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SWeCS NEWSLETTER - 15 November 2004
In this issue...
- 5 Ways To Get Your Website Banned Or Penalised
- This Fortnight's Question
- WA Home Based Business Network
- Intergalactic Spam
- Resources For Small Business
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5 WAYS TO GET YOUR SITE BANNED OR PENALISED
We see it so often, it's worth saying again.
Search engines are very clever, and they don't like it when people
try to artificially manipulate their results. Optimising your site
to rank higher in the search engines is one thing, but certain tactics
will bring you unstuck. And many people do them without realising
it.
- Invisible text
Never do this. As a general rule, search engines will penalise
you for anything that is on your site that a normal human being
can't see. If you've got invisible text on your site (eg. white
text on white background, red text on red background), it will
only be a matter of time before the search engines find this and
either penalise your site (drop it in rankings), or remove it
altogether.
- Link Farms
Link farms are programs or communities where you join them and
you all instantly link to each other. Building proper links with
other websites is fine, but if you join a program that artificially
increases your links, you'll soon be picked up by the search engines.
They see this as artificially raising your "link popularity"
(importance).
- 1 x 1 Pixel Images
A 1 x 1 pixel image is an image that is so small you can't see
it. Originally used for statistics counters, this became a way
for people to spam the search engines by creating hidden links
that the human eye can't see. As a result, many of the major search
engines are now suspect about 1 x 1 pixel images, and you could
be penalised for using them, even if your intentions are genuine.
- Overstuffing Keywords
Ever seen a site that has sentences like: "Widgets
are really great. If you're looking for great widgets,
we have a great widget maker who makes great widgets"?
What they're doing is trying to fill their webpage with as many
keywords as possible to try and increase their chances of ranking
higher for people looking for widgets.
Search engines have become quite clever in working out when a
site is doing this on purpose and will often penalise them. Just
make sure that your website wording sounds natural, and you should
be OK.
- Multiple Copies Of Similar Content
Search engines don't like seeing identical, or very similar, content
on different websites or webpages. If you've got identical content
on many different pages, or even on different websites, they'll
often see this as an attempt to get your content listed more than
once. Again, they could penalise you for this.
There are many other ways you can inadvertently bring your site
into "disrepute" with the major search engines, but these
are the main ones that we see happening, even here in the south
west.
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THIS FORTNIGHT'S QUESTION
This fortnight's question comes from Jason:
"We want to purchase an email list. Where can I find one?"
We won't tell you. In our opinion, purchasing an email list is
wrong on many levels and will be bad for your business image.
No matter what the ads say, there are no email lists available
where people have signed up to receive any kind of offer going around.
When you purchase a list, a vast majority of email addresses will
be out of date. Those that are correct will most likely resent receiving
unsolicited email from you, which is spam whichever way you look
at it. Even if you only intend to send one email to them, that's
spam and in Australia that's now illegal.
The only way to get a quality mailing list is to build it yourself.
Offer something of value to people and you'll find they'll subscribe
themselves. That's how we've built up our mailing lists to over
10,000 people. Our mailing lists are not for sale either.
Got a question? Send it to us at admin@southwestecommerce.com
and we'll do our best to answer it, as well as publish one every
fortnight for everyone to see.
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WA HOME BASED BUSINESS NETWORK
For those of you who operate your business out of home, there is
a great new online forum that has been established by the Small
Business Development Corporation.
It's free to join, and once you're logged in you can communicate
with other home based businesses, network, seek ideas and assistance,
share information, advertise your business, or even just have a
general chat. It's a great way to communicate with other people
in similar situations. You'll even see us in there from time to
time.
You can find out more at http://www.homebasedbusiness.sbdc.com.au/forum/default.asp.
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INTERGALACTIC SPAM
Scientists this week decoded the first confirmed alien transmission
from outer space. Here is the text of the message that they decoded:
This really works!!!!!!!!
Just send 5*10*50 atoms of hydrogen to each of the five star systems
listed below. Then, add your own system to the top of the list,
delete the system at the bottom and send out copies of this message
to 100 other solar systems. If you follow these instructions, within
0.25 of a galactic rotation you are guaranteed to receive enough
hydrogen in return to power your civilization until entropy reaches
its maximum!
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RESOURCES FOR SMALL BUSINESS
Ecommerce Library
Browse through the SWeCS Ecommerce Library,
full of FREE information about getting more out
of the Internet. Sections include Web Site
Development, Web Site Promotion & Internet
Marketing, Online Commerce, Computer &
Technical Issues, and Miscellaneous.
Newsletter Archives
The SWeCS Newsletter archives provides a
wealth of FREE information on small business and
the Internet. Browse through the main topics or
search for your particular query.
SWeCS Affiliate Program
Start up another income stream, by earning
commissions for each referral who signs up for
one of our services.
Affiliate Directory
Browse through a list of reviewed Affiliate
programs. Let us do the work of testing it out
for you!
Do you know of a resource that should be added
here? Email us and let us know. There is only one
condition - it must be free.
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OTHER EMAIL NEWSLETTERS
Here's some other email newsletters you might
like:
www.southwestlife.com.au
www.dunsboroughbayvillageresort.com/news/newsindex.htm
www.west-oz.com/newsletter/newsletter.asp
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