Easyway Informer ENewsletter |
Volume 1 - Issue 1 |
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In this Issue:
Coming Soon:
- Email Newsletter Marketing
Links in Articles:
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Search Engines: Pay-Per-Click vs. Reciprocal Links
Q: What is pay-per-click? Advantages? Disadvantages?
A: Pay-per-click is when you bid for a "sponsored link" position on a search engine. The two largest pay-per-click services are Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. (Formerly known as Overture.) Google powers AOL's, EarthLink’s and AT&T's search engines. Yahoo powers MSN's, Excite's, AltaVista's, Juno's, CNN's and NetZero's. The advantage of pay-per-click is that it is very targeted, very effective advertising. The disadvantage is that once you stop paying for the service, your website disappears.
Q: What are reciprocal links? How do they help my site?
A:Reciprocal links are when others link to your site, and you link to them in return. The more incoming links (that means others linking to you) you have to your site, the more likely search engines deem your site popular, thus you are ranked higher. You want to try to keep your links relevant to your site also. (I.e. if you are a realtor, links to a title company, mortgage broker, and homeowner's insurance agent would be relevant.) Think about it…if you were looking for a certain business, and in asking around, everyone pointed you to the same business location, wouldn’t that be where you would look too? Search engines don’t look at it exactly like humans, but it’s a similar concept. The more links to your site, the more important the search engine perceives your domain to be.
Q: SO…Which one do I do?
A: Short term: pay-per-click. Long term: reciprocal links.
Using Google for an example, follow this scenario:
Type in the keywords: Miami Limos.
You will get a page similar to the following screenshot:
The listings along the top and right hand side are referred to as, “Sponsored Listings.” These are the pay-per-click ads. The listings in the main left part of the page are Google’s picks. If you click on the first one, whose website is: www.a1limobus.com, you will be taken to a site called, “A 1 Luxury Limousine of South Florida.” On their site, scroll down the left hand navigation until you find a link called, “useful links,” and click on it. This is an example of a reciprocal links exchange. If you look closer at the links, you will notice they are relevant to the site. (I.e. accommodations, clubs, travel, etc. – all places that you might find a limo service.) Have I made my case for why you need to do this?! Even better, reciprocal links are most often no cost and do not disappear like pay-per-click ads. For the favor of adding a link to your site, your partners will add a link to their site, thus helping the both of you.
Q: How do I start a reciprocal links program on my site?
A: Contact Easyway Web Design! We can install a links management system on your site. Look at our site for an example: http://easywaywebdesign.com/links/directory. This application requires that you are hosted on a UNIX server running apache, have a MySql Database, and PHP 4.0. If you are one of our existing clients hosted by us, you already have this!
Great features of this system:
- Allows visitors to add their links without the hassles of trading links via email, then sending them to your webmaster to post on your site pages.
- Automatically checks link partners’ sites to ensure the link back to you is in place and stays there!
- You can manually accept links in order to retain control of who is placing links on your site, thus making sure they are appropriate and relevant links.
Q: How do I start a pay-per-click program?
A: A good place to start is by doing Google’s demo. It will help you understand how it works. You can then choose to do it yourself, or call us, and we’ll do it for you. The demo can be found at: https://adwords.google.com/select/. Look for “Sign-up demo” in the middle of the page between the yellow lines. Even if you want us to do it for you, we still suggest doing this, so that you understand what to ask us to do.
Q: I don’t have time for all of this!!! What options do you provide to help me?
A: The most popular option: Set up a Webmaster Account: You can contract us at a reduced rate by guaranteeing us a set amount of hours each month. (I.e. Contract us for 3 hours a month, and we’ll come down 10%. We’ll do 3 hours of managing your pay-per-click account(s) and/or obtaining reciprocal links for you at the price of $135/month. The more hours you guarantee, the better the discount. You can also include site content updates in this or anything else we set as your goals.)
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Anti-Spam & Spam Alerts
For those of you using Outlook/Outlook Express: A great spam eliminator is Norton Anti-Spam. Depending on what you set it at, it diverts all spam to an Anti-Spam folder in Outlook, of which you can delete all at once. If it catches a virus in an attachment, it sends it to Anti-Virus, and deletes it before you can open it. You can find it on the internet at: symantec.com/antispam. Even better: Norton Internet Security which includes Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, a firewall to keep hackers out, ad blocking, and more. You can find it on the internet at: symantec.com/sabu/nis/nis_pe.
Virus Alerts:
If you've received several politically themed e-mails in German that contain links to news articles on German websites, you’re one of the thousands that received a spam barrage triggered by the “Sober” Virus, a mass-mailing worm that sends itself to addresses gathered from compromised computers. So far, these e-mails are not virus-infested.
The second pest is a new version of the “mytob” worm. The “mytob” e-mails attempt to look official with subject lines like, “Important: Your account has been locked” or “Your e-mail account access is restricted.” In addition, they usually have an attachment ending in .zip or .bat.
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Phishing & Phishing Alerts
Beware of email messages purporting to come from banks, credit card companies or other financial institutions that ask you to update your personal or account information. Suspect a phishing scam and do not respond to such messages, do not follow their instructions, and DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS in such messages!
Q: What is phishing?
A: "Phishing" is the practice of sending fraudulent email that try to trick you into giving away personal information by directing you to an official looking Web site to "update" or "validate" your credit card numbers, bank account information, passwords, or other sensitive information. If you provide the information as requested, it will quickly be used to withdraw money from your accounts, make charges on your credit card, or steal your identity.
Phishing email may come addressed specifically to you and may have all the characteristics of a legitimate message, including familiar corporate logos and well written text, so it can be hard to tell that the message is fraudulent.
Q: What should I do if I unknowingly gave out information via a phishing email?
A: Check out this link: Consumer Advice:
What To Do If You've Given Out Your Personal Financial Information.
Phishing Alert:
Emails from Pay Pal: Pay Pal will always use your first and last name in correspondence with you. If it's addressed, "Dear Pay Pal Member," DO NOT click on anything as it is a phishing email.
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