This new qualification, from Google Qualified Individual to Google Qualified Company, comes at a point in time where we have seen a significant increase in the demand for ethical, honest and hard-working Adwords™ Professionals in Australia and affirms Hollowpoint as one of the leading ‘GAP’s’ in this country.

Responding to this news, Hollowpoint director Justin Hollow said;

“I believe that the new qualification is a testament to our client’s success. We are pleased by this new development, however we are not a company to rest on our laurels… our strategy has always been to improve our customer’s return on investment and seek new ways to market our client’s products and services”.

To view our certification, please visit our Professional Status Page on Google.

For more information on our Google Adwords™ management, please visit our Adwords page.

One would presume that if an advertiser paid to list on a website, they would have some control over how their business was portrayed. In fact, the credibility of any business is critical but none more so than a small, hard-working sole trader whose primary source of work comes from websites they pay good money to advertise on.

So it comes as a surprise to find that Melbourne based company Service Central are allowing ‘customers’, real or imagined, to leave negative feedback on an advertiser’s business profile page.  What is particularly alarming is that Service Central see no reason to moderate the comments for veracity or to determine if a comment is defamatory, abusive, unsubstantiated or just down-right malicious.

As part of the signup process for advertisers, they agree to certain terms and conditions. Those terms state, quoted verbatim:

10.4 Service Central does not monitor or censor the opinions posted by Users on the Site nor investigate any remarks for accuracy or veracity. Service Central does not accept any liability for the accuracy or content of any material posted by other Users or Subscribers on the Site.

10.5 Provider releases Service Central from any claim, demands, proceedings, losses and damages (actual, special and consequential of every kind and nature including all legal fees) that may arise as a result of any use of the feedback system on the Site. Without limiting the foregoing, the Provider releases Service Central from any claims for defamation arising out of any comments or other materials posted at the Site.

These clauses in their terms cause some concern for two main reasons.  Primarily, the fact that anyone who has requested a quote from a Provider can write pretty much whatever they want, without fear of having the post deleted, and Secondly, that Service Central believes that it can indemnify itself against comments made by a third party but posted on their website.

Legally, a publisher has an obligation to it’s advertisers and to the public at large to ensure that certain material does not appear on their website. Such material includes anything defamatory… something which is a) untrue or b) unsubstantiated, and c) injurious to the reputation of a business or an individual. A publisher cannot indemnify themselves from such actions because everyone has a right to defend themselves in a court against defamation. Thus, it is a right that cannot be taken away from someone.

Legalese aside, it is just bad business to allow unmoderated comments to be posted on a website that is reliant upon the support of their paying advertisers… that is, the Providers. The customers don’t pay Service Central, the Providers do. You could argue that it is for the protection of the customers who use the site, but one could equally argue that Service Central already has a dispute resolution system in place, where issues can be dealt with in a private forum without resorting to public shouting matches. Service Central could also easily moderate comments to ensure that certain posts that are clearly unreasonable never see the light of day.

So what about the ethics and business practices?

Ethically, is it acceptable to allow feedback on such a site? Surely if Ebay allow it, then it must be okay, right? Even on Ebay, a corporate juggernaut that has proved in the past that it can do whatever it wants, the seller still has the right to dispute feedback, and may have that feedback removed if it is deemed unsubstantiated, abusive, malicious, or defamatory.

So why would Service Central continue to allow unsubstantiated or defamatory comments to appear on their website? Why bite the hand that feeds you? I believe it comes down to market position. Unfortunately, when a company has market share they don’t need to kowtow as much to their advertisers. They can get away with a little more every time.  This mentality has been seen recently in the actions of Ebay, Paypal and Facebook. 

At the end of the day, I do not believe that an advertiser who pays for listings or results should be subjected to the type of policies that Service Central employ.  It is damaging to the reputation of businesses, it serves no real purpose (dispute resolution would be far more effective in solving issues) and it is damaging to Service Central’s bottom line. If Service Central felt so strongly about the protection of the public at large, then perhaps they should charge their customers a fee, instead of the providers. Bottom line, if you go in to bat for your customers, you can’t charge your advertisers for the privilege.

This post reflects the opinion of the author and in no way represents the opinions of any other company or person other than the author. The author has relied on facts at his disposal and cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies in the veracity of the information provided herein.

This new qualification, from Google Qualified Individual to Google Qualified Company, comes at a point in time where we have seen a significant increase in the demand for ethical, honest and hard-working Adwords™ Professionals in Australia and affirms Hollowpoint as one of the leading ‘GAP’s’ in this country.

Responding to this news, Hollowpoint director Justin Hollow said;

“I believe that the new qualification is a testament to our client’s success. We are pleased by this new development, however we are not a company to rest on our laurels… our strategy has always been to improve our customer’s return on investment and seek new ways to market our client’s products and services”.

To view our certification, please visit our Professional Status Page on Google.

For more information on our Google Adwords™ management, please visit our Adwords page.

The issue is two-fold…

1. Hosting companies have a legal right to view ANY information that resides in a server that they own, and
2. A customer has a reasonable expectation that their private data cannot be accessed by anyone without authority to do so.

The two appear to be mutually exclusive.. If a hosting company is legally allowed (and in some cases, legally or morally obliged) to monitor emails and databases, in order to ensure that customers are not doing anything on the server that may be illegal or a breach of terms and conditions, then how can a customer have a reasonable expectation that his or her privacy is protected?  After all, in some cases, a hosting company may have to report to a regulatory or government body (not protected by privacy), they may have to provide access to the server to a third party for maintenance purposes, or they may have a reason to believe that a customer is breaching their terms of service, in which case the Hosting company has a right to defend it’s reputation.

My point of view is this:

1. A hosting company does have obligations to not only itself and it’s business interests, but also to the customer AND society at large.  If the hosting company has just cause to believe that a customer is doing something illegal or that breaches it’s terms and conditions, the hosting company has a right to investigate to the fullest extent of the law.  But, and I must make it clear, such access to private data should ONLY occur where there is just cause (such as a complaint, something that is public and known, or by a filtering mechanism that is automated and thus does not display private details to a real person unless a flag has been raised).

2. Customers have a right to privacy. This is not only a legal right, but a moral obligation. Although the hosting company owns the server, a customer places data on the server with the expectation that the information is secure.

If you suspect that a hosting company is accessing your data without your consent, then the best method is to confront them. Consider putting some form of tracking in your emails (talk to a web developer about this) to collect the ip addresses of people who have read your emails. Also consider asking your hosting company to confirm that they will not access data without either your permission or a court order.

You have a right to privacy, but the hosting company has a right to protect it’s server. Come to an understanding with your hosting company and at least you will know where you stand.

And if you are concerned about a hosting company scanning your emails for porn, relax.  If it’s legal, they really don’t care!

So, I thought rather than explaining the ins and outs of making money online, I would focus on what SHOULD be, for most people, just plain common sense.  Sorry to those readers who thought I was going to reveal some secret that only marketing people know… the truth of the matter is, there is NO secret that only marketing people know. They often lack the common sense and objectivity that business owners also often lack when it comes to their own business.

Firstly, we need to be in the right frame of mind, so here is the Golden Rule of Marketing…

BE OBJECTIVE

Ignore what YOU want and instead, focus on what customers/visitors want. We all have different tastes, needs and wonts when it comes to websites.  Often, we take ownership of something because we have paid for it. Part of that ownership is a need to control the object, whether it be a TV, a puppy, or a website.  The important thing is to avoid the ‘I WANT’ attitude. Instead, get inside the minds of your customers and find out what THEY want. You’ve heard the ‘If you build it, they will come’ line from Field Of Dreams… although that’s not entirely true (you need to Market your website) the point is that if you build something that people WANT, they will buy it. If you build a website with your customer’s needs as the highest priority, then you will have more success than if you built it to make YOUR wants a reality.

Now we are in the right head-space, let’s look at this as we would a To-Do list (we like lists, they make hard things simpler);

1. Be Objective (okay, we covered this one)
2. Customers are your bread and butter - make them your highest priority
3. Listen to advice from experienced and successful people
4. Don’t be afraid to duplicate success - If it works for your competitors, don’t be scared to use it
5. Never miss an opportunity
6. Don’t fear failure - failure only makes you learn that much faster
7. Nothing is free - there is always a catch, so don’t act all surprised when you find it!
8. Find the right people - don’t manage everything… to borrow a line from the Meaning of Life…you aren’t qualified!
9. Take risks - you’ll never be successful if you are afraid to experiment
10. Don’t blame others for failure - take responsibility for the end result. Don’t blame the customer for not liking your website, don’t blame the designer if they designed exactly what you wanted.
11. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket - there are many streams of revenue out there, so don’t always presume that revenue can come from only one source. Look for opportunities to make more money.
12. Don’t preach to the masses, preach to the converted - don’t sacrifice your financial security for the sake of ideals that are not popular.  You can’t retrain people to think like you. If you are in business, you need to think like the average consumer.
13. Every dollar is valuable - you have to earn every single dollar you make. It isn’t free, it doesn’t come without risks and responsibilities, it doesn’t grow on trees. And finally,
14. Be a follower before you lead - we all want to be the leader in our chosen field.  You have to start somewhere, so follow the crowd until you are in a position to lead them.

Okay, well that’s the philosophy of how to make money, but would the article’s title not suggest that I am now going to tell you EXACTLY how to do it? Sorry, you will have to wait for Part 2 which will be coming shortly. In that article, I will explain the various methods of generating revenue that can be applied to almost ANY website.

Quality of the traffic

It is important that you understand increasing visits to your website doesn’t necessarily mean more sales as a result. If a website visitor is searching for your product or service and finds your website, then your chances of converting that visitor into a customer is higher than if you are seen when the visitor is NOT specifically looking for your products or services.  It is important to have a good mix of traffic in this regard. Often, untargetted traffic can lead to conversions and regardless, it should still help in making your company ‘front of mind’.

Low Quality Traffic

If you want thousands of people visiting your website with no real intention to purchase (but perhaps you can convert a handful of these visitors anyway) then there are many services out there offering thousands of visitors to your site for very little. This is handy if you want to be seen to have a lot of traffic, you want many people from a particular region to see your site, whether they are interested or not, or just for vanity’s sake.  The going rate is usually around $50 per 10,000 visits, which can be delivered over a period of time, or as quickly as possible. If you wanted to be seen by, for example, a million people in Australia, you would expect to pay around $2,000 for this service.

These ads are normally delivered as ‘pop-unders’.  This means that as someone leaves another website, a browser window pops under the current window, as if to say ‘If you liked this site, then here’s another you may like’.  Not all that effective for making sales, but certainly a fast, easy way to bring people to your site, whether they look at your content or not.

Medium Quality Traffic

If you want many people who are at least ‘interested’ in your industry to see your website, then Blogs and Articles are the way to go, just like the one you are reading now! You may not need a web designer, but you may have an interest in what a designer has to say. And perhaps you feel that we can help you. If, by spending time giving out free advice and writing informative articles it leads to a handful of extra sales, then great! If not, blogs help to improve your search engine ranking anyway, so it’s worth giving it a go. Setting up a blog can be a little difficult, but a web designer can help you there to at least configure it to run under your domain name and get you started. It’s also more fun than you might think to write articles that can benefit others!

In addition to blogs, syndicated articles are also very popular. If you have some skill at writing, why not submit your articles to places like www.ezinearticles.com . It’s free, easy and with a few good articles you can be an Expert Author in no time!

Social Networking sites, like Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin are also very popular and will add to your overall business image. It’s great for word of mouth (when you have friends of your friends contacting you about your product or service) and also has the added benefit of giving you some social interaction.

High Quality Traffic

If you want highly targetted traffic to your website, you can’t go past Google Adwords. Adwords will deliver ads  that link to your website to website visitors that are searching for your product or service (based on the keywords you select). You choose how much you are prepared to pay per click and per day, what keywords you want to list for, what regions you are targetting and in some circumstances you can even choose the demographic of your visitors (age, sex, location, income, etc). Check out our Adwords page on our main website for more information.

With a combination of these traffic sources, you should see an exponential number of visitors to your website within a short space of time. Just remember that, at the end of the day, no matter how high you list in search engines or how much traffic you can generate, if you don’t have a good website, a good product and good service, no amount of traffic is going to help your site. Get the basics right, then get your business out there!

We’ve all seen websites guaranteeing first page Google rankings, but what does it really mean? Let’s look at two different methods and we will soon see that first page on Google is not as exciting (or difficult) as it might appear.

Guaranteed First Page on Google!

Whilst most viewers would read that headline and think, wow! How could an SEO firm guarantee that? we hate to burst bubbles here, but what they are talking about is Sponsored Links, on Google’s Adwords program. Those ads that appear at the top of the results when you search for something? Usually against a pale salmon background? And down the right hand side of Google’s pages? They are Adwords. There is nothing clever about guaranteeing you will appear in those results, because you PAY for it. Whether you pay to list in the top 3 or somewhere lower down the results, you will be paying every time someone clicks on your ad.  We don’t have a problem with that… it’s a great advertising vehicle, we use it regularly, we ARE Google Adwords Professionals.  What we DON’T like to see is SEO companies using the ‘Be Seen on The First Page of Google, Guaranteed!’ to mislead potential clients into believing that they will guarantee first page ‘Organic’ listings (the main results on the left hand side of the search results page).

Guaranteed Search Engine Rankings!

This is the hard bit. As described in my article ‘Guaranteed SEO Rankings?’, it is possible for an SEO firm to guarantee their work and to push their services on the basis of previous successes, but there is no real way to ENSURE that a client’s website appears on the first page of results. Some firms, including ourselves, won’t charge a client unless we succeed. We think this is a good way to operate. We then have a vested interest in seeing our clients get on the first page of results, or we don’t get paid. And we also have an interest in KEEPING them there, as we want renewals, not just a once-off fee for achieving a singular result. And at the end of the day, one bad result can mean one angry client, which can mean ten friends who know of the failure, which means 100 potential customers who won’t deal with the firm who failed to achieve those rankings.

So, before jumping headlong and signing up with a company, determine first what they mean (Sponsored Links vs Organic Results) as this may save a lot of grief, anger and confusion down the track.

Don’t design for the owner, design for the customer.

There is nothing more detrimental to business, in my opinion, than for a designer to build a website for the owner as an automaton, rather than using some insight and designing with the customers in mind. Sure, the website owner may get exactly what they want, but if that site doesn’t appeal to their market, the site is doomed and you will now have a client who is angry at you for designing a website that doesn’t work!

In a perfect world, the business owner knows their market inside out. They know what will appeal to their customers, they know how to sell to them, they know how to close. But this is not a perfect world and many business owners have little understanding of what makes their market tick. So, should a web designer make the call? Not at all…  but a good designer should do their research and find out more about the market so as to guide the business owner in matters of design.  A good designer knows, in broad terms, what will and won’t work on any given website.  A successful business owner knows, in broad terms, what will work for them. It’s just a matter of the two parties working together to nail their market without being distracted by the ‘designs I like’ scenario. It is very rare that a business owner will be the same demographic as their customers.

Stick to what you know will work.

If there is a particular element in a design that you know works, use it! As an example, many business owners are scared of using elements such as a strong call to action (’Call Us Today! Buy Now! Save Money Today!’) but hey, it works well, so why be afraid to use it? We don’t suggest that our clients SCREAM it out from a rooftop… that would be as annoying as those clearance sale ads where the voiceover shouts out the message over and over again.  What we suggest is to NOT be afraid to try the methods that have proven successful time and time again.

Industry leaders know what you don’t.

The leaders of any industry have already done their homework. They know what will work and what won’t. They have probably invested a lot of time and money into these methods, possibly through experienced marketing people, more often than not through trial and error.  Why not save yourself the effort (and dollars) and duplicate what they are doing? This doesn’t mean you copy them to the letter. You simply take their concept, and improve upon it. That’s evolution for you. It’s how the world turns, learns and grows. Then when YOU become the industry leader, you can be the poor sucker who has to invest money into discovering how to stay ahead of the pack! Lucky you!

Is coding that important?

Look, as a developer, I can say coding is important, but what really matters is what your customers see. Don’t get bogged down by W3C Standards, Accessibility issues, css vs tables, and so forth. Design for your customers and the code will follow. Shock Horror I hear other developers say! No, not really, coding is something for the developer to worry about, not the business owner. Developers - just do your job and let designers and business owners focus on the overall design!

So how do I find out what my target audience wants?

The answer is obvious… ask them! Ask your customers what they want, what they would like to see, what things interest them, what sites they visit. Look at competitor websites and see what they are doing. Market test some designs on your audience and get their feedback.

At the end of the day, the business owner pays the designer, let’s not forget that. But it is my hope that business owners will not see their designers are mindless robots, simply there to push buttons and make a website happen. A good designer is successful because the websites they build produce results. I think there is something in that for everyone!

Use Common Sense, not Algorithms.

Many SEO firms like to tell their clients how clever they are because they KNOW the latest algorithms released by the major search engines.  Well, I hate to put paid to this fantasy, but search engines don’t release their algorithms. They will never fully understand exactly how to make the most of it, nor will they be able to constantly adapt to changing algorithms without billing the clients for all that time.

What will win the day is just old-fashioned, tried and true common sense. If it makes sense, do it.

So here’s the lowdown on factors that are important to improving your search engine rankings.

Domain Names

Domain names play a big part in SEO. It makes sense to choose a domain name that is both a) relevant to the region and b) relevant to the search terms.  For example, if I was registering a domain name for a kitchen supplier in Brisbane, Australia, I would be inclined to pick a domain name that reflected the business and the nature of the business and the location of the business (such as PICKARDSKITCHENS.COM.AU….  where the business name is Pickards, the business type is Kitchens and the location is Australia).  Sometimes it pays to use a generic domain, but often it will confuse potential customers too much (for example, KITCHENSBRISBANE.COM.AU may be too generic because it doesn’t identify the business behind the domain name).

Title Tags

Your home page title should contain keywords that relate to your core business, and should be repeated within the heading of your page. For example, Pickards Kitchens Brisbane, or Kitchens in Brisbane by Pickard will list a lot better than if you just made your title Pickards Home Page.  Put different titles on different pages so that each page is first defined by the title (for instance, an inquiry form title might read ‘Pickard Kitchens Brisbane - Inquiry Form’).

Keywords/Description/Abstract Tags

Some SEO firms don’t believe that major search engines pay any attention to these tags. Some do. At the end of the day, it takes next to no time to put them in, regardless. As long as your keywords, description and abstract are also included in the content of the home page, then this is not a wasted process.  We usually recommend that the description and abstract tags are repeats of each other, and the keywords tag is a repeat of those tags but with commas put in at every available opportunity.  Try and put your 5 most important keywords in the tags, and don’t make the tags too long. Put the most important keyword first.

Next Week, we will be dealing with the Content of each page.

Why is this such an issue?

There is a massive amount of confusion and misinformation out there about Guaranteed rankings, due in part to the three main players in the industry, those who do, those who don’t, and those who pretend they can.

The biggest misunderstanding is that the firms who don’t guarantee results believe that as no seo firm owns a search engine, they can’t possibly achieve the desired results, therefore the guarantee is worthless, unless a firm uses unethical techniques and the firms who DO guarantee results believe that the firms who don’t are just greedy, lazy and have no confidence in their own abilities.

So who are the main players?

• The SEO firms who WILL guarantee their work
• The SEO firms who WON’T guarantee their work, and
• The SEO firms who WILL guarantee their work but use unethical or deceptive methods, both in their approach to SEO and in their client acquisition strategy

Let’s touch on the last one first.

The firms who will guarantee their work but use unethical methods.

Unfortunately, there ARE many SEO companies who use a client acquisition strategy that is entirely deceptive. They will make sweeping claims about their abilities, offer wild guarantees on their work, and use unethical SEO techniques to ‘trick’ search engines into listing websites higher than they have a right to be.  Make no mistake, any SEO firm who uses such unethical techniques WILL do more harm than good.  They can effectively have your website banned from Google and other search engines altogether. Unfortunately, they may actually achieve the desired rankings for a little while, in which case they will want payment from the client at this stage. No matter to them if the website gets banned at a later stage… they got the (temporary) results, they got paid, and they are out the door to hit their next target.  There is no doubt in ANY firm’s mind that ‘Black Hat SEO’ (unethical, cheating methods of SEO) are bad.  So how do you spot the firms offering Black Hat SEO? Ask them what they intend on doing. If they cannot give you firm, definitive answers, move on. It also pays to contact their clients and ask them.  My recommendation is to ask them for the details of a client that they have performed SEO for as far back as 2 years, who is still a client. That will be a dead giveaway.

What about SEO firms who don’t guarantee results at all?

My opinion is that SEO work is largely considered as money-for-jam if SEO companies are allowed to take money from clients without having to demonstrate any level of success.  It is another deceptive client acquisition strategy. They can sprout on about ‘unethical SEO firms offering guarantees’ but at the end of the day, it is because THEY don’t have confidence in their own abilities.  If an SEO firm is not prepared to put their money where their mouth is, then perhaps they should find an easier, less demanding line of work.  There are many ‘bodies’ that exist to provide a place for SEO companies to gather and spruike their wares, but even these bodies have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of no guarantees.  Let’s be clear, ethical SEO firms who DO offer a guarantee are a clear and significant threat to non-guaranteeing SEO companies’ way of life. They threaten the very foundation of easy money for SEO firms.

What about the ethical companies that DO offer Guaranteed SEO?

There are only a handful of these companies at this stage, but as customers become more demanding (ie.. when customers simply want to get what they pay for!), I believe this number will grow considerably.  Provided a few criteria are met, then dealing with Guaranteed SEO firms should not be an issue:

• Get references. Speak to their clients, especially long-term ones, and ask THEM how they feel. If an SEO firm won’t give you access to their clients, run a mile… there will be a good reason why they won’t give you references (especially from loyal, long-term customers)
• Ask them WHAT they will do to improve your rankings. Due to the time-intensive nature of SEO, they should have no fear that a client will simply take their ideas and do it themselves. They should have no qualms telling you the specifics of what they are going to do. If a company mentions ‘cloaking’, run a mile. If they mention ’special tricks’ or something that is ’secret’, run a mile. Ethical SEO companies will use techniques as outlined in my article ‘Ethical SEO Techniques’.
• Find out exactly what the guarantee is for. Most SEO firms will put conditions on their guarantees that are far too ambiguous or too extreme. Ensure that it is as simple as this ‘IF you don’t rank in the top X for such and such keywords in such and such search engines, you don’t pay anything at all’. Also ensure there is a time guarantee (for instance, if the rankings drop out of the guaranteed limits within perhaps 6 months, they must refund the customer)
• Make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the SEO firm has been in business for longer than the guarantee period. We suggest that clients should ensure the company has been in operation for at least 2-3 years. Any less than that and you KNOW that that company cannot produce any references from ‘long-term’ clients.

At the end of the day, you need to deal with a firm you can trust, so if you are in doubt about their abilities, don’t hand over the money. Whatever you do, DO NOT hand over money to an SEO firm that won’t even offer you ANY type of guarantee on their work or failing that, comprehensive reporting. And if you DO deal with a non-guarantee SEO firm, if they don’t produce significant results after 3 months, dump them and deal with a company who will.