Is Google Penalizing Your Website?

There's a simple answer to this question. Register with Google's Webmaster Tools and find out. As early as 2005, Google has been sending out email notifications to notify webmasters of Google penalties for violating their Webmaster Guidelines.

Back in May 2007, the service was temporarily suspended because spammers were spoofing Google penalty notifications. However, webmasters will be happy to find out that Google announced on Wednesday that they're renewing the penalty notification service. Google's quality team does warn that they will not send any attachments with the penalty notification so if you receive a notification with one, it's spam.

Changes to Microsoft Adcenter Trademark Policy

Microsoft just announced via email and their blog that they were making changes to their Trademark Policy. The biggest change is that Microsoft is now taking a hands off approach to trademark issues. If an advertiser wants to use a trademarked term, the advertiser must get permission from the trademark owner to use the term. Additionaly, it is the trademark owners responsibility to deal with incorrect usage of their trademark terms, Microsoft will no longer intercede to obtain permission.
Microsoft feels, "The policy is being updated in order to provide better information to advertisers, a faster response to trademark owners who submit reports of infringement, and a more efficient process for reviewing and getting ads live. We believe that the minimal changes involved here will benefit all aspects of the advertising chain – advertisers, publishers, and consumers." This of course allows Microsoft to show more ads as Affiliates, Resellers and Third Parties may show up against searches for your trademarked terms.

10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 6 - Jerry Shereshewsky, 10 Tips for SEO, Brother Love

10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 6 – Discussion with Grandparents.com CEO Jerry Shereshewsky , Read our recent Press Release
Internet Advertising Legend and new Grandparents.com CEO, Jerry Shereshewsky, Interviewed on latest 10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast , Ten Tips for the most effective search engine marketing, Song-of-the-week Brother Love Summertime
Click hear to listen to the Show!
Please call in comments and questions at +1 206-888-6606 or email podcast (at) 10goldenrules.com
Subscribe for free on iTunes!

Show Notes:

Call in from Michael Lang, The Lang Report “What are some of the hot new Search Engines?”

Google, MSN, Yahoo and ASK.com have over 95% of the searches, www.Mahalo.com a hot new search engine with human results, read Fast Company Story about Mahalo

Email form A Silkin “What do you think about advertising on Social Media Sites?”

Podcast-of the-Week For Immediate Release Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson cover the UK Facebook advertisers who have cancelled ther advertising.

Call in from John Bejarano ROI Makers “Please explain how to get better results in the search engines.”

Ten Tips for most effective search engine marketing:

On Page Factors
1. Find out Where your site comes up in searches on Google, MSN, Yahoo, ASK.com and Mahalo.com
2. Evaluate your Search Engine Performance SEODigger.com , AltaVista.com Link: MyWebsite.com
3. Make sure you have clean code and get rid of those Flash websites!
4. Include a Site map link on your home page!
5. Do keyword research with WordTracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com or the free Keyword Selector Tool
6. Select three different keyword phrases to target for EACH page, add each phrase 2-3 times on the page
7. Select Meta tags and H1 tags on each page incorporating target keyword phrases
8. Describe photos and video using keyword phrases and alt tags
9. Use on-site text links with keyword phrases
10. Off-page factors are VERY important get Links to Your Site through directories, business partners, clubs

Live From the Blog:

• Jeff Search Engine Land Excessive Links
• Kathryn – Underscores are SEO Friendly?
• DJ Link Bait
• Michael comments on Dell
• Margie Dane Cook’s 2,000,000 friends

Discussion with Grandparents.com CEO Jerry Shereshewsky

- Jerry discusses his history with www.SethGodin.com and YoYoDyne
- His role at Yahoo.com
- Direct Marketing Legend Lester Wunderman

Song of the Week Brother Love’s Summertime

Ten Reasons Why Every Company Should Have A Blog…

1) Potential SEO Opportunity
Each blog written can potentially target specific terms that people are searching for.

2) Keeps Website Fresh With Content
Search engines rank websites that contain new content higher than stale ones. Blogging is an easy way for business to continue to add that content and keep the search engines coming back for more.

3) Blogs Can Become Link Bait
A good blog article is an industry-specific insight or a thoughtful critique. People will ink to blogs and the more links, the better the results within the search engines and more traffic you will get to your site.

4) Gain Visibility As An Expert In Your Industry
When a CEO or executives in the company blog they are demonstrating insight, leadership and thoughts on where your industry will be heading.

5) Show Off Your Employees
Blogs offer an opportunity to show your company’s people, culture, and detail what you are experts in.

6) Engage Reader Interaction
Companies are able to offer readers the option to comment on your company and the articles that are written. People are able to ask questions or start conversations about topics important to them. This gives the business an opportunity to answer those questions and keep customers satisfied.

7) Free and Easy
Google makes having a blog very easy and best of all it’s free. All you need is a gmail account so you can log in and begin to blog.

8 Breaking News
When your company has news that they want to put out, there is no faster place than your blog. All your readers will be kept up to the minute on what your business is doing.

9) RSS Feeds
Though RSS, businesses are able to expand their web presence and attract more people. This assists with link building and getting your URL around the web on other sites.

10) Run Promotions
Blogs are another way for companies to offer promotions to customers. Sometimes this can act as an exclusive for people on the web, promoting your site and products even more. People will go into other blogs and post what you are offering luring traffic back to your site.

Search Engine Spiders Crawling

No, it's not a bad B horror movie title, it's what search engines do to find your website. And making your web pages spider friendly is important to getting your content indexed in the search engines. One of my favorite tools is Summit Media Spider Simulator that not only spiders the page to see if it's search engine friendly but also gives you a grade, letting you know if essential elements for search engine optimization are on the page. Another valuable tool is the W3C Markup Validator which will crawl the page to see if your code is valid according to the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium. More valid your code, the easier it is for search engine spiders to crawl your page.

Most business owners assume that their web designers are testing their designs to make sure they're search engine friendly but that's not always the case. I generally recommend hiring a search engine marketing consultancy during the development phase for a web site evaluation and to advise the designers on elements needed to make the pages crawlable for the search engines. Because it's more cost efficient to fix a design issue during the development phase than once it's launched.

GUS and Video Files

We've been pretty excited about Google's new Universal Search (GUS). This integration of multimedia listings into their typical text based results is giving a more rich media interface for searchers. Of course, it also has SEO experts scrambling to try to figure out how to best take advantage of this opportunity.

One of the questions we were asking here was does the video file have to be on YouTube or another video search engine - or will a video resident on a web site, assuming it's been properly tagged and named, appear in a GUS result?

Well, we got our answer the other day via Matt Cutts' blog. In reporting on highlights of questions from SES, Matt noted one question directed at the Google rep was. "Do you expect to be crawling the web for videos?" The reply was, "Not right now. For the time being, you could submit your video to YouTube or other search engines if you wanted to."

Of course, we don't believe this means you shouldn’t properly tag and name your videos when resident on your site. Perhaps at some point in the future, the engines WILL spider sites for multimedia content more robustly. But, for now, it's all about YouTube, Google Video and other video search engines.

Funny Viral Video Top Gun Video

This funny viral video for Top Gun Motors has been making the rounds by email this week.

If you haven't seen this yet, it is a good example of how to do viral marketing. Create something funny or silly enough that people will send it to a friend (or blog about it :) ) and include your web address at the end of the video. This is a great demonstration of this companies product Make and Do Creative

We have linked to another great viral video before, but we like this one so much, here is the Montgomery Mini Mall video (with over 1.6 million views!):

Microsoft Content Ads Coming Soon

Microsoft Adcenter is in the process of sending out emails to all of their US Adcenter Advertisers announcing on August 29th the release of Content Ads(Beta). Which means that your Ads will show on content pages. Hopefully, you were like me when you got this email and read it, not just glanced at. There is one important passage to consider "On August 29th, you don't have to make any changes and your ad groups will automatically expand to hybrid distribution..." That means when you look at your results on August 30th prepare to see an increase in impressions served and probably a decrease in your click through rate.
The email does have a web form (form may not work in Firefox) to fill out to upgrade only in search. In addition there will be other upgrades to the Microsoft Adcenter including expanded distribution and pricing controls. For more information check out the upgrade guide or check back to this blog.

Customer Service Stories

This past weekend I was on break from my MBA class and decided to jump on the Internet and do some research for a few clients. I noticed that I didn't have a network connection so I started to run diagnostic tests, resets, and rebooted my machine about five times (the first thing everyone says to do). I have a Dell Inspiron that's only about two years old. I went home and tried to connect and was having the same problem...Nothing worked!!!

I came into the office on Monday and still couldn't connect to my network. I called Dell who walked me through two hours of testing and retesting, finally the gentleman told me that it had to be my hard drive and he was sending out another one (computer is still under warranty). I asked if it was the network card and he said, "no, it has to be the hard drive, your computer is giving me the results of a system failure and this is what it needs," so I reluctantly agreed. At that time, I asked, "What could have caused this to happen?" With that he responded, "THE COMPUTER WAS BEING USED TOO MUCH." I’m sorry, was I supposed to buy the computer to take up shelf space? In the end, about three days later, it was the network card that need to be replaced.

Do customer service agents listen to customers at all? Do they think we enjoy taking time to call about problems that we are having?

At the Cartoonstock, I found some of the most hilarious jokes regarding customer service and how we are handled when there are issues. Let me know what some of the funniest responses you have had from customer service?

Top Internet Retailers Fail at Search Engine Optimization

In their SEO research study, "Once Again… There's Still Money on the Table: Internet Retailer Study 2007," Oneupweb looked at the SEO efforts of the top 100 retailers as rated by Internet Retailer magazine. After examining keywords, titles, meta tags, site architecture, and other items related to a site's "spiderability", Oneupweb found that 61% of the top internet retailers were nominally-optimized or showed no signs of search engine optimization at all.

This 2007 SEO research study suggests that search engine optimization efforts may be backsliding amongst internet retailers. While well-optimized sites increased by 3%, moderately-optimized sites decreased by 5% and sites that showed no signs of optimization increased by 4%.

Here are some examples of internet retailers from all the categories:

• Well-optimized: Amazon.com, Dell, Best Buy, Apple.com and FTD.
• Moderately-optimized: JC Penny, Circuit City, Target, Williams Sonoma and L.L. Bean
• Nominally-optimized: Staples, Office Depot, Hewlett Packard, Office Max and Walmart
• No signs of SEO: Sears, Costco, Avon, Barnes & Noble and Toys'R'Us
  

So why are the top 100 internet retailers failing at search engine optimization? I think it's a combination of: corporate executives having little to no understanding of search and many traditional marketing agencies still ignore search opportunities. But let me know your thoughts. Send in your comments about why the top internet retailers are failing at SEO.

Who's the Undisputed King of MySpace?

I admit it. I'm a fan. So, last week, when I received an email from Dane Cook, I was pretty excited. I've actually been a stand up comedy fan for many, many years and he's one of my favorites. Over the years, he's taken a very grassroots approach to marketing himself, as many stand up comedians do. But, he had a slight advantage in that his timing was perfect – perfect for the Internet. The viral and community-based nature of the Internet allowed him to reach many more people than any traditional method could. And right on the heels of his start came a website called MySpace. Dane Cook has used MySpace to its fullest – and for proof, his email included the bold statement – 2 million friends on MySpace.

Dane's email went on to say: "When I try to wrap my head around TWO MILLION PEOPLE, it's just not that easy. Did you know, that if THIS were a city, we would actually be the 5th largest in the USA? That's right; New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and then us! We're even bigger than my hometown of Boston! We should try and think of names for this city of ours. Any suggestions?"

The mind does stagger when you think of THAT many people wanting to be "your friend". But with a simple formula and good execution, anyone can do it. So, there you go – Dane Cook: Undisputed King of MySpace. Su Fi.

Hilarious Comedian Kathy Griffin Integrates Internet into show

Last night, Kathy Griffin played to a sold out audience at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.

We recommend integrated communications with your internet marketing, Kathy took it to a whole new level!

She opened with a bit about seeing Britney Spears wigs on TMZ.com

She had some fun at the expense of David Hasselhoff and said "I assume everyone has seen the video of him on YouTube chasing a hamburger around the floor"

She told a story about guest hosting on The View the day after the big Rosie Cat Fight. Kathy was flying when the show aired so she had to 'YouTube' the show to find out what happened. Barbara Walters asked her to discuss the blowout for only 90 seconds, Kathy said she did her part to discuss it every 90 seconds.

And she asked everyone in the audience to Google Bill O'Reilly Loofa...enjoy a laugh courtesy of Kathy.

Excessive Links Are Bad

Searchengine Land just reported that Google recently added the word "excessive" to their link schemes Webmaster Guidelines Page. The Google Webmaster guidelines page are several pages designed to help webmasters get better SEO results. As everyone should be aware, your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The better quality of sites, the relevance of these sites and the number of sites that link to you can help you rank higher in the search results. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.
Google is now saying excessive links will hurt your natural rankings. The obvious question is what is excessive? Dictionary.com defines excessive as "going beyond the usual, necessary, or proper limit or degree; characterized by excess" besides the defining of a word with a word, that is pretty vague, does anyone know how Google defines excessive?

Adding content to your website

I’d like to offer some information on one way to keep your site fresh with new content. One simple form of doing that is by writing press releases about your company and having them link back to your website. There are several ways “news” can be formulated to becoming press release material.

Here at Ten Golden Rules we think releases can be written from several different happenings. First, when there are any updates within your company, from new hires, to new business transactions or even grand openings is all considered news and could have a press release written and added to your website. It’s also relevant to your investors, clients, and prospects about what the company is doing and how they are growing.

Another great way to develop news is for the company to create a study or analysis regarding something going on within your industry. This information puts you out there as an industry leader.

All this information also links back to your website where readers can learn more about your company and all the great things you are doing. So keep on writing those releases and make sure they link back to your website!

Measure Your ROI on Google Universal Search

Google Universal Search (GUS) maybe challenging search engine marketers to think outside the box, and move past the two dimensional world of text-based SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. However, one thing will never change, smart search engine marketers need to keep their eyes on conversions, and make sure their clients are getting a return on their search engine marketing investment.

Paul J. Bruemmer and John Faris in "Google's Universal Search: A New, Sweeping Approach to SEO" offer some ROI measurement factors marketers should be looking at in their vertical search campaigns:

• Integration of natural search on paid listing shelf-space.
• Keyword inventory and traffic analysis
• Offline and online (paid and natural) competitor analysis
• Natural search cost-benefit analysis

Natural and paid efforts need to be working together to offer the best benefit to the client. It's not just SEOs that need to pay attention to Universal Search. PPC managers should look into integrating image and video into their box of tricks, because as Universal Search takes over the results, Google will probably be integrating image and video PPC ads in the natural search results.

Look to the future and integrate systems that will not only allow you to target Universal Search, but also measure the results.

VERY Highly Targeted Advertising

It's always great to see advertisers taking full advantage of the ability most internet advertising channels provide to highly target your audience. This ability, combined with the ease of tracking, add up to make internet advertising the most accountable medium.

But today I saw an example of the MOST targeted ad I'd ever seen. This ad appeared as a rotating banner on eBay's homepage. Considering the audience (of one), I was truly stunned by the targeting being attempted. Of course, you could argue the ad serves many other purposes, and you'd be right. I must admit this banner ad stopped me in my tracks – and certainly that alone makes it successful.

10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 4 Interview Pandora.com Founder Tim Westergren, Winner US Presidential Election ‘08 Web Marketing

The 10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast Episode 4 is live and available here and on iTunes (despite a week delay due to technical glitches, ugh…)

Please share Comments on our call in line at 206-888-6606 or email us at podcast (at) 10goldenrules (dot) com

• Interview with Tim Westergren, the founder of www.Pandora.com,
• Radio vs. Podcasting...comments from Joe Jaffe’s Across the Sound and Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation

The internet is like Direct Direct Marketing in its Measurability – it is measurable and interactive, we can target people specifically and we know who responded, and when they do connect, we create an ongoing two way relationship. Radio vs. Podcasting …what do you think? Please join the discussion by email to Podcast (at) 10goldenrules (dot) com or call 206-888-6606 to leave a digital recording.

Audio comment John Bejarano ROI Makers
Audio Comment from Joan Sparks JM Family

Ten Golden Rules Team ‘Live From the Blog’
Michael - Affiliate Marketing Follow Your Passion
Margie - “Sometimes I hate the internet” Harry Potter Spoilers
DJ - Unavailable After Meta Tag
Kathryn - Blog Widgets (http://tengoldenrulesblog.blogspot.com/#5072989685353224908 )
Jeff - Google Local Ad Preview Tool

What’s Hot – Ten Golden Rules selects the Winner of the United States Presidential Election 2008 Best Website Performance
- CNN/You Tube invited consumer questions for the Democratic debate http://www.youtube.com/debates the format was very well received with real honest questions being asked of the candidates.
- Also You Tube has been buzzing with videos featuring various scantily clad fans of Barack Obama and Rudy Guiliani, here is a link to the Obam Girl video on You Tube that has had almost 3 million views! FYI the ‘Obama Girl’ was a hired actress like LonelyGirl15

The Ten Golden Rules United States Presidential Election 2008 Best Internet Performance Winner!

• So we took a look at the top 6 fundraisers for the 2008 election campaign Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Republicans, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and applied our Internet Performance Rating Criteria
• We examined 13 different items and score each item from 1-10, each candidate could score a maximum of 130 points, then their final tally was divided by 13 to determine an internet performance rating on a scale of 1-10
• http://seodigger.com
• http://www.seoquake.com
• http://technorati.com
• http://www.alexa.com
• Add Google Page Rank with the Google Toolbar: http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/toolbar/FT3/intl/en/index.html
• http://myspace.com
• http://www.Twitter.com
• And the winner is: Barack Obama!


10 Golden Rules interview featuring the founder of Pandora.com Tim Westergren.

The Pandora website is FREE internet music, it let’s you prepare customized music ‘stations’ featuring songs and artists you like. The site is very easy to use and let’s you discover music you like from undiscovered bands.

We discuss The Long Tail of music , The Podsafe Music Network , and he discusses the issues move by the copyright royalty board in Washington that would significantly raise costs for free stations like Pandora.

Tim also shared tips for how to build viral marketing, how to deliver tremendous customer service and develop a successful internet company. A big thank you to Tim Westergren!

Song of the Week:

“See the Sun – Live Acoustic” from Black Lab

Black Lab became famous among the podcast community when a campaign called Bum Rush the Charts promoted their song Mine Again

Please share Comments on our call in line at 206-888-6606 or email us at podcast (at) 10goldenrules (dot) com

Adwords Editor 4.0 released

As the resident PPC Expert here at Ten Golden Rules, I find that most of my day is spent managing accounts. As such I spend a majority of that time using the Adwords Editor application, it is a vital tool in my arsenal of managing my many children (I just learned today that if you have an MCC each subaccount is a child).
As long as I have been using the tool, I have always said that the one option missing was the inability to create a custom date range, well with the latest release of version 4.0, you can now pick your own date range. Not only that, but it saves your five most recent date ranges. If you manage an Adwords Account you now have no excuse not to download and use this valuable tool. There are other valuable tools included in this new update, but none in my opinion are as important as this one.
Now if only Yahoo Search, and Microsoft Adcenter would step up and create a similar tool (I guess first they should work on having an easier user friendly interface).

GOOGLE - The Rules are Changing!

The rules are changing for how you get a website ranked on Google.

A long time ago (way back in May 2007 ;) ) you could count on the basic rules of search engine optimization. 1. Create lots of relevant content on your site. 2.Build plenty of links TO your website from other highly ranked sites (they have lots of links to them) and important sites (.gov, .udu, industry associations etc.).

In the last few months Google has changed the rules. They are giving the prime natural search result position to image results, map results, video results, news results and other selected prime results. This shift has been referred to as GUS - Google Universal Search also called PlusBox or OneBox results. See samples below.

Here is a map as the top result for 'Boca Raton Internet Advertising Agency':














We have always counseled our clients to 'have many arrows in their quiver'. Internet marketing will fail if you rely on just one or two strategies. You must constantly be testing new strategies and tactics that are working for other companies in your industry, and online leaders in other industries. A search engine optimization strategy based on words alone is destined for failure.

At Ten Golden Rules we have always tagged images, generated properly optimized press releases and optimally named client locations for map results. Recently we have increased our focus on optimizing images, news, video and maps.

What are you doing to optimize for GUS?

Here are some examples of GUS (Google Universal Search Results):

Here is an image result at the top of a search for 'tiger':













Here is a movie result:











And a stock search for GOOG (it is down a bit, and likely a good buy):

Underscores in URLs are Now SEO Friendly

For many years, SEOs and even Matt Cutts with Google have been preaching to use hyphens instead of underscores in your URLs. However, that all changed last week when Matt Cutts changed his position because of recent Google improvements and announced at WordCamp 2007 that underscores are now word separators (or at least will soon be) in Google.

Barry Schwartz with Search Engine Land followed up with the other major search engines and found out that it's not just Google that now treats underscores like dashes. Yahoo and Microsoft confirmed that they do treat underscores the same as dashes or hyphens in the URL.

10 GOLDEN RULES INTERNET MARKETING PODCAST SELECTED FOR LISTING ON iTunes

We were pleased to learn that our 10 Golden Rules Internet Marketing Podcast has been selected for listing on iTunes! Our internet marketing podcast features ideas for driving traffic to a website and small business internet marketing and advertising strategies.

Each episode of the podcast will cover topics such as search engine optimization strategies, conversion strategies, pay-per-click campaigns on Google, MSN and Yahoo, affiliate management, web 2.0 marketing ideas including Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, blogging, podcasting web optimized press releases, and YouTube videos.

The podcast is available free of charge through the iTunes store by searching ‘10 golden rules’ or at 10 Golden Rules .

Meet the Ten Golden Rules Team - "Simpsons Style"

You've read our blog posts. You've heard us give our opinions and updates on the podcast. Now, here is your chance to SEE us. Well, see the Simpsons version of us anyway.

Today, we visited the SimpsonizeMe.com website and created Simpsons versions of each of our team. The website is provided by Burger King as a co-marketing effort with the new Simpsons movie - and features the ability to upload your photo and watch it magically transform into a Simpsons character - all within a few minutes.

We recommend visiting the site and having some fun. It really does interpret your photo into a character (as a basis) and then you can make whatever changes you want. End result is a new alter ego to add to your stash, which you can download to use as a buddy icon, avatar, etc. Of course, the site is equipped with the viral marketing ability to send your new cartoon self to all your friends.

We're pretty happy with the results. But, by all means, let us know what you think.