Go SEO

Understanding Google and why they are at war?
Looking at search today it almost seems like google has lost focus on good search results. The ongoing war against SE spam has changed search technology to the extent that many legitimate webmasters are seeing their sites caught up by friendly fire. Although in saying this many of the webmasters that cry the loudest are the ones breaking the rules and pushing the boundaries. Google is smart and plenty of people like to take pot shots at the tall poppy of the search world but I would not want the responsibility of trying to manage and police the worlds biggest search tool. When you look at what they have to contend with in terms of spam in the form of scraper sites and massive amounts of duplicate content, throw in data storage and crawling on an ever increasing and uncharted scale and you are going to encounter many “issues” as you move forward. The KISS (keep it simple stupid) theory is no longer in play here, search technology is much more complex with new algorithms coming into play all the time.

Looking around at SEO forums you read all sorts of things about a google conspiracy and webmasters being forced to buy adwords because they simply can’t get the volume of traffic from organic search any more. What many webmasters are seeing today is pages drop from the google index on large scale and a constant shifting of the results across the different google data centers, also large numbers of supplemental results being reported for sites. Corresponding drops in traffic and very upset webmasters who are caught in the fallout, in some ways Google is the victim of it’s own dominance as are the many webmasters who catch a cold when google has a sneeze. Adwords is not the motive for the constant flux as has been suggested by a few, when you examine things adwords needs it’s network of partner sites to generate traffic in order to keep the revenues flowing and of course good search technology  results play a major part in the cycle. I don’t think it is any more complex than that. Because google is so dominant it’s the greatest source of free traffic in the world, this makes them the biggest target in the world which in turn gives them the hardest job in the world. You can’t keep all of the people happy all of the time some blood is going to get spilled along the way. The biggest enemy of the webmaster is the other webmaster busy putting together a massive auto generated database driven spam site to flood the search engines.

 Is google winning the battle here? The latest series of google updates would suggest to some extent yes they are making headway in some areas although as I write this there are some strange results being served up from a lot of the google data centers right now, we have been monitoring a few of the large spam sites and one or two seem to have resurfaced during the current data push. This I would expect to be only a temporary situation but it is a concern to see in some sectors that good sites fall out of the rankings and sites of lesser quality getting a reward even if it is only temporary. Google shoulders enormous responsibility and the question of accountability is an interesting subject, if google changes it’s algorithm and the whole search world turns upside down the effects can be far reaching and very damaging for online business, we are not talking about small numbers here. Of course some would argue there are winners and losers as the total number of searches remains about the same so if I am not getting clicks then some other business is? Maybe this is the case but with investment in infrastructure and stock and employees an online business needs to consider it’s reliance on organic search results and the revenue generated from this otherwise you might just be caught without a chair when the music stops.

What we tell our clients is simple, build clean sites for your users with original content - forget to a certain extent that a machine is going to crawl your site and make it people friendly. Clean sites, clean code with good intuitive link structure, good relative text this is very much a back to basics approach but it works and the search engines will reward you. Don’t fall for the “we can get you to number 1 in google” trap, it’s not a bad idea to stay away form anyone who makes this promise because not one can guarantee a search ranking. Use resources that benefit your users and don’t try to cheat or manipulate your position in the engines. Good online marketing and promotion will go along way. Look at all of your options for traffic generation and don’t put all of your eggs in the google basket!

Maxine Clarke - With 6 years online doing SEO and developing websites Maxine is helping business managers&nbsp; bring&nbsp; more visitors to their websites. <a href="http://moreclicks.com.au">http:/www.moreclicks.com.au</a> offers a full suite of SEO &amp; SEM services for online business.</b></p>

Click Fraud and Forced Search
Over the last few years, advertising on the internet has changed in many ways. One innovation that’s hanging on is the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) method used by search engines.

The basic premise is that you, the advertiser, purchase a keyword or keyphrase in the search engine. For example, if I was running a site about dieting and losing weight, I might purchase the keyword “weight loss”. Naturally, this is a pretty popular search term, and many other sites will also be purchasing the term. So I set the amount I’m prepared to pay for each click, and my site will be displayed above or below other advertisers, depending on whether I’ve paid more or less than them.

The search engine doesn’t charge me for every time my ad is displayed, only for when a searcher clicks on my ad. So I have to calculate the cost per click, versus what my expected conversion rate is (the number of times I can expect to make a sale for every time my ad is clicked) and work out my return on investment (ROI). Here’s an example:
I bid $1 dollar on the search phrase “weight loss”
I can expect to make a sale to one in 10 searchers - a 10% conversion rate
So I’ll be spending and average of $10 to make one sale. My product sells for $25, so I’m getting a 250% ROI - not bad.

All sounds good - apart from the spectre of click fraud. Click fraud is where you receive hits on your ad which are not down to interested searchers and potential clients - draining your advertising budget for nothing.

There are two common types of click fraud. The first is where rival websites deliberately set out to drain your budget by repeatedly clicking your ads, either through manually surfing or using software to generate thousands of hits to your ads. Because most search engines allow you to set a capped budget, once you’ve hit your cap, your ad will cease to display - giving your rival websites a clear shot at your market.

The second type of fraud is relevant to the PTR world. This is the nasty known as “forced search”, and it is sadly quite common, probably due to many people not understanding the implications.

This type of fraud arises from search engines running affiliate programs whereby they pay people to advertise their search engine, and reward them for every “valid search” made through their engine. A valid search would be where the interested party has searched on a phrase and visited one of the websites shown in the results - thus earning the search engine its revenue from the advertiser.

It’s easy to see where the problem lies: the affiliates have no real interest in drawing quality traffic to the engine, they simply want people to make valid searches, so that the affiliate gets paid. This is fine as far as it goes - but when they find a PTR program which caters specifically to this urge, we get the forced search program. This is where the program owners specifically require the members to make “valid searches” on the ads - or they don’t send them mails. These programs tend to be the ones offering high amounts of cash per mail - they can afford to offer up to 5c per mail, because the advertisers will pay well for valid searches. As long as the program owner can offer a pretty good guarantee of the number of searches, the advertisers will keep coming back.

You’ll be able to spot a forced search PTR program quite quickly - after a few days of joining the program, you’ll start to receive mails saying things like “We’re sending you this because we don’t think you know how to make a valid search” or “Please remember to do a valid search if you want to remain in our active searchers group!” When I get a mail like this, I resign from a program immediately.

There are two reasons for you to steer clear of these programs - the first is altruistic and takes the long view, the second self-motivated. Firstly, you know you’re assisting people to commit fraud. The advertisers paying the search engines are the ones getting their wallets drained, and you’re just the bottom feeder in a chain stretching from the search engine, to the affiliate, to the PTR program owner, to you. Secondly, the search engines are getting much more aware of click fraud and are developing tools and software to stop it. People can and have been taken to court for click fraud. What do you think’s going to happen when the PTR program owner is implicated? You’re not going to get paid any time soon… and all that clicking and searching you did will have been a big fat waste - for everyone.

Karen Barr is the owner and webmaster of the digital art site, Forgotten Worlds.

Search Engine Promotion - - - Be Sure To Go Overseas!
They call it the World Wide Net, so why just concentrate your firm?s search engine submissions on U.S. search engines?

The main reason to get your real estate website listed on the foreign websites is: Good foreign search engine rankings will generate new clients!

This is especially true if your firm is located in a major metropolitan area. Here is some of the actual business created directly from our top foreign search engine rankings: Potential new immigrants, business persons considering setting up a business office, foreign nationals considering immigration, and a foreign couple whose son got arrested in Orange County and they needed to contact a local Orange County attorney to help.

Why heed my advice? Well, let?s add some real world credibility to back-up my advice. So how does our own main legal website rank on foreign search engines? We have many number one page placements. Below are just a few of our PAGE ONE foreign search engine rankings for the very competitive phrase Orange county attorneys on our Los Angeles-Orange County legal website;

http://www.la-orange-county-lawyers-attorney-directory.com

AOL-UK - Sympatico (Canada ? MSN-UK ? MSN-France ? MSN Germany Google Mexico - Google UK - Google Germany - Google Japan

Check today to see if your website is listed on the top foreign search engines. A good starting point is to check the engines hyper-linked above. Perhaps the best way to obtain high foreign search engine standings is to first achieve top ranking on the major US search engines.

Before a quest for higher rankings, you should obtain a comprehensive report on your site?s current page one through page three search standings. You need a base-line or starting point to see if your efforts are effective. An example of such a detailed report can be viewed at:

http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com/lawyer-website-search-engine-standings-report.htm

To enhance your report?s usefulness, I would suggest that you run the same report for your biggest legal competitor. This report will then give you not only a benchmark but a set of goals to strive for.

The second important report you should run is a link popularity report. Good quality incoming links are vital to top search engine ranking. Here again it is imperative to run this report against your local competitors. An example of such a detailed report can be viewed at:

http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com/lawyer-website-link-report.htm

Investing in improving your law firm?s search engines standings could become the most cost effective career investment you make.

Copyright 2006 Promotions Unlimited. All rights reserved.

Bob Schwartz offers free trial & low cost software for <a href="http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com/">search engine optimization</a>. Improve your sites creditability w/Free <a href="http://www.web-site-award-winning.com/">website awards</a>. Also visit: http://www.web-site-award-winning.com

Improve Your Online Business With Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
So you?ve got that wonderful work-at-home online business up and running. You?ve got a dynamite website with easy to use navigation, a slew of well written, entertaining and pertinent articles, and more revenue-generating links than you can handle. But for some reason, the hits just aren?t coming and your business isn?t making as much money as you deserve. How do you turn a struggling online business into a profitable online business?

The first thing you have to ask yourself is, ?How are people hearing about my site?? In an Internet dominated by search engines like Google and Yahoo, high search engine ranking is a must. Why? Most search engines show ten results per page, ranked in order, and most users never make it past the first page. That means that if your website is going to be found, it needs to be top 10. But how? How!? Take a look at the title of this article. That?s right. Through search engine optimization. SEO is a simple concept. Use the words that people will probably enter into search engines strategically in the content of your website. This article is using a couple of SEO keywords, like Online Business or Search Engine Optimization, the very subjects people might search for if looking for an article like this. See how easy it is? Two more keywords without interrupting the flow of the article!

Using search engine optimization effectively may mean redesigning most of the content on your website. When you?re doing that try to keep in mind these Six Commandments of SEO.

THOU SHALT KNOW THINE ENEMIES

Knowing what keywords to use is the most important part of SEO. This means research. Lots of research. Start off by trying to find your site on various search engines. Chances are you won?t, at least not on the first page. Write down the top 10 results you do get. These sites are your competition. Try a few different combinations of search terms. Are there any sites that appear more than once? Check those out. What keywords or phrases are used over and over? What are the titles of pages? What is the content about? What is the web address? These are potential keywords Record them. These will be the basis for your own search engine optimization.

THOU SHALT NOT USE KEYWORDS WANTONLY

Keywords should be thought of as compliments; the more you give, the less meaning they have. By the same token, not giving enough won?t get you noticed. Use them wisely. Find that happy ratio of keywords to normal. A general rule of thumb in search engine optimization is 2.5-4% of your content should be keywords; no more, no less.

THOU SHALT MAKE SURE ALL CONTENT IS SENSIBLE

Don?t fall SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION into the tempting ONLINE BUSINESS trap of SEARCH ENGINES using keywords randomly SEO in order to increase your search engine rank. Tough to read, wasn?t it? Kinda made you want to scream and tear your hair out? Content above keywords. If your articles are so keyword rich that they don?t make sense, users won?t return and you?ll lose repeat revenue. All the search engine optimization in the world is useless if your users don?t stay on the site long enough to put cash in your pocket. Search engines pick up on this tricks anyway. Besides, it?s just plain dirty fighting.

THOU SHALT VARY KEYWORD USAGE

So you?ve done your research and have a list of 25 keywords you want to use in your site. Each article has a primary keyword or two. Unfortunately, every article on the site is using the same two keywords. What about the other 23? Don?t let yourself be tempted by the ease of using the same words over and over. Write articles about all 25 keywords. You spent all that time researching them, now use them! And just because one article is about one keyword doesn?t mean you can?t use other keywords in the article. Use the non-primary keywords like salt sprinkled over the entire site.

THOU SHALT UPDATE

Getting that number one search engine rank was hard. It took hours of work, and now that you?ve reached the pinnacle it?s time to sit back and reap the benefits. Right?

WRONG!

How long do you think that number one ranking will last? You know your competitors got mad when you beat them and are redesigning their sites right now. Right now, I say! Eventually they?ll pull ahead of you again, unless you manage to stay ahead in the game. Update your site constantly with new keyword rich content to make sure that you?re on the cutting edge and can keep that number one ranking.

NEVER FORGET: THOU ART NOT ALONE

Search engine optimization can seem like a daunting task at first, and maybe it is. But never forget that there are people out there willing and able to help you; it is, after all, how they make a living. Some writers specialize in SEO and there are websites available that do most of the research grunt work just waiting to hear from you. So no matter how daunting a task it may seem, don?t ever give up on search engine optimization. In an internet where everything depends on page hits, your search engine rank can never be too high.

David Hudson can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours…To learn more, visit: <a href="http://www.dreamsr.us/pips.html">Dreamsr.us</a> or <a href="http://www.googlebaycash.com">GoogleBayCash</a>

Learning to Use Internet Business Directories
As an online business owner, one of your preoccupations is increasing your site traffic. If you have been in business for even a short period of time, you know that the key to getting more hits is by optimizing for the search engines. Most people use the search engines to find the sites they are looking for, so it is in your best interests to achieve as high a page ranking as you can. Search engine optimization is vital to your business, but you should not overlook another method for increasing your site traffic: getting listed in an internet business directory. Internet business directories work in the same way that yellow pages work for traditional pages. To wit, they are listings of the various businesses operating on the web. To make the listings more tenable to use, the sites are grouped according to different categories. Sites can be listed by topics or regions, for example. Different business directories use different criteria to categorize its sites. The reason you want to get listed in an internet business directory is simple: people use directories to find sites. While getting listed in an internet business directory is not as important as getting optimized for the search engines, it can nevertheless contribute to an increase in your site traffic. People use directories to find a wide variety of sites pertaining to topics they are interested in. Obviously, not being listed is a disadvantage. To have your site listed in an internet business directory, you must first identify the directories that you feel will be most conducive to your business success. Next, you will have to submit your site for possible inclusion. If your site is legitimate, you should have no problem getting accepted. After being reviewed, your site will be indexed in the most appropriate category. Here some excellent examples of internet business directories: AME Info (www.ameinfo.com) ” A business directory listing almost 200, 000 Middle Eastern companies. AT&T Directories (www.att.com/directory/index.html) ” This site can help you find a persons and/ or business by name or phone number. Big Book (www.bigbook.com) ” A listing of businesses within the United States. You can search for a business using its name, location, or category. BizEurope.com Resources (www.bizeurope.com/bsr/manu/resource.htm) - A listing of European companies involved in importing and exporting. British Companies (www.britishcompanies.co.uk) ” a listing of British consumer product companies. British Services (www.britishservices.co.uk) ” a listing of British service providers. Business.com (www.business.com) ” This site also doubles as a search engine. You can find products, services, companies and jobs here. Corporate Affiliations (www.corporateaffiliations.com) ” lists companies that have merged, changed names, or gone out of business. Europages: European Business Directory (www.europages.com) ” Europages lists the addresses of half a million companies from thirty European countries. The site can be viewed in six languages. This listing is not meant to be a comprehensive one, but it should be sufficient to get you started. Remember that internet business directories can help you increase your market reach, so you should never overlook them!

Roger D Osborne Grew up in the Appalachain Mountains of Kentucky, He served in Viet Nam with the United States Air Force. He has lived in Castroville, Texas with his family since 1987. He works hard to locate the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can earn a good income from the comfort of your home. Please visit: http://ProMarketingNetwork.com or http://ProMarketingNetwork.com/pips.html

Effective SEO Tools For Site Owners
First of all, I want to insist that this article is aimed at site owners since sometimes site owners and webmasters are different. Suppose a realtor has a real estate website. But, she is just a newbie on the Internet and she leans on the webmaster (from hosting provider, for example) in her website’s SEO campaign. In fact, that webmaster couldn’t understand real estate industry deeply like her and he has many other sites to manage. So the SEO campaign wouldn’t get the expected result. In most cases, the site owners will play an important role in the success of SEO campaign. However, HTML language, search engines, link popularity, PageRank seem so strange to them at first. Thus, the purpose of this article is providing the amateur site owners with some basic but effective tools and knowledge in Search Engine Optimization. This will help site owners collaborate better with webmasters or SEO firms to boost their websites’ position in Search Engines.

1. Search Engines -You are a site owner and you yourself should be familiar with search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN Search to search for your competitors’ sites to see how they are promoting themselves in the marketplace, evaluate the keywords, check your sites’ link popularity (the number of links to your website from other sites) and link saturation (number of pages on your sites have been indexed by search engine). These search engine syntaxes aren’t academic as you’ve imagined and you don’t need to care about the complicated algorithms behind them. For example, to check whether your sites are indexed, just type site:your_site_domain in search engines. Remember that your_site_url and your_site_domain are not the same. Site domain does not include http:// while site URL  must have (ex: http://your_site_domain/your_page.htm is a URL of your site).

Suppose the SEO firm, in their optimization report, would ask the site owners to exchange links with other relevant sites to improve the link popularity. The problem is: where can I find the other sites? Don’t worry, search engines can assist you. Site owners can learn from their competitors about which sites they’ve exchanged links with by checking their link popularity.

In short, if you want search engines to help carry in business, you should make friends with them first. Search engines are always useful friends (although not easy to control!).

2. HTML basic syntax and HTML editor - Site owners don’t have to master HTML language to re-design their pages. That is not their job. But basic syntaxes are always necessary. For example, they should know to locate where the <head> block in an html page is to insert new auto-generated Meta-tags. I’ve mentioned auto-generated Meta-tags because site owners don’t need to code the Meta-tags either. With “Meta-tags Generator” keyword, they can find that on search engines thousands of websites are welcoming them to use their tool. Besides, the html link syntax is also worthy to remember: Look at this simple code <a href=”your_site_url_1″>your descriptive text</a> which you send to other site owners for link exchange. Your website has many pages for exchanging links so it’s significant to understand this link code to change your_site_url_1 to other pages and your descriptive text respectively. In addition, with the knowledge of html syntax, you can open your web pages and add the links on your own and stop calling your webmasters all the time for modifying pages with links. Today, html editors such as FrontPage, DreamWeaver can highly simplify this task in the similar way as you are working in MS Word. Just select the position in Design view (in FrontPage) and paste the link code in the Code view at the cursor.

3. Google toolbar - Google Toolbar is a useful tool for web surfers and even more useful to site owners to check PageRank. PageRank is a Google’s grade (from 0 to 10) to measure the page’s popularity on the net. With high pageranks, they don’t guarantee a high position in Google’s search results but they can tell us many things. PageRank encourages site owners in the long process of SEO. The little green color on this bar looks like fruits in the tree of our efforts and we are motivated to dig more in SEO. In addition, PageRank helps site owners to find appropriate sites to exchange links with. Search for the sites with the same level (pagerank) to foresee the success of your link exchange requests. To install Google toolbar to your browsers (Internet Explorer or Firefox), just start by typing Google toolbar in search engines and follow the first result.

In  this article, I’ve provided the site owners with some basic but effective tools to come along their SEO campaigns. They include but not limit to search engines, HTML editor, and Google toolbar. Besides, there are others such as FTP tool, Google sitemap, Link Directory software… The important thing to amateur site owners is forgetting your main career and get your hands wet with these tools. Webmaster and SEO firm cannot do everything for you. Learning SEO tools today will never be too late and wasted.

Article by Mike Pham of TopTrafficWholesaler.com, a leading company in Internet Advertising. We also specialize in <a href="http://www.toptrafficwholesaler.com/search_engine_submission_main.asp">search engine registration and optimization</a> as well as tools and resources useful for better ranking / positioning in search engines.

Internet marketing services- Patience for Long Term Ranking Results
If you keep a check on the online world, you must have come across the very famous word, Internet marketing services or more popularly known as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. Born in 1995, SEO has come a long way since then and now you can find numerous companies offering Internet marketing services in UK.

How Search Engines Have Changed Public Relations
When it comes to Public Relations, the driving philosophy that underlies even the most minute aspect of a campaign is that perception equals reality. This is as true as ever in the Interactive Age because anyone with Internet access has the ability to voice his or her opinion on the World Wide Web. Internet users now have the ability to present their opinions for public consumption on blogs as well as websites. Thanks to the advent of search engines, websurfers may access any perspective of the online debate (be it positive, negative, or indifferent) ranging in topic from iPods to real estate. Google has profoundly changed advertising on the internet as well. What distinguishes search from other online marketing strategies is that search provides each individual user with specific information based on their initial inquiry. Often, this information comes from obscure corners of the Internet, thus giving strength to voices that may have gone unheard. This democratic media revolution brings new challenges for Public Relations- the art dedicated to communicating a business s message to its audience. No longer is PR concerned with the relatively sparse inlets of effective television, radio and print ” now, thanks to the Internet, Public Relations has to actually contend with gulp the public! So it makes sense that PR efforts must now encompass the expanding world of search and, in order to survive in the marketplace, your business needs the PR benefits that come as a result. Search Engine Optimization should be utilized by Public Relations professionals to ensure the standards of their client s image. A comprehensive PR strategy must incorporate search as a means of building or maintaining a client s image. The survival of conventional PR then becomes a question of updated technology. When choosing a Public Relations company to help your business maintain an image, it is no longer a question of who has the longest track record, but who has the longest reach. If your PR company doesn t have a search division of its own at its fingertips, don t expect your campaigns to extend beyond the traditional paper and print. In this sense, it was a natural extension of ICMediaDirect.com to announce its Public Relations division after the successes of its Search and Research divisions. Finding that much of the work performed for SEO and SEM was already inherently related to the new Search-influenced PR, the launching of a PR division in a company long familiar with the details of this industry is no surprise. How do they relate? Let s take an imaginary attack on Sunshine Widgets. A disgruntled entity could simply start blogging against it. They could harp on a single unfortunate incident, or flat out tell lies about Sunshine Widgets, and its corporate ineptness. It wouldn t take much. Perhaps Sunshine Widgets runs TV and print ads. These efforts would be undercut by some chap with a blog running a disinformation campaign. Unfair accusations or charges would appear every time someone searches for Sunshine Widgets . No company, big or small, real or imagined, can afford bad press that pops up with every user search. At this point, the necessity for a comprehensive Public Relations strategy becomes clear. Sunshine Widgets could, through a practice commonly known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), be proactive in asserting its corporate voice, thus re-asserting its sterling brand image. The variety of interactive channels to engage in allows Sunshine Widgets greater ability to define its desired message. Here are the ways in which it would benefit from a search oriented Public Relations campaign in the face of these random blog attacks: Blog search engines, like Technorati.com and Delicious.com, are growing rapidly in use and popularity. This suggests that online users, when looking for what the real story is , are curious not only as to what people think but also when they think it. For example, there were a lot more Sopranos searches on the day before the season premier than there were six months before ” and blog searches give you the latest on what bloggers are currently writing, as opposed to search engines which may not take the information posting date into account. Therefore, through Search Engine Optimization, anyone searching the internet for Sunshine Widgets would be returned information that is not only accurate with regard to content, but up to date as well. Sunshine Widgets could issue press releases to announce company undertakings, strategies for the future, as well as past successes. Press releases are the most widely used means of communication employed by a company and are integral in shaping public perception of your brand. By distributing press releases online, a company has the ability to communicate its immediate message to millions of consumers instantly. Sunshine Widgets could engage in a paid search (PPC) campaign to drive searchers to landing pages of Sunshine s choosing. While driving sales numbers becomes secondary to building brand image, a paid search campaign also fuels greater traffic to a company s website, and the company that drives more users to its site helps shape its own reputation ” and reputation, it bears repeating, is very important. These campaigns would all use different tools to achieve the same goal, better public corporate messaging. The benefits brought to the company would vary too. For instance, all of the content published on the web will not only put the word out there , but crowd out any negativity from some renegade s message. A single, angry blog will not be able to cloud a business s message provided that company maintains an effective PR campaign. The many different messaging formats should insulate from this danger. While traditional media outlets are still the cornerstone of any successful PR campaign, The internet presents an unprecedented opportunity to reach consumers directly, and on an individual basis. Through an internet campaign, a company may not only protect its brand image against attack, but strengthen and widen its consumer base. Consider the following statistic: a consumer is four times more likely to recount a negative experience with a company than a positive one. Now consider that a disgruntled consumer has had a negative experience with your company. Now, let us suppose that they write a daily blog encouraging other consumers to boycott your business. Finally, let us imagine that putting your company s name into a search engine brings up said disgruntled consumer s blog as the first search result. Now, ask yourself, would you launch a traditional campaign (print, tv, radio) to reverse the damage done to your brand image, or would you stop the problem at its source through an online campaign? The answer is obvious, and any company that does not take the internet into account when formulating its PR strategy may as well post negative consumer criticism on its website- that s practically what s happening anyway.

Joseph Pratt Media Analyst ICMediaDirect.com http://www.icmediadirect.com e: joseph@icmediadirect.com