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We can not allow comments on this blog because too many Spammers write crap in this Blog when comments are turned on.

So please email your comments to me and we will publish them here or on other sites we own.

This is an Important Matt Cutts Post to Read

This is one of the more interesting SEO posts by Matt Cutts that I recommend all webmasters and business owners read.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-hell/

Feedback to Google Regarding SEO and Ads

Google has been trying to implement more filters to block and / or penalize paid links. Some of what they are doing seems confused and off track. E.g. Googles priority list seems to be wrong. We see sites blocked and penalized that should not be, and questionable sites penalized when clear blatant abuse goes undetected and the wrong doers are harvesting huge results, while Google seems to do nothing about it.

Google knows about this huge abuse I discuss below and has done nothing about it.

I did a Google search on " blog.txt theme by Scott and sponsored by Flower Delivery"

Very interesting to me that it is a clear abuse, and appears to me to be helping all wrong doers with high PageRank and high rankings on Google for their important keywords.

Please see the first result of my Google search:

http://buzzdroid.com/wordpress/themes/wordpress-beware-the-sponsored-link-theme-do-you-know-where-your-pagerank-is-going/

This is an example of the "obvious low hanging paidlink spam fruit" I am talking about.
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I was reading a well known web designers site and he made some interesting points, to bad he does not know he is in danger by linking to a well know text link brokers web site. He makes the following and I beleive correct and insightful comments about dealing with web advertising clients.

1. I think my first mistake right off the bat was offering too many choices.
   
2. I ended up simplifying things within a couple days, dropping some of the ad options.
   
3. People need to be able to see value and if there are too many choices, it makes it difficult for them to make any choice at all.
   
4. People also tend to ask more questions to clarify any comparison between the ad options, so the more ad options the more questions people ask.
   
5. That is why we try to get them to make a small purchase and then ask them to buy more later. Sometimes they buy multiple ads over a 3-5 day period. The key is to get them into the buying mode and away from all the questions.
   
6. Keeping it simple makes it easier for everybody.

Alexa Traffic Rankings are WAY Wrong

I have known for some time that the Alexa traffic rankings are way off. Off by tons... not a scientific way to explain this.

So please see this interesting article to learn more about the how and why Alexa traffic rankings are so defective and not correct.




http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/estimating-webmaster-skew-in-alexa-metrics/

Check out this new blog we are creating

Hello,

Please visit this new blog we are creating.

http://gototom.blogspot.com

It explains the reasons why and the topics it will cover.

Google Webmaster Central

Google has added a lot of good information to this page:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

You should read it several times and use the free tools Google provides.

Links are like Diamonds and Wine

Please click on and read this information below.

http://gototom2.blogspot.com/2006/09/80-of-webmasters-are-wrong-about-seo.html


This is still one of the best articles for people to read to understand many details and complex issues involved with SEO.

Search Engine Marketing Data

North American advertisers spent $9.6 billion on search engine marketing in 2006. I do not have the current worldwide numbers. I wish I did have worldwide numbers for this report. 84% of this $9.6 billion was invested in paid search. E.g. Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN PPC, etc.

So only 14% went to natural search engine optimization (SEO), Yahoo's paid inclusion scam accounts for 1% or $96 million. We hope the FTC stops Yahoo from this paid inclusion scam against the general public and gives Yahoo a huge fine for this advertising scam.

1% for agency fees and in house development account for 1%.

So my question is why is natural SEO still such a low percent of the total. I think it will increase in the future as Google's PPC prices have gone though the roof. Keyword terms that we used to pay $2 for are now $10. At some point people will start to shift more of their Internet marketing dollars to SEO I think. 75% of businesses use some SEO efforts to promote their businesses. For many years people have said they want branding however they generally are still more focused on measuring direct response rates. TV advertising , print ads and newspaper advertising have been dropping and Internet marketing and advertising are growing, we see a significant shift of how corporate budgets are invested. We predict this trend will continue for many years, as the Internet is still a young child.

More from Matt Cutts of Google

I do not see Matt Cutts comment in very many blogs. I might feel a little nervous if I knew Matt was reading my blog on a regular basis. Sometimes I am critical of Google and ....

Anyway Matt has always been helpful to me and responds to my emails very quickly. I do not send him many, I try to keep a low profile with Google, and only talk to them as a last resort. This in itself sets Google head and shoulders above Yahoo (I strongly dislike Yahoo) or MSN.

It is wonderful that a $10 billion dollar a year company has a senior Ph.d level engineer who responds to people like me :) :)

Below is a comment Matt made in some other guys blog.


Matt Cutts Says:

December 20th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
I think you put this pretty well, Eric. Search engines want links to be real: editorial votes based on quality and merit.

With Yahoo, you’re paying for the reviewing service; Yahoo rejects plenty of submissions.

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Tom Forrest Says: This is the same with our Directories, we reject about 85+% of people who submit their listings to us. There are tons of Spammers trying to get into quality Directories and web sites like ours.
We just keep deleting them.