Although black hat tactics may garner great results initially, utilizing these methods is similar to not paying your taxes and hoping the IRS won’t catch you. Of course, the argument can be made that not many sites get penalized for using black hat SEO methods. But do you really want to chance it? I don’t know of any site that can afford penalization for violating search engine guidelines, especially on the monster known as Google!

Additionally, on that same note, your black hat SEO methods could be in danger of being “outed” by credible, well-known sites and news sources, such as the New York Times, for not following search engine guidelines to uphold quality. The New York Times wrote a piece exposing jcpenney’s link building black hat tactics after discovering that thousands of low-quality links pointed to their website, jcpenney.com. Soon after, similar articles began popping up – just do a search for the keyphrases “overstock” and “paid links” for evidence.

Now, you may think you are in the clear if you have conducted black hat tactics and have not yet been “caught.” However, your competitors, who may be jealous of your rankings, could potentially examine your site to determine which SEO methods you used to achieve these results. There are free and paid tools available to determine which tactic is used – on or off of a site. If your competitors used these tools on your site, and found that you are in violation of search engine guidelines, they could potentially report you to those credible news sources, like the New York Times.

Our SEM firm, Medium Blue, has told our clients for years to avoid having duplicate content on websites. No matter how much time it takes or how much money it costs to write content, website copy should be uniquely-written (and hopefully, optimized) content that is unique from page-to-page on your site as well as from other sites. Our white hat SEO methods used to get so much pushback from clients and other SEO companies regarding our approach to copy; however, we continued to promote this recommendation because a website containing duplicate content is similar to paying for links – both black hat tactics are against many search engines’ guidelines.

Thankfully, “sticking to our guns” and continuing to promote SEO methods that utilized only unique content ended up paying off.  Earlier this year it hit. Google rolled out PANDA 1.0 in February 2011, which penalized sites for having duplicate content. Since the original PANDA algorithm, several more versions were rolled out to continue to “clean up” Google from sites that used black hat tactics, such as duplicate content.

The bottom line is, search engine guidelines have been around for a long time and are easily available on each respective search engines’ site. If you want to gamble your site’s success and engage in black hat tactics in order to receive a boost in rankings, your site may ultimately suffer in the long run. I doubt link building schemes and duplicate content penalizations are the end of Google’s (and other search engine’s) attempts to “clean up” the web. Do you really want to jeopardize the future of your site? Is it really worth it? No — especially when you can achieve the same results with white hat SEO methods!

On the flip side, if you are in the market for an SEO firm and/or are implementing internet marketing recommendations to your site, be sure to ask questions, such as “Are these recommendations aligned with the search engine guidelines?” If not, you may want to reevaluate the recommendations… or even your SEO firm.

“Editing an ad will delete the original version: Changing your ad text, modifying the content of your ad, or moving your ad to another ad group will delete the original ad and create a new ad version. The new ad’s statistics will begin at zero. It is not possible to resume an ad once you have deleted it.
If you’re not certain whether you’re ready to delete the ad, try creating a new ad first and pause the original version. Allow the new ad to run within the same ad group and compare the performance for both ads.”

If you have extensive experience in managing PPC accounts, you are aware that Google Adwords rarely says anything definitive about account management. As a whole, Google Adwords does not often tell us what or what not to do within our PPC accounts, but oftentimes, it does supply us with clues and tips. The above paragraphs were highlighted in yellow, accompanied with a yellow exclamation point, which tells us that we should pay attention to these recommendations. To read the complete Google Adwords Help page, click here.

What Happens if I Edit PPC Ad Copy or Delete the Existing Ads in an Ad Group?

If you edit or delete the existing PPC ad copy in an ad group, you lose any historical CTR that the ad group has currently earned. According to Google Adwords Help, one of the core components of Quality Score is “the historical CTR of the display URLs in the ad group.” Deleted ads may still carry some Quality Score for the ad group, but after reading Google’s words of wisdom, I wouldn’t take the chance.

It may be a pain to pause an ad, copy and paste it, and then edit the ad, but it will help your overall Quality Score in the long run. And if you find out that the old PPC ad copy converts better than the new ads, you can simply unpause it.

1. Rising mobile search usage leads to growing visibility opportunities in local/map search.
2. Major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo! collectively agree to support the www.schema.org webpage markup language for structured data.
3. Despite alliances, all three major search engines still compete for your data.

Put together the puzzle pieces of an expanding online market, new standards in search engine technology, and a clear division between how each search engine will pursue this mobile market to reveal a mobile SEO strategy for your website.  This article provides the data and rationale behind mobile search marketing. The goal is to provide optimally structured data to search engines — data that search engines compete to obtain and provide to an expanding mobile internet market.

Rising Mobile Search Usage

The steady rise in mobile search usage indicates that now is the time to invest in mobile SEO to prepare for the coming dominant internet. Last year, Gartner, Inc. research predicted that by the year 2013, mobile phones would overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide:

Context will center on observing patterns, particularly location, presence and social interactions. Furthermore, whereas search was based on a ‘pull’ of information from the Web, context-enriched services will, in many cases, prepopulate or push information to users.

Morgan Stanley Research published a similar timeline, explaining that mobile internet users will outnumber desktop users accessing the internet in 2013.  Other predictions indicate mobile search overtaking desktop search from as early as 2012 to as late as 2015.

This is why utilizing mobile SEO is necessary. Search engines pull data from your website and then push that information to users based on the search query.  They have been evolving to provide modified search results based on a visitor’s context.  In 2007, Google began producing blended search results, called “universal search,” and in 2009, the search engine began integrating rich snippets from videos, images, news, maps and books into its results.  In 2008, Yahoo! began hosting SearchMonkey developer parties to introduce web developers to its rich snippet code which provides data for blended search results.  In 2010, Bing referred to itself as the “Decision Engine,” providing similar blended rich snippets tailored to search intent.

The inclusion of rich snippets depends on the keyword query, and the algorithms that serve the snippets are affected by the context of user location.  Search engines assume that certain keywords are utilized with the searcher’s intent to discover information, while other keywords are utilized when the search intent is to find a location.  The searcher’s location, identified by IP address or GPS, allows rich snippets to become customized according to geo-location, and  all of the major search engines serve up authoritative, keyword-relevant local results closest to the user’s location.

Google, Bing and Yahoo! Agree on Structured Data Format

On June 2, 2011, Google, Bing and Yahoo! announced their initiative to support a common set of schemas for structured data markup.  What is structured data markup? A “markup” is website code – for example, “HTML” stands for Hypertext Markup Language.  Structured data refers to data that is already categorized and can be imported into a database.  Search engines pull this structured data into their specific databases for recipes, videos, products, events, reviews, people, organization, and etc.  These databases are indexed and served as rich snippets in search results. Data for events, organizations and reviews are fed into Google Places pages and help optimize for local/map search results from a desktop or mobile device.

Search engines are constantly crawling the internet, attempting to decipher individual items that can be added to these specific databases. Using the schema markup to tag items on your webpages will structure the data in a way that is accepted by all major search engines.  In many cases, existing data on your website is already present – it just needs to be tagged.

By adopting a common schema, we can conclude that search engines have agreed to make it easy for themselves to gather structured data from websites.

Google, Yahoo! and Bing Are Competing for Your Data

Despite the Bing/Yahoo! search alliance and the cooperative adoption of schema.org, all three search engines are still collecting and displaying structured data independently. Bing may be supplying Yahoo! web search results, but Yahoo! inserts its own rich snippets. The latest search market share from StatOwl indicates that Yahoo! and Bing are head-to-head in generating search traffic. Google, Yahoo! and Bing each maintain a separate database for maps, as well as images, video, news, and so on).

Furthermore, each search engine maintains a unique approach to attract and provide a user-friendly experience to visitors.  Google’s mission remains centered on providing a deep-crawl and relevant search results to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  Bing, the “decision engine,” makes an assumption about a visitor’s search intent and attempts to surrounds him/her with all possible points-of-action that he/she may wish to take during that particular search. Yahoo! maintains a traditional community portal experience, providing prominent gateways to news stories, videos, chat, browsing, shopping, dating, and more.  Each of these search engine experiences rely on pulling structured data to serve rich snippets based on perceived user search intent.

Local and Mobile SEO Opportunities

If your website is not written with HTML 5, microdata format or schema.org vocabulary to tag content for rich snippets, you are not making the most of your mobile SEO opportunities, meaning that you are lacking in visibility in mobile and local search results.  Marketing scare tactics aside, this is a new adaptation of technology.  Elliot Nix, Google Senior Account Executive of the Mobile Ads Team, revealed at the Mobile Search Marketing event in Atlanta on March 31, 2011 that according to Google internal information, 79% of advertisers do not have a mobile SEO landing page.  Now is the time to begin utilizing mobile SEO opportunities. Because you may not be behind your competitors at the moment —  but this is your chance to be ahead of the game.

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For most of the history of this new and critical marketing channel, web designers and creative agencies have put forth a vision of what a company’s web presence should be, based largely on hubris. Because of this, businesses have paid dearly — not just for the price tag of the new website, but for the lack of performance that follows the launch of the site. A business cannot benefit from a website that does not effectively transform visitors into customers. We live in a time of a great and emerging wisdom concerning the unique challenges of website usability and online marketing.

What is it that separates scientific research firms from web marketers? The willingness to fail. The expense of optimizing a website has also been a deterrent, but as the science of conversion optimization progresses, the costs associated with it are decreasing. In our culture of testing, we learn that without risk there is little reward, and every test that we perform teaches us something new about our clients.

What is this insight worth? Making changes to a landing page can result in lower conversions, even if the test is based on solid reasoning and research. However, this experience provides us with valuable knowledge that we can apply in the future towards a continually streamlined action plan for conversion optimization and website usability.

It is essential to make a plan in the beginning. The business model must be clear to those involved in the online marketing processes. After the team has identified the elements that are essential to website usability in regards to presenting the sales proposition and making it actionable for the visitor, an action plan that can extend for months can be generated. Be sure to take seasonality into account and any other outside factors that can affect sales for the business in question. Additionally, you should be realistic about internal buy-in and work immediately to head off any dissention from within. There are certainly going to be those within the organization that will feel threatened by this process of refining website usability, especially those who are responsible for the site’s current state.

It is a good practice to involve stakeholders in this process – allow them to help make decisions about what should be tested. Ask for feedback about the challenges that the business faces in regard to sales. It is important for those involved with conversion optimization to be viewed as partners, working together towards a common goal. Handing down commandments from atop a mountain of “web wisdom” will not endear those conducting the tests to those who may have their finger on the “stop” button.  The strategies of offline marketing channels are not to be wholly ignored and can only serve to broaden the scope of website conversion optimization. The synergy created by reinforcing effective messaging throughout all channels is bound to be advantageous for brand perception.

However, the following is vital: the web marketing team should not promise a specific increase in conversion rate as a result of a given test to find the ultimate factors of website usability and conversion optimization. Instead, reinforce the following idea that ultimately strengthens the values behind the culture of testing: You are performing tests on variables in order to determine where to specifically invest time and resources for maximum gain. If a landing page enhancement, such as landing page optimization, fails to provide an increase in the conversion rate, it simply means that the next test on a variable will be more likely to succeed. If all parties involved are in agreement and are cooperating successfully, continuous testing is bound to increase website usability and add value to the web presence, justifying the costs associated with set-up and maintenance by demonstrating a steadily increasing return on investment.

What does +1 Mean for Pay Per Click?

PPC and SEO are thought of by many as two separate entities with very little overlap. However, sharing landing page/ keyword ideas and performance are two examples of where PPC managers and SEOs can collaborate to increase the effectiveness of both. The +1 button is another factor that affects both SEO and PPC. Anything that makes your ad stand out compared to competitors’ AdWords gives you an advantage. Let’s go through an example:

• Fred logs into his Google account and does a search for baseball gloves.
• Fred sees that one of his friends or connections, +1’d an ad for Mizuno baseball gloves.
• Fred is much more likely to click on that ad.

Google has stated that +1 will not affect quality score, but SEO and PPC experts are saying the +1 feature could be huge for click-through rate. I agree, but I’ll go one step further and say +1’s will affect conversion rates as well. Word-of-mouth is a very strong influence in terms of buying behavior and online word-of-mouth is no different. If your friends recommend something, you are much more likely to buy it.

Plus One’s Next Step

You may be thinking, “Well, if more +1’s equals a higher CTR and possibly a higher conversion rate, why don’t I create ads that direct searchers to click the +1 next to my ad? It costs me nothing!” Good idea, but Google put a stop to this tactic back in March. What you can do is make sure your company, clients, employees, etc. know about the +1 feature. From there, you can see if promoting +1 clicks in a medium other than PPC is something you have the resources to do.

If you plan on launching a social media campaign, take some time to think about how you plan to manage each outlet.  Lay out a game plan for responding to questions and customer feedback, and plan out time to stay involved in the discussion.  Social media is about taking down some traditional barriers and interacting on a more human level.

Here are some tips to make sure you are meeting your customers’ needs with a social media campaign:

Website:  Start with the basics.  If you have a website, you should include contact information, preferably a contact form.  This will allow the customer to choose how he/she would like to get in touch with you.  Once you have a contact form, make sure that someone is promptly following up on submissions.   The worst thing you can do as part of a social media campaign would be to collect these forms and send them into a black hole.   That will only frustrate your customers, and leave them feeling like they have to do more work to get in touch with you.

Blog: Social media content should be fresh and interesting.  Try to post as often as possible, but if it looks like recycled content, less is more.  Make sure that you are responding to comments.  Think of blogging as a two way conversation – you’ve put the topic out there, so be prepared to respond.  If you have time, take this one step further and look for blogs that focus on the same topics and engage in conversation with them as part of your social media campaign.

Twitter:  Keep it low key, and don’t use high pressure sales tactics.  Twitter is a really great opportunity to engage with your customers on a more laid back level, and it’s a great social media platform to learn more about your ideal customer.  Because it’s such a conversational tool, it can often become a place for customers to seek help when they’re having a problem or issue with a company.  Make sure you are taking company mentions into account, and have a social media campaign strategy to follow up with customer complaints, concerns and questions.  This type of thing can snowball quickly, so you need to be able to react in real time.  And hey, if you see someone tweeting something positive about your company, make sure you retweet!

Facebook:  Populate your tabs.  Make sure that they are up to date with information, but not cluttered.  Think about how you’d like to engage your customers with social media and provide relevant content, and make sure you’re pulling in your blog posts to Facebook as part of a comprehensive social media campaign!  It’s a fine line though; don’t inundate your wall with too many status updates. The worst thing as a social media user is seeing your newsfeed dominated by one brand.  For me, that’s the quickest path to un-liking a page.  Offer discounts, promotions and other benefits to your fans, and you’ll gain their appreciation!

Launching a social media campaign can seem daunting, but if you take some time to focus on your strategy and make sure that you prepared to engage your consumers in these new ways, you can build a loyal customer base.  Have a social media plan in place to respond to your customers’ concerns or needs via these new channels, and you’ll ensure that you aren’t damaging those relationships that you’ve taken the time to build.

We will work with CFO Leasing to promote its range of international services through search engine marketing geared toward businesses including those in the United States, Iraq, Germany, Dubai, and Afghanistan. CFO Leasing has helped clients secure over $500 million dollars in federal contracts and grants, and has helped numerous clients across multiple sectors shorten the application process in doing business with the federal government, making companies more marketable to federal purchasing agents.

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The wide scope of this attack begs the question of how developers and webmasters can prevent their own sites from falling victim to similar malicious strategies.

SQL injection attacks work by exploiting poorly-written database code to insert unwanted SQL into database queries in order to view, modify, or gain access to the database.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks work a little differently because they typically don’t have to alter the SQL queries themselves. These attacks simply insert a snippet of JavaScript code into the text fields of the database that are then displayed somewhere on the website. Whenever pages with this malicious script are visited, the code executes and redirects the user. The goal of XSS attacks is to run some remote code or redirect the user to a spyware-infested website.

In both SQL injection attacks and XSS attacks, your susceptibility can be greatly lessened by proactively controlling any form of user-entered information and “sanitizing” your input. For example, by not allowing HTML code to be entered, filtering out certain dangerous characters, and HTML encoding text before inserting it into the database, you can eliminate many of the possible means of attack.

One of the simplest and most effective measures you can take is to make use of database parameters whenever making queries as they have built-in features to filter input and make variables database-safe. Almost all modern languages support parameterized queries, they eliminate much of the potential for error, and they are especially useful for preventing SQL injection attacks.

While it is important to filter input to prevent SQL injection attacks, it can also be beneficial to filter text that is being displayed to prevent XSS hacks. This can entail HTML encoding output or filtering for specific elements, such as hyperlinks or <script> tags (I have also seen image tags with an onerror attribute used for this same purpose).

Although none of these techniques are a magic bullet, a thoughtful combination of these will greatly increase your site’s defenses against SQL injection attacks and a variety of other common security threats.

Resources:

• http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/03/massive-sql-injection-attack-making-the-rounds694k-urls-so-far.ars
• http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10833