The Art Of SEO - The Science Of PPC

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Integrity Preserves Brand

Always act with integrity to maintain your reputation and your brand. One reason to be fair and honorable in your dealings with customers and employees is the amount of damage an angry person can do to your brand. This damage can vary from complaints to the BBB and your credit card processor to posting negative reviews and feedback about your site. Negatives like this can really taint a site.

In the extreme example, the negative reviews can actually overwhelm the company’s own brand in search engines. Take the case of a now defunct SEO company called Traffic Power. They flourished briefly during the two years or so when a link farm could drive Google SERP. They acquired some enemies from their questionable practices as well as sued some people who made disparaging remarks about them.

Instead of silencing their critics, the lawsuit lit up the blogosphere, rallied the SEO community and generated thousands of back links to the story on SEOBook. The top ten SERP’s on Google for “Traffic Power” are currently dominated by websites dedicated to informing customers about the dangers of Traffic Power. The number one site is called Traffic Power Sucks. Traffic Power is in bankruptcy.

Most companies don’t have to worry about pissing off the top names in SEO or someone taking the time to create a site dedicated to telling people, for example “This Brand Can’t be Trusted” or P……….com is owned by a crooks. Only a mistreated former employee or a really angry customer would do that. Rarely is the anger sustained long enough to go to the effort of purchasing a domain like www.P………Sucks.com and optimizing it to control a brand.

What is far more likely is that an unhappy customer or former employee might spend a few minutes each day clicking on paid links for a particular company. For example, the search term of postcard printing brings up sponsored adds that cost between $5 and $15 dollars per click. If the spurned customer or jilted employee is angry enough to get their friends and family to do the same thing, pretty soon the ROI of the campaign can get be put in doubt.

So marketers and business owners, act with integrity in all of your dealings and your brand will prosper.

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Outlaw 2.4 GHz Phones Before they Destroy WiFi

2.4 GHz PHONES SHOULD BE OUTLAWED

For the last few months, I have been battling with intermittent connection problems on my network. After hundreds of hard reboots on my router (which restored the connection for 10 minutes at a time), tweaking my settings (which did nothing) and enduring the complaints of my wife (and a neighbor who piggy backs my wireless connection), I was at the end of my rope. Suddenly, I remembered that the network at my father’s house occasionally made clicking sounds on his cordless phone. We fixed the problem by turning off the SSID broadcast from his wireless network. I realized that my problem began about the same time I purchased a new phone for my office. I reached over a couple feet, unplugged the offending phone and 30 seconds later, my network problems disappeared.

It would be easy to consider this a lesson relearned and an $80 dollar phone that needs a new home, except that 2.4 GHz cordless phones don’t have to be in your house to cause network problems. They are much higher power than WiFi devices and can wreak havoc on a large section of an apartment complex, a nearby business or on a half a block around your home. Here is a very technical description of WiFi Interference Problems.

Law makers should immediately make it illegal to sell any device that interferes on the WiFi spectrum in light of the widespread adoption of WiFi, the huge investment in the standard and the difficulty in overcoming interference, shouldn’t that bit of spectrum be protected? There are cordless phones on the 900 MHz and 5.4 GHz frequencies that don’t interfere, so it’s not a question of cordless phones versus wireless networks. At minimum, a warning label should be required that screams in 48 point type, “THIS DEVICE MAY DISABLE WIRELESS NETWORKS OPERATING NEAR BY.”

As a marketer, here is a great opportunity! Providing a solution to a problem that people are not aware of, while creating a little fear and uncertainty about another product, is a very effective way to get a consumer to make a decision!

If you sell 900 MHz or 5.8 GHz phones, raise the price above what you charge for 2.4 GHz phone. Print up some labels that say, “WON’T INTERFERE WITH YOUR WiFi NETWORK” and then below that, include “2.4 GHz devices may interfere with WiFi networks” and attach the labels to the 900 MHz and 5.4 GHz phones. Now, run a promotion for a great deal on 2.4 GHz phones and watch the sales for the 900 MHz and 5.4 GHZ phones jump while your 2.4 GHz phones stay glued to the shelf collecting dust.