Sure Their On Top, But Can You Trust Google?

In a resent blog “Free Tools Around the Web, Are They Really Free?” I raised some serious questions about the manner in which Google collects information about you and me. I realize that many people share the same worries, but I wanted to clarify one point that came to my attention recently.

On June the 9^th I received an E-mail from Judge James W. Ware, Federal District Court, San Jose, California. This E-mail advised me of my rights as a customer of Google Adwords in regards to a Class Action Lawsuit filed against Google.

On March 31^st, 2009, Google was ordered by the court to pay into escrow $20,000,000.00 to cover reimbursements, and attorney fees in regards to claims filed against Google for over charging Adword clients from January 1^st, 2002 through February 28^th, 2009.

This E-mail finally drove home the realization that I could no longer accept the conflict of interest by allowing a company which I was purchasing adverts from, also monitor and report my conversion rates.

During my search for another analytic service I cam across Web-stat, a company which has been in business since 1998. Their software has answered all of my needs and exceeded my expectations I many ways.

First of all their stats are up to the minute. With Web-stat I don’t have to guess what’s going on for 3 hours at a time. Unlike Google Analytics

Then after trying out their product out on Adwords I decided to setup an additional account for my website. Two of my favorite features which they provide are;

Analytical stats for Flash, no other monitoring service I have found can provide this.

And the fact that they send out alerts if my web site goes down. Their system is set up to check my site every 15 minutes, and if for some reason the site does fail, I am alerted not only by E-mail, but by Text Message to my cell phone as well.

If you should decide to find an alternative analytic service as well you should really check them out, at Web-stat. They have a free 30 day trial of their service and you do not have to provide credit card information to try the service.

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and design
 

 

 

Free Tools Around the Web, Are They Really Free?

Ok I’m sure you have heard the old adage “Nothing in life is free”, yet search engine results are brimming with free this and free that.

A majority are only offering free trials. With limitations on what you are able to accomplish with the software, or how long you are able to use the product. These free items are great; you get to test a product to see if it’s worth buying. To see if the product is really what it claims to be.

Then there are the free items which are just gimmicks to get you on a website. Companies often use these free items as bait, they lure you on to their site with the freebies and once your there they try to entice you with catchy phrases and skillful advertising methods into making a purchase.

Although these types of free tools or game are fun to play around with. They rarely offer any useful or sound advice.

Then there is the more sinister free tools and advice. These freebies are normally very useful and they offer sound advice to help you with a problem. So you have to ask yourself what’s the catch? Large corporations are not in the business of giving money away.

After all, no organization can prosper by doling out there hard earned assets, or can they?

Well, I guess it is a matter of what they receive in return. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN for that matter regularly supply web surfers with free tools and advice. But just what are they receiving in return for these useful hand outs? Information, the amount of personal information which Google acquires about you in this manner is staggering.

Now it can be argued that these freebies are handed out to build customer loyalty, but let’s look at what information is being mined. 

• Free toolbars disclose the websites you visit, the lengths of your visits, how often you visit them, which links you click, the searches you make, and when you make them.
• With PPC advertising you divulge your address, and credit card information,
•  When you opt for free conversions tracking you are reporting all online sales and revenues.
• With desktop searches you are opening up every file on your computer for inspection, emails, word documents, everything.
• With free personal home pages you expose which subjects interest you, financial information such as the stocks you own, and your political views.
• Search histories inform Google of the plans you are making (Yes that search you made last month for motels at the beach let Google know when your vacation was.)
• With SMS your cell phone # is collected.
• Gmail reports your private messages, the contact list you write to, and any party which writes to you.
• And then finally to tie it all together, through the use of cookies, you are identified and all this information is tied together into a single account.

This is a fact finding operation which the CIA could be proud of and I’m certain most people would be reluctant to divulge all of this information to their best friend.    

Although life is a lot easier with all of these free tools, they are not truly free. Each person has to decide if the advantages out weigh the cost.

Personally I use many of these same free tools, but I do turn to 3^rd party tools as well to protect my personal privacy in this information age.

There are many steps which you can take to protect yourself as well.

1. Remember the old saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Don’t use one provider for all of your free services. I’m sure some services seem far superior to the closest competitor, but no one has a lock of the best at everything.
2. There are many 3^rd party conversion tracking solutions on the market today, two that I would recommend are Site Analytics from ENC Hosting Depot, or a free trial at Web-Stat.
3. Opt out of personalizing your free homepage, instead purchase an inexpensive hosting package and build what you need for private personal activities. The Internet is full of hosting companies like ENC Hosting Depot that offer free hosting with the purchase of a website design package and domain name.
4. And finally use different email sources from your other activities. There are many, many free email providers out there, and even the paid services are not expensive. Features do vary from one provider to the next, but you should find paid services provide the most services. Check out ENC Hosting Email Accounts.

Look, there is no way to get around cookies, they are a part of internet life, but you can protect your self from having your entire information end up in one basket.

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and design   

Building a Cost Effective Keyword List

In both Website promotion and PPC (pay per click) advertising being able to choose the best keywords either paves the way to success, or sinks you like a rock. Many reports have described the methods which people use to search for information.

I’m sure you have heard some where, that when a person begins searching for an item on the internet they start off using a very broad single word. And if you think about it I’m sure you will agree that you use this very same method as well. Slowly adding more descriptive words to each new search until you find what your looking for.

Sure it would be nice if you could foresee what each internet user is searching for and have your site or advertisement pop up on that initial search, yet most experts agree that when a user begins a search they are looking for information more than a precise item.

During this phase of search activity every few purchases are ever made. With this I mind, it only makes sense build a list of keywords phrases instead of words.

And in PPC advertising this is even more true. Single keywords, such as: SEO, Adwords, Dockers, or Corvette can be very expensive. It’s not uncommon for some very popular keywords to range from $3.00 to $19.00 per click, even more in some cases.

This makes finding less popular keywords essential for cost effective advertising. This is why I suggest the SEO software tool IB Promoter, along with the Axandra E-book Successful Advertising with Google Adwords.

There are many secrets to using wildcard symbols to create advertisements in Google’s Adword program that just are not spelled out in the online help files. That along with key ways of thinking to improve your chances of locating keyword phrases that are searched everyday. Some of which, due to their low usage by other advertisers can cost as low as $0.05 per click.

And with the second part of this combo the IB Promoter software you have access to the most unique word database around. The IBP data base has 38 million unique English words in it, and with just a click it is able to build complete keyword phrases using supplemental words. Which can then be tested for keyword relevancy and search engine strength.

Another key tool for locating low cost high volume keywords is the ability of the IBP keyword generator to produce a list of common misspelled words to be use as your keywords.

For the best marketing tools, in my opinion, visit the two following links IB Promoter Software and Successful Advertising with Google Adwords.

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and design
 

 

Do You Know Your Next Door Neighbor?

In the world of Internet hosting the terms Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Hosting or Virtual Dedicated Hosting, and Dedicated Hosting get used to describe the hosting plan you are using to run your website.

Chances are, if you’re paying for your account in the free to $20.00 range, your site is being run on a shared hosting account. What this means is that you have neighbors. For the most part this isn’t a bad thing, but you really should know who your neighbors are.

On the Free SEO Tools page of my website IBP Software, SEO Tools form Axandra you can run a report on who your neighbors are. Every server linked to the internet has an IP address, similar to an apartment complex, and when a website shares server space it also shares the IP address.

Now as I said before, for the most part this is fine. But if your neighbors are spammers or porn sites, you run the risk of having your site banned by search engines. Spam site are notorious for trying to trick search engines into giving them unjustified high ranking which often results in the entire IP address being banned.

On my hosting service at ENC Hosting Depot this can be remedied by purchasing a dedicated IP address for very small amount and still enjoy the cost savings over Virtual Dedicated Hosting or Dedicated Hosting.

Now if you run a very busy website or and extremely  large site, shared hosting is no longer an option. Shared hosting isn’t an option if your site requires custom scripts, higher bandwidths, or complex applications either. The next price break in service comes with Virtual Dedicated Hosting.

Virtual Dedicated Hosting or Virtual Private Hosting still shares server space with other websites, but  far fewer sites share the space. In this type of service the main server is partitioned in a way that each customer is running on their own operating system and they have complete control of their server space.

This type of service also gives the illusion of being on a dedicate server with a private IP address, so you appear not to have neighbors. And with an account of this type customers enjoy consistent, high performance even during peak usage.

Costs for Virtual Dedicate Hosting normally ranges between $30.00 and $130.00 according to bandwidth and disk space.

And finally there is Dedicated Hosting. This is for the big boys, with this type of service you own the house. Any site that requires peak performance such as gaming sites or multimedia sites, this is the service for you.

With our hosting packages here at ENC Hosting Depot you can choose between Linux or Windows based operating systems and with both the Virtual and Dedicated service packages you are able to build your own server to meet you own personal needs.

I hope you enjoyed the read and this information helps you.

 

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and designs

 

The Rising Cost of PPC Advertising

If you are advertising with Google Adwords, you probably know all to well about the increasing costs of PPC (pay per click). Thanks to intense competition, bidding wars, and click fraud marketing cost for this type of advertising has skyrocketed over the past few years.

In a study by Atlas Institute it was reported that in this type of advertising there is a 40% drop off in clicks between the first and second ad positions and a 87% drop off between the first and tenth position. With these numbers in mind, the battle between advertisers to acquire first position spots is increasingly ferrous, often resulting in bidding wars. As the price increases for the favored keyword only Google wins

Yet there are some things you can do to protect yourself and receive a respectable ROI (return on investment). Through appropriate pricing strategies and other method discussed in the Axandra E-book “Successful Advertising with Google Adwords” these costly bidding wars can easily be avoided.

Another, detrimental problem facing PPC advertisers is Click Spamming or Click Fraud. This problem has been around almost as long as the pay per click search engines. By repeatedly clicking the ad, daily limits are quickly reached and the advertisement is stopped for the day while huge financial losses are incurred.

There are certain words which do attract these forms of attacks, which you should steer clear of. Another weapon you can use to combat assaults of this nature is anti click fraud software.

To read more on these issues and learn how to lower your PPC cost, download your copy of “Successful Advertising with Google Adwords” today.

　　

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and design
 

 

Can E-mail Marketing Help Me?

If you have ever received unsolicited advertisements, better know as spam, I’m sure that you are very wary of E-mail marketing.  And rightfully so, there is an entire software industry dedicated to the prevention of spam, and I’m sure that in most people’s minds spam rates right up there with telemarketers as some of the most hated forms of contact that there is.

Yet research starting back in 2005 by the “Direct Marketing Association” quoted profits of more than 5700% return on investment for E-mail marketing and those figures have carried forward into today’s recession anxious markets. This point is further reinforced by the CEO of StreamSend, Dan Forootan:

“When times get tough and wallets get tight, customers also sometimes need a little added incentive to buy. Email marketing can be the perfect vehicle to provide that incentive.”

There are, however, some etiquette rules to E-mail marketing which must be followed and an opt-out link is #1.

#2 however is your address building structure, before you can ever start an E-mail marketing campaign you must have a list of Opt-in clients. This is the difference between E-mail marketing and Spam.

Your clients do opt-into the mail you send them, and they are allowed to discontinue the service at any time. Another major point of E-mail marketing is that the information which is sent out is useable information, NOT mere sales pitches.

E-mail marketing, as important as it can be to your business, and as easily as it can be construed as Spam, why risk your reputation for eight dollars a month?

Visit our E-Mail Marketing Center for expert help and guidance.

 

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker Hosting and design  
 

Secrets of Adword to Reduce Cost and Increase Profits

Back in 2002 Google introduced the advertising tool “Adword“. Although it wasn’t the first of its kind the Internet advertising program did set new standards for the industry.

By placing advertisements for related products on the results for each search made, Google supplied an effective low cost marketing tool which anyone could use to advertise their products or services.

Over the years very little has changed in the basic structure of Google’s Adword program, other than the addition of useful functions to help create and track advertising campaigns.

With over 200 million searches per day and advertising cost which can be as low as $0.01 per click, nobody who wishes to advertise on the Internet can over look the Google Adword program.

But there are some secrets to doing business on this marketing giant which Google does not spell out to the general public. Google is in the business of making money too, and it is not in their interest to help you secure the cheapest advertisements and keyword selections.

This is why you must turn to others for help in learning these secrets. And again it is not in the best interest of most online advertisers to help you become their competition either. Yet there are 770 results on Google alone for the search “Adword Help”.

Many of the results of this search are from Google themselves, and even more are not even related to the Adword subject at all. Of the results which are not from Google and do discuss the subject of Adword marketing mostly supply tips on writing a good advertisement but do very little to describe the secrets which will lower your CPC (cost per click) or how to setup a campaign which ensures only perspective customers will see your advertisement.

In the world of pay per click advertising it is essential that your ad is not clicked by someone who has no intention of purchasing your product or service. This type of click fraud, deliberate or not are the causes for skyrocketing advertisement cost.

These topics and many more are covered in Axandra’s E-book “Successful Advertising with Goolge Adwords”. If you are planning to start an Adword campaign or would like to reduce your advertising cost on Adword I strongly advise that you purchase and download this E-book. Now in it’s 6^th revision Axandra is a leader in online advertising and Internet business promotion.

　

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker web hosting and design
 

 

Really, What is King in SEO?

I have seen so many posts about “content is king”, or “Keywords are Queen” I have to ask myself, “Really, what is King?”

Well in my humble opinion information is king! First of all I do not claim to be a whiz kid in the SEO market. All I know is what works!

I have spent decades designing custom equipment to handle everything from the bricks you used to build your house to equipment that made the fancy napkins in the 5 star restaurant you visited last weekend, and information has always been king!

Without information, were do you turn? What direction do you take? See, that’s what a software program like IB Promoter gives you, Direction.

But I do understand, in today’s market were people are building their own websites, not everyone can afford to purchase a product like IBP, just to optimize their own webpage.

If you have been checking out the links, but just can’t justify the cost. Visit ENC Hosting Depot… We are here to help you.

 

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker hosting and website design
 

The Steps to a Profitable #1 Ranking: SEO Step 6 – 7

As I discussed in my last blog from this series “The Steps to a Profitable #1 Ranking: SEO Step 5” I needed to optimize other pages of my new SEO Tools and Adword Secrets website.

After taking care of the last page “SEO News Updates” I focused on the two remaining pages “Adword Secrets” and “Free SEO Tools”.  Since this was repeat work which I had covered before I wasn’t going to bore you with the same information again, but just for a little info “Adword Secrets” started off with a 35 % chance of first page rankings with 31 problems.

After optimization this was raised to a 55% chance, with only 10 problems. Much the same as other pages I have covered previously.

Then there was “Free SEO Tools”. When I began optimizing this page I decided to touch on the point of indented search engine listings.

 If you have ever noticed a listing in the results for a search you have made, were a website has a second listing on the same page slightly indented from the first, this is what I’m talking about. There is a method which you can incorporate during the SEO process to achieve this indented listing.

In Search Engine Marketing a first page listing is very desirable, basically when you receive one of these 10 first page listings you have 9 competitors for your market, and if you can acquire an indented listing this cuts your competitors to 8.

If you search the archives of the IB Promoter’s Newsletters they spell out the process you need to follow to acquire an indented listing.

But for the sake of this blog I am only going to report what I found when I ran my initial SEO report for “Free Tools”. This report listed the page as a 75% chance of first page listings with only 5 problems.

This made me wonder about the home page chances now that the linking process was underway so I reran that report also and returned an 81% change for the home page as well.

One thing that does cause some concern in the report is the fact that too many of my backlines have the exact phrase in them. Google and other search engines consider this to be un natural linking patterns and they will penalize a website for it.

If you’re interested in purchasing a first class SEO suite of tools visit IB Promoter and buy your copy today

 

 ENC Hosting Depot, Biker Web hosting and design
 

Why Isn‘t Your Page Being Indexed?

Ok you have been working on your site for weeks, got all the right keywords, the graphics look cool, and the content is right on. Everyone you have shown the site to tells you how good it looks and you have submitted it to all the search engines, but they just will not index it.

Has this ever happened to you, or is it happening to a site you have just published? It seems to be a common problem for many people, but why?

Well there could be numerous reasons for this to happen, but basically the search engines just do not understand your code.

The robots which index your site are a programs, they are not human, and what looks great to the human eye may be totally meaningless to a program. You see the programs are looking for specific things and if they aren’t there, or if the wrong thing is there these programs give up and toss the search out.

The programs which search engines use can not see what images you place on your pages have in them. Nor can they read Flash elements, script languages, or multimedia formats.

It may look cool and work great, but if you are using Javascript links to navigate your website, search engines may not even be able to find it. If your site contains these types of elements, it is always a good idea to use a search engine spider simulator to evaluate how the site appears to the robots which will be indexing your pages.

One of the nice features of IB Promoter is that you can choose which simulator you want to run. This way you are able to test for different results on Goolge, Bing, Ask, or Yahoo.

Another problem which may be causing this to happen is errors in your HTML. It is very easy during the creation of a website, (as you add and delete elements to get just that right feel), to leave a bit of code that just might tell a search engine robot that your site ends at the very top of the page. You may never see these html errors as you test your website online in browsers like Internet Explorer or Firefox, in fact Internet Explorer is notorious for correcting small problems so that sites look good on their browser.

For this reason you should always check your code with a HTML validater such as the one found in the IBP suite.

As I stated above the programs which search engines send out to index websites are looking for specific things in particular places. When you are trying to be listed for certain keywords, these keywords have to be in the correct places as well as have the right density. If the density is to high your site will be penalized for word stuffing, if the density is too low or the words are not in the proper places these robot programs will not recognize them as key words.

One of the great features I have found with IBP is that this software compares your website to the top 10 pages for the keywords you are attempting to generate traffic for. Then the program gives you a detailed report describing where you need to place your keywords, the amount of words to use and the density in comparison to your complete word count.

And finally sometimes web servers send the wrong status code. When a robot requests a page from your site the server returns a code, this code should be 200 ok. Yet at times a server may send a 320 moved code or worst 404 not found result while the pages can be viewed on internet browsers with no problems. When this happens a robot spider simply thinks the site doesn’t exist and they give up.

Again these problems are easily found using a spider simulator like the one found in the IBP suite.

The tips here are some of the most common reasons websites are not being indexed, and I have found that the IB Promoter software I use does a great job of helping me locate and fix these problem on the sites I build.

So check out Internet Business Promoter, I’m sure they will be able to help you too.

　

ENC Hosting Depot, Biker website design and hosting.
 

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