Want to improve your company’s search rankings? Then make sure you don’t try to play any of these dirty SEO tricks.

1. Cloaking Your Content

The No. 1 top offending SEO technique, according to both SEO software firm SEOmoz and Google’s own guidelines, is to design your Website so that search engines see one thing while human visitors see another. This is commonly called “cloaking,” and it’s generally considered the dirtiest trick there is.

Car maker BMW kindly provided a vivid illustration of this technique a few years back, as well as what happens to those who try it. Specifically, it was discovered that BMW’s German Website was using what are called “doorway pages,” or text-heavy pages sprinkled with select keywords, to attract the attention of Google’s indexing system. The particular search term it focused on was “used cars.”

So, when users searching for “used cars” found the BMW site at the top of Google’s rankings, they were naturally tempted to click on it. What happened then, however, was that a JavaScript redirect would send them directly to BMW’s main page, on which used vehicles featured minimally if at all.

BMW’s reward for its cloaking efforts? Google unceremoniously kicked the BMW site out of its index, as Google engineer Matt Cutts explained in a blog post from 2006.

2. Acquiring Links from Brokers, Sellers or Exchanges

The second worst dirty trick, according to SEOmoz, as well as one apparently employed by both DecorMyEyes and JCPenney, is to pay a link broker or participate in other link schemes so as to get numerous links to your site from all across the Web.

The reason this trick is tempting is that Google’s page ranking system factors in the number of links pointing to a page when it tries to evaluate that page’s importance. It’s also tempting because it can work well–at least in the short term, as JCPenney recently demonstrated.

Why shouldn’t you use it? Well, mostly because it’s in direct violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you severely punished, as JCPenney learned. If you participate in a link exchange program–whereby you link to a spam site in exchange for their links to you–the outbound links you install are also another factor that will negatively affect your rankings.

3. Duplicating Content

If a Website operator offers the same content on multiple pages, subdomains, or domains, it can result in extra traffic and higher rankings–or at least, so the thinking goes. Unfortunately, it’s another violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and it can get you kicked out of its index.

Other instances in which content sometimes gets duplicated include affiliate programs that offer little or no original content, auto-generated content that’s packed with keywords but makes little sense to human visitors, and content “scraped” from legitimate sites and then modified minimally.

Not only will such techniques get you punished by Google, but they’ll also turn away human visitors. Note that when content is duplicated legitimately, such as for printer-friendly versions of articles, there are ways to alert Google so it doesn’t misunderstand.

4. Keyword Stuffing

The keywords used on any Web page are a major factor in that page’s ranking, but it’s a bad idea to use them indiscriminately or deceptively. That includes using too many of the keywords you’re hoping to optimize on–thereby exceeding any kind of naturally plausible keyword density–and it also includes packing keywords in hidden text, different-color fonts and tiny type.

Once again, Google engineer Matt Cutts offered some additional explanation in a 2007 blog post, along with an illustration: Alex Chiu, whose Web page featuring “immortality devices” was at the time stuffed with irrelevant keywords. Guess what? Chiu didn’t show up in Google’s index. (Since then, it appears to be back, presumably because the keyword stuffing has been corrected.)

A useful test, as Google points out in its guidelines, is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

5. Banking on Negative Reviews

Although it was disputed by at least one SEO expert, the owner of the DecorMyEyes site believed that the more negative reviews and comments his site got–and there were many, thanks to his atrocious customer service–the better the site’s rankings, primarily as a function of all the extra links and traffic. For a time, too, his strategy worked pretty well, for whatever reason.

In response to the case, however, Google says it has since tweaked its algorithms, though it didn’t explain specifically how. My assumption is that the overall sentiment of a site’s reviews are now a factor. So, lest anyone be tempted, this is not a sustainable strategy, nor a smart one.

6. Automatic Queries

If you’re like most Website owners, you wonder how your pages rank on various keywords at any given moment in time. Lo and behold, there are even tools that will perform automatic queries for you, to find out the truth from Google itself.

The only problem is, Google doesn’t like that at all. Tools such as WebPosition Gold, it asserts, “consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service.” Better avoid them.

There are other dirty SEO tricks out there, to be sure, but these are some of the worst ones. If you handle your company’s SEO yourself, make sure you don’t stray into these dangerous waters. If someone else handles SEO for you, manage them carefully so none of these slip by.

By Katherine Noyes

A powerful ad is one of the most important aspects of your success. The secret to a successful ad is your HEADLINE. You only have a split second to grab your targets attention. Your potential customer will most likely scan the ads and only read one if it catches their attention. Write your ads with passion, excitement, and benefits.

Use this powerful approach when creating your ad copy.

Create an urgency to act now. Creating a successful ad will take a great deal of time and effort. You’ll need to write it and re-write it over and over again before you come up with a great ad.

We all know the importance of a powerful headline. However, writing a great headline isn’t as easy as it sounds.

An effective headline will literally force your potential customers to learn more. It will instantly ignite a certain emotion and intrigue them to read on.

In order to write an effective headline, you must learn how to use specific words to achieve a specific reaction.

Before writing your headline, you must first learn a little bit about the basic human motivators. According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, human behavior is always
the result of one or more of five basic needs. He listed these needs in a sequence that he refers to as “the hierarchy of human needs.”

He believes that until a less important need is met there won’t be any desire to pursue a more important need. Below are the five human motivators, beginning with the basic needs and continuing to the most important needs.

Physiological – Basic human needs include hunger, thirst, shelter, clothing and sex.
Safety (Security) – Human need for physical, emotional and financial security.
Social (Affiliation) – Human need for love, affection, companionship and acceptance.
Esteem (Self Esteem) – Human need for achievement, recognition, attention and respect.
Self-actualization – Human need to reach their full potential.

When you are aware of the basic human needs, you can incorporate these needs into your writing. A great headline will appeal to your potential customers’ emotions. You must feel their needs, wants and desires and write your headlines with passion and emotion.

When writing your headlines, keep in mind, you only have a few seconds to grab your potential customers’ attention. If your headline doesn’t immediately catch their attention, they’ll simply move on and never return. Below are several different formulas used by professional copywriters to write compelling headlines.

How to

“How to Increase Your Sales Up to 500% by Using This One Simple Strategy”

Headlines beginning with ‘how to’ are very successful, as the Internet is all about information. Internet users have a strong desire to learn. A headline beginning with ‘how to’ immediately grabs your potential customers’ attention and forces them to read on.

Question

“Are You Sick and Tired of Working For Someone Else?”

Headlines written in the form of a question are very effective, as they appeal to your potential customers’ emotions. When they read a headline written as a question, they’ll answer the question in their mind. If the question identifies a specific need, want or desire, they’ll read on.

Command

“Double Your Income Within the Next 12 months — Guaranteed!”

A command headline focuses on the most important benefit your product or service has to offer. It instantly demands your potential customers’ attention and intrigues them to read on.

News

“Announcing a Brand New Breakthrough in E-Publishing”

News headlines are very effective and used to announce new products and services. They are written in the form of an announcement or introduction and create curiosity.

What information needs to be in your business plan? What is the order of information that will make the most sense to lenders and investors? You can answer these questions with the business plan outlines provided below.

What are the standard elements of a business plan? If you do need a standard business plan to seek funding — as opposed to a plan-as-you-go approach for running your business, which I describe below — there are predictable contents of a standard business plan outline.

For example, a business plan normally starts with an Executive Summary, which should be concise and interesting. People almost always expect to see sections covering the Company, the Market, the Product, the Management Team, Strategy, Implementation, and Financial Analysis. The precise business plan format can vary.

Is the order important? If you have the main components, the order doesn’t matter that much, but here’s the sequence I suggest for a business plan. I have provided two outlines, one simple and the other more detailed.

Simple business plan outline

1. Executive Summary: Write this last. It’s just a page or two of highlights.
2. Company Description: Legal establishment, history, start-up plans, etc.
3. Product or Service: Describe what you’re selling. Focus on customer benefits.
4. Market Analysis: You need to know your market, customer needs, where they are, how to reach them, etc.
5. Strategy and Implementation: Be specific. Include management responsibilities with dates and budgets. Make sure you can track results.
6. Web Plan Summary: For e-commerce, include discussion of website, development costs, operations, sales and marketing strategies.
7. Management Team: Describe the organization and the key management team members.
8. Financial Analysis: Make sure to include at the very least your projected Profit and Loss and Cash Flow tables.

Build your plan, then organize it. I don’t recommend developing the plan in the same order you present it as a finished document. For example, although the Executive Summary obviously comes as the first section of a business plan, I recommend writing it after everything else is done. It will appear first, but you write it last.

Standard tables and charts

There are also some business tables and charts that are normally expected in a standard business plan.

Cash flow is the single most important numerical analysis in a plan, and should never be missing. Most plans will also have Sales Forecast and Profit and Loss statements. I believe they should also have separate Personnel listings, projected Balance Sheet, projected Business Ratios, and Market Analysis tables.

I also believe that every plan should include bar charts and pie charts to illustrate the numbers.

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Where to invest, what to test and which deserve a rest

Allocating your small business marketing budget to maximize return on investment and minimize the risks of a low or negative return can become a lot more unpredictable when your investments involve trends and emerging technologies. Investing in trends requires smart timing and consumer analysis.

You would think that marketing trends would be closely aligned with consumer trends, since effective marketing depends on getting your messages to appear where the highest concentration of qualified eyeballs are focused. That isn’t always the case, however, because trend-focused marketers tend to place an inflated value on revolutionary technology and early adoption.

Thankfully, the majority of consumers permanently relocate their attention with much less frequency than marketing bandwagon drivers. Still, missing a trend or sticking with a has-been spells opportunity lost at best and negative returns or loss of market share at worst.

Since your trend-marketing returns are only as good as your ability to make educated guesses, here’s some advice to help you avoid turning educated guesses into marketing messes. The following list features the top 10 internet marketing trends for 2010, in no particular order, and tells you whether to invest, test or let it rest.

Trend #1: Search Engine Optimization
Advice: Test
Sites with relevant content and credible links will continue to rule the search rankings in the coming year, but 2011 has the potential to reveal a few new standards. As the volume of web content continues to grow, consumers will demand even more relevant and personalized search results. That means search engines will be looking for more relevant and personalized content from publishers and brands. In fact, the search engine algorithms are already beginning to pay more attention to date of publication, geo-location, mobile device browsers, past behavior and social media content.

Don’t abandon your current SEO strategy in search of personalization, but make sure you allocate a portion of your budget to testing content, keywords and links that are targeted toward niche audiences. Test keyword and link placement in social media, local content and mobile websites, and make an effort to more frequently refresh some of the content you devote to search engine rankings. Once the search engines have tested these new search targets and revealed some concrete standards, you should be prepared to invest accordingly.

Trend #2: Paid Search
Advice: Invest
Paid search hasn’t seen a revolutionary trend since the idea of the long tail was applied to keyword bidding. That’s OK, because consumers will still use search engines in 2010 as a primary means of finding products and services to fulfill their needs, and they will still be clicking on relevant ads. Search advertising prices will remain reasonable, and average returns will remain comparably high as larger companies with decreased search marketing budgets continue to allocate resources to lower-cost SEO tactics in hopes of attracting visitors at lower prices. 2010 has the potential for even more downward pressure on price-per-click if Bing can gain enough loyal searchers to attract business away from Google.

You won’t exactly feel like you’re in the driver’s seat when your search marketing placement choices are limited to Google, Microsoft or both, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from investing in the highly qualified leads that paid search is capable of producing for your small business.

Trend #3: E-mail Marketing
Advice: Invest
It isn’t hard to justify an investment in e-mail marketing when the cost of sending e-mails is so low. The low cost isn’t the only reason to send e-mail, however. Most consumers still consider e-mail to be their primary form of communication, even though there are several alternative ways for consumers to subscribe to periodic content from small businesses.

E-mail marketing will remain highly predictable in 2011 and may even become more powerful as e-mail service providers improve social media integration, search engine access to archived e-mails, auto-responders and new integrated applications. If you don’t already use an e-mail service provider, invest in one in 2010. If you already use an e-mail service, invest in your e-mail list and in producing valuable content to nurture leads and attract repeat customers.

The cost of building a permission-based list is likely to stay the same in 2011 as it was in 2009 and 2010, but more than one-third of consumers changed at least one of their e-mail addresses in 2009 and 2010–due to job changes or other economic factors. Spend more time and money in 2011 focused on keeping your e-mail list current when those consumers return to work and change e-mail addresses again.

Trend #4: Social Network Marketing
Advice: Test
Social media has one redeeming quality for marketers–lots and lots of eyeballs. That’s attractive if you’re a major brand, but profitable interaction will continue to be the exception for small businesses in 2011 rather than the rule. A good test of your social network marketing potential is to survey your current customers to see how many of them consider social networking to be a primary form of communication. You should probably experiment with a Facebook fan page and a Twitter page if you find that a meaningful percentage of your current customers indicate an interest in following your business.

Make 2010 your year to test content that attracts repeat and referral business. Your current customers are more likely than total strangers to respond to offers posted on social networks because they already know you and trust you based on their prior purchases.

Trend #5: Blogging
Advice: Let it rest
If you’re writing a blog to help with search engine rankings or to inform existing customers, you should continue to test or invest. If you’re blogging in an attempt to attract new prospects and convert them to customers, however, 2010 will be a year that exposes the blogosphere’s vulnerability to the law of averages. Converting prospects into customers depends on driving visitors to content that maximizes conversions, and that means your conversion rate is only as good as the content on your landing page. If that landing page is your blog and your blog changes frequently, your conversion rate is only as good as your latest blog post.

Instead of blogging to convert your website visitors into customers in 2011, work hard to test and develop great landing page content. When you find something that works, don’t change it.

Trend #6: Web Presence
Advice: Invest
If you want people to see the content on your website, it might make sense to advertise the location of your website content by placing ads on other high-traffic websites. Driving visitor traffic to your website isn’t the way to go for 2010, however. Instead, you need to spend 2011 driving your website content to the visitor traffic.

The difference stems from the fact that content aggregation websites like YouTube are boosting consumer demand for instant gratification and what I like to call “content nesting.” Content nesting allows consumers to browse through content fed to them through a single web page, or nest, so that they don’t have to click on links to individual websites all over the World Wide Web, which takes more time–not to mention that the results can be anywhere from unpredictable to shockingly irrelevant.

To take advantage of content nesting in 2011, your website content needs to be nested in as many content aggregation sites as possible. For example, a lot of people search for videos on YouTube. If you have a video on your website and it’s not also on YouTube, people on YouTube won’t bother searching for your website. To them, YouTube represents the total number of videos available to them on their topic of interest.

Trend #7: Mobile Marketing
Advice: Test
In case you haven’t heard, mobile marketing is all about marketing to people through their mobile phones and smart-phone devices. Small businesses haven’t had much of an opportunity to engage consumers on mobile devices, but 2010 has the potential to change that.

Demand is increasing dramatically for mobile applications and mobile web-browsing due to wider adoption of devices like the iPhone and the Google Android phone. As more people adopt these phones and features in 2010, look for small-business marketing services to start providing lower-cost mobile marketing solutions like text messaging, mobile e-mail marketing, mobile websites, mobile application development and location-based marketing.

Make 2011 your year to collect mobile preferences from your prospects and customers, and use tools like Google Analytics to see how many people are visiting your website on mobile web browsers. If you find interest in mobile interaction among your customers, begin testing simple mobile marketing campaigns such as sending a few mobile coupons via text or building a mobile micro-site for one of your products.

Trend #8: Podcasting and Online Radio
Advice: Let it rest
Online radio is actually on a bit of a growth trend, but that’s just because so-called terrestrial radio is suffering so much that radio advertisers are switching their investments to digital formats. 2011 will be a year of exploration for online broadcasters as they struggle to find and attract loyal audiences. iTunes has long been the leader in podcasting, but there are still no clear leaders in internet radio.
Even if leaders emerge in 2011, internet broadcasters will need to make their media more sharable, more engaging, more trackable and more mobile to attract money from advertisers. If you’re looking to attract an audience by broadcasting or advertising on broadcast media, go with online video in 2011 and wait for radio to finish reinventing itself.

Trend #9: Online Video
Advice: Invest
If a picture paints a thousand words, how many words does a 30-second online video paint? Countless buying emotions and memorable brand moments are possible with video. Until recently, spreading your message with video was limited to the television screen. In 2011, watch for video to become more accessible to small businesses through online outlets. Online video is interactive, memorable, widely accessible, cheap to create and highly shareable. There’s also a lot of investment happening around video, which is sure to create even more low-cost opportunities for small businesses to participate in video promotions in 2010.

Video presents a great opportunity for small-business marketing, but don’t think of video as a replacement for text. As powerful as video can be, it can be more cumbersome than text because you can’t scan a video as quickly as you can scan a page of headlines, links and text to quickly find the exact information you need. Use your investments to find the right balance for your customers.

Trend #10: Coupons, Discounts and Savings
Advice: Test
OK, this one isn’t entirely an internet marketing trend, but it’s important enough to mention because of the economy. 2009 and 2010 was another tough years for retailers, and consumers are so accustomed to shopping for deals that they might begin to expect the plethora of deep discounts currently available to continue forever. If you’re engaged in heavy discounting to attract sales and survive the economic downturn, you’ll need to spend 2011 slowly weaning your customers off your lower prices, assuming that the economy recovers. Resetting expectations won’t be easy, so try swapping discounts for special privileges like loyalty discounts, free upgrades and other offers that won’t lock you in to price comparisons.

Internet marketing trends develop quickly, so expect many new and exciting trends to emerge in 2011. Don’t be too quick to jump on new bandwagons because consumers move more slowly than marketers and technology. Stay focused on attracting repeat business, deepening your customer relationships and solving problems for people. Those are the trends that never fail small businesses.

Why is Branding Your Business Important
Learn how to make your small business a big name.
Q: Have you asked yourself what is “branding,” but was not sure what it meant. Do you have to be concerned about it as a small-business owner?
A: Absolutely yes. Brand building is simply a new label for a collection of functions that have always been necessary to make a business successful, requiring ongoing effort in several areas to:
• Increase the public’s awareness of your business name and logo.
• Build a strong company “essence” that inspires loyalty and trust in your current customers and provides a level of familiarity and comfort to draw in more potential customers.
Often referred to as the “good will” portion of your business, your brand is intangible and has nothing at all to do with any real estate, inventory or vehicle fleets your company may count as assets. Instead, it refers to the reputation behind your company’s name and logo. A carefully built brand is worth more in actual dollars than all the tangible assets put together and is what will reap monetary rewards when you’re ready to sell your company. The first thing you have to do is decide how you want people to perceive your business, and then figure out what you have to do to get there.
So what goes into building your brand? Here’s a look:
• Consistency in advertising. Decide what you can do for your customers that your competitors can’t and hammer away at those points in every ad. Create a “sell line” that defines your company in a nutshell and use it.
• Customer service. Only employ people who can get on board with your brand, and make sure that each person understands his or her part in building it. Once a customer is ignored at the counter or treated poorly on the phone or on the sales floor, you’ve lost not only that person but everyone else that hears about the unfortunate experience. Remember that word-of-mouth can help, but it can also hurt. Get rid of employees who won’t cooperate–even if they’re related to you!
• Public relations. Keep promises you make. See that your customers aren’t disappointed with what they find once your advertising gets them through the door. Make it easy for them to make purchases and returns. They should leave smiling. If you tell your local Little League team that you’ll provide team T-shirts, follow through. If you commit to a joint venture with another business, school or a group of any kind, keep up your end of the deal. Pay your invoices on time. Be a good citizen. Get involved with community projects where your business can do something positive (and maybe get some free press).
• Your willingness to use the internet. A company with no web presence is archaic. Even if you’re only interested in local sales right now, your customers are on the web, and they’ll want to see you there, too. Get it done now.
Be vigilant. Every contact with the public will either serve to build your brand or dismantle it, and administering damage control can seem like managing a convoluted maze of tumbling dominos when something happens to threaten the public’s perception of your business.