Originally posted Tuesday January 17, 2006As I have been writing almost every 2 weeks now for the past few months, I have noticed so many things in the world of website marketing that affect all different types of businesses. What I would like to do today is give a breakdown of how I would like to set up the rest of the year. Considering we are only in January, lets call it a gameplan…

As I have been writing almost every 2 weeks now for the past few months, I have noticed so many things in the world of website marketing that affect all different types of businesses. What I would like to do today is give a breakdown of how I would like to set up the rest of the year. Considering we are only in January, lets call it a gameplan…First - Create an agenda for the year. Let’s call it - outlook 2006. Its funny how every SEO and SEM company and blogger gave their predictions for the coming year and reviewed what happened last year and what they got right and what they got wrong. I find it funny because it is a bit cliche. But thats the funny thing about the online world today. Instead of the journalists and reporters being the ones to report the news and present the news, blogging has gotten everyone to have a voice. As someone with a big voice, a big mouth and a big personality, I can appreciate this. But I find the real humor in the geeks and the nobodys who were graphic designers and computer programmers 10 years ago while us marketers were trying to figure out how to make millions of dollars on the web. Of course those millions were for our clients and our dreams were that those millions would rub off on us. But reality set in and there was no surprise. Companies and businesses that were making money before the web was here continued to make money througout the tech bubble. Yes - some of my colleagues got rich along the way. I can name them here but I am too jealous to…oh who is kidding whom. I am not jealous. I am motivated. These guys aren’t smarter than us nor are they more experienced. They had good ideas and they worked hard and they made money. So hats off to Jason Calacanis who sold Weblogs, Inc to AOL for 25million. Hats off to Stephen Messer of LinkShare for selling out to the Japanese for $400million. And if you would, a round of applause to the guy I don’t personally know who made exactly $1 million dollars by selling advertising on 1 page at www.milliondollarhomepage.com. (The irony is that you can’t even access it anymore because it is so highly trafficked…or it just was overloaded and blew up.) But that is a prime example of a 1 hit wonder good idea that is not a stable business that will last for the next 20 years or 100 years. The top 500 movers and shakers (according to Alexa) are where I strive to be. And for my smaller clients, I aim MUCH much lower. But if I can get my sites into the top 100,000 of all sites, I think they are going to really do well on the web.

So though its past half way into January, my resolution is this: Get my sites and my clients sites into the top 100,000. There - I said it. (I wrote it. I typed it.) I have been very successful getting into the top million and even got some sites into the top 500K. But now we are goping for the Gold. As I tell all of my clients (and potential clients), there are no guarantees in this business. And to prove that point, I went back to Google and MSN and took a look at what I wrote 2 weeks ago regarding my ratings and rankings. And guess what? They are no longer true. I suspect that my movement in MSN is due to the fact that they are still in Beta and are not sure what they are doing. I think they are testing out the waters. I also suspect that they looked at this blog and they penalize me. Though my sites are relevant and I am a legitaimate business, they make up their own rules. And that’s why I won’t guarantee top rankings or listings. You can really work hard and succeed and fail and trial and error and all that, but when it all comes down, Bill Gates can basically say what he wants and his engineers will say “how high?” and whammo - you are outta here. So I am not really bitter about my MSN rankings. After all, I still have my google. What I am really gosh darned upset about is Blogger. At first I put up “salemglobal” and it got taken down. I thought it was an error. Human or robot - who knew? But then I put up “salemglobalinternet” and that got taken down too. So I emailed blogger support and they said:
“Hi there,

Thanks for contacting Blogger Support. Since we cannot always respond
personally to every message we get, we encourage you to check Blogger
Help, where you can find answers to many common questions. Here are some
of the top articles which could help you out: etc etc”

So I emailed back and said PLEASE.

And they replied:

“Hi there,

Thanks for your note. This is an automated update from Blogger Support.
Due to the tremendous amount of help requests from users, we’re currently
unable to offer timely, personal assistance to everyone.”

So I emailed back and said PLEASE again.

And they wrote back:

“Hi there,

Thanks for contacting Blogger Support. Since we cannot always respond
personally to every message we get, we encourage you to check Blogger
Help, where you can find answers to many common questions. Here are some
of the top articles which could help you out:etc etc”

So I wrote back and they actually said to me:

>Hi Raphi,
>
>We have removed your blogs and/or disabled your Blogger account due to
the
>fact that you have been misusing our service. Based on our records, there
>are a number of blogs that are not compliant with our Terms of Service
>(http://www.blogger.com/terms.g). This behavior is not looked upon
>favorably.
>
>Sincerely,
>Blogger Support

So I read the terms of service and wrote: (scroll down - you don’t have to read all of their legal mumbo jumbo unless you want to…I did)

I am so confused.
I have read and re-read all of the terms and regulations and do not see
what behavior you are talking about. I really have no idea. Can you please

just point out specifically what I am doing wrong? All my blog is is a
blog about my business with Google adsense. These are real blogs and not
spamming blogs. Please tell me what is wrong so that I understand how to
be in compliance. Please.

4. MEMBER CONDUCT You understand that all information, data, text,
software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages or other
materials (”Content”), whether publicly posted or privately transmitted,
are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content
originated. This means that you, and not Pyra, are entirely responsible
for all Content that you upload, post or otherwise transmit via the Service.
Pyra does not control the Content posted via the Service and, as such,
does not guarantee the accuracy, integrity or quality of such Content. You
understand that by using the Service, you may be exposed to Content that
is offensive, indecent or objectionable.

You agree to not use the Service to: (a) upload, post or otherwise
transmit any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing,
tortious, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s
privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; (b)
harm minors in any way; (c) impersonate any person or entity, including,
but not limited to, a Pyra official, forum leader, guide or host, or
falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or
entity; (d) upload, post or otherwise transmit any Content that you do not
have a right to transmit under any law or under contractual or fiduciary
relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential
information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or
under nondisclosure agreements); (e) upload, post or otherwise transmit
any Content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or
other proprietary rights of any party; (f) upload, post or otherwise
transmit any material that contains software viruses or any other computer
code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the
functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications
equipment; (g) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or
networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures,
policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (h) intentionally or
unintentionally violate any applicable local, state, national or
international law, including, but not limited to, regulations promulgated
by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any rules of any national
or other securities exchange, including, without limitation, the New York
Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ, and any
regulations having the force of law; (i) “stalk” or otherwise harass
another; (j) collect or store personal data about other users; (k) promoteor provide instructional information about illegal activities, promote
physical harm or injury against any group or individual, or promote any
act of cruelty to animals. This may include, but is not limited to, providing
instructions on how to assemble bombs, grenades and other weapons, and
creating “Crush” sites;

So they got back to me pretty quickly and said:

Hi Raphi,

Blogger reserves the right to remove those blogs which are setup either
automatically or manually for the purpose of manipulating search engine
results or generating revenue or traffic through deceptive means. In
accordance to the termination provision of the TOS
(http://www.blogger.com/terms.g), we have therefore removed your blogs
and/or terminated your account.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

And so I say - not to them but to all of you who are reading this that all is fair in love and war and business. I respect the fact that they are tremendously busy and have a great company and are making tons of money. I just can’t understand what they are talking about regarding the practices they mention. In conclusion, I have decided not to use their service anymore. I thought free was free but its not so I am going Howard Stern and taking it to Sirius. Just kidding. I love their platform. But obviously they don’t like me or my business practices. So therefore I will be hosting my own blogs from now on.

Now that that is out of the way I can get back to the agenda. I would like to set up these bi-weekly rants to talk about SalemGlobal the company. What we do for our clients, and the resources we use. Pretty simple. Let’s get started.

Tonight I was on the phone for a while with a new client Bridges to Recovery. They run a 6-bed residential treatment facility in beautiful sunny California. Their website is lacking some basics so that’s where we start. What we found out in our research among about 1,000 things is that more people search for the word “center” instead of “facility.” And “depression” is more searched than “anxiety.” We will be working with them for the next year so stay tuned and listen up. We already have their Alexa ratings up about 250,000.

I also started getting into my new post at the Jerusalem Post. This whole thing with Ariel Sharon is really not so great for Peace but truth be told, news of an Israeli Prime Minister in a coma helps the ratings. No one cares about the good news coming out of Israel, but people want to know when the bulldozer is going to wake up. We are talking about Peace in the Middle East now. No more jokes! But while I am here - I might as well ask you - if you are a Jewish (or Non-Jewish) organization or business, you should really consider a banner ad or text link at http://www.jpost.com. Alexa rating of 2220. Track this with me - this is going to be a challenge. One of the highest rated sites in the world. My goal top 1000 within 6 months.

I launched a number of personal and business websites over the past 2 weeks. Please check them out at:
http://www.israelibabysitter.com (alexa 3,020,098) - Temporary Israeli babysitters speak Hebrew to your kids!
http://www.israelinanny.com (alexa 2,144,712) - Full Time (live-in or live-out) nannies speak Hebrew to your kids!
http://www.usedsukkah.com (No data) - Why pay full price when you can score a Sukkah for $18.00?
http://www.nybni.com (Alexa 2,447,175) - My NY BNI chapter needed a website and we need people to join. So I optimized this and within 2 weeks we are #1 for “ny bni” and #4 for “bni ny” Business networking here in NYC at its finest. Contact me today and check it out…

And while we are taliking about business networking here in NY, for the past year I have been attending Ronn Torrosian’s power networking early morning meetings at his office at 5WPR. If you want to know more about networking, just ask me. I do most of my business through warm referrals and the rest through the web. Contact me and we will talk about it.

Finally, I wanted to leave you off this week with a list of resources that I use personally and professionally:
www.practicalecommerce.com
www.crainsny.com
http://www.revenuetoday.com/
www.nyreport.com
www.mediapost.com
www.alexa.com
www.google.com
www.theagencyblog.com
www.jimboykin.com
http://www.wdfm.com/

Lots more but I need to go…see ya!