It seems a recent post at TechCrunch has created somewhat of a poo-storm in the search engine optimization space.

I have to agree that the thought of government trying to regulate search seems pretty darn ridiculous to me.

The anonymous author states ‘It’s now conventional wisdom that search engine optimization, representing the organic result sets on any search query, is more voodoo than science’. (more…)

Personalization of your sales message is very important and most people don’t do it. You personalize a message as simply as adding the persons first name into the copy you are writing, so it speaks directly to them.

It’s really simple to do if you are using an autoresponder beacause you can add the name field tag of the autoresponder to the message. Very few people actually take the time to do this though. You really should, because personalizing your message is proven to increase response by 10% or more…

Now the spamming bastards of the world are trying it too! I’ve recently had some unsolicited email form these scumbags with very tardy personalization attempts. But at least they’re trying! Here’s a couple examples for your viewing pleasure…

This one is even made to look like an html newsletter, very sophisticated! Of course, having my actual email address name embedded looks really stupid, but it’s an attempt at personailzation and if my email was just Steve@ then it would work!

This is another, less sophisticated example;

You’ll probably be relieved to know that this article is not all about the technical structure of your website. I could go on about that for days on end, but fortunately, structure for you is non-technical and pretty easy to understand. So here goes…

Getting Rid Of The Brochure Mentality
Most small business owners and entrepreneurs build a website without understanding the fundamental reasons for doing so. As such, they create what I call a ‘brochure’ website. You may have done this already. 

Well don’t be upset, it’s a pretty natural thing to do. For some reason we decide to follow the lead of the majority, thinking if everybody is doing it, it must be the right thing to do… WRONG!

So, going against  all conventional wisdom, why do we put up a website? What is the best way to use it?

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I had to download a software update recently and got the following message from the software vendor, who are one of the largets providers of professional software tools in the world.

 

I don’t know about you, but this really pisses me off. I don’t really understand why companies have to use spam filters at all? Are they worried that their customers might be offended if they have to even look at spam or aknowledge its existence?

The problem is spam filters are generally a big pain in the butt! Very expensive to buy, install, configure and maintain and for what? So your Average Joe Whiner doesn’t have to see any spam? Well, thats probably ok but I know for a fact that the very same AJW is the first person to get on the phone when an eagerly awaited email has not been recieved. Er, sorry Joe, it looks like it was eaten by the spam filter. The the crap hits the fan all over again.

I’ve got the perfect spam filtering solution. It’s called Microsoft Oulook junk mail folder. Here’s how it works;

1. Email comes into my outlook mail client
2. Any email with an address that is not ‘whitelisted’ by me goes into junk mail
3. All other email goes into my inbox
4. A couple times a day I scan my junk mail subject lines, look at any that might be wanted
5. Any that are wanted i move to my inbox
6. If necessary I whitelist the senders email address or domain
7. The rest I delete
8. This takes me no more than 30 seconds a day

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