So let’s take a look at how to design a landing page that will drain your pay-per-click budget as fast as it sends visitors away from your site. Hopefully, by knowing what not to do you’ll be in a better position to make a better first impression.

Here are a few pointers on how to design a really ineffective landing page:

• Make sure your central message, or call-to-action, cannot be quickly discerned.  Avoid using your keyword in your message. And avoid text formatting that would otherwise draw your visitor’s eyes to your message.  Your call-to-action should blend in seamlessly with the rest of your content so as to not command the user’s attention.   Do not include multiple calls-to-action near the top, middle and bottom of the page to account for different screen sizes/resolutions.

• Your landing page should not meet the expectation created by your pay-per-click ad.  Make sure the overall tone and character of the landing page isn’t consistent with your ad.  Get their hopes up by making a bold promise and then under-deliver by offering something that is far less impressive or even somewhat misleading.

• Do not make it easy for your user to scan the layout of your landing page.  Do not group information together in easy-to-read ‘chunks’.  Instead, lump all information together with little-to-no white space in between.  If they’re up to a challenge, they’ve found the right landing page as this will test their patience and commitment to remaining on your site. Avoid the use of bullet points and concise, descriptive phrases.  Avoid the use of testimonials.

• Make it hard to navigate to any other page within your website.  Avoid the use of descriptive links that might capture their interest and keep them on your site.

• Avoid the use of illustrative images that might keep their interest and reinforce the meaning of your message.  Or, alternatively, load the landing page with so many images that it takes more than 5 seconds to load.

• Force your visitors to enter information into a form before they perceive any real value in what you’re offering.  Or, take it to the next level by making your visitors enter an email address and other information before they are allowed to enter your site. This should be part of your overall strategy to design your landing page to meet your needs rather than the needs of your visitor.

• Your landing page message should do little to instill a sense of trust in your organization.  Avoid looking at things from your visitor’s perspective and just assume that there are no concerns in need of addressing. Focus on how great your company is rather than how you intent to meet your visitor’s needs.

• Never test variations of your landing page.

There you have it, some helpful advice on how to design a poorly performing landing page.  Use them wisely.

Negative SEO attacks can cost online web owners substantial economic damage in the form of lost visitors and ad revenues. The fact that negative SEO practitioners use misinformation to cause damage to other legitimate businesses is for all intents and purposes criminal behavior. The same might be said for doing the same in order to protect a business of deserved criticism or complaints.

Here are a few of the tricks that are utilized by the negative SEO practitioner to cause undeserved harm to innocent online businesses:

1. Google bowling is a tactic used to create the appearance of link spamming, something that is frowned upon by the search engines, and something that can lead to a significant drop in a site’s rankings. A large number of “spammy” links containing questionable anchor text–e.g., references to porn, etc.– are posted to the target site. With this tactic, the sudden and suspiciously excessive increase in the number of links gets the attention of the search engines, and not in a good way.

2. Tattling capitalizes on the search engines’ disdain for paid links.  Any paid links a website owner may have bought from more established sites are reported to the search engine.  If there are no paid links then the negative SEO practitioner may purchase and report them unbeknownst to the victim.

3. Insulation is accomplished by creating a volume of competing content so great that it eclipses that of the target site.  This may be used, for example, to effectively hide negative crticism or complaints by generating a rediculously large volume of positive comments on competing sites such as forums, blogs, etc.

4. Copyright Takedown Notices are used to effectively shutdown a competing site and have it removed from the search engines’ indexes, at least for 10 days, while the copyright holder decides whether or not to pursue legal action against the alleged infringer.  Since the “infringer”,  in this case, is completely innocent of accusations made by the negative search engine optimizer, valuable time is lost waiting for the 10-day period to elapse.  This is grounds for a lawsuit.

5. Copied content can be used by sites that are older and more established to make the competing site’s corresponding pages disappear.  The search engines don’t like to return duplicate results to users as this tends to dilute the value of the search results.  Efforts are therefore made to determine the original content creator based on the age of the subject sites.

6. Denial of service attacks effectively shut down a competitor’s website by overwhelming the server with more requests for information that it can handle.  These requests are usually coodinated in simultaneous fashion and launched from a network of computers that contain malware.

7. Click fraud is a tactic whereby an automated script is used to artificially accelerate the process of reaching the upper limit of the competing website’s pay-per-click budget by simulating user ad clicks.  This is not only unethical but illegal.

1. Ads of the World | Advertising Archive

2. Graphic Design

3. Communication Design

An iframe should not be confused with a frameset, which is typically used as a way of laying out a webpage such that is has certain fixed features, like a top or side navigation bar.

Here’s an example of what the code would look like for an iframe:

<iframe name=”I1″ id=”I1″ src=”http://internet-advertising101.com/”>Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. </iframe> (Note the error message for users with incompatible browsers.)

Contrary to popular belief, cookies are not viruses or spyware.  They are simply files that serve a useful purpose, whether it be enhancing the user’s experience by ‘remembering’ certain preferences or serving up ads that are more consistent with a user’s web surfing patterns. They are not computer programs.  They do not execute any code.  They can also be used to track which pages your visit within a website for statistical purposes. They will not read and transmit any personal information from your computer’s hard disk to anyone.  They will not harm you computer in any way.

What about third-party cookies?  Third-party cookies are cookies that are sent to your computer from a website that resides outside the domain of the website you are visiting.  There may be networks of participating websites.  Whenever you visit a participating website the cookies on your computer are transmitted to the host servers and information about which websites and pages you have visited is received.  The cookies can then be modified and re-sent to your computer for future use.  The banner ads that are served up on these websites are taylored toward your cookies.  For example, if your cookies show that you have visited several sports related sites, then ads for sports related products or services may be served on the webpage rather than ads for makeup or gardening.

Most web browsers allow users to black third-party cookies by setting the browser preferences.  If you feel uncomfortable with the build-up of cookies that have accumulated on your hard disk you can delete them at any time.  But when doing so, realize that you may be deleting your user preferences for a particular account.  For example, you might be asked to reset your account preferences the next time you log into Amazon.

One popular way of doing this is via invisible iframes embedded in popular, high-traffic websites such as gambling sites, forums and shopping sites.  An individual or company joins an affiliate program and then proceeds to acquire multiple hoplinks which are then placed in a webpage. This webpage is then secretly loaded into other webpages within a website via an inconspicuous or invisible iframe.  This allows for all the affiliate cookies to be deposited on your computer without your knowledge. Should you decide at a later point to purchase a product from one of the corresponding merchants, the cookie-depositing perpetrator gets credit for the sale.  And since it’s not uncommon for affiliate cookies to last 120 days or more before expiring, this leaves ample time for the cookies to do their dirtywork.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that can be done to safeguard against cookie stuffing.  The ultimate solution is one that must be implemented by the merchants themselves by issuing cookies that are not re-writable.  This way, once a visitor has received a cookie from a legitimate affiliate, it cannot be overwritten at a later point should this same visitor land on a page that has been stuffed with illegitimate cookies.

Here’s a list of 10 alternatives to Google’s Adsense program.
1. AdEngage
2. AdJungle
3. Adster
4. BannerGarage
5. AdBrite
6. ExpoActive
7. Text-Link-Ads
8. ValueClickMedia
9. iTotalFind
10. ItsYourAd

It helps to keep things in perspective. Think about the idea of guaranteed traffic in terms of the basic economic premises.  For example, I recently saw a company offering 1 million targeted, unique visitors for just $795. Say I’m selling product ‘X’.  One million targeted visitors for such a low price might seem reasonable if it weren’t for the fact that A) I am not the only one selling product ‘X’ and B) the company from which I purchased the 1 million visitors is not the only company selling targeted traffic.  If there are just 100 other competitors selling product ‘X’ and 100 other companies selling targeted traffic then there must also be 10 billion page views and/or searches for product ‘X’ (i.e., 1 million searches/visitors x 100 competitors x 100 traffic generation companies).  There aren’t even 10 billion people in the world, let alone 10 billion internet users!

No doubt there are legitimate companies out there.  Finding them is another task.  I have not used the following service personally but there are many people who seem to endorse it; it’s a site called traffictesters.com.  Feel free to post comments about it should you decide to try it.

There are many different ways of generating traffic– interstitial ads, expired domain redirects, embedding entire websites in a host page etc.–but the most common method as far as I can tell is the use of pop-under ads.  If you ask me, someone viewing an unrequested pop-under ad impression doesn’t really qualify as a “visitor”. To me, a visitor is a web user who comes to my website through his or her own volition.

In my opinion, effective SEO is hands down the best way to get traffic. If you’re not familiar with the concept of SEO then I’d suggest reading up on it.  If you don’t feel confident in your ability to optimize your site, then I’d suggest hiring a legitimate SEO company.

No doubt,  the raison d’être of any website is that it be seen by others.  Whether for vanity, the sharing of knowledge or making money via some business venture, no website can realize its full potential without traffic. In the case of the internet marketer, whose livelihood depends on selling a particular product or service, getting website traffic is not merely a preference, it is an act of survival.  Fail at this task and it’s time to start looking for a job—a frightening thought indeed!

The fact is, anyone can get “on the first page” of Google by simply opening an Adwords account and paying the market rate for a given keyword. Sure enough, your ad will appear somewhere on the first page of results among the SPONSORED listings–probably not what you had in mind when you forked over your hard-earned $600!  The promise of getting listed “on the first page of Google” is presumed to mean getting listed on the first page of natural search results.  The way these shady firms hide behind semantics calls to mind the character Benny Gibbs, who in the movie “Trial and Error” was a con man accused of fraudulently advertising copper engravings of Abraham Lincoln for $17.99.  Customers did in fact receive a copper “engraving” of Abraham Lincoln which, by the way, also happened to be a copper penny!  Sometimes semantics makes all the difference in the world.

The harsh reality is that achieving a true top ranking in the organic search results is most often neither cheap nor easy.  This is not to say that it’s impossible or takes forever; just that it isn’t likely to happen in a few days.  Part of this has to do with how the search engines work.  Google, for example, looks for one-way links, or “backlinks”, from relevant¹ authority sites.  But link-building campaigns, even when aggressively pursued, often start out slow. Webmasters must see the value in your content, which presumes you have content and plenty of it.  They must see how a link to your site adds value to their own.  It’s a process that starts by contacting one webmaster at a time.

So when considering paying an “expert” to accelerate your ranking in the search engines don’t be afraid to press the sales rep for clarification on exactly what is being promised.  Ask clarifying questions and get things in writing.  A little due diligence goes a long way when your hard-earned dollars are at stake.

^{1. Not all externally linking sites must be relevant in subject matter so long as they are quality sites; but all things equal, a link from a relevant site is preferred.}

What are double ‘Opt-In’ lists?
When someone visits a web page and provides an email address to be used for future email marketing, such as special offers, newsletters and so forth, this is known as an ‘opt-in’ email request. Individuals such as this receive a follow-up email requiring them to confirm that they are the person whose email address was submitted in the original request. This is known as a ‘double opt-in’ or ‘confirmed opt-in’ request. This double-opt-in aspect ensures list integrity by protecting against typos that may have occurred in the sign-up process. It also serves as a filter to any malicious sign-ups that may have resulted from automated registration scripts.

How effective are double opt-in email campaigns?
Hard, unbiased data on the response rates to double-opt-in email marketing campaigns is hard to come by. Claims range from .2% (1 out of 500) to as high as 12%. One thing’s for sure: someone who has taken the time to confirm that he or she really intended to sign up for an email list is far more likely to pay attention to emails from that source. Once you have someone’s attention, the onus is on you to close the sale. How well written is your ad? Does it have a good, compelling headline? Is the offer attractive? These considerations extend beyond opt-in email marketing and into the larger world of marketing in general.

When attempting any email marketing campaign be sure to do your research and ask questions. When dealing with a list provider, make a point of asking whether the list is double opt-in (or confirmed). Do the math; make sure the numbers are realistic and don’t preclude the possibility of making a profit. Opt-in email marketing can be effective when everything’s done right. Anything less will only lead to disappointment.