Back during the dot com explosion at the turn of the century, I heard a story about some guy who received such poor service from Dunkin Donuts that he started a website called dunkin donuts sucks, or something like that. Shortly after, it was rumored that the happy donut people bought the domain for millions of dollars so they could shut the site down. Now I’m not sure if this was motivated by greed or by a deep routed hatred for the brand, but it stuck with me.

This winter my wife and  I went on a Carnival Cruise from Fort Lauderdale all the way to Panama and back. It was our seventh cruise, and we expected it to be just like all of the previous cruises… absolutely wonderful.

Well that was not the case. Through some venting issue on the back of the boat we had garbage compactor smell pumped into our room through the A/C about three or four times a day. The smell was so foul we had to open the door and kill the A/C making it unbearable in the room. Despite repeated complaints, and seemingly weak attempts to solve the problem, Carnival was unable to do anything. Final on the last day we were granted a meeting with the captain of the hotel division. He was of course apologetic but powerless to offer compensation.

To make a long story short, we ended up with an insulting compensation offer, and were left pretty unsatisfied. In the spirit of revenge, I hatched a plan to buy a domain like, CarnivalSucks.com or something of the sorts, and start my own site to post our experience on. Unfortunately, other web projects tool priority and I was unable to find the time.

Anyway, this is my solute to those who use the internet to keep big corporations with terrible customer service in check.  Greed may be their ultimate motivation, like our D&D friend, but I’m okay with that.

I came across an ad the other day promising “Number 1 Placement in all of the Search Engines Guaranteed!”. Wow, that sounds good to me. And heck, there’s a guarantee, so what could be better than that? Uh, how about the truth.

Allow me to be brutally honest, and perhaps save some small merchants their life savings. There is absolutely no known way to guarantee number one placement in any search engine, unless of course you bid on the keyword and appear on the top. Other than that, anyone who makes promises that sound too good to be true, are swindling you. Or, perhaps they’re over confident in their abilities.

If you’re like most small merchants, spending money on SEO is a necessary evil. It can be incredibly expensive to hire a firm to do this, and there are a few good reasons. For one, very few people are good at it. Two, it’s tedious work. Finally, it’s worth a lot if it’s done well. You may be happy to know that there are many, many things you can do on your own to improve your organic rankings without putting out a dime. It’s going to cost you a bunch of time, but it will be time well spent.

1. Spend time seeking out quality link partners. Don’t randomly email millions of people looking for links. Look for quality websites in your industry and solicit link exchanges with them. Industry sites like associations and organizations are a good place to start. Or, sites that compliment the products you sell.

2. Be sure your meta tags are well written and unique on each page of your site.

3. Make sure the copy on your site is keyword rich and written well.

4. Be sure that your internal link structure is easy for site visitors to navigate and access every page on your site.

5. Use links that describe the page they’re linking to instead of generic links like “learn more” or “click here”.

These are only a few tips, there’s much more you can do on your own. Please continue to read this blog and other blogs on the subject for more tips on SEO.

DMNews reported last week about a new round of attacks from the lovable spammers. This time Symantec was warning about a Valentine’s Day spam. Apparently the spammers are sending men (or anyone who has a pulse… no scratch that, anyone with an email address) an email with the subject line “Get your Valentine’s Gift bag from ghd”, with an image that the user should click on. These type of “retrieve your message” spams are nothing  new, but it’s nice to see they’re getting sentimental. I was beginning to think all they wanted to do was relive all of my sexual dysfunction, but apparently they’re concerned about my relationship too.

Thanks for your concern, buttheads.

It always amazes me when I deal with some company and their sales or customer service reps are really rude. Yeah, I can understand the huge companies with thousands of people in a call center will occasionally hire a bad apple. However, there is no excuse for a small business to be rude to its customers.

This week I called a gift card manufacturer to get 5,000 custom cards made for a trade show in two weeks. I was informed in a really blunt and rude manor that the cards would take two weeks, and I had better get my artwork in today! Oh, and if I didn’t hurry, there would be a $250 rush fee. Okay, so my deadline was tight, but why was I being treated like I just asked her to move a mountain? There was no excuse.

Instead of dealing with this company, which I had done business with before… ya hear that, I was a return customer! I decided to search the net for an alternative. I easily found another company who could produce the cards in half the time, and half the price. Bam! Problem solved.

When I wrote a customer service column for Practical Ecommerce magazine, I use to stress the point that the internet is a vast land full of competition. If you’re rude or difficult to deal with, someone can easily hit Google and find the next guy.

When I evaluate websites, I always look for ease of use and availability of customer service. It’s too easy to lose customers these days, and merchants need every advantage they can get. I’ll be posting more tips and tricks for making your web business as easy as possible for the customer.

I get a bunch of emails each week soliciting some sort of “site submit” service for thousands of search engines. Of course, these services aren’t free, and what are they really giving you? Well, like most things that cost money, they’re giving you something you’re too lazy to do yourself! Ok, so I made it easy. You only really need to worry about four major sites, and you can easily submit your website for inclusion in just a couple of minutes. You don’t have a couple of minutes? Ok, pay someone $50 to do it see if I care. Well, I do care, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this. And, I made it easy for you. All of the links you need are below!

Yahoo Free Site Submit

Google Add URL

MSN Live Search

DMOZ.org

For a long time the general consensus in the SEO world is that more links were better. In some respects that’s true, but the tables have turned a bit. It’s now more important to have higher quality, industry-specific inbound and outbound links.

There are many services on the net that will help you find link partners, and some of them are good, but some are bad. Since link building takes time and effort, you might as well do it right. Good quality links from good quality websites that have something to do with your website will serve you much better in the end.

I encourage all of my clients to be picky, very picky. In a very real way, your online reputation is at stake! You don’t want links coming in or going out to link farms, or useless directories. Search engines want to see that the links coming into your site are from reputable sites, with fresh and relevant content. I would much prefer one link from an association or other industry site, than 10 links from random websites, regardless of their Page Rank.

You want to win the war, not just the battle, so take the extra time and slow down your linking efforts just a bit. Seek out those high quality links, not just the easy-to-get ones, and you will be well rewarded down the road.

Microsoft stunned the business world this week when it announced an offer to buy Yahoo, Inc in a multi-billion dollar deal. Much of the commentary I have heard or read is negative; after all, we have antitrust laws for a reason. 

The move worries the Google folks for obvious reasons. With MSN Live and Yahoo working together, the second and third largest in the search market, it brought up talk about an eventual Google takeover. Let me assure you now, it’s not going to happen. Yes, these guys might get together and become a force to be reckoned with, but they will never topple Google. The folks at Google are smart, really smart. Somehow, with almost no advertising, they have turned Google into a “Band Aid” brand. Basically, it’s a brand that becomes the word for the product itself. What Band Aid did to bandages, Google has done to search. You don’t search anymore, you Google.

I don’t love the idea of these guys joining forces but I don’t think it will have the enormous effect that the talking heads at CNBC think. I am sure Google and every other search service will continue to develop new technologies, and encourage small merchants with reasonably priced advertising opportunities. Luckily, Yahoo, MSN, and Google aren’t the only kids in town. They’re so many online marketing opportunities, that you could survive with out them… I’ll admit, it would be tough though.

For merchants, I love the shopping comparison sites, I always seem to see a better ROI. Allowing folks to see your product before clicking on your site really does make sense. For others, I would look at private websites, like industry blogs and forums. Those folks have your audience, and nothing but. If you can’t convert such highly targeted traffic, then you advertising is not the real issue. Most of these highly popular blogs and forums have reasonable advertising opportunities.

Many clients have fairly small budgets to spend on Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. They need to see results from spending as little as $100 per month. This is not a lot of money for PPC advertising, but still workable. If you call any online marketing company they will probably ask for a minimum spend of $1,000 - $2,500 per month. This is simply not doable for many small merchants. So, what is someone with a small budget to do?

One of the first tips I give my client is to watch what keywords you’re bidding on. If your industry is indoor furniture, for example, do NOT bid on the word furniture! This top-level keyword will likely cost you a fortune, and receive a lot of unqualified traffic. If you’re selling furniture, do you really want clicks from people searching for “furniture repair”, “used furniture”, or “patio furniture”? These words are budget-busters, and they’re no good to you. You should be looking for very detailed keywords, that may not get as many searches, but when they do, the traffic will be much more qualified. For example, you may bid on, “living room coaches”, or “brown leather chairs”.

Of course any PPC campaign, regardless of the budget should be preceded by a keyword research period. However, don’t be too selective. It’s a good idea to start with a lot of keywords and narrow down the list every day when you see what keywords aren’t working. Google Adwords has great reporting tools to help you do this.