Here’s another example of a scam email, trying to get you to pay for domain registration that is A. not due and B. not due to them. The parts in red I edited to protect my client’s information, but this is the general look and feel of the email.
You can check out our page of blogging tips for both personal and business blogs on our blog page!
I’ve been getting a LOT of new customers still reeling from the effects of a large “search engine marketing” company that has been hammering this area hard for a while now. They make big claims, but show little results; all the while charging much more than they should. People are getting locked into contracts, and by the time they realize they aren’t getting what they paid for, it is too late.
PLEASE take precautions!
- Read contracts carefully.
- Do Internet Research to find if others have had bad experiences. “name-of-the-company scam” or “name-of-the-company sucks” are good ways to start… If a company has been making enough people angry, chances are you’ll get some results! You can use this strategy for almost anything.
- Ask around and compare prices.
- In the Bethesda area, I’ve even heard of one “expert” claiming he is Google’s exclusive partner! Don’t be fooled!
Vansant Creations has been doing search engine optimization and marketing since 1997 – you don’t have to hire us, but at least get a quote. We’ll let you know if other companies’ promises are borderline fraud.
Ever wish you could “like” a Google ad? No, me either, but pretty soon you can!
In the coming weeks, search results and ads on Google will include a +1 button, which users can click to recommend your ads. You don’t need to make any changes to your AdWords account in order to take advantage of them. The final landing page URL of your ads can also appear on the Google profile of any user who +1’s your ad.
Here’s how the +1 button works:
Let’s say you own a hotel in Madrid. Brian had a lovely stay at your hotel last summer. When Brian starts researching accommodations for his next trip to Spain, he searches on Google while signed into his Google account, and sees your ad. He clicks the +1 button on the ad to recommend it to his contacts.
When Brian’s friend Ann plans her trip to Spain, she signs in to her Google account, searches, and also sees your ad – plus the personalized annotation that Brian +1’d it. Knowing that Brian recommends your hotel helps Ann decide where to stay during her travels.
Think of the +1 button as a way for fans of your business to recommend what you offer, for all their friends and contacts to see. By helping searchers see more personal, relevant ads, we believe you’ll see more qualified traffic. You can also add the +1 button to your site to give your customers the opportunity to +1 your site after visiting it.
Do you use Twitter? If you do, check out Tweriod!
Tweriod gives you the best times to tweet. They analyze both your tweets and your followers’ tweets, so you can start tweeting when it makes most sense to reach others.
Just sign in using your Twitter account and Tweriod runs an analysis on when your Tweets are best received. After all, if you’re using Twitter for marketing purposes – you want to be seen!
Google Correlate is based on technology they used to create Google Flu Trends. Google Flu Trends allows people to see where the flu pops up around the country by matching search data with location.
For instance, if a lot of people in New Jersey started searching for flu medicine, chances are people in that area had the bug. This data could help medical facilities send vaccines to the right areas if supplies were limited, and people in those areas could get ready for the worse when it looked like their area was getting sick.
Google released Google Correlate to allow anyone to find correlated data.
This also makes this a great keyword research tool for you!
While not perfect (a search for baby bibs said a related searches involve real estate) it may work for you. You can also zoom in on the results to see time frames when the most searches for those items occurred (fishing gear searches soar in the summer, for example).
Visit Google Correlate here to play with it yourself!
