It seems that today, everyone that has a website either displays AdSense (Google Text Ads) on their sites or has tried it at one time or another. One of our customers was making a killing with the program until one day earnings went from over eight THOUSAND a month to being banned from the AdSense program, as well as removing his website from the top of natural listings to nowhere to be found.

So think about it, one day your site is in the top 3 natural results getting thousands of clicks each day from Google alone; visitors clicking the AdSense ads and buying your products; you’re earning a great living, then the next day everything is gone. At this point, a frantic scramble begins, trying to figure out what in the hell is going on. You begin to back track thinking “What could have done this..”, then the thought is to contact Google to see what happened. After emails and possible phone calls, you get nowhere. If this is your bread and butter, what pays your bills, you begin to think how screwed you are now and how ends are not going to meet. All of the sudden, your AdSense that made sense, has become NonSense, that makes no cents.

This particular customer was new to LinkWorth and began asking if what they were doing with us was the cause. We explained that search engines do not actually ban websites for purchasing text ads, but they could possibly discount the value of a given link if deemed necessary. This would have nothing to do with AdSense or their removal from the search results. We began reviewing their site to see if we could help explain the situation and eventually found the problem. Before coming to LinkWorth, they purchased software that created thousands upon thousands of doorway pages.

Doorway pages (definition from wikipedia) are web pages that are created for spamdexing, this is, for spamming the index of a search engine by inserting results for particular phrases with the purpose of sending you to a different page. They are also known as landing pages, bridge pages, portal pages, zebra pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and by other names. Doorway pages that redirect visitors without their knowledge use some form of cloaking.

If you click through to a typical doorway page from a search engine result page, in most cases you will be redirectedMeta refresh command to another page. Other forms of redirection include use of Javascript and server side redirection, either through the .htaccess file or from the server configuration file. Some doorway pages may be dynamic pages generated by scripting languages such as Perl and PHP. with a fast

Doorway pages are often easy to identify in that they have been designed primarily for search engines, not for human beings. Sometimes a doorway page is copied from another high ranking page, but this is likely to cause the search engine to detect the page as a duplicate and exclude it from the search engine listings.

Because many search engines give you a penalty for using the META refresh command, some doorway pages just trick you into clicking on a link to get you to the desired destination page.

More sophisticated doorway pages, called Content Rich Doorways, are designed to gain high placement in search results without utilizing redirection. They incorporate at least a minimum amount of design and navigation similar to the rest of the site to provide a more human-friendly and natural appearance. Visitors are offered standard links as calls to action.

Many sites now use content rich doorway pages for their pay-per-click campaign landing pages. These doorway pages may employ server side scripting to count click-throughs, visits, and other user actions to assist with marketing data collection.

Now granted, the doorway pages were probably the worst thing the website owner could have done, but the concerning issue of this is how we are hearing more and more about similar situations (minus the violations). Just today a forum poster explained why he had many sites penalized and his AdSense account suspended along with the payments. These poor website owners get the false impression that since the company paying them is a corporate giant, they are assured the payments will continue to arrive, however, they learn the hard way that big companies find every way possible to cut corners and keep their stock prices as high as they can.

Do you think the advertiser is refunded when Google seizes your money? HELL NO! That turns into a 100% profit for the traffic you sent their advertisers. If it involves a large number of clicks, even better. . .for them. I’m not here to say Google is targeting innocent users to steal money, but you have to wonder how often a dedicated Google customer that supports his wife and three babies on AdSense revenue, earned legitimately, falls victim to a Google “error” like our forum posters.

Google says: You can make money without doing evil.

I guess what the world needs to know is Google’s definition of “evil”.

Publicity for your website is always a positive thing. Most of you probably are aware of the many services available to make press releases announcing new updates about your business through the many media outlets, like PRWEB. These services obviously come with a price, some better than others, but very rarely does one get pub for free.

LinkWorth has created a site dedicated solely to free pub. You can now submit articles to PubWorth.com for free and there are absolutely no strings attached. To submit an article, just create an account, verify your email, login and submit away. All articles will be subject to review and approval before they will appear in the directory, and each account is available to submit multiple articles with no limit.

Often, customers ask if we have articles on specific topics they can use on their website. Due to the demand, we decided to create PubWorth.com to not only provide a way for users to promote for free, but it will also be a way for webmasters to offer on topic information to their own readers. This means articles submitted have the ability to be shown across the net, all for free.

The site is currently live and accepting articles. We are working on a few small feature upgrades and cosmetics, but it will not affect article submission. What is free pub worth to you?

Today we completed the addition of new sub categories. With our publisher numbers growing as large as they are, it was time to start branching off into more narrow areas. We continually receive support tickets requesting a new categories but have always left things generalized.

As we continue to grow, we will continue to expand our directory. If you have time, login to your account and edit your listings to see if there are new sub categories that fit your website. We will be monitoring the new submissions closely so any changes will quickly be approved.

Most average web users would be completely blind to this form of hijacking. It is a topic of discussion around the block and we wanted to share our thoughts and show a good read to better understand what is happening.

Some might think we shouldn’t link to this demonstration, but how else would an average joe comprehed on how to protect themselves? It appears to not be a problem if you operate Win 2003 or recent *nix apache machines. So do yourself a favor and if you feel your traffic has slowed but nothing has changed with advertising and search results, look into this as someone can be hijacking your traffic through DNS.

Excerpt straight from WMW

It’s quite possible someone is framing your website in the search results, thus stealing your traffic and income.

When my own stats were much lower than expected we used the Google Tool inurl: domainnamedotcom which found everyone with my url as part of their url.

In clicking on them we discovered scammers who illegally framed our site and put their own Adsense Code at the top of my index page, thus getting our traffic and clicks.

You can read the full discussion at the WMW forums

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Posted on April 12, 2006April 12, 2006

For those who enjoy reading magazines, there is a new magazine soon to launch that is dedicated solely to search engine marketing called “Search Marketing Standard“. There is another magazine that is touches difference aspects of online marketing, but it is more of a overall online services type of read. This is an excerpt directly from their website:

Search Marketing Standard is devoted completely to the world of search marketing. It covers pay per click advertising, search engine optimization, web analytics, click fraud, local and contextual search, and other search-related topics. Each publication features articles and advice from leading experts in the field, interviews with the who’s-who of the industry, reviews of the most popular tools and services, latest news and trends, and much more listed here.

They are currently offering a free year subscription if you sign up before April 30th. So if this is up your alley, jump in while you can. Their first issue is set to be issued this June.

This is a very funny video that anyone will get. The greatness of Dave Chappelle and his skit on walking through the internet.

You can visit the website providing the video or watch the video directly.

Points of note:

• Enlargement
• Continued Adult Props
• Adult plus goats
• Timelines of each adult session
• Excessive Pop-Ups
• Being tricked into one thing that turns into another

Pure greatness and enjoy the laugh.

We posted previously how Google contradicts themselves by telling people to ‘get links to your website so we can find you’ and then their minions tell people ‘don’t buy links’ to scare people. One guy in the market speaks his mind to great lengths about buying text links and economics, pointing his finger directly at Google.

I am not a link communist. I freely buy and sell links based solely on their value to search engines. The marketplace for search rankings is a valuable one that will not disappear anytime soon, and I hope to continue to take advantage of it while the opportunity remains. Competition, contracts, property rights, appropriate incentives, and market forces serve us well, and I think those principles of capitalism should be observed and respected rather than decisions that cater only to fear, uncertainty, and doubt for short term solutions.

Link buying exists because of the high margins created by ranking high in natural search engine results if you are looking to get links, you can get newspaper backlinks from Freshlinks using the link. These margins give merchants the ability to use their adspend on areas that will increase their likelihood of top rankings. The competition will fuel itself to a point of saturation and diminishing returns. At this point the “problem” will cease. By allowing the market to run itself, resources will be allocated more efficiently.

He definitely speaks his mind and says exactly what every person feels on the subject. Read the full article. . .

After reading a great discussion about buying text links today, many valid points regarding Google being contradictive and possibly violating the anti-trust laws made complete sense. As mentioned over at Threadwatch, Google tells webmasters directly in their guidelines:

If we haven’t picked up your site after several months, it’s possible that our spiders aren’t able to find your pages. If you increase the links pointing to these pages, it’ll improve the chance that we’ll find your site.

Yet, their minions proceed to tell people they wish to abolish companies that help customers do just what they instruct. As the readers point out on the discussion, Google and their employees might be violating the anti-trust laws because what is good for their own pocket is not good for another.

Let this one marinate. . .text link advertising like we provide, has not a single thing to do with any search engine. It happens on a website to website situation and we facilitate the transaction. Is it right for them to dictate what occurs on real estate that is not their own? Then again, with all those billions of dollars, I’m sure they could buy their way out of this one. 😉

Anyone looking to promote their site through optimization and/or link building efforts will have the common question, “How much will it cost?” Unfortunately the exact price is a tough one to say truthfully but one thing for sure, if the market is competitive, it will “take it to make it”. SEO companies that focus primarily in detailed optimization of your site can be extremely pricey. I just read recently of one individual that quotes a minimum start price of $12,000.00 for seo services. That is very high, but not surprising.

One great part of link building is, any type budget can be used. Whether you use LinkWorth or any other service, if your budget calls for only a couple hundred dollars, you should be able to do some link building with it. If you hit the right network, there should be plenty of low priced websites that will fit nicely into your budget. As mentioned above, if your market is very competitive (for example, web hosting), a low budget can be used, but probably not very effectively. On the flip side, very niche markets can be campaigned for low budgets and be very effective.

Promoting your website should be a very important step and money will be required to do so, but make sure to shop prices. There are no guarantees in this business so definitely make sure you do not get locked into any contracts with high monthly bills.

With our process for partners, it only seemed fit to do one for advertisers. 😀 To become an advertiser, there are a few more steps involved, but not too many. The obvious first step would be to visit our advertisers page and read the information provided. Following this, you would need to click the create account button to proceed to our signup form. At this point it will ask for your information, billing method to fund your account with an initial $25 deposit (your money to spend 😉 ) and the creation of your first textual ad. Each field has a question mark that will explain what is required in that field if you get stuck on anything. Then submit your info.

From this point, your account has been created and awaits your email confirmation. Check your email account provided to LinkWorth and it will contain a link to click. This will verify the email you provided is real and you will receive further communication. After verification, you will have access to your account and your first textual ad will be placed in our editorial queue awaiting approval. Pending submissions are usually approved within 12 to 24 hours during normal business days (Monday thru Friday) with weekends possibly lasting a bit longer.

Once your first textual ad is approved, you are ready to start building your campaign. We have the “buy” section setup so you can sort by many different variables. We’ve learned that everyone has their beliefs in what works best, so rather than say don’t buy based on this or don’t buy based on that, we just provide all the available stats available and let you make your decision. Our philosophy is to match apples to apples or even apples to fruit baskets. The more related, the more successful your campaign will become. You must also have a well built site, optimized with plenty of well written content. You want to keep the people around, so give them something they want to read and not put down. Our suggestion is to select partner listings and put them into a wish list.

A wish list is a great middle ground section between selecting prospective sites to advertise on and actually paying for them. You can thumb through initially and only add the sites you have interest in, even all with the same text ad, then you can go to the wish list and dig deep on each weeding out the one’s that do not fit. You can also set which text ad you wish to use (considering you have built additional ads to use) on each individual site. It is also a great place to set the location your text ads will appear with price, total everything up and see exactly what the monthly price is.

It is now time to buy your advertising from the wish list. Select the ads you wish to purchase, then click the buy button. You will be provided with a confirmation page to review what you have selected, then the option of how to pay. Submitting from this page will finalize payment with a deposit of money into your account and set all of your purchases to pending. An email is sent to each partner selected and they get the final decision to either approve or decline your request. If they approve it, what we call a DEAL is created between you and the partner. You will be notified of each approval or decline, and many other details regarding your campaign. But from this point on, our software handles the rest.

Other situations that could arise are partners approving but not publishing the text ad, in which time will expire and cancel the deal. There is also the chance the partner never responds, which our system will expire and cancel the deal. This situations might require you find replacements. Once the ad is approved and published, our system looks for it to put the final stamp of approval. If our system locates the text ad in the correct location, it is stamped with approved at that point and billed to your account. So a rule of thumb is, you will never be charged for any text ad that our system does not locate on their site. They may approve it, but unless it is published, you are not charged.

These are the simple, yet a bit detailed steps in creating a new advertiser account and getting your first camapaign setup and running. There are many facets of our system so if you ever get stuck, please contact support for help.