ipernity is a photo display and Web 2.0 blogging platform. They’ve been going since 2004 and, to use their own words, allow you to “Share whatever you want with people who matter to you or with the whole world”.

Well, … actually it doesn’t quite work out like that. I recently had my ipernity account closed down without warning.

What had I done wrong? I’m not sure, and they don’t seem to want to tell me. I’d uploaded some nice scenic photos of the North of England, all my own work. People who saw them, and my stats, had been telling me that these were appreciated. I’d put up some short articles about aspects of travel and tourism in England – and yes, they did contain links to two of my self-hosted blogs which are ‘commercial’ to the extent that between them they just about cover their costs. There was nothing highly commercialised. The worst I can think of is that I do some of my blog posting by email and think I might accidentally have sent a couple of items twice with one of them containing an Amazon link. Do they ban for ‘duplicate content’?

So what did I do wrong? I don’t know, because they don’t tell me. They gave no warning. I discovered the situation when I tried to get onto the site to see if there was any tidying of profile or blog layout and design to be done. There had been no courteous email saying, “Dear Sir, we’re unhappy with what you’re putting on our site ….”. Nothing! Everything has simply vanished, and worse!

I had included links to my ipernity-hosted photos in several places. As far as I can tell from my bitly stats there have not been too many clicks on them since the account closure, but as I’m not sure when it was closed I’m not certain about that either. My main concern is that instead of going to a beautiful riverside scene in Northern England people clicking on those links have been faced with a big red X and “This member account is closed or suspended.” What is that other than an attack on my online reputation? Implications of spam? Or porn? I do not take it kindly.

I wrote a polite and restrained email to them but got only a standardised reply with the sense of, “You must have in some way contravened our terms of serve”. If they had been sufficiently polite as to reply meaningfully then probably, depending on the nature of their reply, I would not have written this more public post.

Fortunately I had not been using ipernity for long so I didn’t lose a major investment of time and attention, but please be warned. If you put photos up on ipernity do not use it as a primary photo store. You never know when they might all disappear. Make certain that you have everything safely backed up somewhere else.

….. and if by some miracle someone from ipernity reads this, maybe you’d like to write to me.

Thankfully my main sites have not been hit hard by the various Google algorithm changes over recent months. (But that’s no cause for complacency; I could be next!) Several of my smaller sites have, however, been virtually destroyed. Traffic is down to almost nothing in spite of being well-constructed and personally written on subjects that I know a lot about; in other words, exactly what Google say they want to see. Ha! Ha!

Many have suffered far more than myself, and not only the bulk-generators of trash sites but online businesses built up painstakingly with integrity over years. I suppose the mighty-G considers the destruction of honest businesses as merely collateral damage in their war against what they consider to be money-making “spam” [Interpretation: anyone who designs a web site to make money - as though they themselves went into the office every morning without expecting to be paid!] I’ve fought for a long time to suppress a growing hatred of Google, but it’s becoming very hard to keep it down. They need a serious overhaul of their corporate ethics.

Pushed Below The Fold

This morning, though, I’m equally irritated at what they’re continuing to do even to successfully ranking keywords. One of my best sites has been struggling for traffic recently even though it has several important keywords on page 1. Take the example of one that currently ranks at number 4. Who are the occupants [note the plural] of positions 1 to 3? Well, the answer isn’t in the plural, it’s singular. Every one of those top three slots is taken by … Amazon!

So by the time you’ve allowed for the paid spam (my definition, not Google’s) at the top of the page, followed by three slots given to the same big company, my number 4 ranking is pushed below the fold. By long hard work I’ve managed to get ahead of what I’ve always considered to be my “real” competition, but what’s the point of all the effort? What hope have I of ever beating the combination of Big-G and Big-A?

Clearly it’s time to rethink, and two approaches recommend themselves to me:

• Put increased effort into getting direct non-search traffic
• For search traffic find and focus on keywords that don’t appear to interest Amazon

Will it work? I don’t know but some response to the depredations of the immoral uncaring self-focused G-monster has to be found. Google is so big that it’s almost impossible to do without it, but I’ll certainly be minimising my exposure. One thing I SHALL NOT be doing is paying them any money for Adwords. That really would be surrender. I’m planning to go battling on.

I don’t know about you but without making any conscious decision to do so I find that I’ve been using Google Plus less than I did. I still feel that it is an excellent product so why has this been happening?

Apparently the same has been happening with others but some industry observers feel that the introduction of ‘Google Play’, replacing the old (Old!? It’s nobbut a youngster!) Android Market has been designed to boost sharing on Google Plus. Here’s what Bea Halstead said yesterday:

To date, a few industry analysts have been hinting that Google Plus suffers from a lack of use by the over 10 million registered users. With the implementation of Google Play, and the limited sharing available, it seems like Google is devising a strategy to boost interaction within Google Plus.

What do you think? Are you using Google Plus as much as you did? Will ‘Google Play’ make any difference?

As you no doubt already know, writing articles is probably the most effective way to promote your web site. It’s a very simple principle – publishers want a vast quantity of good quality content that they do not have to pay for; you provide that content, with the proviso that at the bottom of your article, they include your resource box with a link to your web site. It’s a win-win situation. With your article published on heaps of web sites, and in several ezines, it’s enough to set your traffic counter spinning.

However, I see many articles that are simply not written in a way that will maximize the benefits for the author. Minor mistakes can turn an article that would otherwise get published several times and achieve a great deal for the author, into an article that is barely published and discarded by most publishers into the trash.

By avoiding these common mistakes, your article will appeal much more to publishers, and you will see the results from your article submissions vastly improve:

1. Do Not Write A Solo Ad

Many authors make the mistake of submitting articles that are actually little more than solo advertisements for their web sites. Containing little helpful information, they read like a sales letter and then urge the reader to visit their web site – and that’s before you get to the resource box.

The chances of such an article getting published are virtually zero. Publishers are looking for an informative article, a quality piece that they can publish in order to benefit their readership and their visitors.

This means that including a link to your own web site in the article body is generally a no-no, unless for example, you are linking to a helpful article that adds further to the information you have included and is in context.

Your article should not read like a promotional vehicle for a particular product or service.

2. Do Not Include Affiliate Links

The site of an affiliate link within your article is a big turn-off for publishers – unless your article is highly informative and of an extremely high quality, but that is quite rare.

Generally, if you want to maximize your chances of publication, avoid including affiliate links in your article. You can sometimes get away with it, if for example you include a link to a straight domain that actually forwards via your affiliate link to another web site. The publisher might not notice, as it appears to be a straightforward web site link, but I find it quite sneaky and dishonest, and I would not generally recommend it.

3. Avoid Spelling Mistakes

The sight of a spelling mistake in an article is another big turn-off for publishers. It turns what could otherwise be an acceptable article with good chances of publication, into a poor quality article that will end up in the trash. Publishers are busy people – they don’t have time to edit out your mistakes. But the main point is that spelling mistakes leave a Very Bad Impression – it points to a lack of care on your part, and reduces the credibility of the information provided in the article.

Take a minute to run your article through a spell checker – there’s a free one online at http://www.spellcheck.net/ – before you submit it. You may be surprised at what you failed to spot.

4. Do Not Include Hype In Your Resource Box

While your resource box can include a link to your web site, it should not read like an advert. I see many resource boxes that read like over-hyped promotional material more at home on a classified ad page. Your resource box should contain some brief information about you as an author, with a link to your web page – nothing more.

A badly written, overly-promotional resource box can cause a publisher to reject your article, even if your article would otherwise have been accepted – the simple reason is that such a hyped-up resource box would ‘lower the tone’ of their publication, and turn off their readership. That’s obviously not what they want to do.

Just respect your potential publishers, and keep your resource box brief and to the point.

As long as you avoid these common mistakes, you are on the right track, and you should see the results from your article submissions greatly improve.

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=963

Article spinning. The title here should most certainly not be interpreted as my saying that I don’t “spin” articles. I do! Some years back, though, I tried several spinners to produce new variants of existing articles and was always dissatisfied with the output. Since then I’ve always written my article then rewritten it in “spyntax” by hand.

Using this method I consistently get meaningful output. Yes, it takes a little longer. In fact at first it used to take a lot longer, but with practice became quite easy. The search engines like to see unique content and they’ve never grumbled at my work.

This evening, however, I decide to look again at current spinners and to see whether they have improved. One was an obvious no-no; the web site seemed to date from Noah’s day. The next triggered a severe threat warning from my protection software. The third looked more reputable, offered a free trial and what I felt was a realistic but not too suspiciously low cost if I liked it. So on I went.

My original paragraph: “The rise of mass tourism and the development of the railway network both happened in the late 19th century. In some areas it was the former that facilitated the latter but in the case of the Lake District it was the other way round.”

Granted these were not the easiest sentences in the world but I wanted the test to be realistic. Here were three outputs:

Spin 1. “The rise regarding muscle size tourist plus the development of the railway multilevel the two occurred in the late nineteenth one hundred year. In a few locations it was your past that triggerred your second item yet in the matter of your Body of water Area it was the opposite approach spherical.”

Spin 2. “The actual go up associated with bulk tourism plus the growth with the railway network the two happened inside overdue nineteenth century. In some places it had been your ex – which caused your second item however in the matter of your Pond Region it had been the other means rounded.”

Spin 3. “The particular rise regarding size vacation as well as the improvement in the train community equally happened inside the late 19th hundred years. In a few areas it turned out your ex – that triggerred your latter nevertheless in the case of your River District it turned out the other method circular.”

Maybe I’m giving up too easily, but I’m returning to my hand spinning!

It was announced yesterday that “Posterous is joing the flock at Twitter”. Should I be pleased? Should I be uneasy? Or should I be downright worried?

My own use of the two services has clearly separated them into very different categories, in three respects:

• Message Size: In my language here at AdMastery.biz, Twitter is a “micro-blog” and Posterous is a “midi-blog”. The 140-character limitation of Twitter is for the punchy message whereas Posterous allows longer, more blog-like length.
• Headline: Posterous allows a headline, Twitter does not
• Hub Distribution: Twitter is on the receiving end of social hub distribution (in my case usually from Ping.fm – which is also under a cloud of uncertainty at present) whereas Posterous acts as a distribution hub.

It is important that these distinctives be maintained.

This needs watching closely. The social distribution strategy of many small-scale online operators is geared strongly to the present mix of characteristics.

WordPress 3.3 was released yesterday and includes some useful enhancements. I just now updated one of my blogs and at least up to this point I’ve found no incompatibilities with any of my theme or plugin additions. After that first test on a less important blog I updated AdMastery.biz here and equally have found no problem.

Details of the update are available from the WordPress site, and it’s a long list. To me, so far, the main highlight is the new media drag-and-drop facility for uploading photos, videos, graphics, etc.; in fact you can upload several simultaneously.

Another improvement is the lefthand navigation sidebar, Where previously you had to click on a link to get a vertically expanded menu, now you simply hover and get a popup menu.

Not only as blogging software but in my opinion as a general content management platform WordPress, especially when combined with the Thesis theme, continues to stand out as the user-friendly option.

Once again, here is the link for the list of enhancements.

Google search people decided some time ago that retailing online is a bad thing and made it more difficult for sites with many product sales pages to get seen. Affiliate marketing is undesirable in their eyes and pages with affiliate links can get marked down. Prominent positioning of ads above the fold is also in their opinion objectionable.

The fact that all of this is profoundly inconsistent with their own Adwords, Adsense and Affiliate Network businesses has apparently escaped their notice. Or has it? Actually it doesn’t need to worry them because they only apply the rules to other people, not to themselves.

If you don’t believe that, just look at the search results page for any popular search term. As an example SEO Book carried an interesting post a few weeks back on Google’s aggressive positioning in the Make Money Online niche. Oh, and I’m also waiting to see them apply the same rules to Amazon as to other online retailers. It is sad also to see that to some extent Bing appears to be following down the same road. See this post on Search Engine Land.

As I’ve said several times I do not wish to be anti-Google. I prefer to be a constructively critical friend, but this positioning becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as their business ethics deteriorate. There are two fundamental flaws in their thinking that I want to deal with in this post.

• It is true that some people (and yes, maybe a lot) dilute the content of the web with sloppy sites that carry little of value, are padded with badly written almost incomprehensible “articles” and promoted using ‘black-hat’ techniques. It is not, however, morally valid to respond to this situation by “taking a sledge-hammer to crack a nut”, demonising and destroying honest, hard-working online retailers in the process … which brings me to my second point.
• Google’s position regarding what they see as “thin” sites runs absolutely counter to all historic retailing logic. Small-town high street stores, by present-day Google logic, do not “add value” to what they are selling and should all be closed down. All they do is display goods for people to come in and buy. In fact in many cases they don’t even do that; products are simply on a shelf or in a cupboard waiting to be asked for. No value added! Shut them down!

What absolute nonsense! A small retail store adds value by bringing together a selection of products into a location where people can buy them. Having them two hundred miles away is not much use. Location IS value.

And what does an online retailer do but bring products together on a site where people can browse, and buy if they wish. Where is the difference? Where is the need to add anything beside providing the locational convenience of having a selection of items together on the site for people to look at? Blocking basic retail sites from view is akin to building a brick wall along the high street to prevent passers by from seeing the storefronts.

What more need I say? Search engine ethics need a radical overhaul.

Over the past year I have oscillated between thinking well of Google and very much the opposite. On the positive side of the equation is the new Google+ social site which I’ve been using since the by-invitation beta phase and find greatly superior to Facebook. I’m using it more and more. On the negative side is what they’ve been doing to search which, despite all their claims of promoting ‘quality’, is being adjusted rapidly toward the interests of big business and other well-funded sites – and of Google themselves.

For the main keyword on one of my older and well-developed sites only one result appears “above the fold” on my screen apart from sponsored ads, and that one is a UK government body. Clearly then I must target much less used keywords and phrases. Yes, that’s right, but what has Google done to long-tail search? Below, courtesy of SEO Book, is their answer to that question in the form of an Infographic.

Infographic by SEO Book

What do you think? Leave your comments below.

Recently I’ve been reminded several times of the vital importance of customer service in building a sustainable business.

Forty years ago, as an under-30 with a shiny new business qualification but no experience, I was given the unbelievable opportunity of working as an assistant to the recently appointed Deputy-CEO of a major consumer products company. The first project he gave me was to discover how we as a company treated people who complained, commented or asked questions about our products. This experience shaped my view of customer service and product support for the rest of my career.

During the past few weeks, however, I’ve seen the other side of the story here on the web. I bought a WordPress plugin. It didn’t work. I emailed the developer and, to do him justice, he replied the following morning with some advice. It still didn’t work so I wrote again. He replied once more, but a bit more slowly. Still I couldn’t get it to deliver the goods so I wrote yet again, remaining calm and courteous and giving no cause for aggravation. … but I’ve waited for weeks now and in spite of polite reminders, total silence.

This is the second time this kind of thing has happened to me in the past few months, with two different software developers. In both cases I have other of their products. In fact one of them is open in my browser right now and I’m completely satisfied with it. But am I likely to buy anything more from either of them? Probably not! I’d certainly think more than twice before doing so.

How can one make people, especially those of a technical bent, realise that the development of a product is only the start of an ongoing process, and that ongoing customer service is the foundation on which their future success must be built? Customer satisfaction, indeed customer delight, is earned not from a good product alone but from good, and patient, product support.