I have made the switch from Google to Yahoo! as my default search engine. You may notice I have changed the site search function on this blog over as well.

While I think Google offers great products their ethics are wanting and I just don’t want to support them any more than I have to. There’s a good list of Google alternatives at Gevil.org if you are interested in reducing your reliance on Google.

You will notice that I have left Google Adsense up. While I take issue with some of Google’s policies I am still a businessman first. Until I find a service that comes close to pulling the same revenue I get with Adsense I won’t change that over. There’s a difference between making a protest and being stupid. Unfortunately YPN does not stack up in this arena.

However, I am happy to report that Yahoo! Search is proving to be much more reliable than Google’s. I’ve been hearing reports that Yahoo! has a higher satisfaction rate and can now see why - it just works!

While this was a personal choice for me I’d like to encourage you to try some other search engines as well. Here’s the big ones to look at:

• Yahoo!
• Live (Formerly MSN)
• Ask

There are some smaller and niche search engines you may want to try out as well:

• Clusty
• Icerocket
• Technorati
• Bloglines

The real issue at heart here for me is building the free internet I want instead of capitulating to the demands of a monopolistic empire. With more than 50% of the market share for search alone, Google is using its size to bully websites into falling in line with ‘policy’ - no matter how hypocritical the new policies are when stacked against Google’s mission statement, webmaster guidelines and public image.

My protest is a small one. I’m hopeful that this message will reach you and inspire you to try something different. If Google’s market share gets affected they will have to address their policies. I’m hopeful Google will go back to being a great service provider and their attempt to architect, engineer or police what the masses want online will stop.

Thank you for your support!

Update: Thanks to this great post by Ben, I have checked out a couple Adsense alternatives and settled on BidVertiser for now. That makes this site one big step closer to being Google-free!

Posted in Website Designers, SEOs, Business Owners, Reviews, Industry News, SEO

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There’s an interesting thread at SEO Refugee where the question of “Blackhat SEO” comes up. What is blackhat SEO and how can it affect your website?

Technically blackhat SEO is doing anything outside of the webmaster guidelines with the intent of manipulating the search engine rankings.

Blackhat SEO tends to bring in results faster than the normal “organic” process of whitehat SEO. It investigates exploits in the search engine algorithms to make a site perform better than average.

I think it is important to note that blackhat techniques are not illegal. Nor unethical. It’s just a short-term solution and there are appropriate uses for blackhat techniques. By short-term, I mean that a site using blackhat techniques will eventually get caught and when that happens the domain will be banned by the search engines.

A problem comes up when defining blackhat because a lot of blackhat techniques have legitimate uses. The problem is the search engines have difficulty detecting blackhat intent on a casual basis. And intent is the real indicator of whether a website is up to no good - and subject to ban - or not.

Common blackhat techniques include:

Hidden text and/or links - Or almost hidden. Use of CSS and matching colors shows the websites a site stuffed with links and content typical viewer won’t see.

Sneaky redirects - Use of javascript, meta refresh and other redirects where the viewer is supposed to arrive on one page but is instead redirected to another sales/ad ridden page.

Scraping - Generating original content based on targeted keywords takes real time and work. Blackhats usually want to keep this to a minimum so automated scripts pull content from existing websites. Advanced scripts scramble the content to make it appear unique.

Link spamming - Using automated scripts to plug links on blogs, forums and guestbooks. This isn’t as effective as it used to be because of the “nofollow” attribute and is the main reason behind Google’s nofollow solution.

Cloaking - Similar to hidden text but implemented in a completely different manner. Cloaking involves watching for the IP addresses of the search engines and displaying different content to them than to a normal viewer.

Keyword stuffing - An old school technique where the keyword density of a page is inflated. Doesn’t really work anymore especially in the meta keywords tag which is all but ignored by modern search engines.

Link farms - Building several sites that link together to artificially increase link popularity of a website.

Hijacking - Copying existing websites to rank for their content.

Referer log spamming - Pinging the website logfile in hopes the webmaster will track that URL back to the spam site.

Buying expired domains - To capitalize off their previous success.

Most blackhat websites don’t provide any real value to the visitor and that is why the search engines seek them out and purge them from their index. But as mentioned earlier there are appropriate uses for blackhat techniques.

Consider a real estate listing in a hot market. Taking the time to get that listing ranking at a level that is of value to the real estate agent just isn’t cost-effective. Using blackhat techniques that may get the site popular within weeks instead of months makes sense. But of course the site will eventually get caught and banned.

Blackhat is fine for short-term projects but should not be employed for a website geared for lasting value or long-term search engine success.

Posted in SEOs, Website Designers, Promotion, Industry News, SEO

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Conversions are any change in a viewers behavior based on your message. Usually online this means clicking something but not always. Consider the following common conversions:

• Increased awareness of a business brand, product, service or person.
• Conversations or references for a business, person, product, service or article.
• Enhanced understanding of an issue that leads to more or less use of…
• Make a purchase
• Click a link

Increased Awareness

This is usually branding or making someone or something more recognizable to a viewer. This comes in handy for people looking to raise their stature in their industry or community. A great example of this are the politician’s websites that are gearing up for the November elections. Common examples are just about every business website out there - they all affect the brand of that business (for better or worse).

Conversations or References

If two people I’ve never met have a conversation about something I wrote that article is successful. If I can get people to link to something I wrote even better. Conversations and references are word of mouth or viral marketing. It’s a tough thing to make happen but always worth the effort.

Enhanced Understanding

Enhanced understanding naturally leads to people doing more or less of something. For most businesses they want the viewer to do more: buy more of our stuff!
But a non-profit may want people to do less: stop smoking, consume less energy, etc. The viewer has to make a choice to either ignore the message or accept it.

Make a Purchase

Making a purchase may come from enhanced understanding but it’s really about the value proposition and how your goods stand up against the competition. Competition that’s just a few clicks away online. Is your pitch good enough to get the viewer to stop what they are doing and navigate through your checkout process?

Click a Link

Learn more, order now, and subscribe are the most common calls to action I see. Then there are the ads including affiliate programs and contextual (Adsense). Sometimes getting the viewer to click the right link is the trick. Usability is the key to get viewers to click the links you want.

When I think of conversions for websites these are the categories I place them in. Once I know what types of conversions I’m looking for I start to define my market: not just people interested in “product x” but also people that will request more information or tell a friend about it or… whatever I want them to do. It’s a special type of person that will convert at all and a rare person that will do it the way I want.

I think that is overlooked on most websites. Traffic for the sake of traffic does not help your brand and can hurt it a great deal. Building traffic to increase conversions is as old as the internet. If you have 1,000 visits per day and 2% convert then if you get 2,000 visits per day your sales numbers double. Simple enough but what about the other 98% of viewers that didn’t get what they wanted? You also doubled the number of frustrated viewers which hurt the brand.

By knowing what you want your viewers to do and building the site around that your viewers will be much happier and your conversions will increase by percentages. How different would your bottom line be with a 5% increase in conversions?

Posted in Sales and Marketing, Business Owners, Customer Service, Marketing, Web Design

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A lot of the questions I get from people new to online business revolve around the differences between online and offline, brick and mortar business. This makes sense as we’re all familiar with offline business, at least from a consumer point of view and most of us have worked retail jobs through high school and college.

The main difference between brick and mortar business and the internet is expectations and interactions.

We all know great service when we see it offline: the friendly greeter, the helpful sales associate, the discerning cashier and the customer service department that really represents the customer (instead of the accounting department). Determining great service online gets a bit harder as we don’t know what to expect. Common questions include:

• How do I find…?
• What is the policy around…?
• Where do I get help for…?

Usability addresses these questions. Good design and use of conventions gives the power to the viewer to get answers to their questions and instill them with confidence. Of course, looking for the answers is still up to the viewer. Websites don’t have a mechanism to see the frustration on a viewers face or read their body language and rush to the rescue.

…at least not yet.

Consider that if offline business is a system of great people, online business is a great system backed by people. In either case the people make the difference.

As clever website designers and marketers innovate the online experience will resemble the offline one more and more… but it will always be different. And it will never reach everyone. Sometimes the whole point of going out is to have human contact, even if it is just with a friendly waiter.

Posted in Business Owners, Useability, Web Design

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After several conversations where people asked if I had a facebook account and I was forced to admit “no, I don’t” I have finally given into to the peer pressure and joined the facebook cult.

Check out my profile, befriend me or drop me some tips to make my facebook experience as cool as I’ve heard!

So far the signup process was very easy. But the search process is a bit cumbersome. It seems facebook really wants you to plug in your email manager and I’m not comfortable with that. Searching for individuals doesn’t seem possible as they want you to look for groups but the groups don’t include “industry” just company, education or location. Kinda short-sided IMO.

I’m still in the dark as far as the facebook culture goes but I hope to learn fast - especially if you help… maybe drop some tips in the comments bellow…

Posted in Sales and Marketing, SEOs, Website Designers, Business Owners, Reviews

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