I was doing an SEO workshop in OMS  New York and one person asked me about guarantees. Their idea was to force the  person to sign up for a service for a year and they could only ask for a refund when the year was up. I said this was at best deceptive and that if they were offering a guarantee it should be as easy to apply for as possible and should be as easy to receive as it was for them to sign  up in the first place. I said if they offered me this guarantee and I tried to claim on it I would be furious I had to wait 1 year to get my money back.… Read the rest

Fionn Downhill CEO of Elixir Interactive an internet marketing agency specializing in Online Reputation Management and Search Engine Optimization Services is a featured speaker at the OMS 23 City tour this summer.  Fionn will present a session in Phoenix, New York, Atlanta and Charlotte.    You can read more about the tour and see an interview with Aaron Kahlow CEO of OMS here.… Read the rest

We have now had a site down since Friday and have still not managed to get it back up and today is Wednesday. This all started when our account was allegedly sending spam. Instead of informing us there was a problem so we could fix it they suspended the account. Now 6 days later and we have still not been able to get them to turn back on the account. Calling them results in being put on a queue forever. Chat with the support staff and they can’t re-enable the account. The problem is until the account is back on we can not go in and check what went wrong and why it was sending spam.… Read the rest

This is something I fought on Friday and got to the realization that PHP classes don’t support array constants. Not sure why not but sometimes you’re stuck with a situation and need a work around. In this instance I used static class variables in place of consts:

class AutoReport
 {

// This should be a constant but PHP constants don't handle arrays

static $DelayTimes = array( 0 => 'Run Once' ,
 60 => '1 Minute' ,
 120 => '2 Minutes' ,
 180 => '3 Minutes' ,
 240 => '4 Minutes' ,
 300 => '5 Minutes' ,
 600 => '10 Minutes' ,
 900 => '15 Minutes' ,
 1800 => '30 Minutes' ,
 3600 => '1 Hour' ,
 7200 => '2 Hours' ,
 14400 => '4 Hours' ,
 43200 => '12 Hours' ,
 ) ;

}

And when referencing this:

AutoReport::$DelayTimes

OK fought this for a while yesterday so thought I would share. The original objective was to display a Google Map with pointers for all the locations on the map, the map would then be re-zoomed and centered so all points show. Sounds simple! After hours of fighting the system the big problem is Google Maps wants to have the map centered and zoomed before adding any pointers. Here’s my take on this, BTW this was built from various other authors code snippets but the combination of them to make it work is my original code:

First off you need a div to put the map into.… Read the rest

Interesting take from Seth Godin on the soda tax proposed in New York http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/rights-and-responsibilities.html

I find it fascinating that companies can sell a product that’s (supposedly) bad for you, they have alternatives available (including diet, water, and other beverages), and yet won’t help their customers move to the healthier alternatives. This isn’t tobacco where there is no healthier alternative, you either smoke or you don’t – here they could help wean people off full HFCS sodas to diet without losing their market or their sales.

This seems typical big company head in the sand thinking – if we fight it we keep the status quo.… Read the rest

Google algorithm changes are a big deal for all of us in the industry. They key is to be aware of all that is happening and be ready to anticipate, test and react. One of the keys to obtaining swift rankings is to ensure that your pages load quickly.

Site speed is always an issue. If your page is not loading quickly enough then it can create problems for your site. You can check your site speed using this page speed tool.  Use it by downloading the page speed add-on.  Page speed is part of the best practices of web design.… Read the rest

Once upon a time, PayPal disputes amounted to less than 1% of all transactions.  It wasn’t really necessary or desirable to have a procedure to handle your side of the dispute.

In fact, in our business, we used to simply refund them and inform them that they weren’t welcome to make any purchases in the future.

The economic downturn and other factors have sent PayPal disputes through the roof for many businesses though.  Our own current rate is over 6%.  We have customer who is experiencing a 26% PayPal dispute rate and/or chargeback rate.

This all started in October of 2008 right when the stock market crashed. … Read the rest

Android announce preview of SDK 1.5. The new o/s contains a bunch of enhancements – see http://developer.android.com/sdk/preview/features.html

I love the Android phone but have two issues:

• Doesn’t sync to Exchange without 3rd party software
• Battery doesn’t last

Otherwise it’s pretty brilliant.… Read the rest

It’s a very common problem that tags have a title attribute set. This is against the W3C standard and so should be avoided – use the alt tag instead.

SiteCara.com has had the site audit functionality changed to include checks for this issue on all pages checked. If you want a swift rank or ranking at all you must comply with all standards… Read the rest