Search Engine Marketing Spot

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Yes I know that domain names are very cheap to buy, but if you are trying to see where you can save any type of money with your marketing efforts then check out register.com. This promotional offer will give you a free TLD for the first year, all that is required is your billing information. Even though you give them your billing information, they do not charge you for the first year. However after your year is up and it is time to renew, they will charge you the $35 to renew your domain name. Just before your domain name is about to expire, you can transfer your domain name to another service. All you need to do is call register.com and request the change and pay the domain fee for whatever company you are switching to. Here is the link to the current new year promotional offer by register.com

http://www.register.com/promo/acquisitions_8772090537.rcmx

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog.

Let me start off by saying that I do not condone using this type of technique by any means. This is an article around learning the darker side of search engine marketing, since we do not see many articles related to it. Many people ask about black hat marketing methods and techniques, this can be considered a very black hat method.

As we all know, backlinks are essential in a marketing campaign for any website. The more relevant backlinks you have to your site, the better it is for your SERP’s. So let’s say you have just finished up your new website and are looking to start promoting it to the general public. You could start with simple forum signature links, paid directory submissions to high profile directories such as Best Of The Web, use Yahoo Answer’s by replaying to questions in the same category as your website, or just buy text links. There are several other ways to start building backlinks to your site, but those can be covered in another article. The problem can arise for you if you gain too many backlinks in a short amount of time for your website. Since the website is still new, you do not have many backlinks, if any at all.

To the search engines, you are like a small seed waiting to grow. As you get more backlinks, you are in essence watering your seed (no not that way). If you get to many backlinks to fast, that is like taking a huge bucket of water and pouring it on your little seed. As we all know that too much water is a bad thing, and over watering can kill the growth process. So imagine what would happen if you went out and got hundreds and hundreds of backlinks each day to your new site. Yes you guessed it, you can hurt your new website. The search engines will actually penalize your website if you all of a sudden starting showing all these backlinks very quickly.

Now take the over watering technique and apply that to a competitors new website. The same thing will happen to there site, to many backlinks in a short amount of time and they will get penalized in no time. I do not think that this would work on a well established website since the site has been around for years and has built the authority and backlink numbers already. What good is a few hundred links a day going to do to a site that already has hundreds of thousands?

There are two pieces of software that I can think of that would be able to accomplish this task for you with very little work. Xrumer and Prosubmitter are tools used to auto submit your website URLS to forums, blogs, message boards etc. automatically. These are not your typical run of the mill programs and can seriously harm your site if abused.

Xrumer works with several popular forums, it can auto create the account (breaks almost all security measures, captcha, word text, javascript and even email verification) and post messages for you. Even after you post a message with the URL, it can then go back to the same forum, create another account and post a following up bogus message to your original thread. Yes this software is pretty damn evil, it is multi threaded and can run on proxy servers. There are more in depth features of the program, but this should give you a general idea as to what it does and how it operates. So take either of these two, run them for a week straight on your competitors new website and I bet within a few weeks you will see the penalized results.

I had always thought that the SERP’s could not be manipulated on Google, Yahoo or MSN, but this sure sounds like a way to do it to a new website. So how can you protect your new website from someone who could sabotage it from the start? I am still working on answers to that question so I can share them with all of you. If you have idea’s on how to protect your new website from this sort of attack please post a comment and let everyone know.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog.

Spot On Tuesday’s tip of the week is more of a warning then anything else. I felt it was needed to make this exploit public as soon as possible because I do not condone in hacking any website. This method was being used for two things, one to deface the website completely and redirect it to where ever the person intended and secondly this method is being used to add links to the website in an effort to increase the backlinks for whomever. Imagine you find 200 sites, some have a low PR, some have a high PR and you used this method to add as many links as you saw fit to help boost your site. This not only allows you to do that, it also gives you full admin rights to the site and that is why I feel it was needed to bring this out in the open. This exploit revolves around phprealestatescript.com, which they have issued a fix for this known problem as of this posting. If you or anyone you know that uses this script on there website (mainly real estate websites) then please pass this information along to them and have them download the fix for this attack. You can download the patch here from there site. I will show you how this method is used by people, so let’s get started.

Step 1. Do a search on Google for “Browse with Interactive Map” with the quotation marks. This will bring up results like these on the first page.

Step 2. Find a site that has not already been exploited, just go to like page 19 and you will be able to test this method out. If you find sites that are still vulnerable then PLEASE contact them and let them know how to fix it. In the browser simply put in

www.website.com/fullnews.php?id=-1/**/UNION/**/ALL/**/SELECT/**/1,2,concat(username,char(58),password),4,5/**/FROM/**/admin/*

Of course you will need to change the website.com to whatever the actual site address is. Once entered, if the site has not already been compromised it will bring up a screen like this.

Step 3. As you can see by the image, we now have the admin login information for this website. Now a quick visit to www.sitename.com/admin/login.php and you should see the admin login.

With admin access you have rights to the site and can make changes as you see fit. Now imagine a high traffic website that is now running your affiliate ads, or has site links inserted on high profile pages, etc. Yes this is pretty damn evil, but as shown above there are people who are taking down entire sites using this method. I hope you take this serious and update any websites you, friends, clients that use this real estate script for there website. The damage is extreme, a patch has been issued by the script creators so please go and update your’s ASAP!

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

 

So here I am thinking as to why Yahoo would come out and say “It is not your fault, but we have to terminate your account” to Shoemoney. There are several email responses listed on his site in regards to Yahoo Search Marketing - ‘We Know We suck’ in which Michelle tells Jeremy that his account has a 65% fraudulent charge rate, it is not your fault, but we will be terminating your account. What in the hell kind of statement is that? Michelle said that Yahoo could not tie discrete clicks to the fraudulent sign ups. You would think that a company the size of Yahoo would have there stuff in order. I guess I am wrong by thinking this. They cannot keep track of referring URL’s from Commission Junction, they cannot detect the use of that many fraudulent credit cards, and they would not assign him another ID to basically make him a new account. I was surprised by this and to top it all off last summer he was in Yahoo’s top 3 for monthly earnings.

Everyone in the industry knows who Shoemoney is, he has made a name for himself weather you think it is good or bad. So with the fame can come the hater’s, or the people who are either jealous or have a grudge against him. Who is to say you could not hire someone in another country to fraudulently sign up using stolen credit card information. There are forums you can go to and actually purchase these types of services I am sure. As bad as that sounds, it is true. Instead of attacking the person publicly and making a name for your self, they could have just out sourced this sabotage attack on his Yahoo Search Marketing account by signing up using the stolen credit cards. Imagine the damage you could do to so many other big account holders.

The truth is that Yahoo needs to get there shit straight, they know they are falling even further behind Google as to being the dominate search engine. With poor support for there top money makers, a tracking system that cannot fully track referring URL’s and shutting down an account even after they admitted it was not his fault. Wow, what kind of system are you people running over there? That many degrees in one building and you pull a stunt like this? Yahoo you need to get a bigger paddle, because you are falling downstream faster then your arms can move with stunts like this.

I could be wrong but who is to stop someone from “carding” on the Yahoo Network to get other accounts shut down like this. My answer is simple, nobody because Yahoo seems to not have full control over there own system and how it is run. What are your thoughts on that, do you think Shoemoney was a victim of his own success and someone sabotaged his account on purpose? I would love to hear what everyone else thinks.

The image you use is just as important as the rest of the text layout and color scheme. In today’s advertising world, we are all aware of the fact that sex sells. You see the TV commercials, billboard ads, magazine ads, even ads that are on the side of a bus that showcase a beautiful model. Oh yea, I almost forgot along with that model there is some product or service that someone is trying to sell. The same concept applies to online marketing, people take a beautiful woman and showcase them on there landing page in hopes that it will help the viewer convert. That is not always the case, and I am afraid that people end up changing there text and colors around more then they might have to on there landing pages in hopes to have it convert better. I bet you have never thought about changing your image though now have you?

Here we have two images of the same person, the only difference is the direction she is looking. With the first image she is making eye contact with the viewer, and in the second image she has here eyes focused to the viewer’s right. Many people make the mistake of using faces that are looking straight at the viewer, as to make eye contact with them and hopefully hold there attention. Problem with that is the image is not the one that needs all the attention, your contact form, special offer, the product itself should be getting the attention in the effort to convert the viewer.

The better image to use is the second, for the eyes are focusing on the viewers right side. It is human habit to focus on the eyes and then direct your attention in that same direction. The problem with the first image is her eyes are focused right back at yours because she is staring directly at you. With the eyes looking to the right, you are able to put what you are trying to sell or your capture form since in most cases the viewer’s eyes will be diverted in that direction. Remember using a pretty face is a nice touch, just make sure that the face is focusing the attention on what you are trying to sell. By having the face focus right back at the viewer, you are taking away the viewers habit to look in the same direction that the face is. So next time you are wondering what changes you can make on your landing page or creative, look at what type of image you are using.

 

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

 

 

 

 

 

When starting any internet marketing campaign, you always want to use clean and crisp images to have a professional look. Using clipart or trying to resize images that are to small looks bad from the viewer’s standpoint. Using bad images just gives the viewer one more excuse not to go through with what you are trying to offer them. They will stand back and say to themselves, “man this website looks horrible, there service/product can’t be any better”. So to take that though away from your viewers, you want to use the best images possible. There are royalty free image sites, however they can charge hundreds of dollars just to use a small set of images from there collection. Here I have compiled a list of free stock photo websites that you can use when creating your sites.

http://www.openphoto.net/
http://www.morguefile.com/
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/
http://www.pachd.com/free-images/index.html
http://www.freeclipartpictures.com/
http://www.freeimages.co.uk/
http://www.hooverstock.com/
http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/photos.htm
http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp
http://www.123rf.com/freeimages.php
http://www.imageafter.com/
http://www.fws.gov/pictures/
http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/
http://www.usda.gov/oc/photo/opclibra.htm
http://pdphoto.org/
http://www.stockvault.net/
http://www.fotogenika.net/modifica/igallery.asp
http://www.mayang.com/textures/
http://freelargephotos.com/
http://yotophoto.com/
http://www.bigfoto.com/
http://www.wpclipart.com/

If you have other sites like these, please list them here to share with everyone else.  Tomorrow I will be going over a tactic that everyone should take into consideration when using people and there faces when creating your landing pages.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

The site will be a little slow in the next two weeks, I will be taking the family up to New York for Thanksgiving to see my side of the family.  I will be still be writing on the site, just the number of posts will be a little lower since I will not be working full time while I am away.  The laptop will be with me so I can get some work done, I will be back November 25th.  I wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving!

Imagine being lost and almost out of gas, you get off at the next exit in hopes of finding an open gas station to ask for directions. The only gas station open is a self serve with no attendant inside to ask for directions. You begin to fill up on gas so you can find a nearest store to ask for help, low and behold you see the Google icon on the touch screen. First thought is damn I need to spend less time thinking about how I am going to increase my SERP’s with Google. Your second thought being why in the hell am I seeing there logo at a gas station. You pause, expecting to hear Matt Cutts voice come out and start talking to you about the nofollow tag and why hasn’t Danny or Barry told me about this damn gas pump before? I want to rank #1 at this gas pump now, this could be my chance!

The pump stops as your car is now full on fuel and the gas fumes fade away. Your mind returns from the quick day dream and you press the screen to see what it is. Low and behold it gives you driving directions! Yes you can now find your away back home and start to work on ranking #1 at the gas pump…oh wait, that was that stupid day dream. The gas pump does not offer the full scale search engine, and it does not allow you any custom direction searches. It simply gives you directions to local hotels, restaurants, shopping, entertainment, etc. The other neat thing about the system is it will NOT carry any Google advertisements, I mean why in the hell would I care about mortgage or viagra crap while pumping gas? Instead the system will allow you to include your own coupons to offer to the user. The coupons, along with your driving directions can be printed out right from the gas pump.

Gilbarco Veeder-Root is the company behind this new gas pump system and they are scheduled to start with 3,500 of these Google Gas Pumps as stated by CNN. No date has been made public as to when the first Google gas pumps will be introduced to the public, but I bet some black hatters will try and figure out how to coupon cloak now! bwaahhahahaaahaaa…

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.

As of today, SEMSpot is no longer nofollowing there comment links.  We are encouraging you to post on our blog and interact with what we have to offer for you on our site.  We will still monitor the comments to not let the spam get through.  This is just another way of saying thank you and giving you a link out from our site.  The debate of nofollow tags will go on for months to come, however I believe there sole purpose was to help combat against blog comment spam.  Now Google is using nofollow to combat against the problem of selling text links, which was an industry they themselves created with there PR on the toolbar.  Anyhow, that is another story among itself and I will not get into that at the moment.  Does your blog still use the nofollow tag on your comments?  If so, why do you still have it setup that way?

When you hear someone say website advertising or website marketing, do you think it means the same thing? In today’s fast paced society many people believe they mean the same thing, or they get the two mixed up. There is a big difference between the two, and I am here to try and break it down for you.

Website advertising is building your brand recognition and showing the general public what services or products you are offing. There are many forms of advertising your website, such include PPC, banner placement, text links (yes I did just say it), article writing, pod casting, targeted email campaigns. All of these are nothing more the different methods used to advertise a website. Website advertising is just a small piece to the big puzzle, many just seem to overlook it.

Website marketing is the strategic planning you do in an effort to help your website grow. Website marketing is the big puzzle, if you can put it together properly then you have a chance at succeeding with your website. However theirs no guarantee that a marketing plan will be successful even though you have taken all of the right steps in putting the puzzle together. So what is website marketing then?

Concepts – Here you will come up with and think about all possible concepts that you would like to use when advertising your website.

Research – Research is a very important step to take in your marketing strategy, you need to research your competition and see what they are doing. What keywords are they targeting, what websites have linked back to them, what anchor text are they using, what is the dominant catch phrases they are using in there online advertisements, etc. You do this not to copy them, but to see what is working for them and just better your efforts. You will then want to research and try to find other keywords that you can use as well, there could be highly searched keywords in your niche that your competition has not found yet. That will be a good ticket to punch in, finding those other highly searched keywords that have little to no competition. You will also want to take a look at Google or Yahoo and see what those keywords are going to cost you per click so you can factor that into your budget. The same thing goes for buying banner space, you will want to look for the sites you want to advertise on and see how much they charge and what size banner you get. Even a small 125×125 banner can cost a good amount of money on some high traffic websites. Do not try and rush through your research, you do not want to overlook something that could have propelled your website to the top.

Planning – Planning your website marketing is almost as crucial as the research you do beforehand. Here you will need to determine what roads you want to take your website down. Are you going to be heavily involved in PPC campaigns? Plan on buying up a lot of banner space on high traffic websites? Maybe you will want to write some good articles for your website in hopes that the social media craze will come and blow up your website. In some cases making the front page of Digg has taken some website offline due to poor hosting. A big factor in determine what you will be doing is your budget. Can you afford a highly target PPC campaign or buying banner space on high traffic sites? This goes back to the research you did before, you should know how much your keywords and banner ads will cost you. Now just take those figures and divvy them up among the direction you want to take your marketing campaign.

Design – Designing the right material (banner ads, PPC ads, email ads mainly) is very important for your marketing campaign to succeed. If your ads look and sound like crap, well then there is a good chance your marketing campaign will end up that way. You always want to design multiple ads no matter what. With multiple banner ads, you can then go over each design with your team, family or friends to see what everyone else’s opinion is and which would be the best to use. The same thing goes for your PPC ads because you have very little room to make a big impact on the person reading them. With PPC though, you have more room to test them and see which ones are converting better for you. They can be changed almost instantly with little effort, unlike banner ads or an email campaign.

Testing – Testing is pretty straight forward, here you test out your designs to see which ones you want to invest fully with.

Advertise – There is that other word, advertise. When you have finalized your designs and they have passed your quality tests you then begin advertising your website. If you chose PPC, banner ads and a dozen text links, then you are using three forms of advertising in your marketing campaign. This is the second to last step and the one where you go for it and see if your marketing strategies will pay off.

Research – Research again? Yes you do some more research again, this time though you need to find out what forms of advertising you used that paid off the best for you. This is where you will take a look at your website analytics or your PPC campaign to see where the traffic and conversions were coming from. After you have taken this data, you can go back and design any new ads that you see fit.

In the end, I want you to understand that website marketing is the strategic planning that you do for long term results. Website advertising is nothing more then a small piece of your planning and is really the “action phase”. When you advertise your website, you are putting forth the actions you designed and to implement in your marketing strategy.

This article was originally written and posted on SEMSpot.com, a Search Engine Marketing Blog. If you like the article please sign up to our RSS Feed.