text, and more text. With maybe a little extra text thrown in, just for good measure.

So the problem is, you've just spent several thousand dollars on your Flash site, it's beautiful, your test group raves over it, and your marketer tells you it's useless. Can't rank. Waste of money. Flash is a graphical programming language, and while the visitor sees exciting pictures that usually incorporate plenty of text content, the search engine sees a call to a Flash file, and that's about it. Flash sites, historically, rank poorly if at all.

Recently it was discovered that Google was finding a way to rank some Flash sites, apparently reading the actual program files and picking out text words (see our post on "Flash Websites, Internet Marketing, and Conversions"), giving hope to Flash programmers that their hard work would finally gain some recognition on the internet.

Now there's even more good news: Macromedia has announced that they have an entire division which is devoting itself to coming up with an SEO-friendly version of Flash. If they succeed, it will be a godsend to marketers and designers alike, and business owners won't be caught in the middle of the war anymore. It promises a new era of cooperation between Flash and the search engines.

Let's hope that they succeed, because there are no losers in that scenario!