The price of domain name registration has come down significantly over the years, and this really changes the way you should think about it.  You can now purchase domain name registration for $8-$10 from a number of sources, or you can even get them for less than $5 if you are interested in purchasing extra services from your domian name regstrar. 

 

You may be thinking about starting a business, or you may have an idea for a web site.  In either case, a great domain name is something that you will likely need for either venture to succeed in the current market, where internet usage and sales are starting to overpower the retail business.  There are serveral great reasons that you should think about early domain name registration, or even registering one or more domains that you think you might use in the near or distant future.  Here are a few of them:

 

Lock in your brand or company name:

 

Many companies and internet startups will take several months or even years to get off the ground.  During this time there is a chance that someone out there will identify with what you are trying to do, or possibly set up a business in competition.  They will be looking for the same type of domain, or exact domain that you are for their business.  You don't have to use it right away, just register the rights to it, and it's yours.  Protecting your brand or potential brand in this way will save you a great deal of frustration down the road!

 

Domain age is important for Search Engine Optimization:

 

One of the key factors in Search Engine Optimization is the age of the domain.  The search engines, like Google and Yahoo! take domain age as a factor in ranking web sites in their organic search results, giving higher priority to domains that are a little older, because it implies that the owners and sites are not "fly by night" factors on the web.

 

Great domain names are becoming hard to find:

 

There is a whole sub-culture that surrounds internet domain name registration, buying, selling and auctions.  People who don't even want a domain name are constantly trying to figure out what might be the next big thing in retail, technology or the environment (or anything for that matter), and spend a lot of time and money on figuring these things out and buying up the domains names that would be relevant or desired, so they can later sell them for a profit, making it that much harder to find a domain name for your own endeavour.

 

So, whether you have just come up with the new solution to global warming, and are seeking the funding to launch your idea, or you need a good domain name for your blog about your pet, the earlier you snap it up, the easier a time you will have when you are ready to launch your idea or product online.

 

Best of luck, and good hunting!

 

        

Just Launched!  The new Smart Space application from Dragonfly Net Solutions is a solutions for beginners to host a web site and blog on the internet!

The application puts a web site, blog, social media space and photo album, all in one great package!  All you have to do is choose your domain name, add Smart Space, and we do all the technical stuff! 

You now have fully functional blog using Quick Blogcast, a web site builder through Website Tonight, an online photo gallery, email and more!

I will be posting more about it in the future, but you can check out our sample page at www.dns-ss.info and see exactly how easy it is to become a presence on the net with your very own domain name.

Check out a video about easy web hosting with Dragonfly Net Solutions here on our social space.

        

Beginners who start the process of developing their skills for SEO will come across a plethora of acronyms and terms that they may not fully understand.  Google Pagerank is an important metric to measure both your own site, and the sites of others that you may choose to seek links from, or link to.  Pagerank is a numeric value that ranks a web page's importance on the web, in Google's case, it is a ranking out of 10.  The importance of Pagerank in Google comes from Google's algorithm for ranking pages in it's orgainc results. 

The position you place in the organic results (search results) is directly linked to both the Pagerank of your own site, as well as the Pageranks of other sites that link to your site.  It is basically a rank of how important your site is to others on the web, based on how important other sites, who link to your site are.  And so on, and so on, and so on.  It is often called link juice.

The image below shows how Pagerank can pass from one site to another.  Many sites with low Pagerank can build up a site's own Pagerank, as in site "B".  But, you can see the higher Pagerank from just one link to site "C" from site "B", passes a lot of link juice, giving site "C" a very high rank.

High Pagerank from others linking to you = High Pagerank for you!

 
Excellent beginners discussion of Pagerank from SEOmoz.



SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday-What's PageRank Got to do With It? from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Now that we all know a little about Pagerank, use the tool below to determine yours!

Check Page Rank of any web site pages instantly:

This free page rank checking tool is powered by Page Rank Checker service

        

Now that I have calmed down a little about the Google Map Listings for Winnipeg Florist, I would like to go a little further in the discussion about why I believe this is wrong, and what people can do to effect change in these listings.

The really good news is that I can't seem to duplicate these results any more, as you can see from the link above.  I don't know if Google made the change or if we were just experiencing an anomaly in the results.  I did confirm the results with several sources, the day I wrote the blog about the bad Google results.

I actually didn't realize it at the time, but I was dealing with 2 separate issues.

1. Google Map Spam in General
2. The Way Google Uses Maps in Search

In this blog, I will discuss the first issue:

1.  Google Map Spam in General

Google Maps is one place to search for local businesses, and the results that Google brings back for these searches can be very good, or very poor.  Google has laid out several guidelines that you can read about on Mike Blumenthal's blog from Blumenthals.com, called Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo Local Search.

Here is an excerpt from Mike's Posting:

What I have learned from this exercise, is that Bloomex Inc. has created multiple listings for Google Maps that link to both their actual business name, as well as keyword stuffed listings that include the words flowers and the names of cities they are represented in.

Based on Google's guidelines, they are not allowed to do this:

Quality Guidelines:

The following items outline practices that could result in your business listings being permanently removed from Google Maps. While they cover the most common practices to avoid, Google may respond negatively to other practices not listed here. If you have any question about whether or not a tactic is deceptive, we recommend you stand on the side of caution.

• Represent your business exactly as it appears in real life. The name on Google Maps should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website.
• List information that provides as direct a path to the business as you can. Given the choice, you may want to list individual location phone numbers over a central phone line, official website pages rather than a directory page, and as exact of an address as you can.
• Only include listings for businesses that you represent.
• Don’t participate in any behavior with the intention or result of listing your business more times than it exists. Service area businesses, for example, should not create a listing for every town they service. Likewise, law firms or doctors should not create multiple listings to cover all of their specialties.
• Use the description and custom attribute fields to include additional information about your listing. This type of content should never appear in your business’s title or address fields.

I have been informed that there is only one avenue to pursue changes to the content Google provides for these listings, and that patience is a virtue when doing so.  That is through the Google Maps Help Group.

Here you can report spam on Google Maps by providing the search results and some background information on your complaint.

To file a spam report with the Google Maps team, please reply to this
thread with the following information:
- Your search terms
- A link to your search results
- A short description of why you believe this is spam
If we don't ask for additional information, you can assume that your
report has been read and is being investigated.

I submitted a spam report for Bloomex Inc. with plenty of information on their spammy nature across Canada, in the Google Maps Results.  Their business names are NOT, Bloomex Flowers Winnipeg, Bloomex Flowers Hamilton, etc.  I guess we will see what happens. 

I hope that I can get some other local florists to post about this issue as well, in the coming days, and really pump up this issue with Google.

        

Continuing to critique Google's results, I did a quick search for Winnipeg Flowers today on Google.ca.  The results that were returned are absolutely shocking to me!






Bloomex now gets the sole position on the Google map that is returned.  This is an extremely powerful position for them to be in, above the organic results, and it needs to be changed.

Bloomex has only been in business in Winnipeg, since the end of the summer.  They chose a location in town that would be beneficial to their local result in Google, and it has worked brilliantly.  In my mind, this is a complete and utter travesty.  This position will net, what?  40% of the Valentines Day sales for this keyword? 

What of the florists in Winnipeg who have been hacking it out in this market for years, eeeking out a living?  We are now way beyond partisan politics in the Winnipeg florist business now. 

I hope that Winnipeg Florists can band together and generate a voice strong enough, in the face of Google, to get Bloomex removed from these results (or at least demoted), and let the true backbone of Winnipeg, the Mom and Pop or family stores have a chance to succeed. 

We will be creating a survey, that will hopefully be well received by all Winnipeg florists, as we band together to make Google listen.

.... Oh yea, this is the result for "Winnipeg Florist".  Not so surprising, and equally disturbing.  They get the "A" spot!



I guess this is Google's "Welcome to Winnipeg!"

        

Anyone who knows anything about the internet knows that Google is the biggest in search, they get over 60% of the search traffic.  They have had an extremely good year, making revenue exceeding 5.5 BILLION DOLLARS in Q3 alone.  As stated in Google's Investor relations Q3 Report, they have increased their Q3 earnings by 31% over last year.  Google is still growing, and with revenues as large as this, and market share this big, it places a much higher level of responsibility on them to have good results.

Wait a minute, isn't that just what they claim, is that they have the best results?  They have even gone so far as trying to improve the user's experience by improving landing page quality in the sponsored links, and creating "trust with the user through a positive experience".  So, what's the problem?

The problem is, that the average internet user, for whom Google is professing their loyalty, doesn't even know what a sponsored link is!

I have been running pay per click campaigns for almost 5 years.  During that time, I have spoken with many friends, family and colleagues about sponsored links; Here is a typical conversation:

"Hey Brad, I run a pay per click advertising campaign for my wife's flower shop, check it out?"
"How do I do that?"
"Just type in "Winnipeg Florist" in Google, you will see us there."
"Oh yea, there it is!"   ...CLICK!!!
"HEY, DON'T DO THAT, THAT JUST COST US MONEY!"
(Yea, we just fraudulently clicked ourselves)

A programmer friend of mine sent me an email a couple of weeks ago that said, "I just clicked your advertising".  He was talking about SEO with another friend of mine, and used my site as an example, he too didn't realize that when they searched for our business, we come up in both the organic and sponsored results, hence the click.  When my other friend told him about what "sponsored results" means, being the good friends they are, they thought it was funny and let me know.  The point is, that although anyone who reads this post likely knows about PPC, but the majority of internet users do not. 

You may have had your own experiences such as the one above, or you may not have.  It is still a reality that there are millions (Hundreds of Millions?) of people that use Google search each day.  (I couldn't find a good number by searching, most were questions posed on boards, and the answers most often were,"a lot")  How many of those users are experts?  1%?  Maybe one tenth of 1%?  A millionth?  The rest of the people out there put a lot of trust in the results they get, including the sponsored results.  Google has made billions of dollars because people don't even know what they are clicking.  Of course in a free market, this is just fine, and I don't begrudge them one dollar of it.  AdWords has helped me and my wife gain a lot of extra business on the internet.  But, there is a point where this system really breaks down. 

What if it's your mom surfing the internet?  You would want her to find exactly what she is looking for right?  What if she was sending flowers across the country to you and your wife, after you just had a baby?  Well, now its personal, isn't it?  (I will try not to relate this to the flower business too much, but that is what I know)

Now for the good part.

That $100 flower order you mom sent you may have gone something like this: 

Your mom actually clicked on an affiliate link for an order forwarding site (Posing as a local florist, with an add that stated "'Your city' Local Florist"), that probably cost her about 5 bucks.  Next it went to a wire service, that just cost her another 20 bucks.  The remaining $75 made its way to an actual florist, who probably has their own website, but weren't found in the query.  Oh, wait, they may have to pay a fee for getting the order.  There goes another 3 bucks.  Now the florist gets to make and deliver the flowers with the remaining $72.  Probably not exactly what mom expected.  Had she found the actual florist's web site, she may have actually got $100 worth of product (less delivery) for her $100.

If the sponsored links were so great, she would have found an actual florist in your city. 

Is this Google's fault? 

You can draw your own conclusions, but of course, I have some of my own.

This type of advertising in any other arena, besides the internet, wouldn't make it a week.  Better business bureaus, local consumer advocate groups, even word of mouth would stop it dead in its tracks before it even hit the ground running.  For some reason, on the internet, this is considered good business!

One of my favorite bloggers, recently posted a blog called "Who wants to beat Google?".  While this was a very compelling article about linking social networking and user preference to search, he missed one key element about the user experience in the quality of the results.  VALUE. 

Here are some interesting Canadian stats. 

(I will use Canada as the example, because other than Greenland and Iceland, our internet usage seems to be the highest in the world, almost 85% of the population.  Cold climates?) 

From StatsCan
45% of Canadians use the internet to purchase goods and services. 
60% of Canadians use the internet for window shopping.  (Just behind sports and bill payments...)

There are 33 Million Canadians, 28 Million use the internet.

Lets go back to how many people are internet or PPC experts...enough said there.

So, we have established that a very major portion of the internet is about consumerism.  Hence the sponsored links.  Let's focus on that, and leave the Wiki-informational stuff for another discussion.

What is someone who is an internet consumer actually looking for? 

Cheap Nike shoes from China?  The consumer may not even realize it, but What they are really searching for is VALUE, for their dollar.  Does Google have a responsibility to provide this value to the consumer?  I will say yes.  But, I will follow that conclusion up later with a solution for Google, just hold on.

Let's talk a little about Google's improved webmaster guidelines on AdWords for a minute.  This relatively new venture is really providing better results isn't it?  Sure, when you click on an add for car parts, the site that pops up is actually a site for car parts, but it has nothing to do with value.  They have improved the user experience for the consumer by providing a re-direction that is hopefully useful to you, and not just a spammy ad for something else.  I really don't know who could afford to advertise for car parts and have a site for diapers, but I guess that was an issue.  Even reading Google's new quality rank help topic, you can see that it's really geared towards appeasing the advertiser, not getting better results for the consumer.  There are some general guidelines about content and having the ad match the content of the page, but nothing there states anything about whether the site provides value to the consumer. 

Fraudulent Google Ads

I have read stats that there are over 20,000 florist web sites in the US alone, many of which have ads associated with them.  How many of these actually link to a florist?  Your guess is as good as mine.  What I do know is that many of these web sites are not actual florists, or are local florists somewhere other than where the site states.  How could this happen with the new quality score in place?  I have seen several examples where florists in other cities with sites that have the capability to provide wire transfers have created mirror sites with local phone numbers and even local addresses in the cities in question.  "Local Winnipeg Florist", states the ad.  "Winnipeg Florist", is the name of the site.  "204", is the area code of the phone number. 

Google has been my favorite, trusted search engine for a long time, and their link told me that I was clicking on a "Local Winnipeg Florist".  Why would I have to check the about us page, to find out that they are not actually a local florist, but an order gatherer who is going to take a percentage of my money and send the order to a REAL local Winnipeg florist, through a wire service who is also going to take a percentage of my money?

Isn't this fraudulent advertising?  I posed the question about fraudulent advertising to Google through my own AdWords account some time ago, and blogged about it at The Florist Blog.  Google's response was, "...no comment...Would you like help with anything else?"  I was a little disappointed with the response that day, and didn't really have all that much to say about it.

I would suggest that there should be a governing authority who should be policing this issue, but with all the malicious activity going on on the internet already, what priority would this issue get, and who would have the resources to police this kind of activity?  Wait a minute, how about Google?!  With Q3 revenue of 5.5 billion dollars, why not put some resources into policing this issue.  What a great idea!  I can't believe they haven't thought of this!  Oh, wait again, there might be a small problem here.  These are the very people who are creating Google's revenue that we will be hunting down.  That's a terrible idea.

Or is it?

I have been thinking about this issue a lot lately.  Google has been fairly steady with their market share for quite some time now, and it doesn't really look like they will be gaining any market share any time soon.  In fact, there are continually other entities like Cuil popping up that may just hit the nail on the head, and steal some of that market share from Google.  (Not that Cuil is going to do that)  During a recession and with everyone seeking to take you down, you have to think outside the box. 

The Solution for Google

1. Research the issue.  (It may be a bigger problem than even I think)
2. Begin to clean up AdWords. (Start with some obscure lightly trafficked industries to test it out)
3. Go Public.

Number 3 is the kicker.  Announce that while there was no clear regulations to do so, Google has taken the initiative to create VALUE for the consumer in their sponsored results.  Make it REALLY public!  Even go as far as cleaning up the organic results.  Tell everyone you just made them better.  Actually do it!

I firmly believe that as online spending increases, the dip in revenue from the reduced fraudulent advertising revenue will be offset by the increased traffic and an increase in market share.  Watch that 60% rise to above 70% within a year, and force the competitors to follow suit.  Google, you have just made a more money, and made a better world for doing it.

While this may not actually be the right solution, I hope that Google will find this blog and take notice.  They have the power, and of course;

"With great power, comes great responsibility." - Uncle Ben, Spiderman 1


google

        

I had a phone call the other day from a sales person who sounded like they were in a complete panic to sell me,

"Top Placement in the Google Search Results for My Specific Keyword".

For anyone who is reading this that may be in the SEM game, this claim will always raise a few red flags.  Those of you who don't know what I am talking about, read on.

The caller told me that it was going to be in my best interest to "grab it now", and that "we can only offer this for a limited time, as my colleagues are on the phone right now with other clients who may steal this keyword from you before you get it".

Now, the keyword isn't really that important, but it is for one of the sites for which I manage both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC).  I wondered, how can they be offering me the top position in Google for this keyword?  I wondered, "is this a legitimate claim, and they have spammed this keyword so badly that they got the top position, and now they are offering it to me?".  This has to be the best offer ever!

I kept listening to what they had to say out of a morbid sense of curiosity, provided my email address so that I could do a little research on what they are offering, and just enjoy the whole process.  I had to know exactly how much this great service would cost me.  I found that for a hundred dollar setup fee, and then about 100 dollars a month, I could have the top position in Google for my great keyword.

I managed to get a web site address out of them, and took a quick look.  Right there on the first page of their site was a quick video about how it works.  They even showed a page from Google and pointed to the top position in Google where I would be listed for my great keyword. 

Yes, there it was, they had published something absolutely amazing and truly remarkable. 

They could get me top ranking on the first page of Google.... IN THE SPONSORED LINKS! 

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw it.  They were actually promoting their ability to add you to their Google AdWords campaign and bid as much as possible for the keyword in question to put you in the number one spot on "the Google search results".

So let's get back to the 100 dollar setup fee.  They would add, quantity of 1 keyword to a search campaign, with a couple of ads I would imagine. (Nice profit margin)  Then, for about 100 bucks a month, I could get place in the top position on Google's sponsored results for my one keyword.

I have it on good authority that the fees for the top position for this single keyword would be around $15 per month.  Not a bad profit margin again.

People are allowed to make money, but at least do it by providing a full disclosure about what you are going to do.  (Oh, did I mention that you have to sign up for a 1 year contract?)

I have learned a great deal about human nature since getting into the business of online marketing.  Most of which it is safe to say, I wish I hadn't.

Enough said.

        

Search Engine Management, or "SEM" is defined as the process of building and marketing a web site with the end goal of improving it's position in the search engine results. This process includes a few key techniques:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the process of building a site that is "search engine friendly". Pages that are optimized for search engines will provide content that is highly relevant to it's targeted keywords and make it more appealing to both the search engines and the users.

Advertising or Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click advertising is used within the search engine's results as a way for advertisers to get their website on the first page of the search results on a cost per click basis. This is done in 2 ways, with search results and with content results. The search results return PPC links for a specific search, and content results provide links within sites that contain content relevant to the advertiser's website. You bid on the top spots against other advertisers.

Link Building:

Link building is used to improve both visibility and the apparent quality of your site to the search engines. Having a link to your site on sites that have content highly relevant to the content on your site gives the search engines the impression that your site is more important to that particular topic.

1. Choose the Right Domain Name

Any good website starts with a good domain name. Picking the right domain name that is both easy to remember and related to your site and top keywords is very important. It is also very common to chose a business or organization name for your domain. Your domain name should have a few key characteristics:

- Try to include one or more of your top 5 Top Keywords

- Make your domain unique

- Go for Dot-com domains if possible unless another extension suits your brand

- Make it Easy to Type

- Make it Easy to Remember

- Keep the Domain Name as Short as Possible

- Relate it to your product and/or brand

- Avoid Copyright Infringement

- Avoid Hyphens and Numbers

As you do your research (Point #2), you will find numerous blogs and sites that discuss choosing the right domain names.

2. Do Plenty of Expert Research Before Getting Started

In order to create effective sites for SEO and to get the most out of your PPC dollars, you will need to learn as much as you can about both topics prior to getting started.

The SEM experts online provide literally thousands of websites out there that can tell you all you need to know about SEO. You can learn a lot from what other people have put on the web for free, before moving onto other other avenues. What's right for you may not be what's right for others. Here are a few links to get you started.

www.seobook.com

www.webconfs.com

There are also several references that can be purchased online, but until you really know what you want, I would suggest that you should stick to the free stuff.

3. The Search Engines Themselves Provide a Wealth of Information

Google in particular provides a great deal of information from webmasters on their support site.

www.google.com/support/webmasters/

Reading through these pages will allow you to find some key dos and dont's for search engine optimization. It also introduces you to Google webmaster tools which has been provided for you to track your site's performance with Google and offers helpful hints, specific to your site.

4. Build a Home Page That is Full of Your Top Keywords

One of the most important factors for search engine engine optimization is "Keyword Density". Keyword density is defined as

the amount of times a keyword shows up in the text of your site or home page. This metric is used by the search engines to rank your site's relevance to the keywords input by the user. The more times your top keywords appear on your site, the more relevant your site will seem to the search engines for those keywords. There are several tools on the web that will allow you to check your site's keyword density. Here is a link to a simple one that I have used.

www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

5. Go Slow on Pay Per click Advertising

Over the past few years, the top PPC providers have changed the way they look at advertising. Google in particular has added a relevance factor into their algorithms that new gives you a quality score for each keyword you add to your campaign. This quality score takes into account the content of your landing page and the content of your advertisement. This has been done in the hopes that the user is provided with more relevant ads for their keywords. If your site is not highly relevant to the keywords you have chosen, or your advertisement does not appear to be relevant, your minimum bid is raised significantly. This can prove to be somewhat frustrating to the advertisers at first, but once you get going and learn how to manage your ads and bids, you will be able to create relevant ads and reasonable bids for your keywords.

It's best to start slow with PPC advertising. Set yourself a budget and work within that budget. Try a few different landing pages and different ad content to see what happens. Don't get caught up in it if you see a lack of clicks and keep increasing your bid to gain position on your competitors. You should have an idea of what each click will be worth to you; Stay within that range.

6. Link Building

There are several ways to go about link building for your site. Some of them, like paid links are not recommended and the search engines frown on this form of link building. You can use link exchanges to build links to your site, but building a huge cache of links on your site can turn out to be cumbersome and some say that the search engines don't put as much weight on these types of links. The best way to build links is through providing relevant linkable content for your site viewers. Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

- Create lists of top 5, top 10 or top 100 somethings that relate to your site content

- Perform surveys relating to your content

- Write and syndicate articles

- Create a blog

- Use Social Networks like Facebook and MySpace to promote your site

Hopefully these few beginners tips to SEM will start you on your way to #1 placement in the search engine results.

        

http://www.celebrityinfosite.com

http://www.newcelebritynews.com

http://www.findagoodlawyer.info

http://www.findagreatlawyer.info

http://www.findingagoodlawyer.info

http://www.findingagoodlawyer.com

http://www.howtofindagoodlawyer.info

http://www.findhydrogenfuel.net

http://www.findhydrogenfuelstation.com

http://www.findhydrogenfuelstation.net

http://www.findhydrogenfuelstations.com

http://www.findhydrogenfuelstations.net

        

I spent the evening searching for a few kind words for Cuil, the latest in search engines trying to grab some of Google's massive market share and sadly, I couldn't find very much positive feedback out there.  There are definately some issues with the results at this point, but I maintain hope that they will continue to improve and not fade away.

I did manage to find a few objective articles about Cuil that didn't get too deep into the mud slinging effect and were more informational than anything.

Here are a couple:

<:od>Cuil Not a Google Killer Yet

A new search engine from Ex-Googlers challenges Google

I believe that if Cuil can keep the hype going and continue their press releases as they improve their results, we will see great things coming from this search engine in the future.  I am keeping my fingers crossed!