A lot of sites are guilty of keyword stuffing. There just is no way to honestly work in all of our keywords into readable content we write, so we have to resort to just listing keyword after keyword on the bottom of the page. Some of us even hide it. Does this really work, or does it cause more problems?

I will be honest, I’ve done it before. About 8-10 years ago when I was merely a struggling online vendor, I would try anything to get more traffic to my site. This included stuffing the foot of the page with every keyword I could think of. My thought was, “If I have the keyword on my site, people will find me.” I’m sure better than 90% of the online market thinks this exact same way. Unless you have spent years learning the art of optimization and search algorithms, you have no idea the “do’s and dont’s” of site optimization. Of course, if you are reading this, then you obviously have some knowledge of how things work. 😀

You should definitely understand that stuffing the bottom of your page with tens of hundreds of keywords will not only do no good, but it can easily get you penalized. Search bots are smarter than most people think and while I question they are as smart as the search employee’s make them out to be, they are definitely smart. Something that is laid out like keyword after keyword is very easy to spot. With what limited programming knowledge I have (which is almost none), I can visualize a way to spot keyword stuffing, so these PHD nerds can most definitely spot it.

So be wise and refrain from stuffing your pages with tons of keywords. I know it’s a lot more work, but write real content using your keywords. It will take some time, but eventually you will have a powerhouse site that people will visit just for the information you provide. The old saying that I seem to read every day “Content is King”, is more true than you’ll ever know. . .well, unless you build it. Set aside an hour or two a day, or even a week and put your thoughts down about your product/service. Make sure you use several of your keywords in each topic. It will do much more for your search positioning than keyword stuffing.

We recently sent a message regarding publish options for those who use file inclusion. I thought posting it in the forum made more sense so it will always be here to read.

If you publish regular text ads, rotating ads or billboards with any type of “file inclusion” method, we have updated the code used and also provided a way to style your format.

• NEW CODE: The new code was a topic discussed on our forum recently and it involved the issue of the require command being unable to reach the LinkWorth server, then causing your site to either drag really bad or hang forever ending in error. Well we now have two types of inclusion codes that include a variable which can be set as a timeout option. In other words, if set to (4), after 4 seconds if it cannot connect, it will simply end it and load the rest of the page without error.
• STYLE CODE: In addition to the updated code, you are given the option for style formatting. The default setting is each text ad is placed within it’s own cell inside one table. You can select canned separators between each ad from the drop down menu or you can select “CUSTOM”. Custom will allow you to enter your own html code to go between each text ad and publish it on your site where you have control of before the ads and after if needed

One other feature changing is our affiliate links, buy direct links and any other links that direct back to our site. We are changing these to unreadable javascript to ensure you can promote LinkWorth without having to actually have a direct link back to our site. THere is much more functionality in using javascript and it helps remove all talk regarding LinkWorth from your site.

Someone once asked if what we did was spamming, to which I said “absolutely not!”. We help legitimate businesses build their popularity and name recognition, which opens the flood gates of traffic. Some worry about having our name on their site in fear of google, but there should be no fear because we do not do anything sneaky or with trickery. So to make everyone feel safe, we’re removing all searchable links back to us and replacing them with unsearchable links. We will make an announcement once this section is ready to go.

The term “speed” can refer to a whole list of different things. Since this isn’t a rehab website, we’ll stay away from the drug talk epidemic :D. What I want to talk about is the speed a website loads for visitors. How fast does your website load for your visitors? It is something that can often be overlooked but can make the world of difference.

Just today I was noticing how our website was loading slow and instantly began researching the issue. I noticed the home page loading a little slow over the weekend, but figured it was the connection I was using. Come to find out, our server log had reached its limit and was slowing load times quite a bit. A quick fix and we’re back to normal. If you website still slows down after the fix, then it might be time for you to learn what is SD-WAN.

This made me wonder what this has done to our traffic recently so I began reviewing our traffic logs. The number of unique (new) visitors that left within 30 seconds increased over 50% over the past few days compared to the same time frame a week before. So make sure your site is always loading fast because people do not like to wait. Many people don’t realize how vital it is to have the best possible vps hosting in the game. I didn’t at first– until I realized that people are picky and options are plentiful. If your wait time is anything over 3 seconds, people are going to do business with a competitor using more optimal hosting services. Luckily for you, website hosting canada is here to help you out. Make sure you have the opportunity to win a customer over instead of losing them to a slow loading website, look in to the Inline Host Blogger website to know more about this.

We recently had plans to exhibit at the SES NYC (Search Engine Strategies Expo), but due to a growing staff that needed attention, we had to back out. Unfortunately, their terms tie you in to either half the price of a booth or the entire amount if you cannot make it. I definitely understand the need for contracts and why they do it, but they might consider offering options for people that just cannot make it.

This really isn’t about their stern, “lock you in” contract, it is about a promotional product they offer. Since we were locked into a contract for the full amount, I offered the option to move our booth money into some advertising for the event. Granted I had to offer this option up, they do get credit for allowing us to move our money into advertising instead of just losing it. They said to review what was still available and let them know what we would like to do with our booth money. Anything you do with these expo’s is high priced. For example, a premier sponsorship is over 35k! The visibility is very good and you get many perks, but boy do they make some money.

The two options we selected to use up our paid money were the back cover of a handbook and an “email blast“. We have attended one of these events and the price of a handbook advertisement was worth it because everyone has one in their possession at the event and it follows many home. The email blast was a little interesting due to no real stats being offered and usually email marketing is a big question mark anyway. After our handbook back cover, we only had enough funds for the email blast, so we selected it. Continuous questions regarding how many people actually read the email have still ended up with no answers and reviewing tracking stats today, I think I understand why.

I realize the “visibility factor” could play into the value of an email blast to an event that boasts so many big company names, but after due time, I might consider this the worst money we’ve ever spent. The email ad itself was so short you could barely make sense of a sales pitch if you wanted to and one image was allowed but it could only be your business logo. All things aside, I created a quick and catchy email with our logo and sent it on its way like a school boy on his first day, except, this schoolboy was full of tracking url’s that would give me all bits of info regarding this email. Since no one wants to tell me how many poeple get the email, I figure maybe I can track it myself.

Most are excited to know we have received a total 54 click-thru’s, however, most of them are duplicate ip’s, so it’s tough to tell. Zero of the referrals have turned into any type of lead and;or sell. So my thought of this entry is to be very carefull when purchasing anything that has no upfront numbers or results other than a big fat bill. I’ve asked too many times for proof of advertisements and numbers but have been ignored on my reqeust each time.

The moral of this rant is, if you plan to attent a SES or WWW expo, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON AN EMAIL BLAST. Ok, i just dozed off at the laptop only to be awakened by a jolt of mysterious electricity run through my arms and legs. Maybe it was another click from our email blast ad that occurred and it sent a jolt of energy through me for a quick second.

Who knows! I believe in this company and what they do, I just don’t quite buy into “EVERYTHING” they do.

One of our future planned services is offering a traffic tracking tool. Currently, it’s a bit far back on the list of things upcoming, but we will eventually offer a product once we are sure it is of top quality.

In the meantime, there are many free services you can use to get the basics of your traffic. We’ve been testing statcounter for a couple of months and they have a nice product. The numbers aren’t real representative of what our server logs say, but offsite tracking seems to have the ability to lose some numbers. Each free service offers the basics then allow one to upgrade for more detailed info. There are also many paid services like Omniture, Websidestory & Webtrends. The best thing to do is have one of their staff give you access to a demo to ensure you get what you are looking for before paying.

Tracking traffic can tell you many things, including a better way to target visitors and convert them. If you do not currently track your visitors, we highly suggest you give it a shot and ask an analytics expert to show you how to read them if unclear.

This business is always changing and you have to keep up with everything going on to provide a good service to customers. This means reading many sites and bits of info that revolve around search and optimization. This includes Matt Cutt’s blog, which I call “SPAM Cutt’s“; because his job is obviously to find SPAM sites and “Cutt” them from the index.

It seems like a few times a month one of his posts involve sites that have hidden text on their homepage or maybe another internal page. He’ll get before and after screen captures and make a kind of open letter to the webmaster of the site in question.

Well I think people make it WAY too easy sometimes, which made me want to put together a tricky page for anyone that feels they are good at spotting hidden text on a page. If you can locate the hidden text on this page, consider yourself a future Google engineer in the making!

FIND HIDDEN TEXT HERE

We all know that Google is the monster of search. If you don’t know it, stick around, they’ll let you know it by taking your site offline accidently or maybe you did something unbeknownst to you was wrong, but the likes of SPAM Cutts finds it and removes your listing. Google, for the most part, has the top product and definitely most used search product out there. It’s a term I hear on TV, standing in line for food stamps and even in the homeless shelters (maybe not all these places), “I Googled my name..” or “I Googled to see what information I could find…”. It’s a household name these days.

It’s also been talked about how the multi-billionaires that founded Google are targeting Mr. Gates, which there is nothing wrong with. The latest report has Bill Gates still the richest human at $50 BILLION! ! ! Let me put that into zero’s for you: $50,000,000,000.00. Now whether they actually have this target or not, it’s been written in news articles that they are. You know for a fact Mr. Gates himself has heard this from his many little birds that probably suck up to him for a raise.

Along comes the first real Microsoft push for their own market share in online search. http://www.live.com is a new style of online search that has many similarities, but also it’s own unique features to make it stand out. Over the past year or two I’ve watched Google follow many search standards that Yahoo had, so now I wonder if this same thing will happen with MSN’s new LIVE search. The results are supposed to be on target to the query, but aren’t they all. Give it a test run for yourself and see what you think.

Here are a few points I made on our forum about the LIVE.com

1. The infinite scroll. No more going from page to page…it’s all on one. So technically, you are on the 1st page for every term!!
2. In the top right corner of the search results frame, you will see a sliding scale. If you slide it to the left or right, it will change the way the listings appear. To the right will make the option “Search within this site”. If you click it, it then pops up a search box under the listing where you can enter a term to look for on that site. Pretty crafty. Switch to the left and it only shows the title and the website url, leaving out the description.
3. I like the fact all advertising is on the right. Yahoo and Google sneak the ads on top of the natural listings, which in my mind, taints the true natural organic listings. Separating the paid and natural doesn’t trick the typical user into thinking the very top is the very relevant.
4. As far as relevancy, I think it probably still needs some work. Just digging through searching for keywords I’m familiar with, the listings appear to be some good some not so good. But overall, I give it a thumbs up.

We’ve posted a poll on our form searching to see if we want to put together our SEO Toolbar V.2.0. So if you wouldn’t mind, hop on over and give us your feedback if we should put a new version. The new Google toolbar is pretty nice and I find myself using it more than anything else now, so if a new version of our toolbar doesn’t make sense, we might focus our time elsewhere.

Answer Our Toolbar Poll Here

If you are in a sales position where you are soliciting a product or service, there is some advice that might be helpful when speaking to other businesses. There are times during a year that are good times and other times that might not be so good. As I always state in any advice I give, every market is different, so this is more of a generalized theory than anything else.

Rather than get wordy and lengthy in my explanation and reasoning, I’ll give best and worst times:

Best Times for B2B selling:

• The months of January and February. (First of year numbers start over)
• Between the dates of the 10th through 25th of any month except December. (Meat of month less bills)
• Between the 5th and 20th of December. (moves up a bit due to holidays)
• The last week in December. (Some companies like to dump excess funds to escape taxes)
• First of January, April, July & October (Typically first of each quarter for quarterly companies)

Worst Times for B2B selling:

• Any holiday period. (companies may be closed)
• The week leading up to the tax deadlines. (business owners stressed and sometimes facing big bills)
• The last week in December. (This is either hit or miss. While it can be the best, it can also be the worst)
• The end of March, June, September & December. (End of quarter for quarterly companies)
• Weekends. (This one is obvious, but Saturday and Sunday are probably the worst)

Again, these are generalized timeframes for business to business selling. If it’s business to customer, it’s a completely different ballgame because weekends are great for customers, along with holidays. You should always try to sell 365 days a year in some fashion, but put more emphasis towards the prime, or best selling times.

As I have been reading more and more about this settlement, the more it makes me happy that I didn’t do anything with this enormous book of papers to my side. This book of papers I’m referencing is the documentation to enter into this exact case that was sent to me last year. I spoke with the attorney’s representing the plaintiff’s because I was very interested. At one time I was going back and forth with both Google and Overture trying to plead my case of obvious click fraud only getting the constant run-around from both. Sometimes they would give me a $50, maybe $100 credit even though I was showing them proof from our tracking logs that showed thousands upon thousands of fraudulent clicks. Both companies always gave the same old crappy speach how “they have super techno technology to prevent fraudulent clicking”, of course, I had evidence that proved otherwise.

One of the most shocking statements I read about this settlement is what $90 million dollars is to Google. This is an excerpt from this news story:

“Since 2002, Google has generated $11.2 billion in gross revenue, and $7.3 billion in net revenue. So the $90 million settlement would amount to 0.8 percent and 1.2 percent of these sales,” Mahaney wrote in a research note.“

Could you imagine if $90 million dollars meant less than 1% of your net revenue? Wow.

Back to why I’m glad I did not actually follow through with joining this case. . .after reading that those involved get the same reward as those who were not involved it made me realize that all the time to spend reading the book I received and doing the work to get involved would have been a waste of time when all I have to do now is submit my log history to Google for a refund.

I strongly urge everyone that feels wronged by click fraud to submit to Google. We need to take their offering and use up all $90 million. Once the suit is finalized, they will provide a method to request a refund from your AdWords account.