If you’re reading this, you probably know what dynamic keyword insertion is, and just want to know about the legal implications. But just in case, a quick bit of background. Dynamic keyword insertion is a feature used by major PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising networks such as Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads as it was known…
In 1996 I was a technology consultant and author—I’d recently written the second edition of the best-selling Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Internet—when I received a phone call (or was it an email?) from an attorney working for Microsoft. I don’t recall whether this was an in-house attorney or a law firm working for the…
“The SEO business is 80% scam,” I told a new client the other day…”damn right”, he said, “I’ve been scammed already!” I’ve been telling people my “80% scam” estimate for several years now, and what amazes me is that never has anyone disagreed. Nobody’s ever said “that’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” Never has…
It still amazes me just how bad businesses–in particular, but not exclusively, small businesses–manage their passwords. We’re almost a quarter of a century into the Internet revolution (I date it to 1993, when the popular press began talking about the Internet), and still the average person does a totally absurd job of managing passwords. DepositPhotos…
Online reviews are a double-edged sword for today’s business. A firm that knows how to manage reviews well can benefit greatly. Businesses that don’t, or simply deserve bad reviews, can be seriously harmed. Yelp’s Anti-Litigator Warning Box Perhaps not surprisingly, some businesses thought they’d try a little legal arm-twisting in order to guarantee good reviews. They began…
You’ve probably heard the phrase, Content is King. I recently asked for a show of hands at a speech I was giving, “how many of you know the phrase ‘content is king,’” and I was surprised at how many people, in this non-technical, small-business audience, with little understanding of digital marketing or SEO, had heard the phrase. No, One Size…
Last week I published a blog post explaining that most SEO services are a scam (I won’t repeat myself; you can find out about the SEO scam here). I want to explain another way businesses can avoid getting ripped off: by understanding the role of page optimization. There are essentially two sides to Search Engine Optimization: on-page and off-page. On-page optimization is…
AdWords Express provides a fast way set up a simple Google AdWords PPC advertising campaign… but a really terrible way to set up a good AdWords account, it’s a method that will almost certainly cost you more money in clicks than you make in sales. First, what exactly is AdWords Express? I must admit that in years of PPC advertising…