http://adsense.blogspot.com/search/label/Optimization

Do you know another source? Please leave the link in a comment for all of us!

Of course if you need more help with this you can reach me anytime…

http://www.enaresource.com

enadelman@enaresource.com

Wikipedia Definition

On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine (sometimes called spamdexing or spamexing).

SEO Professional Beware

Looking for good inbound links is quite a job and can be hazardous to your search engine ratings. Do not get involved in a link farm. Luckily there are some indications that the organization you are working with is a link farm…

1) There is a fee involved, it is never free.

2) Promises of HUGE traffic.

3) Talk of a large network of websites.

4) Lots of testimonials

These points do not guarantee the site your’re dealing with is a link farm but they should set off alarm bells in your head. These points indicate that caution is required.

How do I know for sure?

You don’t. There is no list I am aware of and even if there is I will venture to guess it will never be totally complete. For me, if it sounds like a link farm, walks like a link farm and smells like a link farm… its a link farm. Better to lose a link opportunity than have my Search Engine rankings destroyed.

Safety

When I am working on a recip link program I do my homework and research the web site I am planning on working with. I do some searches, I check the ranking web sites and even look at the whois.org information. This does not mean I will ever be involved with a link farm but it is as far as I can go.

If you know of a link farm and would like to warn the rest of us please include the website in a comment here.

Think of a link farm as one of the mines in the minefield of SEO. Be careful.

Put as clearly as I can, a funnel is the path you want your web site’s visitor to follow. The large open end of your funnel represents all of your landing pages while the small side of the funnel is the end result you want to achieve. The user arrives at your landing page, finds the product or service they are looking for and ends up at the buy now or contact us page.

Simple huh?

Sounds easy don’t it. Well, don’t let that fool you. Designing your web site to have a clear functional funnel is anything but simple. It all starts with a clear plan that answers this simple question… What do you want your visitor to do? All of your design decisions will then revolve around that one simple idea. If you remember your purpose throughout the design and implementation process you will greatly enhance your chances of succeeding.

Been to MySpace recently? What a mess. No wonder they are losing market share, just try to set up an account and get something done. The site is so polluted it takes real concentration to find anything. Sure they have a large market share now but they gained that share before they destroyed the functionality of the web site. Since the sale of MySpace things have been heading south.

Clarity of purpose is key to each part of the funnel. Next time you go to Google something take a moment to really take in the design of that search site. Simple and clear. Not bad in the profitability department either. Clarity of purpose helps in most endeavors but rarely has quite the impact it has when applied to a web site.

A funnel has three parts. Each part of the funnel is important so I am going to break it down for you.

Landing Pages

The landing pages are the beginning of the funnel. The landing page has to be designed to keep the visitor on the web site (you have less than 10 seconds on average, that is how long the average visitor takes to decide.), quickly show what you offer and point the visitor in the right direction… right into the funnel.

Navigation

Your navigation system should be simple and effective. The visitor needs to be able to find what they are looking for quickly.

Too many steps or any confusion leads to a leak in your funnel. The visitor leaves for another site and you have lost your chance. The funnel must be kept “visitor” tight. Make sure your guest knows what you want them to do and show them how to do it. Keeping your visitor moving through the process ensures you get the lead / sale.



Success!

Make the contact us or buy now page simple, quick and efficient. Once the visitor makes it to the bottom of the funnel it is almost a criminal act to lose them. Do not forget to keep leading your visitor at this point, too many web sites give up helping the visitor here and they create an awful leak. The visitor is your responsibility until they leave your web site, make sure you help them every step of the way if you want to succeed.

How tight is your funnel? Just wondering. You know… Google Analytics is really good for judging the effectiveness of a funnel. Give it a try!

Keep your purpose in mind, help your visitor realize the result you intend and success will be yours.

Nirvana… really?

Yes… really. Search engines love content. Meta tags, image alt tags and URLS are all great stuff but content is king. You see a long time ago an upstart little company came along and decided that the tags were not enough to figure out what a web site was offering. This little company found that by looking at the content their robot was better able to categorize the sites place in the keyword listings.

Almost forgot, before I move on… the little upstart company’s name is Google.

Getting Started

There are many free blogging web sites out there, Blogger.com stands out in my mind but there are others. This can really help you jumpstart your blogging endeavors. The memberships are generally free, they offer great tools and make it very easy to ease into blogging.

Not easy enough… OK, you can try microblogging. This only requires entries of around 125 characters. Surely you can afford the time to do that! Try Twitter.com or (if Google ever opens it up again) Jaiku.com.

Personally I write my articles during slow parts of the day or a slow day of the week. I then review them a day or so later to make sure I still like the post. Then I read it one more time before publishing to my readers. It really isn’t that hard, I’m a software engineer and I can do it. You can do it too.

Going big time

When your ready to go big time setup a WordPress blog. WordPress is the gold standard. Your hosting company should have no trouble helping you set up the basic software, it is free (GNU License) and there are hundreds of free plugins to do about anything you want.

This blog is in WordPress. I picked a template, redesigned large portions of it over time and even wrote some of my own code to improve it. WordPress lends itself extremely well to customization. I know of at least two web sites (product sales) that used WordPress as a starting point.

The online administrative interface is simple and easy to use, I have been told there is software available to make it even easier but I have never felt the need to go look for it so I cannot comment on it. If you know of any please leave us the information in a comment.

An entry a day

Once you have setup your blog, free, wordpress or micro, you have to feed the beast. An entry a day is a good minimum requirement. New content on a daily basis will keep it fresh.

Do not be tempted to buy content, you may pay more than the sticker price if it is duplicated elsewhere. Search engines take exception to duplicate content. Don’t tempt fate. Use a good word processor, spell and grammar check your writing. Tell us something we may not know or just tell us about your experiences. There is something you can write about so get started and remember to keep in touch so I can read your blog!

Promotion

I use a mix of social bookmarking sites, microblogging and embedded SEO to promote my blogs. Since I do not use my blog as a revenue source these suffice however there are as many ways to promote a blog as there for web sites. I know many bloggers that make a living from their blogs (in my opinion a tough way to go) and they would know more about it than me so I will leave it to them to explain on they’re blogs.



Get out there and show the world what you know. Join the global conversation, or just tell us all what your doing. Remember content is its own SEO reward.

There is a spammer out there that has set the date on their email to well over a million A.D. and this took my email provider down. Luckily I use a very good contact management system that reacts quickly to customer issues and they were able to fix the problem in an extremely timely manner. (if your interested they are www.oprius.com )

Like most of you I have to sort through all the spam to figure out which one may be a new customer or a legit response from a question I have asked online. I would like to send a bill for that time to one of these spammers. Recently I heard they shutdown a single spammer that was responsible for over 40% of the spam online. Incredible.

I know this is not exactly a new subject but due to the date thing it became new for me. If you are in the United States please join with me in requesting that part of the change promised in the last election be an all out attack on spamming. Take a minute, contact your congress person and demand help. If the big three are going to get 34 billion the least they can do for us is cut down the fecal material we have to trudge through to get our work done.

Anyways, that is my two cents. Thank you all for letting me rant a little and blow off some steam. Feel free to do the same in the comments, believe me I will not hold it against you.

Click… click… click… goodbye!

How many clicks does it take to close this deal anyways? If your visitor asks themselves that question they are gone. If you are selling a product it should take less than three clicks to make the purchase. If you are gathering leads it better be fewer than that. Making your potential customer jump through hoops to do business with you is a really bad idea, you better jump through hoops to simplify the process.

Is this an IRS form or what?



Let’s start with the dreaded “contact us” form. Have you ever reached one of these forms that was at least 30 lines long. Most visitors are not going to put up with it. Rather than driving good leads away, we can be “creative”. One of my favorite creative solutions is to do a multiple page contact form. Wait for it, I promise it gets better…

The first page is only the information I need to contact the visitor, at the bottom is a “submit” button / link – NOT A – next button / link. Now if the visitor abandons the transaction I can at least contact them and have not lost the lead. If you think about it there are other techniques you could use but the most effective solution I have found is only ask for what you really need.

Where the hell is the buy button?

This one is a pet peeve of mine. You go to a web site, find what you want and then cannot figure out how to buy it. If your designing the site and the intention of the site is to sell a product then make it clear how you want the visitor to accomplish this feat of magic! Nothing is more annoying. (If you work for Amazon.com… this paragraph is for YOU).

Do you have it or not!!!

Navigation to the product of interest must be simple, clear and quick. If a visitor cannot find the product they are looking for quickly they will go somewhere else, probably to a site that quickly shows them the item they want. Take care in this area, for a great example of what not to do AT ALL COSTS visit Microsoft.

True story… I attended a SES conference and exhibit in Manhattan last year and was able to pin down an Microsoft Ads salesman. He asked me if I used they’re service, my response was no, I could not figure out how to access it. He had a laptop, used a bookmark and went to the pages I needed. I told him that was cheating, spun the laptop, typed www.microsoft.com and then asked him to navigate there without looking at the bookmarks. HE COULD NOT DO IT!!! LOL. It was great.

KISS me



Make what you want the visitor to do easy and painless and you will reap the rewards. Treat your visitor like an honored guest in your home, lay out the best towels in the guest bath, put out a stand for their suitcase and make sure you leave a light on in the bathroom at night so they do not stub a toe in the dark.

I apologize for the tone of this post but it is a fair representation of how most people feel as they try to accomplish something on the Internet. Since we make the Internet experience we can change the frustration to satisfaction.

Brick and mortar stores have finally figured this out, one of the rising stars is Target, they call the customers “guests”.

Aim for the Target model, your customers will reward you for your efforts. Good luck out there.

Assuming the visitor is interested in your product or service the next question will invariably be, “Do I trust you?”

Even if the web site is only gathering sales leads, trust will play a part. Giving out personal information is not easy anymore. If the visitor gives you their email address will you spam them? If they pay for a product will they receive it? Will you steal their identity? Who are you?

Unless your a large brand name trust is always an issue. So how do we overcome this problem?

Location, location, location.

If you’re located in the United States, Canada or Western Europe you can provide your country of origin. Generally it is accepted that these countries enforce laws that would prohibit Internet scams (this may or may not be true but we are talking about perception here). Display the flag on your pages, prominently display your address, DO NOT USE a PO Box as an address, etc…

Secure Payment Option

Choose a payment service people trust. Google Checkout and PayPal stand out in my mind but there are probably lots of other options. Having a secure trusted payment option will generally take a lot of the fear out of the transaction.

Big Partners

If you are a partner with some big players make sure that the visitor knows it. Standing with giants goes a long way towards calming the fears of a visitor.

Telephone Access

Man those phones. Being able to call a company and reach a human gives the impression that the company represented by the web site is real. The visitor gets a dual benefit here; the customer will assume that if something goes wrong they will also be able to reach the company for resolution.

Spelling B

Use spell and grammar checkers. Bad spelling or grammar makes your company seem small or maybe even fake. If you do not know how to use a spell checker then just how good is your product? This is any easy fix, and will help with more than just the fear factor.

Seal of Approval

Take these with a grain of salt, most visitors will. There are many services out there that will offer you an emblem to display on your web site that signifies you are a real company. I have my doubts about their effectiveness but others stand firmly by them. It is up to you.



It is up to you!

If the customer is afraid to provide information or interact with you your web site will not do well. It is up to the company behind the web site to quell the fears of their visitor. How would you feel about giving personal information to your own web site if you were a stranger? How can you make your guest comfortable?

Do not overlook your visitors’ security; a little work in this area will go a long way towards improving your bottom line… trust me.