SOPA, GoDaddy & What YOU Can Do

December 23, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Internet Marketing 

By now you have likely heard the uproar regarding SOPA.  If you haven’t it is highly suggested that you read about it because it affects EVERYONE who uses the Internet or has a website – it’s very troubling to say the least.

Here are just a few articles on the topic:

So how does GoDaddy fit into all of this?  Well, they’re the one internet company that is PRO-SOPA.  Here is their official stance:  http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/go-daddys-position-on-sopa/

Gizmodo has a very strongly worded article on GoDaddy’s position.  One of the things I’ve always hated about GoDaddy are their totally inappropriate commercials that run during sporting events in which children are watching.  It almost made me sick to my stomach when I read this portion of their “stance” on SOPA:

And, I spend a great deal of my working (and non-working) hours each day working to keep the Internet a better and safer place, especially for children.

What a bunch of crap.

If you recall, in early 2011, Bob Parson’s owner of GoDaddy was proudly photographed next to a gunned-down elephant (with gun in hand); this outraged many people at the time.  Recently, they were found to be placing keywords related to their own services within the footer of websites purchased through their “Website Tonight” product all unknown to the website owner.

If you haven’t had it by now my friends, this last item should be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Ashton Kutcher posted today:  I am moving my domains off of @Godaddy due to their support for #SOPA.
In a post at Reddit, over 100 domain holders who have accounts at GoDaddy are said to be transferring their domains.

Ben Huh who owns the network of Cheezburger sites, and who has over 1,000 domains registered with GoDaddy stated that he will transfer registrar’s if GoDaddy doesn’t change it’s stance.

And slowly but surely, I am moving as well.

I highly suggest http://NameCheap.com – PLUS, they’re even offering a discount on transfers.  They posted this on Facebook today:

Unlike the competition, we oppose SOPA because we believe in internet freedom. Transfer your domains over for $6.99 with code SOPASucks. Offer valid for COM NET ORG INFO and BIZ TLDs.

Here are their instructions on how to transfer a domain from GoDaddy to Namecheap:
http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/876/83/how-to-transfer-a-domain-from-godaddy

Here are 6 things that you can do to help stop SOPA.

And Ben Parr is offering additional alternatives.  They including calling and emailing your representative on the day that Congress reconvenes which is January 18, 2012.

I hope that this post has helped to inform you just a little bit and gave you some options as to what you can do.

Long Live the Internet!

*** UPDATE ***

A press release issued by GoDaddy today says they no longer support SOPA. A little too late?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/godaddy-no-longer-supports-sopa/
http://mashable.com/2011/12/23/breaking-godaddy-no-longer-supports-sopa/

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Leaked Google Search Quality Guidelines

October 20, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Google, Internet Marketing, PPC, seo 

You no doubt have heard by now that Google’s most recent search quality guidelines was recently located online.  This new one is dated March 2011 while the previous one found online was from April of 2007.  I had originally heard about it from Search Engine Land who has since been contacted to remove the document.

If you’re not familiar with this document, it is a document that’s given to Google’s Search Quality Raters in order to evaluate a website.  The most recent document runs 125 pages with what begins with instructions to the reader and then moves on into the details.

However, prior to the removal I did read the document and took some notes that I felt were particularly interesting.  I did notice that most of it is plain-old common sense.  If you’re posting content on a website that has little to no value other than to get affiliate sales or clicks on your ads, then you’ll probably get flagged by one of these raters.  This should come as no surprise to anyone.

What follows are my snippets of notes taken while reading this document.

  • “When doing your work use the Firefox browser.”  This is paraphrased but essentially they want those doing the ratings to use Firefox.  Since it’s Google’s own document I don’t understand why they would recommend Firefox instead of Chrome and while this tip is not directly related to the content of a website, it was interesting.  I did later learn that this is because Firefox offers an Add-On called “Web Developer” which is helpful in the rating tasks.

Rating Scales

Perhaps the most written about within the document was that of using rating scales.  In other words, depending upon the site, the raters give it a certain kind of rating which comes in 6 varieties from “Vital” to “Unrateable”.
Essentially, “vital” means that if someone is searching on “Target Stores”  the search results should show the official Target Store website.  If someone is searching on “Pizza Hut” then the official site for Pizza Hut should show up in the results.
Alternatively, if there is a site that, upon a visit, immediately warns you that it is expected to have malware then this would be considered “Unrateable.”  Because the rater should not click through to the site in order to determine its value.
Between these two are four other kinds of ratings which vary and while I won’t add them all here, I will give you the most important things to remember when you’re developing your own website and its contents.
A Good Web Page…

  • Is of high quality and helpful to your readers.
  • Can also be fun to read OR
  • Contain recent news.
  • Be on-topic.

On item I did note was that in a portion of the guidelines it was stated that while evaluating a page it may get a lesser rating if it’s less up-to-date.  Something to keep in mind if you update your site on a very in-frequent basis.

Additionally, your page may get a lower rating if it’s “shallow” or in otherwords, contains little to no helpful content.  We’ve all run across these pages that are nothing more than a paragraph or two and that really doesn’t offer much for the reader.

Of special note was the use of the SPAM flag.  The pages that fell into this category were sites that have copied content or repeated keywords.  Now, regarding copied content. Evidently at least where Google is concerned, as long as the copied content is well-organized and helpful for users this shouldn’t get the lower rating.

In essence, it’s truly left up to the judgement of the person looking at the page.  This could be very subjective in my opinion as one person may think a copied content page is well-organized while another one may not.
Web Spam

While reading over the web spam portion of the document, here are a few things to note:

Hidden text on the page is generally considered spam (this is no surprise).

Keyword stuffing may be considered spam if it’s annoying to the user (again, this can be very subjective; what’s annoying to one person might not be to the next).

Redirects – If a URL redirects to another URL then it might be considered spam but only if the URL that the redirect ends up at is different from the one displayed in the search engine results page.  HOWEVER, it is noted that at times a company will get a new URL and then redirect the old one to the new one.  In order to be sure that this is correct, the rater is encouraged to check out the WHOIS records which shows who owns the domain.  If the WHOIS record is not available or its protected, this could cause your site to be flagged as SPAM even if it’s not and all for such a small mistake.

Additionally, it also went on to talk about those web pages created specifically to get clicks on PPC ads (such as AdSense) on a site and how to determine if the page they’re viewing is a real web page or a spam page.

They do NOT consider the following kinds of pages to be “spammy”:

  • Price comparisons.  Even if the user has to click an affiliate link to go to another site in order to get the product that they want.
  • Product reviews.  This also states that the review content must be original.
  • Recipes;
  • Lyrics, quotes, etc.
  • Coupons and the like.  Again, they mention here coupon or promotional codes, discounts, etc.  This is not considered to be “spammy”.

Another thing to be aware of is that of using copied  content alongside of PPC ads.  Even if a site specifically allows you to use their content and even if you have linked back to the original source, it is still considered “copied” content and will therefore receive a lower rating.

If the site is nothing more than one that uses feeds from any kind of site (think about those sites that use RSS feeds for example), and also uses PPC ads this will also receive a lower rating.
Blogs

Sometimes people will use auto-generated blogs that scrapes information from other sites in order for it to appear as though it’s a real blog – its only purpose however, is to generate clicks on PPC links will be considered “spam”.

On the bright side though, some blogs are truly legitimate but the blog owner hasn’t done a great job of monitoring those who leave comments on their blog and thus, tend to get hit with spam a lot.

If a site like this is found and there are lots of spammy links they don’t want to penalize this blog owner simply because it has been taken advantage of by someone else.

On the other side of the coin however, I noticed that it was stated in these guidelines that those sites that have “commercial intent” or in other words, try to make money from their site are mostly spammers.  While I take great issue with this statement (if this were true then Amazon.com would be considered a most egregious spammer would they not?), you have to take this into consideration yourself as to how to go about creating your own content.
Thin Affiliates

A thin affiliate site is a site that exists solely to make money from affiliate links and offers little to no value to the visitor.

Some examples given of this are:

If a “buy now” button exists but you are taken to the affiliate site on a different domain than the one that you’re on, it’s considered a thin affiliate page.

Image sources having a URL that is different from the page you are on.  TIP:  When you do promote a product and you are using an image from the product site, it’s best to download it to your own computer first and then upload it to your web server.

Again, on the bright side, if you’re offering price comparison’s or reviews even though it uses an affiliate link, that site would not be considered to be a “thin affiliate” site.

In all cases, just keep in mind that if you were to remove ALL advertising on your site how much content would actually be left?  If it’s little to nothing, you should probably get to work creating some helpful and unique content for those pages.

There was quite a bit of information contained within these guidelines but many of the ones I omitted are truly just common-sense and typically can be found in the Quality Guidelines already provided by Google.

All in all, when you’re creating your own websites and pages the best thing for you to do is keep the user in mind.  ”What is best for the user?” because in the end, this will help you far more than just about anything else you can do on a site.

ADVERTISERS
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How to SEO Your Videos

October 4, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Traffic, Videos 

It probably comes to no surprise to you that it’s important to use online video as a way to get your message across; whatever that message might be.  Whether you’re marketing a product, want to create brand awareness, want to showcase what kinds of services your business offers, you need video.

Not using video as part of your overall marketing strategy means you are missing out on a whole lot of traffic.

Today, it’s very easy to create your own videos, whether you’re using a screen capture program like Camtasia Studio, you’re recording it from your smart-phone or just using the built-in webcam on your laptop.  Creating the video is easy.   What to do with it once your done is a whole other matter…

Here we’ll take a look at a few fundamentals you can use when creating your video and then we’ll talk about the pros and cons of hosting it on your own site versus posting it on video-sharing sites.

Video Creation Tips

  • When you’re creating your video or writing your script, avoid talking about specific dates or times.  Your video will likely be available for quite some time and you don’t want someone getting turned off thinking they’re watching something outdated.
  • Also, don’t forget to add your website address, your logo, or any other important piece of information to your video as to how people can contact you. Some folks place their URL at the bottom of the video and leave it there for the duration of the video.  TIP:  Because ads typically appear at the bottom of a video while you’re viewing it on YouTube for example, the ad will cover up your website address so try placing it in a spot that will always be visible to the viewer.
  • Your voice and any audio you have on the video should be very clear.  At one point in time Google was testing something called “Google Audio Indexing” or GAudi.  This was located in Google labs which is being phased out so I’m not certain where this product sits right now.  However, they are using automatic captioning which attempts to ascertain what is being said in the video and then translates that into captions.  The bottom line is, you’d be better off making sure any verbal content in the video is clear enough so that you can take advantage of this service.  It wouldn’t hurt to also mention a few keywords here and there as well.
  • At the end of the video be absolutely sure that you tell the viewer what you want them to do next.  Sign up for your newsletter?  Visit your website?  Call you?
  • When you save your video, give it a keyword-rich name.  Video54879.mp4 doesn’t tell Google anything about the contents of that video.  Finding-Cheap-Books.mp4 however, does.

Once you’ve covered these bases, what do you do now?  One of the first questions to consider is “Should I host the video myself on my own site?” or “Should I post this video to YouTube?”

Hosting Your Own Videos

By far the biggest factor is how much bandwidth you have with your hosting account.  Some hosting accounts limit how much bandwidth you can use each month and if you happen to go over that amount, you’ll get charged extra.

There are some companies like HostGator for example who don’t limit your bandwidth at all.

But if you’re not willing to completely change hosting companies, you might want to consider using a service such as Amazon’s S3 service.  They offer a very cheap alternative which currently charges $.12 cents per gigabyte up to 10 terabytes per month.  It’s not unusual to get a bill for say, $4.00.  A great alternative if you are looking for way to personally host videos but don’t want to pay your hosting companies overage costs.

If you decide to host your own video (see the tip below about using both your own site and YouTube to utilize the most traffic possible), you’ll want to also make use of these SEO Tips:

Posting Your Video

When you post your video at sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, etc., you get the added benefit of being able to share your videos easily not to mention that it gets in front of more people than it would otherwise have the opportunity to do.

The biggest downsides to posting on a video sharing site as opposed to your own though is that the viewer will be exposed to advertising within your video, and you’re often limited as to how long your video can be.

It’s not uncommon however, for people to use both of these.  For instance, posting a short video on a video sharing site which is considered the “teaser” video and then encouraging them to visit your own website where they can watch the rest.

What’s Next?  Video Sitemaps

Videos (at least at the time of this writing) have to rely on metadata in order to get it listed properly in the search results.  One great way to make sure this happens is to use an XML Video Sitemap.  See the Google Help file on creating a Video Sitemap.

There’s also a way to combine all of your sitemaps such as html, mobile, video, etc.  See this Google post for details.

Additionally…

If you decide to post to a video-sharing site, don’t forget to write a description for your video that makes use of the keywords you’re trying to target for that video.

Also, don’t forget to add your URL as close to the beginning of the description as possible and be absolutely certain that you include the “http://” portion, otherwise your link will not work.

 

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