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.