47 Ways to Build Website Trust

47 Simple Ways to Build Trust in Your Website or Blog
By Miles Galliford (c) 2007

If your website does not create a sense of trust in your visitors, all your efforts will be in vain. Your online business will never succeed. That's the bad news. The good news is that it is very easy to create and build trust in your online visitors. Below, I have listed all the techniques used by the hundreds of websites I have helped launch. If you have additional techniques, please add them to the list.
As the old saying goes, you have only one chance to make a first impression. Building trust cannot be achieved by one single action. Trust is achieved by hundreds of little things you do throughout your website that, when taken together, give readers a sense of honesty, legitimacy and stability.

The other bit of good news is that few website owners focus on building trust in the minds of their visitors. If you do it well, it can become a real and sustainable competitive advantage.

Here are 47 simple actions you can take to get started.

1. Trust is built by lots of small actions on every page of your website.

2. Your website design is the first impression. Make sure it is professional and relevant to the subject matter.

3. Navigation must be intuitive. If visitors can't find what they are looking for easily, they will question your competence in providing what they want.

4. Make the website personal by giving it its own tone and voice. People buy people.

5. Follow the HEART rule of creating online content. (Reminder: HEART stands for Honest, Exclusive, Accurate, Relevant and Timely.)

6. Use language that is appropriate to the audience. It will build empathy.

7. Regularly add new content to your site. It shows that the business is alive and kicking.

8. Check all links. Doubts will quickly form in your visitors' minds if links don't work or, worse still, take them to error pages.

9. Good grammar and spelling matter. Errors give the impression of sloppiness and carelessness.

10. Never make outrageous and unbelievable claims, like "Read this blog and you'll be a millionaire by the end of the week." People are used to scams, get-rich-quick schemes and rip-offs.

11. Publish REAL testimonials and third-party endorsements. Try to always use real names and link to websites where possible. Some sites show images of letters sent by happy customers.

12. Publish case studies about customers you have helped, who use your product, etc.

13. Don't put down, curse or insult competitors. It's unprofessional. It is better to offer an objective comparison of competitive services or products.

14. Focus on building your long-term reputation, not on making quick sales.

15. Write articles for humans, not search engines.

16. Make your 'About Us' page personal and comprehensive. It plays an important part in making visitors feel comfortable that real people are behind the site.

17. Publish your photo or the photos of the key people involved with the site. Again, this reinforces the fact that there are real people behind the screenshots.

18. Clearly identify who is behind the site. Nothing creates more suspicion than a site that tries to hide the identity of its publishers.

19. On the 'Contact Us' page, provide an email form, telephone number, fax and address of the company. In Europe, it is a legal requirement for sites taking money, but even sites driven by advertising will benefit from openness.

20. Provide a telephone number that people can call and talk to a person.

21. Provide Web addresses linked to the website domain, not addresses from free webmail services such as Hotmail and Gmail.

22. Never lie to make money. The most common way is to write a glowing report about a product or service to earn affiliate revenues. It is very short-sighted to lie to visitors to sell them rubbish. They'll never come back or, worse still, they'll actively condemn your site on forums and blogs.

23. Think carefully about reciprocal links. If your site is about organic food and you have links to Party Poker, people are going to question your integrity.

24. Think carefully about the adverts you display on your site. Ensure that they are relevant to your subject and audience.

25. Be explicit when you are being paid to endorse a product or service. An advertorial is fine as long as it is transparent. Paid-to-post is corrupting the Web and will experience a user backlash. I never read websites that accept payment for posting.

26. Write and publish your privacy policy. Be clear about what you will and will not do with any personal data you collect. State that you adhere to all data protection laws. Make it easy to read and don't use legal gobbledygook.

27. Write and publish a security policy. State what measures you take to ensure that all transactions are secure.

28. Ensure that you have a security and privacy policy which is linked from the footer on every page. Make the link more prominent on all the order pages.

29. Clearly publish your guarantee. I would recommend making it a 100% money-back guarantee if possible.

30. Clearly state your refund and returns policy.

31. Piggyback off reputable brands. If you use PayPal, put the PayPal logo on your site. If you have a merchant services account with a major bank like Citibank or HSBC, put its logo on your site.

32. Use Google search on your site for two reasons. First, it is a great search solution which will help your visitors find what they are looking for. Second, having the Google name on your site instills trust.

33. If there are well-known industry associations for your subject, join up and put their logos on your site.

34. Have a forum on your site and respond quickly to questions. Have the attitude that you are happy to help others without receiving immediate reward. As the old saying goes, 'Givers always gain.'

35. Allow people to comment on articles. Interactivity and an exchange of views build community and a sense of involvement.

36. If people provide constructive criticism or comments in the forum, don't delete them, but respond with your point of view.

37. Put photos on the website of the owners, publishers and/or team. Let visitors know there are real people behind the business.

38. Put images of the credit cards you accept on every page of the order process.

39. Use the words 'secure website' whenever you try to get any information from visitors, including newsletter sign-ups, forum input and payment.

40. On every page, state, "We take your privacy and security very seriously." Link the statement to the security and privacy policy.

41. Remember, reputations take years to build and seconds to destroy.

42. If you are selling a subscription, offer a low-cost, entry-level option. This could be a one-day taster, 'a week before billing starts' or a monthly trial.

43. Use a high level of security when processing credit cards. Make sure you make your clients aware of all the steps you are taking.

44. Never send credit card information or personal details over the Internet unencrypted. Tell your customers that their data will be encrypted.

45. Only ask for information from customers that you really need. For example, for an email newsletter sign-up, the only information you REALLY need is an email address, so that is all you should ask for.

46. If you have pricing on your website, make it transparent. I recently went to buy a book which was advertised for $10. When I checked out, they added tax, post and packaging, and the final bill was $19.50. I didn't buy it as I felt they had deliberately tried to mislead me.

47. Keep your SSL certificate up to date. Let people know you are using SSL encryption and who the provider is.

You can never do too much to build trust. Most of it comes down to common sense and good business practice. To ensure that you are continually improving your trustworthiness, every time you go to a website, ask yourself whether you trust it or not. Then ask yourself why you have formed the opinion you have. Continually try to learn what makes a site trustworthy or untrustworthy and implement the relevant changes to your site.

If people trust you, the money will follow!

Source: SiteProNews.com

Google Invests (Again) in Mobile Social Networks

Google Invests (Again) in Mobile Social Networks with Zingku Acquisition
By Bryan Gardiner September 27, 2007

Google made further inroads into the mobile space today with the acquisition of Zingku, a mobile social networking and communication platform, according to the Google Operating System blog.

Zingku released a statement this afternoon saying that the two companies had entered into an agreement, although the precise terms were not spelled out. While no official statement has been released by Google, the company has since confirmed the acquisition, telling GOS

"it is true that we acquired certain assets and technology of Zingku. We believe these assets can help build products and features tha will benefit our users, advertisers and publishers."

The service lets you create and exchange things like invitations, 'mobile flyers' and pictures with friends over the phone, according to Zingku, and integrates your phone with a personalized web site so that you can more easily move such things back and forth.

Today's announcement once again has Gphone believers giddy as speculation mounts over how, precisely, Google intends to use Zingku's "assets." While that likely won't be known for some time, the search company has definitely shown interest in services like this before. Google purchased Dodgeball.com, a social networking app that lets mobile phone users locate and meet up with friends via text messages, back in 2005. And while that partnership ultimately failed, the Zingku deal may mean Google has resumed its hunt for fresh meat in mobile space.

Source: Wired.com

PDF Bug Compromises Windows PCs

Critical Zero-Day PDF Bug Compromises Windows PCs
By Lisa Vaas

A zero-day PDF vulnerability in Adobe's Acrobat Reader has come to light that can lead to Windows boxes getting taken over completely and invisibly, according to a security researcher.

"All it takes is to open a [maliciously rigged] PDF document or stumble across a page which embeds one," said researcher Petko D. Petkov, aka pdp, in a blog posting on Sept. 20.

Petkov said he's closing the season with this highly critical flaw—a season that's included, at least in the past two weeks, his discovery of a slew of serious vulnerabilities in meta media files: a QuickTime flaw that can be used to hijack Firefox and Internet Explorer; a simple method of loading HTML files into Windows Media Player files; and an easy, six-step method by which to penetrate Second Life accounts with an IE bug.

This PDF vulnerability is even worse than the QuickTime flaw, Petkov said. Mozilla provided a Firefox workaround for the QuickTime flaw earlier the week of Sept. 17, but it can still be used to compromise Internet Explorer, as security researcher Thor Larholm demonstrated in a posting on Sept. 19. Apple hasn't yet released any details on the status of a QuickTime fix.

Paul Henry, vice president of technology and evangelism at Secure Computing, based in San Jose, Calif., said in an interview with eWEEK that PDF vulnerabilities have a strong advantage when it comes to users being tempted into opening them, giving this vulnerability the potential to become a "huge" attack vector.

"From a social engineering standpoint, it's easier to attach a PDF to e-mail and assume [the target will] open it. If you've got a request to launch a video conversation from someone you never heard of, chances are you won't do it. Or you won't click on a video online if you don't know where it's from. But from a social engineering point of view, this is deeper."

For its part, Symantec, based in Cupertino, Calif., on Sept. 20 warned customers using its DeepSight Alert Services that Adobe Acrobat is subject to "an unspecified vulnerability when handling malicious PDF files," allowing remote users to take over targeted machines.

The scenario is that an attacker rigs a PDF file designed to exploit the flaw. He or she distributes it via e-mail or through other means, or hosts it on a Web page. When a user opens the rigged PDF file with a vulnerable application, the user's machine can be loaded with malware that makes it open to a takeover.

Symantec said it's not aware of any working exploits out yet.

Still, Henry warned, the PDF threat is real. "The ability to use PDFs to install malware and steal personal information from remote PCs is here," he said in a statement. "Readers should be cautioned to only open PDF files from senders they explicitly trust."

Given that this latest meta media file flaw with PDF documents is so critical, given also that PDFs are used throughout the business world, and given the fact that he expects Adobe will take a while to fix its closed-source product, Petkov said he's refraining from publishing any POC (proof-of-concept) code.

"You have to take my word for it. The POCs will be released when an update is available," he said.

This has miffed some. "If you have nothing else to publish than 'Please don't open PDF Docs, but I can't tell you why,' it would be a better choice [to] shut up instead [of] bringing no information," wrote somebody with the handle of Jan Heisterkamp.

Others are willing to take Petkov's word that the flaw is too critical for a POC. As it is, Petkov's credibility is shored up in no small part by five PDF POCs he put out in January.

One of those PDF vulnerability POCs automatically opened a folder displaying the victim's c: drive on his desktop; another displayed the file path to the temporary stored PDF and revealed the user name; and Petkov also posted self-contained, local, Universal PDF XSS (cross-site scripting) flaws: one for Internet Explorer, one for Firefox and one for Opera.

In spite of Petkov's having refrained from putting out a POC for the latest PDF flaw, somebody's sure to piece together an exploit or POC out of the other five, Henry said.

"Everybody and his brother has the other five POCs he put together. With a little tweaking I'm sure they'll put them together pretty quickly," he said. "I would have to assume [the six PDF vulnerabilities are related]. He's done a lot of work attaching JavaScript to media files. We have to assume this latest trick involves a change in something with the media files, with JavaScript. It's not rocket science."

Henry said Secure Computing, for one, has been sounding the alarm about PDF since Petkov's original postings.

"We raised the flag in January when [Petkov] discovered the initial [PDF] vulnerabilities and publicly released the POC code," he said. "Shortly after that we saw a huge upsurge in PDF attachments in spam. We all have to be cognizant that the POC is out there for potential vulnerabilities. This would be a very good vehicle for malicious guys to move code into our networks."

Adobe, also based in San Jose, said within the past few weeks that the five vulnerabilities in the January POCs represented a low threat risk. But with Petkov's most recent finding, Henry said, "We see an announcement that at least this current version is absolutely not low risk."

"I think this will create problems for us," Henry said. "I'm [warning] people … plans need to be put in place to quickly raise awareness in the organization that there might be a risk in PDF files. We're informing users to not open files that a) come from someone they don't know and b) they aren't expecting."

Petkov wrapped up his most recent, most terse PDF posting by telling Adobe's representatives that they can contact him "from the usual place."

Adobe issued a statement on the evening of Sept. 20 saying that it's aware of Petkov's post, has been in communication with him and is researching the potential issue. Adobe will update users on its Adobe Security Bulletins and Advisories page. Also, the statement said, all documented security vulnerabilities and their solutions are distributed through the Adobe security notification service.

Petkov's advice is to keep away from PDF files, local or remote. He said other viewers besides Adobe's Acrobat Reader might be vulnerable as well. He has verified the PDF issue on Windows XP Service Pack 2 with the latest Adobe Reader 8.1, although previous versions are also affected, he said.

Source: ChannelInsider.com

The New Digg Features

Today, Kevin Rose announced the release of new Digg features. What most people covered in the release were all the cool additions, but no one really talked about the small changes that have drastically affected submitters. Before I dig into these small changes that affected submitters, here is a quick recap of the new features that everyone is talking about:

1. Digg is now made for big widescreen monitors. If you have a large monitor the site will now adjust the content so you can make use of your entire screen.

2. Each section on Digg now has a top 10 story listing on the right side. This area shows you the hottest 10 stories on Digg even if they are not on the homepage anymore.

3. Because the video section did so well when version 3 was launched, they decided to create a separate section for it. They are also using fancy javascript which allows you to now watch videos on Digg so you don't have to go to the actual source to watch them.

4. In the last few years the growth of podcasting has been phenomenal. Due to this Digg decided to add a podcasts section where users can submit podcasts and vote on them. At the current moment this feature is only available to registered users.
Now that you know all the details that the Digg crew decided to share with you, here are some the other changes that they did not talk about:

Digg Friends: You Can No Longer See Your "Friends"

The Digg friends feature is the main way people are gaming the system. Users friend each other on Digg and digg each others' stories, which makes it easy for users to get stories to the homepage.

Before on Digg, you could see all the users that made you a friend, so you could make sure to friend them back and vote on all of their submissions. In this recent update, they took that feature out. Now you can friend people, but you can't see who has added you as a friend.

This was probably removed to help stop gaming of the system and to stop new users from creating accounts and becoming a top 100 user in 30 days. The downside of this is that it will keep the top users up there and also make it much harder to out perform them.

Postscript: The friends feature will go back to the old style; Digg has said it was left off by mistake.

Top Users

Before it seemed that there was more emphasis on the top users. Now it seems that Digg is trying to steer visitors away from that section by moving the top users link to the footer area instead of where it used to be in the sidebar. Although the top users will probably still control Digg, this small change may change that perception of many of the average users have.

New Voting System & Podcasts Ordered By Most Votes, Rather Than Latest, Greatest

Kevin Rose made a video that covers many of the new features he released. One of the things he went over is the podcasts section and how it works, but if you look closely it seems that the voting system for the podcasting section is different. The whole purpose of Digg is to see what is new and the latest and greatest, but with the voting scheme of the podcasts section it seems that the same podcasts might end up staying at the top for a prolonged period of time. Maybe they did this because they don’t feel enough new podcasts come out that are hits. This new voting system for the podcast section might be a hint of some ways that Digg might change their normal voting system.

Keeping Users On Digg

The new video section is great for users because it allows them to watch videos on Digg, but it is not great for websites that host the videos. YouTube wants people to go to their site so they can increase their pageviews and ad revenue; this change keeps users on Digg and away from the websites hosting the videos. By doing this, they also may be reducing the temptation for marketers to leverage Digg for their viral video campaigns because less people will go to the marketer’s website.

Overall the new Digg is a good improvement because it should improve the quality of content on Digg and help stop new users from spamming. So far, the reactions from users have been positive, but once they realize all the changes and how these changes really affects them, it will be interesting to see if they change their minds.

Story by Neil Patel
Source: searchengineland.com

Web Ad Blocking May Not Be (entirely) Legal

By Anne Broache and Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Advertising-supported companies have long turned to the courts to squelch products that let consumers block or skip ads: it happened in the famous lawsuit against the VCR in 1979 and again with ReplayTV in 2001.

Tomorrow's legal fight may be over Web browser add-ons that let people avoid advertisements. These add-ons are growing in functionality and popularity, which has led legal experts surveyed this week by CNET News.com to speculate about when the first lawsuit will be filed.

If ad-blockers become so common that they slice away at publishers' revenues, "I absolutely would expect to see litigation in this area," said John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Firefox's Adblock plug-in is probably the most prominent way to configure Web browsers not to display advertisements. It lets people block ads from individual Web sites such as Doubleclick.net or through configurable directories, like "/banner". Similar plug-ins are available for Opera, Safari and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, the lobbying arm for the online ad industry, says it isn't preparing a legal offensive at this point. Mike Zaneis, the organization's vice president of public policy, said he wants to work with software developers and consumers to come up with a middle ground on what he describes as an "issue that is just now ripening."

"We don't want to go down a route that would seem adversarial at all," Zaneis said. "People are free to ignore ads, and they often do that, but when you have a third party blocking those ads, that's the real problem." He said the IAB is "looking at all the options."

Ad-blocking tools have been around for years, of course, albeit not without controversy. Nearly a decade ago, a Web software firm called ClearWay Technologies released a beta version of its AdScreen blocking software to threats of boycott from Macintosh-oriented publishers that feared the product would kill their ad-supported Web sites. The company responded by killing the project. Before that, security firm PGP Corp. discontinued an ad-blocking program called Internet Fast Forward because its creator said he had been threatened with copyright lawsuits for modifying publishers' pages without their permission.

Ad-blocking recently hit the spotlight again when an obscure blogger named Danny Carlton--who expounds fringe political views such as AIDS being a "mythical disease" invented by the U.S. government--banned Firefox users from his Web site. Claiming that Firefox creator Mozilla Corp. has endorsed the Adblock plug-in, Carlton redirected Firefox browsers to Whyfirefoxisblocked.com.

The New York Times wrote about the Whyfirefoxisblocked.com kerfuffle last week, and the CNET Blog Network expanded on the topic from a technical perspective. On Wednesday, Carlton lifted the ban on all Firefox users, saying he found a way to identify only Firefox browsers outfitted with Adblock Plus.

MySpace, LiveJournal: Don't block our ads
Many Web sites prohibit any kind of ad-blocking in their terms of service agreements. MySpace.com prohibits "covering or obscuring the banner advertisements on your personal profile page, or any MySpace.com page via HTML/CSS or any other means." Six Apart's LiveJournal uses similar language, as do some news organizations including the Chicago Sun-Times and Fox TV's Houston affiliate. CNET News.com does not.

Any lawsuit would likely invoke two arguments--that copyright infringements are taking place (through derivative works), and that the Web site's terms of service agreement is being violated.

"From a pure legal point of view, a Web site can do anything it wants, so to speak," said Michael Krieger, an intellectual property and business lawyer with the firm Willenken Wilson Loh & Lieb in Los Angeles. "That's a little overstating it, obviously, but suppose to get into Google, you first have to click 'I agree, I'm not blocking ads.' I think it's perfectly within their rights to do that."

In the past, entertainment companies have threatened commercial-skipping products on the grounds that they violate copyrights. ReplayTV, which sells digital video recorders, eventually dropped in 2003 a feature called Automatic Commercial Advance after facing a lawsuit from major TV networks and movie studios over that and other issues. (A judge dismissed the suit the following year.)

It's not clear whose side the courts would take, if asked. In the famous lawsuit over the VCR from nearly 30 years ago, the movie studios claimed that Betamax users would fast-forward through commercials.

They lost, of course. The 1979 district court opinion estimated that only 25 percent of VCR owners fast-forward through commercials. But it was based on the technology available at the time: what if it was easier and 95 percent of TV viewers did it?

The judge said: "To avoid commercials during playback, the viewer must fast-forward and, for the most part, guess as to when the commercial has passed. For most recordings, either practice may be too tedious."

A more recent hint about legality comes from a 2003 appeals court decision related to a copyright dispute over the file-sharing service Aimster.

In that opinion, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner concluded that, based on earlier court rulings, commercial-skipping creates "an unauthorized derivative work, namely a commercial-free copy that would reduce the copyright owner's income from his original program, since 'free' television programs are financed by the purchase of commercials by advertisers." By "derivative work," he was referring to a concept from copyright law that says it's generally unlawful to make a new work out of an existing copyrighted one without permission.

The second argument claims that a Web site's terms of service are a "browsewrap" or "clickwrap" agreement that are legally binding. To apply, the notice must be "conspicuous enough to the visitor, so they they're aware that their visit is governed by these terms," said Cydney Tune, a lawyer who heads copyright practice at law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco. (A "clickwrap" license that requires a visitor's agreement to proceed is more likely to be enforceable, however.)

Still, just because a Web site's terms of service prohibits ad-blocking doesn't mean that lawsuits will necessarily ensue. "This is a conversation that comes up a lot," said Anil Dash, chief evangelist for SixApart, which owns LiveJournal. "We're not going to chase (them) down. If a kid wants to install a browser and a plug-in on a browser to control their experience, we're not going to fight them doing that."

"The truth of it is, very, very few people run ad-blocking software," Dash said. "Some of them are very vocal about it, but we do respect that."

A Fox Interactive Media representative declined to comment about MySpace.com's terms of service.

While statistics for ad-blocking tools are hard to come by, an estimated 2.5 million users worldwide currently run Adblock Plus, and an even greater number have downloaded the utility, Adblock Plus lead developer Wladimir Palant said in an e-mail interview. He estimated the product is attracting 300,000 new users each month after an initial spike in adoption attributed to people switching over from Adblock, a related utility with a development path that has diverged.

Palant said he believes Adblock Plus is in "no way illegal" and suggested that suing companies like his "out of business" won't do anyone any good. He added that no one to his knowledge makes money, directly or indirectly, off the software.

In addition, because the source code is publicly available, development would likely continue in another nation with different copyright laws. "The software that I am making is open source, even if I stop working on it--each Adblock Plus user has a copy, and any of them could develop it further," Palant said. "If the advertisers have a problem, they will not be able to solve it in the legal way. As long as people want to block ads, they will be able to do this."

Source: CNET News.com

Google Eyes Radical Changes to Search

Google will soon make aggressive changes to its search results, with plans to increase the frequency of different types of links that include websites, video clips, images, news and map, according to a report in InfoWorld.

"We're still at the nascent stages," said Sundar Pichai, director of product management at Google. "Going forward, we'll be more aggressive in terms of when we trigger this."

Google launched universal search in May in with the intent of providing more comprehensive search results to its users.

Pichair spoke at Citigroup's Annual Global Technology Conference, where his colleague, Nicholas Fox, indicated that Google may soon break from its tradition of only running text ads along search results.

Google could ultimately begin offering video and image ads alongside search results.

Source: iMedia Connection

The Paid Links Debate

The Paid Links Debate: Shades of Gray
By John Biundo , September 6, 2007

The paid link debate continued at SES San Jose, and boy was it fun. Except it wasn't really a debate. More rhetoric was thrown around in several sessions than any three Obama/Clinton CNN/YouTube debates. This is a complex subject – similar in my mind to understanding what constitutes fair marketing vs. anti-competitive practices in capitalist markets – and it requires thorough and thoughtful analysis and debate.

My goal with this series of articles is to outline the basic skeleton of the debate, in the hope that it will help propel a reasoned discussion forward. In this article, I try to tackle the foundation questions of definition and authority.

Defining Paid Links
It seems appropriate to begin by trying to understand exactly what a paid link is, since this seems to be the source of much angst and confusion. Many just want to know whether the marketing activities they're contemplating will be considered verboten, and their sites thrown in the search engine slammer. Others are confused by the rhetoric, or the ambiguous definitions that have been given by the Search Engine Guys.

Clear cut, unambiguous examples of link buying abound: as link-libertarian Todd Malicoat pointed out, you can find text link brokers by searching Google, and paid links don't come any more clearly marked than that. Alternatively, as many experienced darker hats advise, you can eschew the middle man, taking a lower profile and cutting a deal directly with a webmaster on a related site, though you're still likely dabbling in what most (including Google) consider paid linking.

Right away, trying to glean a definition from these examples begins getting tricky, and we're not really even close to sliding down what proves to be a very slippery slope. For example, in the case of the webmaster-to-webmaster negotiated deal, is it cash changing hands that defines a paid link? What about the case where articles, with embedded links, are swapped? Obviously one can sell content (or, equivalently, hire writers), so an article can be seen as having cash value. But article swapping seems to be a venerable link building strategy that hasn't (yet) been called out by the Search Engine Guys.

We could delve into many more examples that are even harder to classify. Indeed examples abounded in the presentations and Q&A's in San Jose, and we can quickly lose focus and drown in the details. OK, so getting a black-and-white definition of something with so many shades of gray probably isn't going to happen. What's the way out of this morass? It turns out that answering this question requires us to first tackle another sticky one: who makes the rules?

Who Makes the Rules?
If you ask Michael Gray, he'll tell you that "Google is not the government." I didn't speak to Michael, who seems like a smart enough guy, but I took that statement, along with his comments about Google "overstepping its bounds," to mean that Google doesn't have the right to set the rules. I'm truly puzzled by this. Don't get me wrong -- I have no problem with Gray publicly proclaiming his disdain for Google's policies. I don't even begrudge him using his place on the panel to lobby Google's customers to put pressure on Google to change.

But I really don't see any legal or ethical basis, or regulatory precedent, for saying that Google should neither freely determine how it ranks web sites nor be able enact a policy that those who engage in practices that it finds damaging to its brand will be penalized. Clearly, it's the search engines that offer the service, make the rules, and define the search world that we choose to live in. The SearchKing and Kinderstart cases clearly show that the Search Engines have the right to make the rules for how they rank sites.

Matt Cutts (who increasingly seems to act as a spokesperson for all search engines on this matter) continued to provide the standard party line we've heard coming out of Mountain View for several years now: purchasing links that pass Page Rank violates Google's quality guidelines. This is certainly an imperfect definition. You don't have to go far to find a lot of people that quibble with a lot of details about how Google publicizes its policies.

It's easy to get hung up on the fact that Cutts points at Google's Quality Guidelines, which really don't spell out anything about paid links. Or to criticize his use of an FTC judgment as an analogy for Google's policies. Or to disagree with his assertion that if paid links aren't stamped out, we'll be left with a web where only those with the deepest of pockets can win at search marketing. All of these distractions can make it easy to dismiss Google's policies as vague, wrong-headed, and unsupportable.

Once our moral indignation is up, we can get angry, or revel in Google's embarrassment, when it's revealed that while the right hand is decrying the "noise" created by paid links, the left hand is earning record profits, in part by allowing text link brokers to take out paid ads. It's also easy to sympathize with those who bought links "back in the day" when it wasn't so controversial, and wonder if, when such links are discovered, Google will penalize seller, buyer, or both.

Personally, I agree with the social engineering tactic of "discouraging" users from purchasing links by pointing out the risk of falling afoul of the enforcers, much as car pool lane violators are discouraged by the threat of fines. However, I question Google's wisdom in bringing up such analogies explicitly. To engage in public debate, however indirectly, about the social cost ("noise," "pollution," "fairness," etc.) of paid links, and the appropriateness of using the threat of penalties as a way to discourage behavior, seems to me to be a losing proposition. As seen by the crowd reaction in San Jose, people are stirred by such ideas and tactics, and react viscerally and skeptically when their attention is called to any attempts to restrain their choices or influence their behavior.

Interpreting the Rules: Uncommon Sense?
Let's try to put the emotion aside. In my opinion, Cutts and others have consistently surrounded the imperfect definition with enough context to make the meaning clear. It was very evident to me, from listening in on many Marriott hallway and Google Dance discussions, that smart people can and do understand the definition in a reasonably intuitive and consistent way.

While some might call for pages of detailed definitions, or wish for some sort of impartial panel capable of pre-evaluating and approving individual tactics, these alternatives aren't practical. Like it or not, we live in a world dominated by shades of gray. Good judgment, embodied in the ability to see and evaluate these shades of gray and assess risk/reward tradeoffs, is always going to be rewarded. Following scripts and recipes, not so much.

What is practical is expecting people to use common sense and, when things get tricky, to rely on the wisdom born of experience – even if that sometimes means relying on other people (i.e., paying consulting fees). This can be codified as something we might think of as the "smell test." If it smells like a paid link, designed primarily to garner Page Rank, especially to someone with a trained nose, then it is a paid link.

I'm convinced that this test provides clear enough guidelines in most cases, for most people, most of the time. Much like appellate law, the exceptions and corner cases can continue to be debated publicly, as we continue to refine our collective wisdom. And like the judicial system, the process is imperfect and innocents occasionally do get hurt. But at the macro level, it seems to work pretty well.

Is Google Blaming You for Problems It Created?
One last point I wish to make here. Lots of folks anguish over the fact that Google cares at all about paid vs. non-paid links, and argue that the algorithm is somehow flawed. Some even carry this argument to an emotional extreme, concluding that Google created the problem, so they should either fix it, or live with it.

Some SEMs have said that Google would be well served to somehow "fix" the algorithm to eliminate this problem. I have little doubt that Google would like to see this problem go away, but I've seen no evidence that we're about to see such a fundamental change in how search engines work anytime soon.

If we combine these observations: 1. Google (and friends) get to make the rules, and 2. the current set of rules will prevail for the foreseeable future, it's reasonable to conclude that it would be valuable for the search industry as a group to devote more energy to understanding the nature of what constitutes valid vs. deceptive linking practices. We can advance the "common good" by educating those who aren't familiar with the rules, and by challenging Google and other search engines to continue to make the rules clearer, and more fairly enforced.

While there's lots of noise and emotion surrounding this discussion, we can establish that Google have the right to "make the rules," and all the public hand wringing about this amounts to a waste of breath and time. Webmasters have the right to demand clarity in these rules. But perhaps our most valuable contribution would be to acknowledge the current state of things, then move on and participate in an ongoing dialog that helps us to flesh out more details and build and share the collective wisdom.

As for Google (and the other guys), I would ask for more clarity, consistency, and focus. This issue is obviously extremely important to webmasters everywhere, so take great care to clean up the loose ends, listen to where there's confusion, and contribute to an improved understanding by all parties.

And Google, if you're listening: I'd also advise against any "greater social good" arguments and analogies, and any other moralizing, as it's frankly condescending, and it's just plain asking for trouble. And one more thing, Google: get cracking on those new algorithms!

John Biundo is Chief Search Analyst of Stone Temple Consulting, an SEO consultancy with offices in Boston and California.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Make Web Advertising Worth Watching

How To Make
Web-Advertising Worth Watching
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

It has become an article of faith that the Web is all about content; content is King on the Web as opposed to television where commercials are king. It seems that television networks just can't wrap their heads around the Internet and fit it into their standard commercial box. The traditional media's tactic of last resort, buying-up the competition and imposing its commercial will, just won't work with the Internet.
Businesses that want to succeed on the Web must learn how to turn their commercial message into content as a seamless entertaining presentation.

After years of website visitors first ignoring, then getting increasingly irritated with banner ads that blink, burp, and blast across their screens, there finally is a better way; advertising in the form of Web-videos that not only deliver a marketing message but are worth the time invested in watching.

There is a lot of hype surrounding so-called viral videos. Many companies have tried to create this kind of marketing vehicle but the sheer lack of commercial purpose fails to attract viable prospects and instead generates a lot of attention from the maturity-challenged segments of society. As a business you want your video to be passed on to as many additional viewers as possible, but if it doesn't attract new leads or at least deliver your message, what good is it?

There is an absolute qualitative difference between a video that is engaging, entertaining, humorous and clever that delivers a strong marketing message and a video that is just plain stupid or at best pointless.

Bold is Beautiful and Effective

We know from experience that clients are attracted when we create entertaining offbeat video campaigns that send a clear message. But as soon as we start to create the equivalent type of campaign for them, they start to get nervous.

The Web demands a bold, frontal attack that delivers an uncompromising creative presentation of what you offer; not a defensive, compromised, don't-make-a-mistake approach that tries to cover everything and anything you might do.

The average business is incredibly timid when it comes to advertising. Boring, monotonous presentations that drone on are as helpful in attracting new business as viral video food-fights or female mud-wrestling clips. There is as much difference between bizarre and bold, as there is between salacious curiosity and entertainingly effective.

The challenge for business is to take this new form of advertising and use it so that it rises above the lowly realm of boring corporate PowerPoint presentations and silly homemade video antics to the lofty, and ultimately profitable dominion of content.

Why Web-Videos Aren't Like Television Commercials

Web-commercials are not television commercials. I know big advertisers are double-dipping their ad placements by flooding the Web with their TV spots, but who really cares? If you can see it on NBC or CBS twelve times every night why would you go out of your way to watch it on the Web?

The most significant difference between television and Web-commercials is cost. According to MediaPost's Gregory Wilson in his VideoInsider newsletter, the average 30-second TV commercial costs $12,000 per second to produce. That's per second, far beyond the budgets of most businesses. You can get an entire Web-video campaign for the cost of one second of TV-level production. Of course, you're not going to have a cast and crew of hundreds working on your spot, but then the quality of script, simplicity of concept, and creativity of presentation count for more than wasted exotic sets and setups.

There are lots of things people just hate about television commercials and the best of the Web-commercials avoid these irritants.

Television commercials distract viewers from the content. Nobody likes interruptions. There is not much difference on the irritation scale between a telemarketing phone call selling aluminum siding at dinner time and a commercial that interrupts the latest adventures of 24's Jack Bauer.

About the only good thing you can say about these program-interruptions is that they provide you a bathroom and beverage break, which of course doesn't help the advertiser who just spent $12,000 per second to get to you.

Web-commercials are different. They are sought-out by people as long as they provide something more than a mundane sales pitch. If you are clever, bold, and interesting, people will not only watch, they'll remember.

Think back to when you were in school and the teacher told you to look up the answer yourself and not just rely on her to give it to you? That's because the effort of searching out the answer created a more memorable experience. Commercials are no different. Sure fewer people are going to come in contact with your Web-commercial than they would a television commercial, but then the Web-commercial is more targeted, more memorable, and far more cost effective.

Even worse than the continuous interruptions is the repetitiveness of television commercials. Sometimes you have to sit through the same obnoxious commercial multiple times in the same commercial break. Give Apple computer and Geico Insurance credit for their commitment to developing creative, entertaining campaigns that are continually evolving with new segments that build a following for the characters, product and message. These commercials actually do rise above the level of sale's pitch and achieve the status of content. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for ninety-nine percent of all the other television ads.

Because people choose to watch a Web-commercial, they don't become upset with the advertiser for inflicting repetitive psychological torture. In fact Web-commercials that are entertaining and informative will be watched over and over, and passed on to friends and colleagues.

The Bottom Line

1 Web-users choose to watch Web-videos and therefore are more receptive to the message.

2 Web-videos need to be entertaining so they are more likely to be watched repeatedly and passed on to friends.

3 Web-videos are less costly to produce so advertisers can create campaigns consisting of multiple videos on the same theme so that viewers don't get bored or irritated.

How To Turn A Pitch Into Content

If you are going to bore people to death, then Web-advertising is not for you. If all you have to say is buy my stuff, nobody is going to listen. If you are afraid to be different, you are just going to blend into the woodwork. If you think search engine optimization is going to solve all your marketing problems, well think again.

If you want to turn your advertising into content then create your next campaign on the following principles:

1. Be Clear.
2. Be Bold.
3. Be Uncompromising.
4. Be Entertaining.
5. Be Engaging.
6. Be Clever.
7. Be Humorous.
8. Create Character(s).
9. Tell a Story.

Source: SiteProNews