MH1 Web Design Blog

by Mike Hallaron, MH1 Web Design

Email scams are as old as the Internet. Recently, we have received another round of a familiar phishing scam under the guise of a Google AdWords customer billing email. Those of you operating an AdWords account need to be aware before falling prey to this trick in the confusion and turning over your credit card or other vital financial information.

Here is how it works

You receive an email from “Google AdWords”, the popular pay-per-click tool. The subject line reads something like “Your AdWords Google Account is stopped”.  The email message reads like this:

Dear Advertiser,We were unable to process your payment.
Your ads will be suspended soon unless we can process your payment.
To prevent your ads from being suspended, please update your payment information.Please sign in to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login,
and update your payment information.Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.This is a common “phishing” ploy. Simply defined, phishing is a fraudulent email claiming to be from PayPal, eBay, Google, Youtube or online banks that direct the recipient to a fake Web page in an attempt to trick him into entering sensitive account information or credit card details.

If you are uncertain, skip using the link provided in the suspect email and go straight to the Web site in question (google.com in this case) and login as normal. You might change your password and contact customer support about the mysterious email request to update your payment information.

Bottom line, if you get a link in any email asking you to update credit card or bank information, you should NOT click it no matter how real it looks or whose email address the notice appears to come from.

Phishing can be used against you in many ways and if successful can devastate your private finances and personal security. Be careful and contact MH1 Web Design if you are in doubt about any curious email request.

If we are managing a Google AdWords account for you, contact us with any related issues.

Houston/The Woodlands (713) 429-1746

The keyword selection process is close to one of the most important parts when it comes to creating your PPC ad’s, so you want to ensure that you get it right. 

Selecting the correct keywords for your campaign is essential. It’s no use paying for underperforming keywords that will just run your campaign funds dry.

So you want to know which keywords are classified as the “right keywords”? Then check out the follow tips.

1. Start with a List

Generate a list of keywords based on words defining your product, location, product/services etc. Carefully consider what terms users are likely to use in searching for your products/services. It is essential to use the keywords searchers use, rather than the ones you and your organization use to describe your product/service.

2. Choose Specific but Not Popular Keywords

You’ll need to select keywords that are specific to your product or service offering, but you need to be careful not to select keywords that are extremely popular, as this may deplete your PPC funds sooner than expected.

3. Use Phrases instead of single words.

You stand a better chance of winning the search engine wars as this helps to narrow down exactly what people are searching for.

4. Consider misspelled keywords

Everyone makes mistakes when they are typing, so who’s to say that your searchers don’t make this same mistake when typing in search queries ” take advantage of this.

5. Constantly Change Your Keywords

Keywords should be evaluated frequently for performance. This can be done by reviewing your website statistics to see which terms are being effective in driving traffic to your website.

So don’t waste your hard earned money on keywords that just won’t give you customers. Take these tips into account when evaluating your keywords and see the customers start knocking down your door.

About the Author:
Courtney Mills is a contributing writer for ineedhits.com.

Keywords are important, but there’s a wrong way and a right way to deploy them.

While seeding content with keywords is useful — there are mistakes that everyone makes when trying to get their sites noticed by the search engines. Be careful not to repeat these freshman errors; at best you may alienate users, at worst your site will be excluded from search engine databases.

The ‘relevenace’ of a page is decided by a number of factors, including the number of times a specific searched for word appears. Search engines are also designed to seek out and ignore deliberate repetition. So, if you have a site about garden gnomes and your place the words “gnome, gnome, gnome, gnome..” in your keywords, your page may get filtered out.

Similarly, it is unwise to put keywords in your pages that attract hits that don’t have anything to do with the content within. So, leave references to podcasting, and Kelly Clarkson out of the keywords for your online flower shop. The practice of keyword stuffing is no longer thought of as good search engine optimization practice. Balance is everything.

Source: Practical Web Design magazine

Unique web content is your most valuable asset, and ensuring search engines can read it is crucial. Text embedded in images or Flash cannot be read, so make sure you use important keywords, headings, and hyperlinks in plain text form. Instead of using images as navigation links, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) makes it easy to format those links to look more like ‘buttons’, thus creating powerful anchor text as well as making it visually appealing. Use heading tags properly and don’t try to hide keywords or text by making it the same color as the page background or shrinking it so it can’t be seen. Make sure the keywords you wish to rank high for are used frequently in the page copy but within reason.

Now that you’ve created good content, is it actually being crawled? Copy and paste a page’s URL into a search engine to see if it has been indexed. If you’ve just created the page, it may take a few days to show up. Aside from age, many factors can lead to web pages not being indexed by search engines, such as duplicate content (ie. a printer-friendly version of a page might be indexed and the normal version not, or vice versa); links generated by JavaScript instead of HTML; poor site architecture (ie. using too many sub-directories); lengthy, dynamically generated URLs using special characters; and orphaned pages.

The Author: John Metzler has held executive positions in the search engine marketing industry since 2001. He is the Founder of FreshPromo, a Canadian-based SEO firm and updates his blog regularly.

by Bruce Swedal

The internet stores a massive amount of information and much of that is in text. To find quality content to return for search queries the search engines look for sites with text content and the more the better.

If you have ever wonderedwhy your website is not receiving any traffic, you are probably looking for a way to increase it. Most webmasters on the internet are because they realize that traffic is what will make their site a success.

You should consider taking a two pronged approach to building links. The first method for building links is through submissions of your site to quality web directories. Every link you get to your site is not only a vote in popularity, but also a doorway for traffic. Every quality link you can get through directory submissions will bring more relevance to your site.

How you can use article marketing.
The first way you can use article marketing is by going to article directories. If you can’t write your own unique content (which is preferred) for your site, you can use the content from article directories to place on your site for content as long as you retain the authors resource box. You need the content there for the search engines to spider when they visit through all the linking pathways you created when submitting your site to quality web directories.

As we covered the internet contains a massive amount of information and people search for it every day. The more links you have pointing to your site and the more content you have on it relevant to your sites niche, the better you will rank for search engine queries.

Another way to use article marketing is by writing your own unique articles on topics related to your websites niche and submit them for publication to the best article directories. These articles will create some links to your website to increase its popularity and with each link comes another doorway for traffic to find you.

When you write and publish these articles, you are also letting the public know you have expertise and knowledge on the subject. To get the reader’s attention, give them a quality, well written article filled with information.

Build links through quality directory submissions to increase your site’s popularity and create doorways to traffic and search engines. Then use article marketing to provide quality on-site content for the search engines to spider when they arrive.

The more quality web directories you submit your site to, the more article content you provide on your site and the more articles you submit for publication on article directories, the more search engines will love your site.

These are some of the key elements to creating traffic and building a successful website. You can have the best website on the internet, but without proper promotion your visitors will never find you. If they do not find you, they cannot use the services that you provide.

Now it is time to get started.

About the Author:Bruce Swedal – Gain an online presence for your Website by getting listed on The Authority Website Directory.