Tony's Thing on the Web

How to stop spam email is a problem that faces all Internet users and especially website owners. Finding an email spam blocker or using a spam filter service may help but is there a better way ?

I recently returned from a 3 week absence to find I had received almost 4,000 emails from the 50 or more email accounts that I have. Of those emails 70% were SPAM which from what I have read seems fairly typical.

There would probably be more if not for the spam filter service I use on each web hosting account. This 2nd line of defense does its best to act as an email spam blocker before the mail reaches me.

My 3rd line of defense, which is the most effective, is Mailwasher an email spam blocker software that I run that whilst it doesn't stop spam email, at least stops me from having to download it before I find out that it's a SPAM email.

My 4th line of defense is my email client (browser) on which I have set up some basic filters.

In case you're wondering what my 1st line of defense is to stop spam email, it's trying not to let my email addresses be captured by spam bots and email brokers. I know in the latter case I need to do better.

Of course it would be nice to be able to stop spam email before it ever gets to my mail box. It would also help if the whole system of email we currently all endure were redesigned. The email system we have today was created at a time when SPAM emails were largely unheard of.

As such the email system we all use is easily abused. For example many web hosts operate capture all email accounts. This means it doesn't matter what someone uses to send you an email.

Say they use wyscz@yourdomain.com, the web hosts email server at yourdomain.com will deliver it to you even though you have no such email address as wyscz. What the web host has done is shift the problem from them to you.

Have a good Christmas and a Happy New Year

Tony
website design optimisation
Making Your Website Work for You

Continue reading "Email Spam Blockers - Is There a Better Way ?" »

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 11:27 AM | web page link

In the past three weeks I have been receiving a daily email that is meant to provide a Niche Market per Day.

I have written before about what is and what isn't a Niche and these daily examples from Niche A Day are yet more examples of what I consider not to be a niche.

The daily email comes courtesy of NicheADay.com run by Scott Standke, who also runs Keywordavalanche.com.

In the email Scot provides a keyword or phrase which by his definition represents a niche market based on the estimated monthly traffic from Overture and a PPC bid price which is the other piece of information supplied.

Here is a list of the Niche a day supplied in each daily email for the past 3 weeks.

They look really exciting with these high levels of traffic. But the real question is what chance is there of getting any of that traffic if you built a website around one of these “niches” ?

To answer that question you need to look at what information is not supplied by NicheADay and that’s the level of competition.

Or, put another way, how many other web pages are competing for this traffic by using the exact same keyword phrases ?

Todays NicheADay niche is: spyware
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 448,799

Todays NicheADay niche is: digital photography
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 52293

Todays NicheADay niche is: consulting
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 179117

Todays NicheADay niche is: bahamas
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 121890

Todays NicheADay niche is: bankruptcy
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 278932

Todays NicheADay niche is: diabetes
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 425020

Todays NicheADay niche is: landscaping
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 140988

Todays NicheADay niche is: adoption
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 190355

Todays NicheADay niche is: car insurance
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 1740644

Todays NicheADay niche is: hot tub
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 196195

Todays NicheADay niche is: office furniture
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 208618

Todays NicheADay niche is: tax attorney
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 180207

Todays NicheADay niche is: teeth whitening
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 78842

Todays NicheADay niche is: wedding
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 494127

Todays NicheADay niche is: airfare
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 804608

Todays NicheADay niche is: architect
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 110468

Todays NicheADay niche is: dating
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 3067977

Todays NicheADay niche is: gardening
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 224923

Todays NicheADay niche is: headphones
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 32553

Todays NicheADay niche is: home gym
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 101429

Todays NicheADay niche is: long distance
Estimated Overture Monthly traffic: 219359

Here’s the same list again but I have added the number of other web pages being reported by Overture ( this information was not supplied by NicheADay )

Competing Web Pages
spyware 222,000,000
digital photography 74,800,000
consulting 695,000,000
bahamas 245,000,000
bankruptcy 141,000,000
diabetes 197,000,000
landscaping 55,200,000
adoption 316,000,000
car insurance 77,900,000
hot tub 21,400,000
office furniture 437,00,000
tax attorney 3,040,000
teeth whitening 4,380,000
wedding 304,000,000
airfare 60,500,000
architect 220,000,000
dating 437,000,000
gardening 122,000,000
headphones 68,400,000
home gym 4,260,000
long distance 109,000,000

With this level of other web pages using the exact same keywords, I would like to know how anyone would consider these to be in a Niche.

Perhaps Scot Standke could supply his definition of a niche ?

Then it would all make perfect sense how we can quickly get free traffic to a website built around one of these keywords.

As Scot says in his NicheADay email “Now it's up to you to take this information and actually do something with it.”

Here’s my suggestion, put it in the bin, what’s your suggestion ?

To determine whether a niche is worth targeting you need to do proper keyword research or keyword discovery as I prefer to call it. That means at least knowing not just the volume of monthly searches, but also the level of competition for those search terms.

If there is a lot of competiton in your niche you then need to determine what chance you stand of competing in that niche. That will depend a lot on your website, your know-how and what budget you intend to spend to dominate that niche. You can see what factors I use during my own keyword discovery at: web site optimization & keyword discovery

Tony Simpson
web site optimisation
Making Your Website Work for You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 12:47 PM | web page link | Comments (1)

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry called " Do You Believe in Fairy Tales " in which an Internet Marketer had sent me an email regarding a SEO (search engine optimization) product that he said would get me higher search engine rankings than ever before.

Two days later I get another email from the same marketer telling me to be wary of SEO programs that make all sorts of misleading claims. Now this marketer has obviously not realized or forgotten that his previous email was promoting an SEO product, which I should add, was full of misleading claims.

So does this marketer think I have such a short memory that I'll not realize one day he is sending me a message to buy an SEO product full of all sorts of misleading claims and two days later he is telling me to be wary of SEO products that make all sorts of claims.

In other words he thinks I'm a Goldfish - shown to have poor memory and an attention span of about 3 seconds.

The first part of his email read:

You've probably seen a lot of SEO programs lately that make all sorts of claims. Some will get you the #1 spot on Google, or others will "magically" drive laser-targeted traffic to your site.

The truth is that there is no "magic button" and there never will be. If you've bought into the claims of the SEO magicians, you've probably learned that many of the so-called systems are short-lived, and some of them will get your site outright banned from the search engines!

Don't get me wrong, there ARE helpful tools which can be an important part of your SEO strategy. The tricky part is not wasting your time and money on the ones that don't work or will get your site dropped.

In terms of wasting your money or getting your site dropped he obviously is not referring to his own SEO product of two days before that I showed was a waste of money and could get your site dropped.

I said I wouldn't reveal this marketers identity to avoid him embarrassment, but since he thinks I'm a Goldfish I've decided to tell you his name is David Zohar.

Tony Simpson
web site optimisation
Making Your Web Site Work for You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 07:47 PM | web page link

Just how many emails do you get from marketers who will tell you porky pies ( Lies ) to get you to do something. Here’s one I received a while ago from quite a well known marketer of web business products.

It read:

When I got up this morning I found a gift in my inbox. It was an email from one of my top affiliates. He had sent me a free one year paid silver members to his new website. This wasn’t something new because I get a lot of people who send me free copies of their products to review.

I logged in and found ebooks, software, scripts and resale rights to a ton of unique products. It’s really was a very cool gift to find in my inbox today.

So, I sent him a quick email in response to see if I could also send YOU a one year membership. After a little negotiation he finally agreed, on one condition. That was that you wouldn’t share the link with anyone else.

He usually sells these memberships for $97 a year, but you’ll get in the back door because you are on my list. Here is your back door login page:

Affiliate Link to website was here

I hope that you’ll love this gift as much as I did.

The membership site to which this email refers, has been offering this same product for the past 6 months so it’s not new ( Lie 1 ).

Secondly a lot of the products offered are not unique ( Lie 2 ).

The one year membership normally $97 has been given away by lots of marketers, I don’t think many people actually pay for it. ( Lie 3 ).

The marketing strategy is to give the basic membership away for free with the view that you’ll upgrade from silver to gold membership. So getting a one year membership would not take much negotiation ( Lie 4).

You should not share this link ( I agree ) but by telling you not to, he hopes you’re going to be naughty and tell all your friends about it so he can get even more sign ups.

Tony Simpson
web site optimisation
Making Your Website Work for You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 07:13 AM | web page link

I gave up believing in fairy tales at quite an early age yet surprising as it may seem a lot of marketers on the Internet still believe in them, or if not they think the rest of us still do.

You see I subscribe to quite a lot of email lists and get about 250 emails a week. I’m a fast reader and they’re a good way of keeping up to date with what’s going on. However the down side is I have to wade through a lot of Bull S**t.

They also give me a good laugh from time to time with the claims they make and the way they write about different products. I have to wonder who on earth swallows this sort of stuff, but I guess some people do.

A good example of a fairy tale was an email I received yesterday from a marketer whose name I will not reveal to save him the embarrassment.

##### His email went as follows #####

Here is how you can be on your way to higher, stronger and more powerful Search Engine Rankings Than Ever Before...

URL link to product.

With this new software you can boost your search engine rankings, and help your website climb the search engine charts like never before.

Top search engines such as Google and Yahoo are now listing many different types of documents in their listings, including PDF files, as well as Flash sites, and .SWF graphics files.

These top search engines are always updating and adding new abilities to their search engine spider technology, and as that technology increases, it gives you added opportunities to update and give your websites that cutting edge before your competition knows about it.

The "Secret FLASH Search Engine Rank Booster" simply going to replace your existing .GIF and .JPG images on your site with new images that can carry keyword phrases the search engine spiders can read and rank

The "Secret FLASH Search Engine Rank Booster" takes away all of the time consuming effort that it would otherwise take you, and turns it into a few short minutes of playtime that can help boost your rankings like crazy.

You can read about this new and amazing tool at:

URL link to product

##### End of email #####

The ability to put text into images is not new and Google has been able to read text in Flash files for at least the past 12 months. I came across a similar product to this about 6 months ago.

What’s being offered in this product email is the ability to put hidden text in images by converting gif’s and jpg’s to flash files.

But putting hidden text on a web page can get your pages removed from a search engine’s index and get your site banned, so don’t try this at home folks.

Google has for a long time made it clear that even the use of Alt tags for images by stuffing them with keywords will be regarded as Spamming the search engine. The end result can be the same – banned by Google.

What this marketer also doesn’t tell you is converting all your gif and jpg images to flash files will slow the download time of your web pages dramatically. This will not make your visitors very happy and the search engine’s don’t like slow loading pages either.

If you want to learn more about the effects of page loading times on your visitors and on search engines you can get a free evaluation at: free visitor web page optimisation evaluation

Does this marketer use this flash search engine rank booster on any of his 12 or more web sites, well I asked the question and I’m waiting for the answer. I also asked if he could provide a URL so I can check.

What do you think his answer will be ?

If Yes, he does believe in Fairy Tales

If No, he doesn’t believe in Fairy Tales but he wants everyone else to.

By way of a footnote to my question to this Internet Marketer, I never did get a reply. This must mean he doesn't use this product himself and doesn't believe in fairy tales, but he wants you to.

Tony Simpson
web site optimisation
Making Your Website Work for You

Copyright Tony Simpson - Webpageaddons.com | Posted at 09:45 AM | web page link