J.C. Penney's organic search results topped Google's rankings for months, including the critical holiday season.   The Times researches determined that J.C. Penney's rankings were due in part to incoming links from thousands of pages, many of which had nothing to do with consumer retail goods.   In other words,  somebody created a huge network of bogus sites that existed primarily to generate "link juice" that benefited J.C. Penney.

J.C. Penney denies any wrongdoing and claims that neither they nor their search engine optimization consultant had anything to do with this manipulation of Google.  Google search engineer Matt Cutts explains the delay in Google's response by noting that the search giant has to deal with over 200 million domain names.   Mr. Cutts emphatically denies that Google intentionally delayed its response to manipulation of its search results because J.C. Penney spends close to $2.5 million on Google's paid search.

I think that the J.C. Penney case is instructive for several reasons, whether you believe J.C. Penney, Google, both or neither.   First, inbound links, even from sites that are not topically related to your site, carry a lot of weight in the Google algorithm.   There is an active marketplace on the Internet to buy and sell incoming links – although Google frowns at link buying as being an artificial manipulation of its search results.

Second, Google sees search results manipulation as a significant problem and they devote a lot of effort to combating so-called "black hat" search engine optimization.   Some of these more questionable tactics may work for a while but eventually, Google will catch on and your site will be banned from its index.

Third, it is possible that someone who does not like you, or perhaps even an unscrupulous business competitor could harm your Google rankings by creating a black hat linking campaign for your site.

While search engines no longer care as much about keyword meta tags, it is still important to make yours are well-written and relevant – or your site could get penalized. Keyword meta tags are used to quickly and easily identify the relevance of your site. These days, Google's algorithm, which is used to figure out where to rank pages on the search results, is much more complex due to years of dealing with people trying to cheat the system. Google’s algorithm will not respond to outdated tricks such as typing keywords multiple times or using “invisible” keywords (white text on a white background). If you attempt these tricks, your site will not only be frowned upon, but may get banned from Google altogether.

Another big mistake is including keywords that are irrelevant to your site to attract more traffic. By including a hot-topic article on your website that is irrelevant to your subject matter, you will loose your credibility and your audience. Once a visitor to your site realizes your trick; they’ll leave immediately. Why would anyone bother visiting your site if it is filled with incohesive, random content?

Since navigating the internet for quality information is already difficult, it’s important to stand out from the sites that are created for no other reason than to get better rankings. You can do this by providing useful content and keep from making typical mistakes such as trying to trick search engines via the methods mentioned above.

Tips on choosing relevant keywords

So you have determined what your site’s content will be about but now you are at a loss as to what keywords to choose and begin using. A good place to start is Google’s keyword tool. There, you can simply type in the keyword (or search term) that you think the people who you want to visit your site would theoretically be searching for. Then, this useful tool will tell you how many searches people make per month on that particular keyword, what the competition is for that keyword, and will even provide similar keywords which may be more effective and that you hadn’t thought of. For example, say you are trying to make a website all about old outlaw ballads. Well, according to the Google Keyword tool, people rarely search for the keyword “outlaw ballads.” However, it will tell you that the keywords “outlaw songs” and “outlaw music” are far more popular and will show roughly how many others are trying to use those same keywords to market their sites.

For more on how to use the Google keyword tool, I recommend checking out this handy video on how to use articles to build SEO found at IdeaMarketers.com. There is a section of this 20-minute video devoted to the topic of using Google’s keyword tool – I recommend you check it out for more tips on using it and finding the right keywords for your site.

For example, if I am reading an article on a blog about a doctor or lawyer and that professional's email address is hyperlinked, all I need to is click on the link to open my email program (in my case Gmail, but it could be Outlook or Yahoo Mail or any one of several).

By contrast, if the email address is not a link, I will have to manually open my email program, past the address and then send the email.

In my first web sites, I intentionally made my contact email addresses hyperlinks so colleagues and potential clients could easily contact me.

Big mistake.

Spammers use programs called "bots" to troll the web and harvest these clickable email addresses. Within a few months, my firm email address was (and is) essentially useless because of all the junk that arrives daily. I still keep it active because a lot of people over the years use that email address and I am reluctant to close it.

For years I have recommended to my clients that they use email forms (like the one on this site) rather than live, clickable email addresses. If you do not want to devote the real estate to a form on your site, you can put the form on a separate page, then use a link shortening service like tinyurl.com or cli.gs and post that address.

I recently learned about another solution called HideText.net. This free service takes any line of text, such as emails and converts it into a graphic.   Here is an example:

This email address a graphic and thus not currently readable by spambots. A nice and elegant tool.

Frequently, the email solicitation will state that your link has already been posted on the other web site, with a link that looks something like www.abcwebsite.com/links_2.html.  If you should happen to visit that page, your link will be there along with a few dozen other links that may or may not be in your business category.

My advice is to ignore these requests for link exchanges.

Years ago, the major search engines gave some credit to links on "link directory" pages on a web site.  Back in 2000 or 2001, a "reciprocal link exchange" might have some value to both parties.  Unfortunately, those days are over.  Search engines generally do not give any authority credit to a link that exists in a link directory – at least that has been my experience.

Link directories that exist solely to pass "page rank" or site authority defeat the purpose of a good search result – to indentify authority sites that provide topical and relevant information.  This bias against link bartering is why some search engines are punishing links sold by link brokers.  Take a look at an article by bodybuilder Mark McManus entitled "Google Slashes MuscleHack's PageRank."   Mark earned $18.95 by selling space on his blog to a text link ad company, only to see his ranking in Google plummet.   Mark happens to have a legitimate blog that contains fresh, original content that is frequently updated, yet he got slapped.  Take heed.

If you are going to "exchange" links with another web site, ask the other site's editor if he/she add an article that you have written to his/her web site.  The article you write should be topical and relevant and it should contain a relevant link text phrase back to one or more pages on your site.  You would never want to use "link here" as your link text.

At this point it does appear that the major search engines are still giving authority credit to "blogroll links" on blogs.  In theory blogroll links don't differ much from link directory pages on web sites, but obviously Google and Yahoo must see some reason to still consider blogroll links.  Don't be surprised if this linking tactics disappears at some point.

I'll post about some of the link building tactics that I use in a future post.  For now, however, don't waste your time or your site's credibility exchanging links with link builders who are using 10 year old tactics and putting links on link directory pages.

I responded by asking him if he had tested his web site for conversion.  It turns out that his web site is not yet live – it is in production and will be produced by a friend at no cost.   I just took a look and, yes, the domain is registered, and the "in production" version of the site is there.  The designer is using a template downloaded from Free Website Templates, and the site looks to be about 10% complete.

Now let me stop right here and say that I have nothing against a free website template.   In my view money spent on expensive design is often money wasted as one can have a very effective web site with a free template that displays good content.

My point here is simply that before my friend even thinks of signing on for $3,000 per month of pay per click traffic, he needs to have a live web site up and running and he needs to test that site to verify that live visitors are responding appropriately.  If live visitors don't like your site, and if they don't follow the path that you have set out for them, you are wasting your money with paid advertising.

I explained to my friend my concerns about marketing for personal injury online and that in my view his target ought to be the "researcher" type who will spend hours online looking for a vendor who will provide extensive information.

I also suggested to my friend that he should capture names and email and add a sequential autoresponder to his site to communicate with past, present and future clients.

Now, my friend is a very smart and successful lawyer.  But this episode shows that even smart, savvy, trained minds can fall prey to the hype of a good salesman and the excitement of wanting to tap into the Internet gold rush.  My friend needs to either educate himself about how the Internet might work for his practice or he needs to associate a consultant like me to advise him.  Otherwise the $9,000 he plans on spending will do him no good at all.

Comment spam can take a lot of the enjoyment out of blogging.  Comment spammers operate in the same manner as email spammers – they use automated scripts to disperse their wares.  Comment spammers use the comment capability of most blogs to distribute links to their web sites.  If your blog has the "no_follow" attribute of comments disabled, then you may be unwittingly providing the comment spammers with some of your "link juice."

At a minimum, every blogger should enable the moderation feature for all blog comments.  If your comments are unmoderated, you will soon see hundreds, if not thousands of irrelevant, spammy, link-filled comments on your blog posts.

Most blog platforms have spam filtering either built in or available as a plug-in.  Wordpress, which is my blogging platform, has a plug-in called Akismet, which is a very good spam filter.

Many of us learn about comment spam the hard way.  What happens if you did not previously enable spam blocking and now you have 10,000 spam comments in moderation, or worse, showing up as comments on your blog posts?   Fortunately there is an answer to this problem and the video demonstrates how to go about clearing spam posts in volume.  The blog I use for my example is the Bankruptcy Law Network blog.  This is a multi-contributor blog that accepts contributions from a select group of lawyers.  The blog has been very successful in educating consumers and those in the legal community about Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy, but, as a group, we did not plan very well to when it came to moderating and processing comments.

Over the course of the past year, we found ourselves with over 10,000 unmoderated comments, most of which were spam.  Worse, the size of the unmoderated comments table in the SEQL database that manages the Wordpress blog made the manual, one-by-one processing of comments very slow and cumbersome.

After some looking around, I figured out how to deal with the spam comments in bulk and I show what I did in this screen capture video.

I was particularly interested in the section where Lorelle wrote about how to deal with the problem of content theft.   Content theft happens when an unscrupulous blog owner "scapes" your content and puts it on his own (Google Adwords stuffed) blog.  Often the scraped blog (called a "splog" within the blogging community) will contain scraped content from several legitimate blogs on a particular topic.  The splogger then includes a trackback hoping to pick up page rank from the legitimate blog.

As Lorelle points out, these sploggers are content thieves.  In the "How to Stop Content Theft" section of her post, she identifies several specific tactics to deal with these content thieves.   There is a splogger who scrapes every post from my Atlanta bankruptcy blog and I am going to try some of these suggestions.  I'll report back to see how they work.

About 85% of the digital photos were backed up – I burn my digital photos to DVD's every year, but not much of the rest had been backed up.  Fortunately, my IT consultant was able to salvage the hard drive – he put it into an external enclosure so all of my data is still there.  Nevertheless, this experience served as a wakeup call to me.  You cannot assume that your digital information will always be there.

In the old days, there were backup programs that compressed data for storage on floppy disks.   Now, with hard drives holding 200 to 500 gigabytes of data, backup options are less obvious.

There are some software options but I have not found one that I like or completely trust.  At this point, I am going to use the external hard drive route – I will have to remember to back up but I will have a complete copy of all of my data.

My friend, Atlanta mortgage broker Steve Epstein included the following suggestions in his weekly newsletter.  You may have seen these tips before, but they bear repeating:

• Hold On to Those Disks. You know those disks that come with your computer…the ones with all the software on them…the ones you throw in a drawer and forget about? Well – don't. Even though software often comes preloaded and ready to use, those disks and serial numbers are priceless. Keep them in a safe, memorable place and you'll be able to easily reload your software after a crash.
• Rule of Thumb. Those little USB flash drives or "thumb drives" that you see everyone carrying around now are an ideal, inexpensive way to backup small files for short periods of time. Whether you're moving information from one computer to another or you want to make sure a critical company report doesn't get lost before the client presentation, these handy devices are well worth the small amount of money you'll spend for 4 GB of peace of mind.
• Don't Get Burned…Do the Burning Instead. Most computers come standard with CD/DVD burners. Contrary to television commercials, you can burn more than just song compilations. Make the most of this device by backing up your important data regularly. Most DVDs can hold 4.7 GB, or you can double the data with double layer DVDs (known as DVD DL) that can hold up to 8.5 GB!
• Take it Outside. To backup every last byte of data, add an external hard drive that operates independently of your computer. Products like Seagate's FreeAgent storage devices offer you a variety of options…as well as the ability to access your information even when you're not at home, so you can open a document or even view your family photos from out of town.
• Leave Home Without It. For the best level of protection, move data out of the house altogether. Storing your IT off-site protects it from fire, theft, and flooding. And it's not as expensive as you might think. In fact, you can get a ton of space free from services like Yahoo! and AOL. At that price, the only thing you have to lose is your data if you don't back it up!
• Once the Damage is Done. If you've already lost your data, you may actually be able to recover it…the cost, however, runs anywhere from the hundreds to the thousands.
• Don't wait until the worst-case scenario happens–act now to protect your important data files.

The lesson – back up your data to DVD or to an external drive and keep your backup in a separate location!

Ideas for Blog Posts That Work 

As a lawyer who blogs regularly for my own practice and as a consultant working with other law firms and small businesses, I believe that an effective blog needs to have a "voice" and the posts need to fit within certain guidelines. Here are the approaches that I believe are most effective:

1) Use your blog to chronicle case studies. Everyone likes stories and you can use your blog to describe both positive and negative experiences. At my Social Security disability blog, for example, I frequently discuss my experiences representing clients in Social Security hearings. I speak about both positive and negative experiences and I use these case studies to explain what I am learning from my experiences.

If you are in sales, you might describe a sales call or a presentation. What went well and what surprises did you encounter? If you are writing about an experience that did not go well, describe your errors or problems in terms of a learning experience. Humbleness and a willingness to learn from mistakes can be an appealing trait and a blog can be an appropriate platform for addressing your experiences.

Be aware that all of your case studies should not describe negative experiences, but do not feel that your blog has to paint you only in a positive light.

2) Use your blog to report and comment upon current news in your industry. No doubt your subscribe to one or more industry trade journals or online news sources. You can use your blog to summarize news reports from other places (with appropriate credit) and to offer your own commentary.

In my Consumer Bankruptcy Blog, for example, I frequently discuss new developments in bankruptcy laws and I frequently reference posts from other bloggers. Most blogging software allows you to notify another blogger about your use of his material through something called a "trackback." Since blogging tends to be a cooperative activity, appropriate borrowing of content usually will be appreciated and encouraged. You will end up creating ongoing relationships with fellow bloggers in your content niche.

3) Use your blog to make your readers aware of other resources. Think of your blog as a digest service and share what you discover. Remember, blogs have a subscription feature called RSS, which mans that your blog readers are probably consuming your blog posts on their custom home page (such as My Yahoo, or Personalized Google). They will only stay subscribed if you offer useful content. Unlike regular web sites, your blog readers may have only visited the home page for your blog once. You want them to subscribe to a feed of your posts; you do not need them to bookmark your site.

Blogs That Do Not Make Sense 

By contrast, a blog does not make sense if you plan to use your blog to vent about topics unrelated to your business. There is nothing more painful than to see a business owner using a business titled blog to discuss politics, religion or his personal taste in restaurants or movies. If you want to write about these things, set up a personal blog for that purpose.

Similarly, a business blog that exists only to sell something will likely garner very few readers. Blogs are about sharing ideas – potential customers are not going to give you valuable space on their custom home page or RSS readers and subject themselves to a hard sell. You can certainly mention what you do and what you sell, but doing so within a case study or a news update post will be much more palatable to your blog readers.

Finally a business blog that you do not update frequently - at least once a week – will founder. I use my personalized Google page as the home page for my browser and at any one time I may be subscribed to 20 to 30 blogs. If I don't see some activity in a blog over the course of a month, I delete the feed.

Blogs can be a valuable component to your marketing arsenal but only if you publish interesting, relevant and timely material. Blogging for the sake of blogging will waste your time and possibly create resentment within your target market. Your blog is not something that you finish – it is an on-going process that requires regular care and attention.

[tags] blogging for business, blog mistakes, creating a blog for my business [/tags]