Twitter is the new application that has risen in success at an astronomical rate. Unfortunately, Twitter has become plagued with a serious problem for legitimate users: Spam, or Follow Spam

Once you setup a Twitter account and start following some users, you may be surprised at how quickly you get followers. Taking a look at your “followers”, you may start noticing a trend. It seems a large number of followers are advertising something. A great many have thousands of followers themselves and are following thousands. Many of these spammers follow everyone possible in the hopes they will follow them in return (which some do) and spam them. They do not want to genuinely follow your comments. There are even programs that let them follow thousands in a short time. This is such a problem that Twitter has written about this almost a year ago. Unfortunately, they have not done much.

Twitter needs to step up defense against spammers

At this time, Twitter offers no good solution to this growing problem. Some spammers quickly create accounts with random letters that are easily disposable so even if you report a spam user, they can quickly create a new user. There isn’t a system to block followers with certain keywords, nor is there an effective system to report spam. Until that time, Twitter may lose it’s appeal by people frustrated with “followers” who are really just spammers.

Where are the genuine followers?

This is a good question because of the fact that many now view Twitter as a way to advertise their business, service, or multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme. For one user, out of 70 “followers” in the first week, no more than 10 (likely only 6) were legitamite followers who were interested in the user. The rest followed from hundreds to over ten thousand users and offered everything from work at home and get-rich-quick schemes to software optimizing your computer which appeared in tweet after tweet.

Conclusion: Twitter may have a place in the improvement of the Internet but there needs to be serious improvement of some aspects of their site. Otherwise, it will soon be viewed as a haven for spammers and useless ads.

Site development

1. Pick a good domain - No, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the domain to be perfect. Start by brain-storming all kinds of names. Then narrow the list down by checking what is available and eliminating the domains that do not work. You will often find that one or two-word .coms are already taken and if you MUST have a certain domain, you may have to buy it. Snapnames, Namejet, Godaddy aftermarket, and the more pricey SEDO all have a large selection of domains.

2. LinkedIn answers - Before you start your web business, sign up right away with LinkedIn. You can get professional answers for all aspects of business, from marketing to taxes, all for free. This is an excellent tool and a must for e-businesses. You can ask others to give advice about your website, but be careful as any negative comments may be reflected on the first page of the search engine results.

3. Get Firebug - Firebug, a plugin for Firefox, allows you to see the structure (HTML and CSS) of sites in a way that is easy to understand. You can use this tool to learn how the pros design. You can also use this to identify errors in your own site.

4. Beautiful design - One of the most important factors in success of a site is the design. You must make your site stand out. If you find this difficult, get someone to do it for you. Keep up with the latest trends in web design, and use other well-done sites as a guide.

5. Structure - Carefully plan the structure of the site, starting with the rare XHTML, continuing with CSS, and then adding any javascript.

6. CSS - Use a good reset CSS file and then add your style sheet next. Don’t separate the style into too many separate files.

7. Analytics program - Sign up for an analytics program, like Google Analytics, and add the code to each page, either manually or using an include like PHP include in the footer.

8. Proper URLs - Develop the site structure with readable URLs. Use folders for pages instead of files. In each folder, use the index.html, index.php, or other extension. When naming the folders, use hyphens to separate words, making the page be readable for search engines and humans.

9. Javascript / Ajax - Make your site memorable. Add some javascript to your site to increase usability. Use one of the more popular javascript frameworks like Mootools or jQuery to speed this up.

10. Keyword research - Use Google’s keyword tool to research common keywords. These should be placed in the title tags, description tags, header tags (h1, h2, etc.), and the content. You can also place the keywords in the keyword meta tag, although this is of little importance anymore. Be careful not to overstuff keywords or to concentrate on keywords that are too broad (cars, surgery, business). You will not get ranked on the first page with a broad keyword.

11. Logo, Favicon - Brand your site with a professional logo and favicon (the little 16×16 icon near your web address).

12. Sitemap, robots.txt - Create a sitemap for search engines to easily find all your pages. The robots.txt is useful in telling the search engines which pages to crawl and which to not crawl.

13. Blog - Adding a blog to your site is an excellent way to help promote your site. You can create a /blog/ folder and add Wordpress (if site is PHP) or another application. A popular option would be to make the homepage into a blog and add pages to the blog. If your site is offering a service and you want to maintain the look of your website, do not make the mistake of cluttering up the blog with ads.

14. Custom 403, 404 error pages - Use the .htaccess file to create custom 403 (Forbidden) and 404 (Not Found) pages. Users like to see consistency in the pages and the custom pages allow you to point the user to the right page or even add some humor to the situation.

15. 301 redirect - If you have an old site, use the .htaccess to direct it to the new site. On your new site, use .htaccess to redirect all versions of the homepage to one. If your website is http://www.site.com/, redirect http://site.com, http://site.com/index.html, http://www.site.com, and http://www.site.com/index.html to http://www.site.com/.

Check website for problems

16. Usability, contrast - Ask friends and relatives to examine the site and note any issues with navigation and ease of use. If the user cannot determine in a few seconds what the purpose of the site is and where to go next, you have failed to create a usable site. Test the contrast of the colors on Vis Check to determine if your site is difficult to read.

17. Website Grader - Check some key factors of search engine optimization on Website Grader. Although this doesn’t cover all issues, it will alert your to some major problems.

18. Google webmasters tools - If you haven’t done so, sign up immediately for Google’s webmasters tools and carefully study their advice. Correct any problems that are mentioned, because this gives insight into how all search engines view your site.

19. Check for bad links - Are you linking to any site that may ruin your reputation? Go to Bad Neighborhood and delete any links that give a warning. These may adversely affect your position in the search engine results page (SERP).

20. Keyword density - If a page uses a keyword for more than 10% of a text, this could be interpreted as keyword stuffing, or keyword spamming. Check the keyword density on SEO Chat and reduce the number of times a term appears if more than 10%.

21. Validate XHTML, CSS - Go to w3.org and validate your sites code. This will improve your sites visibility and will allow you to appear in certain lists that require strictly validated and well-designed sites.

Site Submission

22. Search Engines - Submit your site to three search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN. Other search engines will get information from these. There is no need to continue submitting to search engines periodically.

23. Directories - Although directories are not the best way to get ranked, they can help. You can submit your site to the following internet directories:

- DMOZ.org - This is the first place to submit a site. DMOZ is notoriously slow but is still considered a very important site. After several months, or years, DMOZ may approve your website as worthy of making the directory. The site has a PageRank of 8, meaning Google determined their site to be very important. A link from DMOZ will help increase your PageRank.

- Yahoo directory - Although $299 a year, the Yahoo directory will include your site much faster and are less picky. Having a PageRank of 8, the effect is similar to DMOZ.

- BOTW.org - The third directory that is considered fairly important is the Best of the Web (BOTW) directory. BOTW is picky about which websites make their directory, and they charge a minimum of $99 to be considered. For these reasons, search engines consider them more reliable in determining the quality and importance of a site. BOTW has a PageRank of 6.

- Other directories - There are perhaps thousands of directories, most of which require a fee to be listed. The value of internet directories is still questionable as search engines discourage paid links and even punish websites that buy links. The search engines have “caught on” to the fact that many directories offer paid listing (links) without looking at your site and therefore the value of these links may be very little. It may even hurt your site’s ranking. Directories that are strict as to the sites they allow are often considered good links.

24. CSS Galleries - CSS galleries are lists of sites that are both well-designed and XHTML, CSS valid. This can be an excellent way to get increased traffic and PageRank, as many galleries have a moderate PageRank themselves. Be careful not to submit too fast when your site is new. You may acquire PageRank but be demoted in the SERPs because the search engines will think you bought illegal links or obtained rank through some other “black hat” SEO technique. Here is a list of some CSS galleries, as well as there PageRank, approximate visitors the first month, and number of days needed to be listed:

CSS Gallery Website:	Traffic (first 30 days)	Days to be listed	PageRank
cssclip.com	125	10	5
css-design-yorkshire.com	121	3	5
cssbased.com	82	4	6
cssfreshblend.com	68	18	4
boxedcss.com	52	2	5
csscontainer.com	52	2	5
free-css.com	48	17	5
cssmix.nl	41	3	5
cssbag.com	37	14	4
css-design.fr	31	2	4
css-imagine.com	31	1	4
userinterfacegallery.com	31	2	4
csscount.com	29	2	4
rgbgarden.com	27	4	5
onecss.com	22	3	4
cssblaze.com	21	2	4
cssstar.com	16	4	5
css-showcase.com	13	3	3
cssfights.com	13	11	3

25. Other sites

- Command Shift 3 - On this site, visitors rate the better of two sites that appear on the screen by clicking one. Because of the poor quality of their thumbnails, sites that are rated well are usually minimalistic with good typography. If your site fits this description, you can submit it, which may give you more traffic.

- AboutUs.org - Simply enter your website into the search dialog and press “Find!” A page is quickly added to the list.

Online Profiles

26. LinkedIn - Fill in your profile, with website links. On your “public profile”, use your domain name (your URL on LinkedIn). For the “headline”, or signature, display your domain. This will help when you answer questions.

27. Rollyo - Create some good search rolls (lists of websites for searches) and include your business information. Also create your Rollyo URL using your domain.

28. Wikipedia - If your company is important enough, you may be able write a page on Wikipedia. The page must not be an advertisement. It should also be objective, showing possible negative remarks. Although the links use the “nofollow” attribute (the links themselves do not help your site), Wikipedia can help drive traffic to your site.

29. Squidoo - Sign up Squidoo and start making lenses. These are pages about various topics and the more interesting and unique, the better. Try not to make the lens look like an ad, but you can mention your site on the page. Create the lens with the same name as your domain.

30. Other websites for e-Profiles - MySpace, Facebook, Wordpress.

Promotion, Branding, Marketing

31. Learn from the competition - Find who links to your competition. In Google use “theirsite.com” -site:theirsite.com or in Yahoo use link:http://www.theirsite.com.

32. “Google” your business - Do a search of your domain and business name. Take note of anything negative and work to fix this. Try to keep anything negative from appearing in the top results of SERPs by building your e-brand.

33. Use your business name - On all sites where you sign up, have a profile, or contribute to the content, use your domain or business name.

34. Brand your email - If available, sign up for gmail, yahoo, and other webmail services with your business name.

35. Press release - Press releases should be more like an article than an advertisement. It should be objective and interest the general public, especially those in your field. Put a lot of thought into the headline, as this is what catches attention. Write a quality press release about some newsworthy event related to your company, and submit it. PR Leap ($49 and up) is searched by the major search engines and other sites. Others include: pr.com (free), prweb.com ($80 and up), and clickpress (free).

36. Write articles - Write quality articles in your field of expertise and submit them to EzineArticles.

37. Comment in blogs - Some blogs allow comments to contain links to your website. This can be very helpful in your link-building strategy. Avoid generic comments like “Thanks” or “Good article” just to get a link from the blog. Write something interesting.

38. Forums - On forums and groups use your website in your profile or signature.

39. LinkedIn answers - Answer questions in your field of expertise. Use your business/domain in the signature of answers. If you answer well you will build the reputation of being an expert in a certain field, which will help direct visitors to your site.

40. Give links - Give out links (link love) and those sites may link back to you. Be sure to check if the link is in a “bad neighborhood”.

41. Link bait - You can get attention (and valuable links) by writing good content. Give advice in your field of expertise or write a “top 20″ or “10 ways” type article. This has been done a lot but it generally catches attention.

42. Delicious - Although Delicious uses “nofollow” for search engines, thus removing any “link juice” from their popular site, tags can help promote your website.

43. Proprietary information - People love graphs and illustrations. If you have some proprietary information that can be useful to others, this can get you quality links. Maybe you don’t have any such data, you can research information relative to your field of expertise and graph it in a new way.

44. Alexa toolbar - Other than seeing the approximate traffic of sites, this bar has another interesting quirk. Every time you visit your own site, Alexa approximates that several other visitors viewed the site, increasing your apparent traffic rank. Alexa rankings aren’t very accurate for rankings in the millions.

45. YOUmoz (soemoz.org) - If you are a web developer, write articles for SEOmoz. You can do this on their YOUmoz blog. This will help establish you as an expert in you field and may help drive traffic to your website.

46. Yahoo Answers - Although YA will not help greatly in promoting your site, answering questions in your field of expertise help a little.

47. Local.com - Advertise on local.com with a link to your website. List other details such as hours of operation, languages spoken, payment methods, and services offered.

48. Twitter - Sign up for Twitter with your profile as your business name, add your link and customize your profile. Write useful, interesting tweets. Don’t ramble on about every little thing you are doing.

49. Other sites - TrueLocal.com, Craigslist.com (45 days), Yellow Pages free listing (active for 12 months at a time)

50. Be careful - With e-branding, be careful what you say, as anything you write on the internet may be picked up on a search engine.

51. Viral marketing - Make something so interesting that others want to tell their friends about it. An example would be a really unique video put on YouTube that gets millions of views simply by word of mouth.

52. Give stuff away - People love free stuff! Write an ebook. Give away images, tutorials, programs, and templates.

Communication

53. Email - Respond promptly to emails. Use the company name, telephone, and a domain link in the signature of emails.

54. Gratitude - Thank others for their business. This can go a long way as they will be more likely to recommend you and referrals are the preferred method of advertising.

55. Continued support - Support your customers after the sale. This will leave a positive impression. Your customers will refer others to you.

56. Speak directly to customers - A mistake for a small company would be to avoid talking to customers. Make your company stand out from the competition in that you communicate directly to clients. Prominently display your telephone number or toll-free number on your site. This goes a long way in making an impression.

Paid ads

57. SpyFu - Find out what the competition is paying for ads and which keywords they are targeting.

58. StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon offers a good way to get a lot of traffic quickly. For $.05 a view, you can get hundreds of views a day or more. If your site is useful and done well, you will get a lot of positive responses, “thumbs up”, which will get you free traffic.

59. Adwords, Yahoo, MSN - Pay-per-click ad techniques are beyond the scope of this article, but there are some major points to remember. Target specific keywords, use keywords in the ad, develop a compelling landing page, and do not bid on the first, most expensive position. Be sure to check ad performance and continue trying to “beat yourself” to get better results.

60. BuySellAds - Although banner ads are less effective than pay-per-click ads, they will help you get traffic. You can sign up for BuySellAds and search for a site on which to advertise. Good deals can be found, sometimes as low as $5 a month for a banner, sidebar, or favicon ad. Design a high-quality image for the ad.

61. Be wary of buying links - A big mistake would be to buy links to get a higher PageRank, which is against search engine policy. Do not pay anyone to submit your site to hundreds of directories, for the reasons mentioned above. Avoid “link farms” at all costs. In general, buying links are okay for advertising, not manipulating SERPs.

62. Direct people to your own site -  This seems obvious but many website owners miss this one.  Instead of offering something they have to sell, a website will litter their page with scam-like ads and other paid ads. This directs customers to others sites and may ruin your reputation if the links are bad. Better would be to direct people to your own site, or sites and offer your own products.

Non-web promotion

63. Unique business cards - Print some awesome business cards, put business cards in car windows, doors of businesses, and give some them to everybody you know (who may recommend you). Spend some extra money and make a business card nobody will throw away.

64. Make your business known - Tell all friends, neighbors, relatives, colleagues about your site.

65. Car ads - Get a car magnet to stick on the doors or a see-through sticker for the back window for around $100. See-through stickers work especially well on cars that have a near-vertical rear window, like CR-Vs.

66. Freebies - Everybody loves free stuff. Make coffee cups, pens, clothing, and calendars to advertise your business.

67. Sponsor sports event - Advertise at sports events.

68. Toll-free number - A number of companies offer low-cost toll-free services.

69. Yellow Pages, Newspapers - For some businesses this may be good, although in general, interest in yellow pages and newspapers is dying out.

70. Network - Get out and meet people. Talk about what they do. Give them your card.

Here’s an excellent example of why it is always a bad idea to try and increase traffic to your site by using less-than-honest methods. One site owner sent emails to businesses, including mine, on Craigslist pretending to be a possible customer. The message went something like this (stars inserted where website and name were):

“I am interested in your services but would like a little more information. Are you listed on ********.com ? just so I can see your professional profile and any feedback you’ve gotten.

Thanks a bunch,

****”

Although very generic and not listing exactly what was needed, it sounded like a real customer. I emailed back that I’ve never heard of the site but will check it out.

The site looked fairly well done. It is somewhat like LinkedIn.com, connecting businesses. But I was somewhat suspicious of the email, which seemed to me to be an ad for ********.com. What really threw up the red flag was that the site was new and I’d never heard of it, so how is it this “potential customer” used it as an authority for deciding on which businesses to deal with?

After a few days and with no answer I was fairly sure this was simply an ad for the site ********.com. I should have immediately researched the company, which would have revealed a lot. As of today, a search of the site shows in the number two position of Google a forum thread discussing the spam they received from ********.com. Most of the comments in the thread are outrage against the emails pretending to be a legitimate customer.

This is a major problem for the site now, which they will never live down. As it turnes out, the traffic for the site has gone from about 11,300 a month late last year to about 80 a month at this time, according to Quantcast. This is a huge loss of traffic, but honestly I believe the large traffic earlier was due to constant ads on Craigslist. Likely the site will disappear completely and join the list of other failed attempts at promoting their site through trickery.

There is a lesson for all in this. Do not try to trick potential customers. It angers people to waste their time and will eventually hurt your company. The Internet is a powerful tool to promote your site, but it can just as easily break your site.

Here is a list of some principles I’ve learned to make you a successful business owner or a successful person in general:

1. Success takes much time and effort.
2. Very few people get rich quickly.
3. What you offer people has to satisfy a definite need or want.
4. Whatever you do, do it well. Be the very best in your field of expertise.
5. Discover what you love, and find out how it can make you money.
6. Don’t be too proud to ask for advice.
7. Study something new in your field each day. Learn from others who are successful. Never stop learning.
8. If you try to do what everybody else is doing to make money, you will make little money. Do what nobody else wants to do and you will have work.
9. Everyone wants a lot of money with little work, but there’s little of this “free money” to go around.
10. Real money comes from an outstanding product or service.
11. You will not be successful if you buy other’s secrets on how to get rich. No truly successful person sells their secret to thousands of others.
12. Successful people don’t get advice from late night infomercials and Internet ads meant to make you jealous of the advertiser’s wealth.
13. Avoid like the plague any business that sells overpriced, low-quality products and tries to get you to find others who will sell overpriced, low-quality products.
14. If you wouldn’t buy it, don’t sell it.
15. Remember you are not going to get rich quick, no matter who says so.
16. Don’t try to get out of a deal just because it’s harder than you anticipated.
17. Keep your promises and people will refer you.
18. Shake hands with your clients, make eye contact, and DON’T LIE.
19. Be honest, even when it’s not in your favor. People will respect you and refer you to others.
20. Give compliments to people. Send thank you letters.
21. Pick up the phone and call your clients.
22. Build long-lasting relationships with clients.
23. Stop twittering, blogging, and emailing and interact with people in real life.
24. An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours after midnight.
25. Exercise, eat well, and sleep well.

I am a web developer who studies search engine optimization. This is a constantly changing field due to the fact that the search engines keep refining and changing their algorithm for displaying websites. I got an email not to long ago with these words:

“1st page Google search results guaranteed or your money
back, please email us back to get a full proposal.”

Looking at this, you might think this is good. After all, you’ve always wanted first page results and there’s a money back guarantee. But there are several things that you should watch out for.

First of all, we all know the dangers of spam and unsolicited emails. There is no guarantee this person wrote the email, or that the person knows the first thing about search engine optimization. They could take your money and that’s all that you hear from them.

Secondly, there are individuals who may get you first page results through the use of “black hat SEO techniques”. These are methods to try and “trick” the search engines, many of which are effective only temporarily, until the search engines find out. An example would be white text on a white background. This black hat technique tries to stuff invisible keywords into the web page. Humans can’t see them but the search engine robots can. This trick may work for a short time, after which your site will almost certainly be penalized or removed from the search engine results pages altogether.

Thirdly:

Almost all websites have first page search engine results

Are you surprised? This statement may seem strange but it is true. Why is this?

The search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and MSN search known websites and index the information. The servers then display a list of sites that they feel are relevant to your search query. If the search is for a very broad keyword like “cars”, then the number of websites that have the word “car” us very high, as well as the competition to be on the first page. Now if a person looks for “antique mustangs in Kalamazoo Michigan” then the competition would be much less. If you had a site dedicated to that subject, you would likely be in one of the first places, if not the number one spot.

Take your site name or text from your site and enter it into Google. In these cases, you will also likely be on the first page. This is because the search query is very specific and almost no sites have that text, so even poorly done sites can have first page results. This problem is, almost no one does these searches, so in this case “first page Google results” is not too comforting, although technically true.

Because of the way search engines work, technically speaking, almost anyone can guarantee first page results on Google (as well as Yahoo and MSN). The question is: The first page of which results? Google’s webmaster central helps you see which keywords you rank for and what position. Oftentimes, the keywords you rank for are keywords you would have never guessed.

So when someone guarantees first page Google results (or first page Yahoo results, or MSN), it is likely true. But don’t think they can guarantee first page results for very popular keywords, because you will probably be disappointed.