Does your business get cold called for SEO? How about the ole form submission from a guy telling you he couldn’t find your web site in the search engines and therefore, drop him an email and he’ll get it all taken care of for you? My newest favorite is the the corrugated plastic sign stuck in road side medians here in Orlando offering SEO Success Today!

When you need your web site found, go to Google and search for an Internet marketing company. The proof is truly in the pudding when it comes to worthy SEO companies.  Can you find them? Does their web site look professional? Do they PROMISE you the world and back? SEO shenanigans abound my friends, be sure to kick the tires on the company you chose, be sure you can speak to someone when you need to, if possible, see if you can actually sit face to face with them and discuss your goals, objectives and company needs.

In my next blog, I’ll address some of the more sinister shenanigans that some fly by night so called SEO companies employ… Stay tuned!

To discuss your SEO needs with a true professional company, call mine: In Orlando, call 407-830-4550 and Nationwide: 866-998-6886.
If you like this blog, be sure to check out my other SEO Blog: TheSEOCEO.com.

I can’t stand thieves.  A good friend of mine found this the other day and brought it to my attention.  This company in Shanghai China took it upon themselves to duplicate our site in it’s entirety, including some of our customer testimonials.  They simply switched phone numbers to a China phone number and then switched the meta tags to reflect Internet marketing in Shanghai.  Site jacking is wrong, anyway you look at it, it is stealing, plain and simple.

Web Site Jacking : Wizzard Communications, Shanghai

So, if you read my last post you would know that On Target Web Solutions.com was the target of a website jacking incident recently.  This got me thinking about who else has been possibly stealing my stuff.  I discovered a tool today called CopyScape.com . Once I used the free copyscape.com site, I quickly discovered more idiots who took it upon themselves to swipe my own content word for word.  It turns out that an alleged SEO company in Savannah Georgia doesn’t have an original bone in their body and decided stealing my copy was a simple quick way to get seo results.

In case anyone has any doubt out there, taking some one else’s content is indeed STEALING.  If you can’t come up with your own copy or content, stay out of the business: how can you help clients succeed if your business plan involves riding on the coat tails of someone else’ success?

Trust On Target Web Solutions to provide UNIQUE and non-pilfered web design and search engine marketing for your web site: call us today at 407-830-4550.

While browsing through my web stats the other day I came upon a link I had not seen traverse my site before: out of sheer curiousity as I normally do, I clicked the link and was gazing at my own web site with a different URL…. I was in fact, seeing double.  The un-orignial dirt bag who actually jacked my site was a bit sloppy and failed to hard link our images to his own site, thus the click through… So not only was he stealing my actual content, he was stealing bandwidth as well.

To make things even worse (or in his case, stupid….) he didn’t bother to change the meta tags which had our company name, Orlando area market information, etc.  So, stealing the copy, tags, etc. and not bothering to alter them for his Nashville market only added fuel to my fire.   After doing some quick Internet detective work, I found the culprit: we’ll call him Bob the Site Jacker from here on out…. I found Bob’s phone number and quickly deduced he was from the Orlando area… he recently moved to Nashville to begin his new career in web design and was anxious to get his (or my…) website up and running.  I contacted my attorney, promptly went through each and every page that he had stolen and printed, date stamped, etc for future evidence.  Then, being the inquisitive person that I am, I was able to dig up some dirt on Bob the Site Jacker… Bob has a pension for theft, according to public record, he likes to steal credit cards, not pay people debts he owes, etc.  Further, Bob is a  convicted felon. And, Bob the Site Jacker is on parole in the State of Florida .

I could go on and on, but here was the resolution: I spoke to Bob the Site Jacker and quickly and efficiently informed him he had fifteen minutes to bring My or His web site down, any delay of course would result in a phone call from my attorney, which he did ultimately receive.  He did as he was requested and removed our web site from his servers. 

I HATE thieves, I have no patience for some un-original idiot stealing my thoughts, our design, our success, etc.  Not only could this have been a detriment to our search engine rankings (duplicate content, etc.) if you are selling web design and search engine marketing services, don’t you think you should know how to do it rather then stealing from someone who knows what they are doing? 

Stealing is stealing no matter what.  Stealing someone else’s thoughts, designs, content, strategy is cowardly and weak and is NO way to get ahead in life.  Imitation may be the best form of flattery, but it just succeeded in pissing me off and wasting eight hours of my life yesterday.

One black hat seo tactic that flourished in the mid 1990′s was the practice of keyword stuffing.  Here’s the scenario: You are trying feverishly to rank on one particular search term, but there is always this idiot ahead of you in the SERPS (search engine results page). You visit the site and can’t even begin to find the keyword in question in his metas, copy, alt tags, etc. UNTIL…..

Scroll down on that web page to the bottom, past the footer and keep going: Here’s where you will find those keywords: STUFFED into the site for only search engine robot / spider consumption.

Believe it or not, this black hat seo technique is still alive and well and is just one of the tools of the black hat SEO jockey.  This tactic actually works, HOWEVER, it doesn’t last long.

Case study: one of my clients is ranked number one under the term Florida VA Mortgage in Google and has been for quite some time.  A few months ago, a newcomer came along and stole the thunder… I dug around his site and realized he was employing keyword stuffing. (Scroll down and check out the keywords stuffed into the site.)  Long story short, his Google ranking has dropped and my hunch is, will continue to drop.

Much of this stuff comes down to ethics: as with everything, there is the right way to do stuff and the wrong way to do stuff.  Sure, the wrong way may be the path of least resistance, BUT, one can be assured that the right way will always triumph.

I spoke with a prospect last week who informed me that he had paid a writer to compose several testimonials to give authenticity to his online company: he got the point that a web site needs to scream reliable, honest, solid and trustworthy, but obviously he had missed the true ethics of the situation.  Paying someone to compose bogus testimonials?  Unreal.  Needless to say, that prospect won’t be becoming a customer at On Target Web Solutions.

Your web site needs to be real, needs to be authentic and needs to instill confidence and trust in each one of your web site visitors.  An unsolicited testimonial is indeed a powerful tool.  People love to read about other people and their experiences both online and offline.  The true pure form of Internet marketing in my humble opinion is by being real.  With so much competition online, people (prospects) dig through hundreds of sites to find the one that captivates them, one that they learn from and one that they trust before they will be making a purchase or returning to your site.  People look for real people: give them the courtesy of authenticity when they visit your web site.

Got an email from a client who sells Christian T-Shirts.  He was concerned because one of his competitors is ‘bidding’ on his company’s name which is a VERY obscure name for a company.  I wandered over to the ‘christian’ company that sells the exact same product as my client and dug around in his meta tags only to discover: they had included EVERY one of their competitors names, url’s, keywords, etc. in their metas.  Rather than focusing on their own branding and success, they figured they could ‘steal’ or ‘jack’ traffic from their competitors.  Truly an unfair and unethical seo practice.

Why is this wrong? Be yourself. Be unique. Don’t take the easy way out. You may not personally believe that there is anything wrong with this practice, but in my humble opinion, it is stealing traffic from your competition.