Pole Position Marketing

404-Redirect

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:34:00 +0000

The URL you're trying to reach must be closed for maintenance. We better get you back on track. Where are you trying to go?

If none of these options get you going, contact our pit crew at 866-684-3374 and get you fixed right up!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:12:29 +0000

Before we talk about search engine optimization services, let's get one thing out of the way. Ranking websites isn't our job – it's Google's. That's why our professional SEO services focus on much more than just getting you top search engine rankings. We help you build a site that deserves them. To assist you in creating a website that performs at the highest levels, we combine advanced, thorough research, aggressive on- and off-page optimization techniques and performance-based conversion and usability analytics that are centered on results. With a strong SEO strategy, you'll maximize your search engine visibility and visitor conversions and speed past your competition in exposure and sales. Our effective SEO services are flexible and can be adapted to the changing needs of your business. They expand when you need it and grow as you grow, delivering consistent advances in site performance over time. To this we can add the power of complementary Web marketing service options, including pay-per-click (PPC), link building, content marketing and social media. Our full-scale approach will give your website a formidable edge over your opponents in the highly competitive online marketplace.

Quality, Growth-oriented SEO Services that Get Results

Our strategies are designed to maximize your return on investment. Instead of limiting you to a set number or predetermined keywords, we continuously look for new keywords that can be incorporated into your site, as well as new avenues for growing your customer base. This ongoing evaluation and optimization gives you the ability to quickly make changes based on market trends and ensures that your efforts are always expanding, drawing in new targeted traffic each month.

Our SEO campaigns help you:

Achieve placement for your targeted keyword phrases
Identify and optimize new targeted phrases each month
Increase traffic month to month with little SEO plateauing
Turn your site into an industry recognized authority
Improve on-site conversion ratios and return on investment (ROI)

High-Performance SEO from an Experienced Team

Our team is available every day during business hours via phone, email, IM and Skype. We return messages and emails in a timely manner, usually within hours, rather than days. You will undoubtedly find many SEO companies that offer services at a lower cost than we do. If you are looking for a cheap SEO, you've come to the wrong place. We provide only the highest quality service, backed by years of experience and knowledge, to provide truly affordable optimization that goes far beyond the boundaries of our typical "discount" competitors and gives you the return on investment needed to grow your profits.

Our SEO Services

Strategy Development
Keyword Research
Keyword / Content Optimization
Technical Site Optimization
Site Architecture
Linking Strategy
Usability Issues
Analytics
Performance Reports
Local SEO
Campaign Management

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:13:05 +0000

People are searching the web for what you offer. Are they finding you? You know your product or service will make their lives better. Do they know you exist? Paid search advertising and pay-per-click services may be the best way to make sure they do. The right pay-per-click company can help you get found. With paid search, your prospects can discover you where they are hanging out on the web. Whether it's via search engine results or targeted web pages, good pay-per-click management will meet your prospects' needs and answer their questions.

Organic and PPC Rankings Together Deliver More

A variety of paid search and PPC service options can help you achieve search results on important keywords you may not be ranking for organically. In addition, you can own more real estate by ranking for both paid and organic results at same time – a technique that has proven to increase overall traffic and conversions. At Pole Position Marketing, a leading web marketing agency and pay-per-click firm, we can build and manage your advertising and pay-per-click service campaign through Internet search and display channels, making you the answer your prospects are looking for. And we handle PPC services at a cost and ROI that works for your business. We'll ensure that you:

Show up on keywords your prospects are using to find what you offer
Move targeted web users into the shopping funnel by getting their attention as they surf the web
Receive what you expect from your advertising investment
Maximize your returns through advanced paid search management principles and techniques

Fully Accountable Paid Search and PPC Campaigns

When you choose Pole Position Marketing to be the PPC firm in charge of your account and each bid made, you can be confident that your campaigns are fully accountable. With accurate visitor and conversion tracking, you are able to see exactly what your money is doing for your business and immediately adjust based on results. This allows us to achieve guaranteed profitability for you on every dollar spent. Where it really gets good: our ability to provide ongoing, professional optimization of your campaigns to build long-term online business success and growth. In addition to paid search and PPC management, we also offer social network advertising, display advertising, landing page optimization and performance reports.

Social Media Marketing

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:17:59 +0000

Although conversing with followers and customers and building a community around your brand are important functions of social media optimization, we know that, at the end of the day, you want to see results from the time and money spent on marketing your business via social media channels. At Pole Position Marketing, we believe social media consulting and analysis should be viewed as one integral part of your total online marketing plan that ties directly to your business goals. A great social media consulting program is built on compelling, customer-focused content that incorporates today's best search engine optimization strategies. Well-planned and well-executed social media strategies:

Help increase quality, contextually relevant links
Boost search-engine performance
Draw highly targeted traffic back to your content
Encourage conversions both large (i.e. sales, leads) and small (i.e. content subscriptions)
Can withstand regular algorithm updates and competitor advancements

Social Media Consulting and Optimization Solutions

Whether you're just getting started with social media optimization or are looking for some ideas on how to improve your current efforts, our social media consulting services – designed specifically for small to medium-sized organizations – can help. Our social media strategist has been active in a wide range of social channels for several years and holds a master certification in social media from MarketMotive^®. When you choose Pole Position Marketing for your social media optimization, we will assist you with identification of your target audience(s), important influencers, optimal social media channels and key performance indicators (KPIs). We can also work with you to develop strategies to build your presence and brand; to increase follows, shares, likes and comments in your social streams; and to improve conversions.

Related Social Media Optimization and Consulting Options

Content marketing strategies
Social profile and reputation management and maintenance
Team training

Link Building

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:15:12 +0000

Link building – or the practice of garnering quality, relevant links from other websites to yours – is a cornerstone of any effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. It's one of the best ways to improve your website's page rankings, credibility and targeted traffic. The more quality links to your site and its content, the better your online presence looks to search engines and readers alike. Think of building links as love and hugs pointing in the direction of your website.

Professional Link-building Services that Increase Website Visibility

The goal of one-way or inbound link popularity is to get keyword-rich links (also known as anchor text) on external sites pointing to your keyword-optimized pages. At Pole Position Marketing, our professional link-building services focus on seeking out potential linking opportunities with quality sites that are germane to your business or industry. At the heart of our link popularity service strategies lies extensive research, effective content marketing, social media and good, old-fashioned relationship building. Web marketing evolves almost as fast as Google's algorithm (we're pretty sure there's a connection there), and link-building techniques that rocked the world yesterday may no longer offer you any benefit. We stay on top of the latest changes in our industry and know which link-building practices work the best today and which ones may be tomorrow's elixir of life.

Build Links via Short- and Long-term Strategies

Getting quality links fast can be challenging. That's why we recommend doing relatively simple, short-term link building strategies – such as directory submissions, news releases and user-generated content and contests –while putting the majority of time and effort into the most effective long-term methods, which pay the biggest dividends:

Building relationships with media outlets, trade publications and bloggers (influencer research, online PR)
Creating good, link-worthy content and "socializing it" in ways that encourage clicks and links

At Pole Position Marketing, our link popularity services and campaigns are designed to deliver more lasting search ranking results as quickly as possible. And, because we're a Web marketing company, we can ensure that your inbound, one-way linking works in concert with all your other online efforts.

Analytics & Conversion Optimization

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:15:30 +0000

It’s overwhelmingly easy to get Web analytics data on your website. Just plug in a few lines of code and voilà... data. But, a vast canyon exists between looking at data and gaining insight from it. As a business owner, marketer or webmaster, you don’t want to look at website reports unless they can tell you what you should do. You don’t want to just know what happened. You want to know why it happened because you can then take actions that lead to bottom-line outcomes. At Pole Position Marketing, we won't let you waste your time, money and energy looking at data that doesn't offer actionable insights. Our Web analytics consulting service will assist you in getting past the numbers to the intelligence that matters. We can integrate analytics with your business goals and strategies, so that you can make online marketing decisions with confidence.

Goal Analysis and Recommendations

Reporting numbers is one thing. Taking action is another. The goal of good Web analytics providers should not be to give you graphs that go up and to the right. It ought to be showing you what to stop or start next to grow your business. If every time you look at a website report you think, "so what?", Pole Position Marketing's Web analytics services can help. Our Web analytics consultant will work with you to determine why your website exists and how well it's meeting the goals of its existence. Without great answers to these questions, the numbers don’t matter. Allow us to use our advanced knowledge of Web traffic and data segmentation to uncover the valuable intelligence that can be gained from analytics. From that, we'll determine the best strategy to drive action that improves your business.

Website Architecture

Do you know all the reasons visitors come to your website? Are they able to easily complete the tasks they came to do? Many website owners have never even thought about these questions but simply allow their sites to be designed according to “best practices.” The problem is that your Web users are probably a quirky sort of bunch. They don’t necessarily want “best practices,” unless that helps them find what they’re looking for and accomplish their mission for being on the Web. Every website’s visitors are unique. Solving for the customer experience is critical. Frustrate a visitor just a little and they may be gone for good, only to buy from a competitor. At Pole Position Marketing, we can review and/or re-organize your website to create the positive website experience your visitors are looking for. We construct the site so that common tasks are easy to find and complete. We also give you optimization recommendations that will help boost customer engagement, conversion and task completion, resulting in more satisfied customers and a growing business.

Monthly Status Reports

The key to finding insights that drive action and grow your business is monitoring how things change over time. Once you establish your goals and take action to meet them, it’s important to stay on top of the results. This shows what’s working (or not working), why it’s working (or not working), and what you should do about it. However, you may dealing with a ton of data in your Web analytics tool, jumping from report to report to see what is important to you. Our Web analytics services can help you solve this problem by providing monthly status reports that condense your Web data and focus on what’s important to actually growing your business.

Content Strategy

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:15:47 +0000

Relevant, well-crafted content is foundational to effective marketing for the Web. You build SEO, links, a social media presence – and even your brand – on good content. If executed properly, it has the power to educate readers, capture leads, reinforce your relationship with current customers and increase sales. At Pole Position Marketing, we believe the best online content marketing strategies are based on your business goals, the make-up of your target audiences and the shape of your buying process. A one-size-fits-all approach isn't successful. That's why our content strategist will work with you to:

Determine what you want your content to accomplish
Identify the buyer personas you're trying to reach
Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for the content
Manage content development and audience acquisition
Disseminate and measure the content's effectiveness against KPIs

Experience with Diverse Content Marketing Options

Depending on your business, your goals and your audience, there are a broad range of content options, each with its own unique strength. Our content strategist – with more than a decade of experience in crafting digital and print content – can offer insights on blogs, guest posts, website copywriting, article directories, eBooks, white papers, case studies, e-mail campaigns, news releases, magazines,videos, podcasts and more.

How We Use Content Strategy

See how we're using content strategies on behalf of Pole Position Marketing! You'll find a few of our Web marketing gems at:

eMarketing Performance (EMP) blog, established in 1999
Online marketing learning library
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Journal
Live training events

Consulting & Training

Stoneygd — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:16:05 +0000

[gravityform id="3" name="Consultation Request Form" description="false" ajax="false"]

About Us

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:43:19 +0000

Pole Position Marketing is a leading search engine optimization (SEO) firm that specializes in organic SEO, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, link building, content marketing, social media consulting, Web analytics and more. Our SEO agency was established in 1998 and serves B2B and B2C companies throughout the United States and in diverse industries, including retail, travel, health care, manufacturing and higher education. As an enterprise-level SEO company, that serves small, medium and large businesses alike, we provide you with reliable, affordable website marketing services designed to engage your customers, drive your brand and win conversions. Our SEO firm's team of experienced SEO and Web marketing professionals is dedicated to helping you grow your business through efficient, economical and ethical online strategies.

The Crew Chief Stoney G deGeyter Lead SEO, CEO & All Around Nice Guy	The Pit Chief Maria Paschen Office Manager & Team Favorite

Pit Crew Leaders
Mike Fleming Analytics, PPC Strategist & Employee of Every Month	Annalisa Hilliard Local SEO, Link Strategist & Supernatural Wunderkind

Deb Briggs Content Marketing Strategist & Confirmed Shopaholic	Kathy Gray Social Media Marketing Strategist & The Geek Next Door

Kevin Nisly Client Relations Specialist & Ambassador of Tomfoolery

Company Chaplain Jim Roberts CCMFT, CCPC, CCLC	Company Mascot Max Speed aka Stoney's Alter Ego

A Leading SEO Firm That Drives You to the Top

As a professional SEO company we specialize in bringing success to your business. We don't just drive traffic, we drive ROI. Our SEO firm has a team of SEO and web marketing experts that work with you to develop the strategies you need to get the results you want. Our SEO agency works closely with you through all aspects of your marketing campaigns, helping you build trust with your audience and get the sales and conversions you need. Because that's just the kind of SEO company we are!

Contact Us

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:43:54 +0000

[gravityform id="1" name="Contact and Proposal Request Form " title="false" description="false" ajax="true"]

Serving Canton, Akron, the rest of Ohio and beyond!

Although our global headquarters is located in North Canton, Ohio (OK, so we only have one office), our business knows no boundaries. When it comes to website marketing and search engine optimization, we can help businesses throughout North America grow their online presence. In fact, we already do. So, whether you’re an Ohio company that wants to do business with an Ohio marketing agency – or a business in Why, Ariz., that needs expert answers to befuddling web marketing conundrums – we’ve got you covered. Learn more about us and our impressive track record, or put the petal to the metal and contact us today!

PPM Library

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:44:56 +0000

Here you will find quick access to some of the most important and useful tools and references on the Web. We use these regularly in our ongoing optimization research and campaign management.

Library Directory

Our Philosophies

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:45:31 +0000

What makes our services unique? More than anything else, we strive to excel in service, quality and results. Over the years Pole Position Marketing has proven itself superior in all the areas that matter most. Our Destination SEM styled campaigns are not the run-of-the-mill SEO services provided by our competition. You won't get a stagnating service that limits growth. Instead, you'll get quality optimization that builds momentum and velocity creating a marketing campaign that grows with your business.

How our philosophies impact you

But, who cares what we do, right? You want to know what that means to you. Take a look at our philosophies below for those answers.

Client Login

Stoneygd — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:46:10 +0000

Oops! Something's amiss...

Not a Pole Position Marketing client? No worries, you can have a peek at all the cool reports our clients have access to on our client report pages. Just click that link, browse around and you can view all the exceptional reporting tools we provide. We are constantly improving the quality of our reports and occasionally this creates bugs in the system. If you experience problems logging in let us know so we can have our programmer fix the problem and get you on your way to reviewing your reports.

Blog

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 03:46:43 +0000

coming soon

The Pole Position Marketing Pit Crew

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:14:53 +0000

At Pole Position Marketing, we like to have a good time and share some laughs while on the job (never at a client's expense, of course). In our bios, you'll note this tendency toward tomfoolery, along with a slight hint of smugness where some employees are concerned. (You'll recognize the offenders immediately.) We felt compelled to provide these bios for you. In fact, we were compelled by some so-called nice guy. But, after all, if we're going to work with you, we want to be honest, upfront and completely transparent, just in case you don't like surprises. On the other hand, you can be certain they'll be no surprises when it comes to improving the performance of your website. You'll receive exceptional communication and service at all times – and that's no joke.

Stoney deGeyter

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:15:23 +0000

President, CEO & All-Around Nice Guy

As a living entity, Stoney deGeyter has been around for nearly half a century (give or take 10 years so this page doesn't have to be updated all the time). His early life was remarkably unremarkable. He (mostly) stayed out of trouble, (mostly) got good grades, was (mostly) well liked and was (mostly) fun to hang with. He is, after all, an all-around nice guy. That’s what it says on his business card. Stoney has been an overachiever for a good portion of his life, skipping 8th grade, graduating at the age of 16 with an honors diploma, and then going on to start a web marketing business while working a full-time job. (We’ll ignore his dropping out of college and unwillingness to stay at any single job for more than a year!) Stoney’s ADD, anal-retentive nature and perfectionism made him a prime candidate to be his own damn boss, thank you very much. But he really does get along well with clients! Promise. Stoney started Pole Position Marketing from his bedroom and quickly expanded to his living room, where he homeschooled his children at the time. Eventually PPM outgrew the living room and deserved an office of its own, growing from one to a half dozen (give or take a half dozen, for the same reasons noted above) employees and sub-contractors. Talented people, every last one of them! Stoney has been known to spin a yarn or two at some of the major SEO and marketing conferences around the globe, giving SEO-related talks, training and presentations each year at venues such as PubCon Las Vegas, PubCon Hawaii, SEMpdx Searchfest, Search Engine Strategies NY, Search Engine Strategies Toronto and SMX West. He’s also presented for L'Oréal in New York and the Cleveland chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). By the time you read this, there will be more to add to that list, but we can’t all overachieve. Stoney writes tirelessly about his SEO, website architecture, usability and business adventures. His musings, for better or worse, have been published on Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Land, Web Pro News, Search Engine Journal and Visibility Magazine. He’s also the main contributor at Pole Position Marketing’s E-Marketing Performance blog. Stoney has been quoted in WSJ.com and written about in MSN’s Business On Main. In addition, he has written several e-books: E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies For Building, Optimizing and Marketing Your Website Online; Keyword Research and Selection: The Definitive Guide to Gathering, Sorting and Organizing Your Keywords Into a High-Performance SEO Campaign; Destination Search Engine Marketing: SEO Without Compromise; The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period, and some other tasty morsels you can find in the PPM library. In his free time, Stoney likes to… ha, ha, just kidding. Stoney doesn’t have any free time. But with what off-work time he manages to dig up, Stoney reads all kinds of books, works in Christian ministries, loves his kids, enjoys his friends, looks for ways to create a more productive work environment for his employees and increase ROI for his clients. See? He really is an all-around nice guy!

Stoney's Life in Pictures

Mike Fleming

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:15:38 +0000

Analytics, PPC Strategist & Employee of Every Month

Mike specializes in paid search and Web analytics. The employee of every month thing? Well, that’s because at one time in a galaxy far, far away, he was the only in-house employee at Pole Position Marketing after Stoney deGeyter relocated corporate headquarters to Ohio. So, Mike proudly carried the award for months on end. Someone may have taken that distinguished title from him since then, but don’t tell him that. Trust us, he won’t believe you! He’s helped blaze a new trail of success at Pole Position Marketing for every team member to tread upon. Why? Because he’s on top of the latest strategies in paid search and Web analytics to make sure every campaign he manages for clients brings measurable, profit-maximizing value to their company and their website visitors. If that doesn't happen, everyone will know – including you! He’s made believers out of businesses that thought PPC wouldn’t work for them, was not that important, wasn’t that hard or was already being done correctly. Also, he’s shown businesses how a true understanding of what is happening on their website – and why it is happening – can lead them to new levels of success against their online competition. On a lighter note, Mike has always been involved in sports and any other sort of competition. Poker, Wii Bowling, ping pong, hot dog eating – it doesn't matter. Bring it on! But, his favorite competitive thing to do is play basketball. Not only does it give him a not-so needed ego boost, but it also keeps him in shape and looking good. (See what we mean?) He reads a lot, plays guitar and writes and records music, which can be heard on his MySpace page. Mike is married to a beautiful, sweet, caring and admirable girl who decided to throw a snowball at a stranger one day – and eventually married him.

Mike's Life in Pictures

Ad-minister data holder

Stoneygd — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:10:28 +0000

Ad-minister data holder

EMP Book

Stoneygd — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:31:41 +0000

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is only one important ingredient in increasing your web site's exposure on the Internet. Learn how to incorporate your SEO campaign into a much broader e-marketing campaign designed to transform your site into a high-performance marketing machine. If this is what you business needs, get the book that will show you step-by-step how to make the most of your company's presence on the web and watch your sales multiply.

E-Marketing Performance

Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing and Marketing your Website Online

You'll learn the secrets of:

Creating a Marketing Focused Website That Sells
Laying the Foundation for a Successful Online Business
Designing a Money-Making Website
Marketing Online Via Other Avenues
Improving ROI and Conversions

eMarketing Information That will Tune Your Site for Maximum Performance

E-Marketing Performance is filled with valuable and actionable online marketing information that will help you create a better optimized and more user-friendly website that not only will help you flood your site with new, highly-targeted traffic but increase your sales conversion rate at the same time. Author Stoney deGeyter will show you how professional online marketing can make a difference for your business. Stoney deGeyter has been president of a successful professional search engine marketing since 1998 and is considered an expert in the field. He has helped many companies get to the top using his proven principles.

See What Others are Saying about the Author and the EMP Book

"Stoney deGeyter is one of easiest to read, and then implement, SEO writers out there." --Jaan Kanellis

"I wish I had this ebook a few years ago!" --Igor Mordkovich

Portions of EMP Book have been distributed in article format. Readers of these articles have been providing their feedback:

"Outstanding. Rare to see an article that doesn't waste the time of its reader ... all meat and potatoes ... great job!" -- Austin Culley, Oil-Net.Com Inc.

E-Marketing Performance

Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing and Marketing your Website Online

kathygray — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Debbie Briggs

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:16:16 +0000

Content Marketing Strategist & Confirmed Shopaholic

Faster than a speeding tweet! More powerful than a well-placed keyword! Able to leap tall blogs in a single bound! It’s Pole Position’s Content Marketing Strategist! Debbie knows good content when she sees it, whether it’s an informative blog, content marketing campaign or fully optimized web page. Just like Clark Kent, Debbie got her start in newspapers, working as a reporter covering everything from school board meetings to new business openings to agricultural articles on farm equipment—which is pretty funny for a self-described city slicker and shopaholic. But she caught the writing bug and continued to hone her skills while working for an automotive trade magazine for 10 years. Considering that even Clark Kent might be out of a job today, Debbie became interested in online avenues to use her writing skills and found the position she holds today—or maybe it found her? Either way, she’d love the opportunity to help you develop your content marketing strategy and produce great content that gets noticed. When she’s not optimizing a web page or writing a blog, Debbie enjoys spending time with her husband and two young boys. Annual family trips to the beach—any beach—are mandatory and not an option. If she’s not at the beach, then you’ll probably find Debbie at Target sipping a vanilla chai, dancing away at a Zumba class or catching up on her favorite TV shows.

Annalisa Hilliard

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:16:43 +0000

Local SEO, Link Strategist & Supernatural Wunderkind

When you ask Annalisa where she's from, she'll tell you right away – Indiana, Pennsylvania. If you're confused, don't worry. She's used to it. Virtually no one else but actor Jimmy Stewart knows where the small town of Indiana is in the huge state of Pennsylvania, and, sadly, he died in 1997. So, hailing from the great state of Pennsylvania, Annalisa brings the heart and determination of a champion to the Pole Position Marketing team. (Ever heard of the Pittsburgh Steelers? It’s been rumored that when she bleeds, it's black and gold!) As most people would, Annalisa got tired of always being surrounded by winning sports teams, so she moved to Ohio, where sports teams are rumored to be under a curse. Except if you are talking about the team that she works with – they are the best anyone could ever hope to play for. She graduated from Malone University with a degree in communication arts, with an emphasis in public relations and an almost minor in marketing. Notice there isn’t any SEO training in those credentials. But, that will come later. To help foot the bill for tuition and have some extra money for snacks while in college, she got a job at “the corporate coffee giant.” While there, she slung java and became addicted to caffeine. Thus, her goal became to work her way up the coffee tree. However, two years into management, the tree limb broke from the weight of the great recession and she became the product of corporate downsizing. After picking up the pieces of her broken heart and watching the bills pile up, she turned what appeared to be defeat into opportunity. It was then that she got a part-time job and started looking at her options. After deciding not to go back to school (those mounting bills), she read a lot, started doing some writing and accepted an internship at Pole Position Marketing. The internship sparked her interest because we told her that she'd get to keep reading and writing a lot. Not confident she was the top candidate for the open position of link specialist, she nevertheless won us over with her determination and charm! She became the “favorite” un-paid intern and got hooked on the work (or linked, if you will)! It was the perfect fit! She impressed us with her ability to work hard and apply her link-building skills because we offered her a full-time job (with pay!). She gladly accepted. Today, she is very happy to be doing something she truly loves and enjoys the challenges that come with it. The added bonus is that she gets to work with talented people who keep her on her toes by always encouraging her to get better. She feels she has found her true calling as a link builder and intends to dominate the tiny link-building world! Annalisa also serves as a Communications Chairperson for the Canton Advertising Federation. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, reading, and taking in a good film. She also has a competitive nature that beckons her to participate in endurance challenges. So, keep your eyes peeled. You might run into her while she trains at all hours of the day for her next half-marathon or bicycling century. Her goal is to enter a triathlon or to ride her bike down the West Coast. Go, Annalisa!

Annalisa's Life in Pictures

Maria Paschen

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:16:56 +0000

Office Manager & Team Favorite

Maria is the beloved office manager at PPM, happily serving both clients and co-workers alike. She greets everyone with a smile, keeps things running smoothly around the office and beautifies the environment by "decorating" with fancy (non-company approved) sticky notes. She often says that being an office manager is like being a personal assistant, administrative assistant, mini-accountant (or mini-CFO, as she likes to call it), personal shopper, event planner, receptionist and human resources guru all rolled into one. It can be quite challenging at times, but being made from that hearty Italian stock, Maria can handle it! (Well… sometimes she cries, but doesn’t everyone cry at work?) Regardless of the occasional tears, she’s up for the challenge of whatever comes her way! (Except during tax time, but any time other than that, she’s wonderful, really.) Just look at her title – she’s the “team favorite.” And, hey… we don’t just throw around titles like that here! On a more personal note, Maria is one of the shortest adult human beings that most other adults (and children) know, so she’s affectionately referred to as “shorty-pie” by those who try to make her feel good about her stature. It’s a cute name, but little do they know, her older sister is only 4’9,” so she’s the “tall” one in the family. No self-esteem boost needed there! So, she walks away… tall. Maria likes to laugh. Sometimes she laughs and doesn’t stop laughing for quite a while. But, that’s good. Laughing is good. It’s #allgood. In her time away from the crew, Maria cherishes time with her daughter, her family and her friends. She has a heart for all things creative and artsy and loves to be able to use those gifts to serve in her church through their production outreach ministry. (We're fairly certain she will paint just about anything that is paintable... That is your official warning!)

Maria's Life in Pictures

Max Speed

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:17:08 +0000

Stoney's Alter Ego

If the Pole Position Marketing team had a muse—and it does—it would be Max Speed. We love Max’s occasionally off-color, usually amusing and always pointed "Maxisms." (Maybe "Maxims" would be a better word.) Max gives voice to some of the things we think but, bound by professional decorum, aren't permitted to say. At least, not out loud. Max is a digital representation of the company’s tagline: Velocitize Your Web Marketing. He puts umph to the effort, octane to the fuel, yin to the yang, and maximizes our performance and your ROI. Max plays multiple roles at PPM, including resident mascot, avatar (the icon, not the movie), Jedi Knight, programmer of the matrix and avatar (the movie, not the icon). He dreams of someday being the 13th Cylon Model. He was raised in the small town of Eureka, Oregon, spent some years living on the outer rim running from the Alliance and has mastered the Vulcan mind-meld. (Not something you want to experience!) He was once, albeit briefly, declared President Pro Tempore of Isengard. He is a firm believer in spewing pithy wisdom, catchy catchphrases and insightful...um, insights. He can often be heard around the office passing off movie and television quotes as “words of wisdom” and keeps a vast mental treasury of useless knowledge. Max actually does have some pretty interesting things to say, which is why we keep him around. We hope you enjoy the Maxims (found at the bottom of every page on this site) just as much as we do.

Why Choose PPM

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:17:27 +0000

We've been performing quality search engine optimization and marketing solutions since 1998 and we are one of the few search marketing firms providing high-level, hands-on campaign management with a near transparent optimization process. We do more than simply work for you, we work with you to ensure that all aspects of the marketing campaign is achieving your goals. A little research and you'll see that most other search optimization firms don't.

Experience and Knowledge

We provide complete "hassle-free" implementation for all aspects of your campaign.
We have an impressive record of success that we openly present allowing you to verify for yourself.
Campaigns are structured with the goal of improving site performance on the search engines. We don't focus on top rankings alone but on what's really important: sales conversions. Competing SEO firms structure their campaigns with the goal of just getting top rankings regardless of performance.
Our process are never automated and completely customized for each client. We take into account the unique attributes of each individual page and optimize it using scientifically sound processes that we have developed through extensive independent research.
Our services are focused on discovering each web page's individual and uniquely optimal level of optimization. This is accomplished through ongoing research, testing and analysis. As opposed to other SEO firms that offer a "one shot" optimization service.
Every campaign falls firmly within best-practice guidelines of recognized Internet bodies of authority such as the W3C, U.S. Gov. Information Accessibility Board as well as the primary search engines. Our clients are never in jeopardy of incurring the penalties that can (and often do), ruin e-commerce businesses.

Our Search Engine Marketing Firm:

We don't consider ourselves an SEO firm. We are a professional web marketing agency, which specializes in SEO and other important aspects of website marketing. We strive to provide the most complete range of online marketing solutions available.
All of our services are structured for flexibility based upon unique client needs.
As the industry moves forward we regularly amend our services and features accordingly to ensure we stay on the cutting edge of high-performance results.
Our specialists regularly review all of our services to ensure that they are the most up-to-date and effective strategies available.
All promotion strategies are executed and managed in-house, or with contractors we know and trust. You won't find us outsourcing parts of your marketing campaign to other countries!

Our Operating Principles

Provide Top Quality Customer Service We want to do more than simply "close the deal"; we take the time to make sure you have all your questions answered before, during, and after the implementation of your marketing strategy. Our Clients have access to any of our marketing and development staff--including their project manager--at any time during business hours via phone or email. We strive to answer all your questions and concerns quickly in a professional manner. When you call, you should always be able to speak to a "real" person and have your email answered within hours, rather than days or weeks.
Strive for Excellence in Every Way Whether you are having your website designed from the ground up, or optimized for top search engine placement, getting your input and feedback is an integral part of the process. Your questions, comments and observations are never unwanted or unwarranted and ensure that we deliver the best possible results for your targeted audience. Our goal is to ensure that you receive nothing less than the very best and results that bring success.
No Secret Recipes, Just Honest Success Some marketing firms like to keep secrets because they fear that their clients might "find them out" and take the marketing into their own hands. We feel quite the opposite. We offer an element of complete transparency to our marketing strategies. Our clients are constantly updated on the progress of their marketing campaign via access to a host of statistics and reports, as well as the ability to read internal team notes that we write each time we interact with your website.
Develop Fruitful Relationships Traditional business relationships can often be formal and impersonal. Pole Position Marketing wants you to feel comfortable calling us by our first names. We also want you to know that you should not hesitate to tell us what is on your mind. Our goal is to build a friendship that extends beyond the standard business relationship, creating a long-lasting and successful partnership that creates profitable results.
Demonstrate Personal and Professional Integrity It's our conviction that the commitment to our clients and integrity in our personal and professional relationships is essential not only to our success, but to yours as well. Our website marketing professionals are committed to you and achieving the results that increase your ROI.

Testimonials

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:17:56 +0000

We could tell you how valuable our internet marketing services are, how much ROI you'll get in return from a few simple consulting calls, how many rankings we've improved through our site analysis and action reports, or how many new sales our clients have gotten due to our SEO services. Or we could let you read it for yourself, straight from our client's mouths. Below you'll find some honest to goodness client testimonials. As you can see, our clients like us!

Pole Position Marketing Client Testimonials

Our company has used Pole Position Marketing, and we are VERY pleased with our results. The people there are great, knowledgeable, and just plain good people!

-- Mike Kappel, Patriot Software

The time we spent consulting with PPM really opened our eyes to the power of online marketing and it provided us with a basic understanding of what we needed to make the most of it. Our organic traffic on the rise, and we have a much clearer picture of how to proceed in our marketing efforts in the future.

-- James Nisly, Genevieve Nisly Photography

I wanted to take minute to express my appreciation for Kevin Nisly and the folks at Pole Position Marketing. We chose Pole Position Marketing out of a long list of seemingly capable companies to handle our SEO needs. Kevin (sales) and Stoney (CEO) presented to us and from the beginning, we could tell that they we’re taking personal responsibility for the success of our campaign. This was a refreshing difference to the “online” and impersonal options that were on the table for us. Kevin is still personally involved in making sure we’re satisfied. I am more than happy with the results and would absolutely hire them again if time travel were an option.

-- Adam Smrdel, Carey Color Inc

Over the past seven years, Pole Position Marketing has been instrumental in bringing Sierra's lead generation and online marketing to a new level. Their SEO expertise is always on point, keeping up with the latest search trends, and has consistently placed Sierra in the top 5 search results in Google. PPM also manages our PPC campaigns which are highly targeted and refined, giving us very strong leads and conversion rates. What's even more important than our excellent results is the terrific team at PPM. All the team members at PPM are domain experts, very proactive, take initiative, and always give us just the right advice to push our results to the next level. The team is a pleasure to work with.

-- Erica Giannini, Sierra Instruments

BatteryStuff.com has been with Pole Position for 10+ years, and we have been extremely satisfied with the results that they have been able to consistently provide for us over the years. Pole Position has been able to get us to the top of the search results in all the areas that we choose to focus on, and working with the team there has been a pleasure. If you are considering replacing your current SEO company, or are new to the whole idea of paying for results, we highly recommend them for the job.

-- Jeremy Fear, BatteryStuff.com

We hired Stoney at Pole Position Marketing to inform our SEO efforts. We found his expertise was comprehensive, his communication skills were excellent, and he was highly ethical. He provided solutions specific to our situation and was very willing to explain the rationale behind his recommendations. Refreshingly, if there was something he didn't know, he said so. He is highly detail oriented and customer focused. If you work with Stoney you'll experience high availability, fast responses, communication in the forms you need and great expectation setting.

-- Greg Sundberg, StylishHome

I would like to thank Stoney for his outstanding knowledge of the SEO best practices and willingness to share it with us, commoners! Stoney's insights have helped us develop clear SEO strategy and set important milestones for our project. We are looking forward to working with Stoney on many exciting projects!

-- Andrew M., Vancouver, BC Canada

Specialty Pet Product Website Growth Stats

Within 7 months of bringing on the Pole Position Marketing team, this well-established specialty pet product website was seeing +80% increase over the previous year.

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

I searched for a company online to help us with SEO, and decided to pursue Pole positioning since they appeared high on the search results. I figured that their top positioning in my search results proved they were practicing and implementing their competencies. Our one hour consultation call was highly informative and led me to introduce Pole Positioning to our advertising agency in order for them to collaborate in achieving top results. Both myself and the agency found them to be knowledgeable and very much trustworthy.

-- Henry Geddes, UMT International

I just wanted to send you a quick thank you for all of your support this weekend. Getting information from people like yourself is invaluable for people like me, who are just starting out. I feel I have a pretty good understanding of a lot of the aspects involving ECommerce, I am just struggling to find the right products to sell. Thanks again for your help and I look forward to attending another one of your seminars/webinars in the near future.

-- Dennis Grieco (webinar attendee)

After only 7 months with Pole Position Marketing and a very modest budget we almost tripled the number of hits on our website and have had just over a 100% increase in our sales. Stoney and his crew are very helpful and professional. Thank you guys for everything.

-- Chris A., River & Rock Adventures

Pole Position Web has been our SEO company for [many] years and has been doing a great job. We have many phrases that are number one on Google and many of the major search engines. ROI is definitely there.

-- Steve F., Up North Sports

Plastic Card Manufacturer Growth Stats

A long-time client of Pole Position Marketing, this plastic cards manufacturer continues to see not only sustained growth in organic search visitors, but a paralleled growth in quality and relevant visitors. As visits to the site have grown, engagement on the site has grown as well. In one year this site increased organic visits from search engines by over +60%.

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

We've been working with Pole Position Marketing for several months and have been surprised at how much easier it is to just work with one company when it comes to our web site. In just a few weeks our rankings were pushing upward on several search engines. Pole Position has impressed us with their diligence, accessibility, and courteous staff. We would recommend them to any business.

-- Pam B., Reno Integrative

The VP of [top SEO firm] called me about a month ago to tell me that she had done a webposition on our site and was amazed at how much better the site was doing on the search engines. When I told her that indeed it had improved greatly since I went with Pole Position Marketing she said "Oh, you're not with us anymore? Well congratulations on the site improvement." (Click!) They use to use me as a reference and I have been recommending your company to the people [that] have called.

-- Michael L., ARS-Inc

When our website, rainbowweddings.com, mysteriously and suddenly dropped off the Google radar screen late last year our business dropped by about 30%. Previously we had been #1 or #2 on page one and enjoyed a steady flow of inquiries both by phone and email. This was a harsh lesson in the importance of Google ranking compared to Yahoo and MSN where we remained strong. Our webmaster at the time, a good and trusted friend, was baffled. He'd carefully crafted our site and SEO campaign over the years to strengthen our ranking. A painful decision was made to find another SEO company. Much to his credit, our friend guided us to Pole Position Marketing. It was the smartest move we could have done. Over the next several months, the people at PPM seemed like a combination of forensic investigators and Columbo, the TV detective. We followed their guidance and recommendations assiduously and literally put the fate of our website and our business in their hands. Months went by as they streamlined our code, had us make changes on our pages and worked their magic. We anxiously watched for some change in our placement on Google. Business was still sluggish even though we'd launched a Pay-Per-Click campaign, as per PPM's recommendation. Then it all changed! One morning I typed in one of the main search categories for Google and there we were back on page one. It had been six or seven months, and lots of reassuring emails from Stoney, but it all paid off. The phone is ringing again and email inquiries are back up to pre-crisis levels. I highly recommend PPM for helping with new websites and, as was our case, bailing out and cleaning up an existing site. PPM handled our problem promptly and professionally with the best results we could possibly have hoped for.

-- Curtis, Rainbow Weddings

Thank you very much for all your hard work. We are on the 1st page in Google. This is great!

-- Eugene, ASP One

On Google you put us at #1. Congratulations on a job well done. Please keep up the brilliant work!

-- Steve, Mototime

We've been working with Pole Position Marketing for several years now and we have yet to be disappointed. Pole Position has provided us with strong search engine rankings and excellent customer service. We'll continue to use Pole Position Marketing for all of our Internet Marketing needs!

-- Rob Avery, DealerTrend

High-Tech Company Growth Stats

This client is in a fast-growing, highly competitive high-tech industry. In the first 18 months of working with Pole Position Marketing, they grew in organic search acquisition by over +130%.

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

Nice Job! In 4 months we went from zero to hero. Now we are #1 on Google. Keep doing what you're doing!

-- Strud, Polar Bear Coolers

You helped me obtain our 5 year plan in just 13 months. We could never have done this without your help!!!

-- Paul, Penny Farthing Inn

Thanks to everyone (or both of you, depending on how many fake names Stoney is generating) for your good work on my account. If only there were some sort of monthly compensation I could make available to you for all your hard work... Oh wait one minute... Never mind. Seriously though... thanks everybody!

-- Keith Barany Entertainment

Pole Position has met and far exceeded my expected results. Their knowledge of Internet marketing, responsiveness, performance and cost effectiveness have made this skeptical client a firm believer.

-- Tim Leister, Baby Best Buy

The team at Pole Position has been great, making our web changes a breeze, and our site stays on top of all the major search engines. I would recommend this team for any type of Web Maintenance...! Thanks Stoney and team.

-- Jack W., Pro Mailing Equip.

Winter Ski Clothing Website Growth Stats

Upon launching their seasonal ski clothing business in early fall, Pole Position Marketing has helped them to achieve significant growth in organic search acquisition. Within 4 months, they were beating expectations in organic search traffic to their site surpassing their first season goals. By the following season, year-over-year numbers had increased as much as +40% in some months.

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

After 7 years and a lot of wasted money, I finally found a company who can get the job done. My company has had a website for years, but who cares, because no one could find it. You could even type in our company name and it was no where to be found. When I asked a potential client, "Where did you hear about us?" I NEVER heard, "I found you on the web." My previous webmaster, who I found to be 100% unreliable in all of his dealings, gave me an outrageous quote for doing search engine optimization. In calling around, searching for an answer, I found Stoney at Pole Position Marketing and for the first time, I found someone who talked with me, not at me and over my head. Stoney and the whole team at Pole Position Marketing are always available. They take time to explain things to you, if you want to know. They are incredibly patient, reliable and their rates are reasonable. They know what they're doing. We're climbing up in the ranks week by week. Now potential clients actually say, "I found you on the web." Thanks Pole Position Marketing!

-- Frank S., DC Mentors

Prior to working with PPM our website was ranked on the 10th page of Google with the search terms we desired. Now it is on page one and we have noticed an increase in traffic and calls as a result. Thanks for everything.

-- Rick S., Synux Technologies

We signed up with Pole Position to be our SEO 3 years ago when we barely had any traffic to our web site and our business was in trouble. Pole Position stepped in and did their magic. Within a few months, we were ranking high on the major search engines. The amount of inquiries that came in were astounding. Our business picked up to a momentum where we had to turn clients away and recommend other wedding companies to them. We made the best business investment we could ever make by hiring Pole Position to be our SEO.

-- KatRama B., Rainbow Wed.

Stoney, I've been reading your posts here for almost a year I think....and I'm still very impressed and wanted to say so publicly. I'm an SEO practitioner up here in Canada, and while Canada itself is definitely behind the curve for just about all SEO factors (i.e. behind the US I mean) what I've read in your posts is both 'futuristic' and spot-on! Congrats on a great series too, your SEO 101 is very much appreciated too! I send my clients your URLs for them to read up on why we do certain SEO tactics, and you explain very very well! Thanks Stoney, and I can't wait for more posts!

-- Jim Rudnick, Canuck SEO

Outreach

Stoneygd — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:18:19 +0000

Pole Position Marketing is a community-oriented business. Here are just some of the local, national and global outreach programs and ministries that our team members currently support (or have supported) with their time, talents and resources – both individually and collectively:

The Soul Care Center: Faith-based coaching, counseling, training to enable individuals to reach their highest potential.
One Family at a Time: Faith-based life skill training to move families off poverty into productive, meaningful, self-sufficient and successful living.
Kingdom University: Raising up Spirit filled, Christ-centered leaders who hear the voice of God and lead people through the darkness.
Transformation House: Transforming individual lives by the power of the Holy Spirit through training, education, counseling, coaching and life skill development.
Mom's and More House: Transitional housing for women coming out of domestic violence.
Healing and Wellness Clinic: Provides free medical, emotional and spiritual healing to those in need in the local community.
24-hour Prayer and Encouragement Line: 24-hour prayer hotline for those with prayer needs of all kinds. 330-526-8652
aLittleBirdie.org: Helps fill a variety of needs for local residents who are unable to meet the needs themselves.
Gospel for Asia: Taking the gospel to the people of Asia.
National House of Hope: Christian residential programs for troubled teenagers.
Pregnancy Support Center: Provides education and support for teens with unplanned pregnancies.
First Friends Church: Wednesday evening classes for kids, including outreach to inner city students.
Kids CAN (Community Action Network): A service program for school-age children.
Mercy Medical Center's PALS Program: Outreach program to southeast Canton and Allen Elementary School.
Stark County Hunger Task Force: Provides food for individuals and families during times of crisis.
Plain Local Schools: Reading and writing programs for elementary school students.
Chippewa Church of the Brethren VBS: A rural church community serving the people of Creston, Ohio
Sojourners: Faith in action for social justice.
World Relief: Partners with local churches to assist in transforming the lives of the most vulnerable people economically, socially and spiritually.
International Justice Mission: Seeks to make public justice systems work for victims of abuse and oppression in four specific areas: victim relief, perpetrator accountability, survivor aftercare and structural transformation.
KIVA: Microlending to the working poor in third world countries.
KORE Foundation: Helping the poor of Haiti have a life of self-reliance by creating opportunities of economic advancement.
Child Reach Canton, Ohio: Eternally impacting children on the margins of society by providing necessities.

Advertising Comparison

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:00:20 +0000

Search engine optimization is one of the most affordable forms of advertising and produces an exceptionally high return on investment (ROI). The chart below compiles basic advertising costs to provide you a comparison to the overall cost of a search engine optimization campaign. You can easily see that the cost of SEO, while not always the least expensive form of marketing, is very often the most effecting, giving you a much lower cost per conversion than other forms of advertising.

Advertising Cost Comparison Chart

Medium	Cost	Campaign Term	Audience Reach
Local Television	30 seconds in top 10 market: $4,000 to $45,000+.	Purchased throughout year or scheduled in flights.	Large number of consumers but a small target audience.
Network Television	30 seconds in prime time: $80,000 to $600,000.	Purchased in small flights due to high cost.	Very high number of consumers with very low ROI.
Cable Television	30 seconds in prime time: $5,000 and $8,000.	Purchased throughout year or scheduled in flights.	Lower number of consumers but offers better audience targeting.
Radio	60 seconds: $200 to $1,000.	Purchased in flights that center around specific events.	Depends on station. Good reaction numbers but at a high cost.
Magazines	National Magazine: $50 per 1,000 issues. Local magazine: $120 per 1,000 issues.	Sold as annuals, specific months of publication or special issues.	Depends on circulation. Response rates very low.
Direct Mail	Letter-sized envelopes: $15-$20 per 1000. Single sheet newspaper insert: $25-$40 per 1000 issues.	Unlimited.	Very low response rate.
Search Engine Optimization	$15,000-$75,000 per year.	Typically in 6 or 12 month terms.	Exceptionally high ROI as visitors are seeking your products and services and return to become regular customers.

Here is a great video that shows how much advertisers are paying to get their message in front of people. You'll agree that SEO provides far better ROI than the typical alternative.

Bookmarkletts

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:00:38 +0000

Bookmarklets are JavaScript applications contained within a bookmark. Appearing as be normal links, they are actually dynamic scripts, able to perform a variety of tasks, depending on the bookmarklet you use, the page you're visiting, and even what specific text is selected on the page. bookmarklets can be saved and used as a normal browser bookmark, providing quick access to many important and useful tools.

To SAVE a bookmarklet simply drag it into your bookmarks folder in your browser.
To USE a bookmarklet, just click bookmarked link for the page you want it to run.

SEO Bookmarklets

Bitly - Shorten URL via Bitly URL shortener.
Clear Cookies - Clears the cookies for the current page
Disable CSS - View page without CSS, reapply CSS by clicking again
Edit Page - Allows you to edit the current page
Google: CACHE - Shows the Google cache for the current page
Google Site:Search - Shows pages indexed by Google
HTTP Header Check - Displays the page's header information.
Highlight headings - Shows all H1-H6 headings on the current page
Highlight NoFollow - Highlights all links with “nofollow” attribute
Hootlett - Socialize page from Hootsuite.
Hyperlink - Generate a link for the current page instantly.
int/ext links - Colors internal links red, external blue, in-page links orange
Linkfromdomain - View outbound links from site
MSN Link Forward - See all sites this domain links to.
MSN Outbound Links - View outbound links from site
Page Headers - shows all headers on the current page
Robots.txt - Displays the Robots.txt file for the active site
SEO - Allows you to see tile, meta description and other one-page SEO elements.
Technorati - Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword. Also provides popularity indexes
TinyURL - URL shortener via TinyURL.
Validate W3C CSS - Validates code of linked or imported style sheets
Validate HTML - checks the markup validity of the current web page
W3C Broken Link Checker - Checks for broken links on the site.
WayBack Machine - Shows cached view of the current page at various points in time
WhoIs - Provides domain name registration information - registrant information, DNS, and expiration dates from DomainTools

Wordpress Plugins

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:00:55 +0000

Plugins for WordPress expand the functionality of your blog and allow you to do almost anything you can imagine. We'll link you to the ones we like best. If you use different plugins, feel free to shoot us an email. To install a plugin you generally just need to upload the plugin file into the correct directory (WordPress will show you where it is). Once a plugin is uploaded, you may activate it here.

Plugins by Pole Position Marketing

Some plugins we've developed for WordPress that should make your life easier. They're free, so enjoy!

WP-SpamFree Plugin - WordPress Anti-Spam: An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. Includes spam-free contact form feature as well.
Nofollow Blogroll SEO Plugin: A simple plugin that adds rel=”nofollow” attribute to non-homepage Blogroll Links. Improves SEO while still providing some link love to your favorite sites.
Comment Technical Data Plugin: A plugin that adds additional technical information to comment notifications, including referrer and a lot more.

Additional Plugins We Like

You can find more plugins for your site in the WordPress plugin directory.

Append Content: Allows you to post a snippet of text, call to action or ad beneath each blog post.
Audio Player: Allows you to insert mp3 audio files into your posts and pages.
Automatic SEO Links: Allows you to choose a word and a URL and the plugin will replace all matches in your blog posts with hyperlinks.
Broken Link Checker: Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found.
Dofollow: Disables the rel=nofollow attribute in comments.
Google Analytics for Wordpress: Makes it simple to add Google Analytics to your WordPress blog.
Hyper Cache Extended: A cache system for WordPress to improve it's performances and save resources.
JavaScript to Footer: Automatically moves JavaScript code to page footer, speeding up page loading time.
KB Robots.txt: Manage your robots.txt file from within Wordpress.
Redirection: Allows you to manage 301 redirections, and keep track of 404 errors.
Search Everything: Includes options to search pages, excerpts, attachments, drafts, comments, tags and custom fields.
SEO Title Tag: Create a customized title tag for any post, static page, category page.
Sharaholic: Adds a list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.
Subscribe to Comments: Allows commenters to receive notification when additional comments are posted to the thread.
UTF8 Sanitize: Handles the broken characters that might appear on your blog posts.
What Would Seth Godin Do: Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors.
WP-SpamFree: Eliminates comment spam.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches.

WP-Spam Free

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:01:20 +0000

Sorry! We are no longer able to provide support for the WP-SpamFree plugin, as we currently do not have the internal resources to maintain the plugin or respond to support requests. We apologize for any inconvenience.

An extremely powerful anti-spam plugin for WordPress that eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam. It works invisibly without CAPTCHA’s, or other inconvenience to site visitors. The plugin includes spam-free contact form feature as well. Finally, you can enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog! Tech Support: WP-SpamFree Support Download Latest Version Follow WP-SpamFree on Twitter: @WPSpamFree

Quick Navigation – Contents

Description
Background
Features
See What Others Have Said About WP-SpamFree
How It Works
Installation Instructions
Displaying Spam Stats on Your Blog
Installing a WordPress Contact Form on Your Blog
Configuration Information
Changelog / Version History
Known Plugin Conflicts
Troubleshooting Guide / Support
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
Let Others Know About WP-SpamFree
WordPress Security Note
Download Plugin / Documentation

Description

Comment spam has been a huge problem for bloggers since the inception of blogs, and it just doesn’t seem to go away. The worst kind, and most prolific, is automated spam that comes from bots. Well, finally there is an effective solution, without CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, or other inconvenience to site visitors. The WP-SpamFree plugin virtually eliminates automated comment spam from bots, including trackback and pingback spam.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Background

Before I developed this plugin, our team and clients experienced the same frustration you do with comment spam on your blog. Every blog we manage had comment moderation enabled, Akismet and various other anti-spam plugins installed, but we still had a ton of comments tagged as spam by Akismet that we had to sort through. This wasted a lot of valuable time, and we all know, time is money. We needed a solution. Comment spam stems from an older problem — automated spamming of email contact forms on web sites. I developed a successful fix for this a while ago, and later applied it to our WordPress blogs. It was so effective, that I decided to add a few modifications and turn it into a WordPress plugin to be freely distributed. Blogs we manage used to get an excessive number of spam comments show up on the Akismet Spam page each day – now the daily average is zero spam comments. To further the development of this plugin, I now study thousands and thousands of potential spam comments from many test blogs and contributors. I use a special diagnostic version of the plugin, which provides much more information on each of these spam comments than what is shown in WordPress. By analyzing patterns and behaviors consistent with spam, I can continually improve the plugin and ensure future accuracy.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Features

Virtually eliminates automated comment spam from bots. It works like a firewall to ensure that your commenters are in fact, human.
A counter on your dashboard to keep track of all the spam it’s blocking. The numbers will show how effective this plugin is.
No CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions or other inconvenience to site visitors — it works silently in the background.
Includes drop-in spam-free contact form. Easy to use — no configuration necessary.
No false positives, which leads to fewer frustrated readers, and less work for you.
You won’t have to waste valuable time sifting through a spam queue anymore, because there won’t be much there, if anything.
Powerful trackback and pingback spam protection.
Easy to install — truly plug and play. Just upload and activate. (Installation Status on the plugin admin page to let you know if plugin is installed correctly.)
The beauty of this plugin is the methods of blocking spam. It takes a different approach than most and stops spam at the door.
The code has an extremely low bandwidth overhead and won’t slow down your blog (very light database access), unlike some other anti-spam plugins.
Completely compatible with all cache plugins, including WP Cache and WP Super Cache. Not all anti-spam plugins can say that.
Display your blocked spam stats on your blog.
Helps keep your database slimmer and more efficient.
Works in WordPress MU as well. (See the related FAQ for details.)
It’s completely free for both commercial and personal use.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

See What Others Have Said About WP-SpamFree

The WP-SpamFree plugin for WordPress seems to be much better than Akismet at blocking spam bots.

- WP-SpamFree Plugin

I would like to report that the plugin is very very effective. The Akismet spam queue which used to have about one hundred entries a day now has just one or two. Sometimes even zero spam comments. No one has reported missing comments so real comments are not trashed. Very effective.

- WP-SpamFree is Really Good

I’ve tried it out, and it works great. Try it, and even if you’re using Akismet, you’ll notice you don’t have the tons of Akismet spam to go through… if you go through it at all. Eliminate comment spam with wp-spamfree!

- WP-SpamFree Eliminates Automated Comment Spam

I was getting spam comments that averaged 2000 words in length on certain posts. I would have to scroll through them every day before deleting them (Akismet page). Now I am freed from that task. I was using a separate plugin for my contact form and employed a quizz to combat spam. With WP-SpamFree I could delete that plugin, and instead, use the included contact form, which is more easily configured to the features and sizing I require than the full-featured contact form plugin I was using. One less plugin, better functionality, and no quiz for readers to cope with. The clear, complete, and concise information that the developer has detailed on this site. Many thanks :-)

- Zen Moments, on WP-SpamFree 1.0 WordPress Plugin Released

WP-SpamFree is by far the best plugin I have installed. It virtually eliminates comment spam, including trackback and pingback spam and uses very low bandwidth.

- WP-SpamFree: A Must Have WordPress Plugin

I highly recommend downloading and installing WP-SpamFree. It’s a great and unobtrusive plugin to weed out almost all of your spam without imposing spam’s evil effects on your readers.

- WP-SpamFree – A Reader’s Dream?

Tired of those spams that keep bugging your WordPress blog? Then, you need an extremely powerful anti-spam plugin like WP-SpamFree. Use this plugin and see how efficiently it eliminates comment spam including, pingback spam and trackback spam. Rest assure to enjoy a spam-free WordPress blog with this new plugin.

- WP-SpamFree

Say no to spam and get WP-SpamFree for your WordPress blog today! Just install the WP-SpamFree plugin, sit back and relax to watch it do all its magical work.

- Akismet is Not Enough, Get WP-SpamFree

After trying multiple plugins and multiple approaches, I have finally found a spam blocker that works. It’s WP-SpamFree. Before using WP-SpamFree I used to get more hundred spam comments (often in excess of two hundred). Now, on an average I get zero spam comment every day!! … WP-SpamFree is the best antispam plugin I have come across. Give it a try and you may just be tempted to ditch all other antispam plugins.

- WP-SpamFree – Banish Comment Spam

There was some kind of javascript comment spam attack on my blog and although, I was using Akismet, it wasn’t enough to stop all sorts of problems that I was facing because of those spam bots. Thanks to Dreamhost that they told me that which all plugins will be able to help me resolve this problem. … When I came to know about WP-SpamFree, I installed it right then and there. Now, I realize that how effective this plugin is and that how it has helped me in fixing up the problem that DreamHost kindly brought in front of me.

- WP-SpamFree: Fight Blog Comment Spam and Avoid Fat Database in WordPress

Lately, comment spam has been a big problem and I was sick of clearing around 15 – 20 or so spam comments that wordpress catches. Some of them escaped and were getting published. I knew about Akismet but the problem with that is you have to get an account on wordpress.com and give the API key. Annoying. I’ve used re-captcha in the past but it creates more problems than it solves. Often times I find it frustrating if I have to go through a captcha which is unreadable. Sometimes you get it wrong several times and lose the interest to comment and you just go away. During my quest for a world with zero spam without any captchas, I stumbled on the awesome WP-SpamFree plugin. Zero comment spam so far! w00t. Rock on Scott!

- WP-SpamFree: Eliminating Comment Spam If you like WP-SpamFree, please let others know by giving it a good rating on WordPress.org!

[ BACK TO TOP ]

How It Works

Most of the spam hitting your blog originates from bots. Few bots can process JavaScript. Few bots can process cookies. Fewer still, can handle both. In a nutshell, this plugin uses a combo of JavaScript and cookies (on steroids) to weed out the humans from spambots, preventing 99%+ of automated spam from ever getting to your site. Almost 100% of web site visitors will have these turned on by default, so this type of solution works silently in the background, with no inconveniences. There are extremely few users (less than 2%) that have JavaScript and/or cookies turned off by default, but they will be prompted to turn those back on to post their comment. Stats show that among all Internet users, less than 2% have JavaScript turned off, and less than 1% have cookies turned off. This requirement isn’t anything out of the ordinary because most modern websites require the use of JavaScript and cookies for key features — AJAX, for example, won’t work if JS is disabled. Overall, the very few that might be inconvenienced because they have JS and cookies turned off will be far fewer than the 100% who would be annoyed by CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, and other validation methods. As of Version 1.5, WP-SpamFree has multiple randomly generated keys across several methods, along with a few additional security features that further decrease the likelihood of an automated spam comment getting through. These security keys re-generate on a regular basis. Some would argue that this is too simplistic an approach. Many programmers prefer using some type of basic AI to fight bots by trying to figure out if a comment is spam. While that isn’t a bad idea, it falls short because no machine can ever accurately judge whether a comment is spam – many spam comments get through that could easily have been stopped, and there are many false positives where non-spam comments get flagged as spam. Others may argue that some spammers have programmed their bots to read JavaScript, etc. In reality, the percentage of bots with these capabilities is still extremely low – less than 1%. It’s simply a numbers game. Statistics tell us that an effective solution would involve using a technology that few bots can handle, therefore eliminating their ability to spam your site. The important thing in fighting spam is that we create a solution that can reduce spam noticeably and improve the user experience, and a 99% reduction in spam would definitely make a difference for most bloggers and site visitors. The bottom line, is that this plugin just plain works, and is a powerful weapon against spam.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Installation Instructions

After downloading, unzip file and upload the enclosed ‘wp-spamfree’ directory to your WordPress plugins directory: ‘/wp-content/plugins/’.
As always, activate the plugin on your WordPress plugins page.
Check to make sure the plugin is installed properly. Many support requests for this plugin originate from improper installation and can be easily prevented. To check proper installation status, go to the WP-SpamFree page in your Admin. It’s a submenu link on the Plugins page. Go the the ‘Installation Status’ area near the top and it will tell you if the plugin is installed correctly. If it tells you that the plugin is not installed correctly, please double-check what directory you have installed WP-SpamFree in, delete any WP-SpamFree files you have uploaded to your server, re-read the Installation Instructions, and start the Installation process over from step 1. If it is installed correctly, then move on to the next step.
Select desired configuration options. Due to popular request, I’ve added the option to block trackbacks and pingbacks if the user feels they are excessive. I’d recommend not doing this, but the choice is yours.
If you are using front-end anti-spam plugins (CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, etc), be sure they are disabled since there’s no longer a need for them, and these could likely conflict. (Back-end anti-spam plugins like Akismet are fine, although unnecessary.)

You’re done! Sit back and see what it feels like to blog without comment spam! If you’re not familiar with WordPress plugin installation, you may want to read these two articles:

For Best Results WP-SpamFree was created specifically to stop automated comment spam (which accounts for over 99% of comment spam), and it does have features that help combat human comment spam, as well as trackback/pingback spam. Unfortunately, no plugin can perfectly detect human comment spam. As other experts will tell you, the most effective strategy for blocking spam involves applying a variety of techniques. For best results, enable comment moderation, and if you desire a backup, feel free to use Akismet (although unnecessary), as the two plugins are compatible.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Displaying Spam Stats on Your Blog

Want to show off your spam stats on your blog and tell others about WP-SpamFree? Simply add the following code to your WordPress theme where you’d like the stats displayed: where ‘1′ is the style. Replace the ‘1′ with a number from 1-9 that corresponds to one of the following sample styles you’d like to use. To simply display text stats on your site (no graphic), replace the ‘1′ with ‘0′.

To add stats to individual posts, you’ll need to install the Exec-PHP plugin.

Small Counter To add smaller counter to your site, add the following code to your WordPress theme where you’d like the stats displayed: where ‘1′ is the style. Replace the ‘1′ with a number from 1-5 that corresponds to one of the following.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Installing a WordPress Contact Form on Your Blog

First create a page (not post) where you want to have your contact form. Then, insert the following tag (using the HTML editing tab, NOT the Visual editor) and you’re done: There is no need to configure the form. It allows you to simply drop it into the page you want to install it on. However, there are a few basic configuration options. You can choose whether or not to include Phone and Website fields, whether they should be required, add a drop down menu with up to 10 options, set the width and height of the Message box, set the minimum message length, set the form recipient, enter a custom message to be displayed upon successful contact form submission, and choose whether or not to include user technical data in the email. If you want to modify the style of the form using CSS, all the form elements have an ID attribute you can reference in your stylesheet. What the Contact Form feature IS: A simple drop-in contact form that won’t get spammed. What the Contact Form feature is NOT: A configurable and full-featured plugin like some other contact form plugins out there. Note: Please do not request new features for the contact form, as the main focus of the plugin is spam protection. Thank you.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Configuration Information

Spam Options M2 – Use two methods to set cookies. This adds a secondary non-JavaScript method to set cookies in addition to the standard JS method. Blocked Comment Logging Mode This is a temporary diagnostic mode that logs blocked comment submissions for 7 days (changed from 3 days to 7 in version 2.1.0.4), then turns off automatically. If you want to see what spam has been blocked on your site, this is the option to use. Also, if you experience any technical issues, this will help with diagnosis, as you can email this log file to support if necessary. If you suspect you are having a technical issue, please turn this on right away and start logging data. Then submit a support request, and we’ll email you back asking to see the log file so we can help you fix whatever the issue may be. The log is cleared each time this feature is turned on, so make sure you download the file before turning it back on. Also the log is capped at 2MB for security. This feature may use slightly higher server resources, so for best performance, only use when necessary. (Most websites won’t notice any difference.) Log All Comments Requires that Blocked Comment Logging Mode be engaged. Instead of only logging blocked comments, this will allow the log to capture all comments while logging mode is turned on. This provides more technical data for comment submissions than WordPress provides, and helps us improve the plugin. If you plan on submitting spam samples to our us for analysis, it’s helpful for you to turn this on, otherwise it’s not necessary. If you have any spam comments that you feel WP-SpamFree should have blocked (usually human spam), then please submit a support request. When we email you back we will ask you to forward the data to us by email. This extra data will be extremely valuable in helping us improve the spam protection capabilites of the plugin. Enhanced Comment Blacklist Enhances WordPress’s Comment Blacklist – instead of just sending comments to moderation, they will be completely blocked if this is enabled. (Useful if you receive repetitive human spam or harassing comments from a particular commenter.) Also adds one-click blacklisting – a link will now appear in the comment notification emails that you can click to blacklist a commenter’s IP. This link appears whether or not the feature is enabled. If you click the link and this feature is diabled, it will add the commenter’s IP to the blacklist but blacklisting will operate according to WordPress’s default functionality. The WP-SpamFree blacklist shares the WordPress Comment Blacklist data, but the difference is that now when a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP, it will be completely blocked, not just marked as spam. One word or IP per line…add each new blacklist item on a new line. If you’re not sure how to use it, start by just adding an IP address, or click on the link in one of the notification emails. It is not case-sensitive and will match included words, so “press” on your blacklist will block “WordPress” in a comment. Disable trackbacks. Use if trackback spam is excessive. It is recommended that you don’t use this option unless you are experiencing an extreme spam attack. Disable pingbacks. Use if pingback spam is excessive. The disadvantage is a reduction of communication between blogs. When blogs ping each other, it’s like saying “Hi, I just wrote about you” and disabling these pingbacks eliminates that ability. It is recomended that you don’t use this option unless you are experiencing an extreme spam attack. Allow users behind proxy servers to comment? Most users should leave this unchecked. Many human spammers hide behind proxies. Leaving this unckecked adds an extra layer of spam protection. In the rare even that a non-spam commenter gets blocked by this, they will be notified what the situation is, and instructed to contact you to ask you to modify this setting. Hide extra technical data in comment notifications. The plugin now addes some extra technical data to the comment moderation and notification emails, including the referrer that brought the user to the page where they commented, the referrer that brought them to the WordPress comments processing page (helps with fighting spam), User-Agent, Remote Host, Reverse DNS, Proxy Info, Browser Language, and more. This data is helpful if you ever need to submit a spam sample. If you dislike seeing the extra info, you can use this option to prevent the info from being displayed in the emails. If you don’t mind seeing it, please leave it this unchecked, because if you ever need to submit a spam sample, it helps us track spam patterns. Help promote WP-SpamFree? This places a small link under the comments and contact form, letting others know what’s blocking spam on your blog. This plugin is provided for free, so this is much appreciated. It’s a small way you can give back and let others know about WP-SpamFree. Contact Form Options These are self-explanatory.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Changelog / Version History

For a complete list of changes to the plugin, view the Version History.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Known Plugin Conflicts

Plugins that are reported to be incompatible with WP-SpamFree, or have certain compatibility issues.

AskApache Password ProtectUsers have reported that using its feature to protect the /wp-content/ directory creates an .htaccess file in that directory that creates improper permissions and conflicts with WP-SpamFree (and most likely other plugins as well). You’ll need to disable this feature, or disable the AskApache Password Protect Plugin and delete any .htaccess files it has created in your /wp-content/ directory before using WP-SpamFree.
WP-PXSMail (de)
Some front-end anti-spam plugins, including CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, etc.There’s no longer a need for them, and these could likely conflict. (Back-end anti-spam plugins like Akismet are fine, although unnecessary.)

Plugins that may have issues with WP-SpamFree. Recent updates to WP-SpamFree (1.9.8.0+) include workarounds and improvements that may alleviate compatibility issues. If you plan to use any of these with WP-SpamFree, it’s recommended you do some testing. Enabling the option “M2 – Use two methods to set cookies.” may also improve the compatibility with plugins in question.

Head Cleaner (and similar plugins that condense JS)

Plugins that previously had compatibility issues, but are now compatible. (Plugins that we’ve had reports of no conflict whatsoever with recent versions of WP-SpamFree.)

AJAX Edit Comments
Wordpress Thread Comment
WP-OpenID

Please let us know about any undocumented plugins that you suspect conflict, or if you have any other issues. If you have any of these working with WP-SpamFree without issues, let us know.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Troubleshooting Guide / Support

If you’re having trouble getting things to work after installing the plugin, here are a few things to check:

Check the FAQ’s.
If you haven’t yet, please upgrade to the latest version.
Check to make sure the plugin is installed properly. Many support requests for this plugin originate from improper installation and can be easily prevented. To check proper installation status, go to the WP-SpamFree page in your Admin. It’s a submenu link on the Plugins page. Go the the ‘Installation Status’ area near the top and it will tell you if the plugin is installed correctly. If it tells you that the plugin is not installed correctly, please double-check what directory you have installed WP-SpamFree in, delete any WP-SpamFree files you have uploaded to your server, re-read the Installation Instructions, and start the Installation process over from step 1.
Clear your browser’s cache, clear your cookies, and restart your browser. Then reload the page.
If you are receiving the error message: “Sorry, there was an error. Please enable JavaScript and Cookies in your browser and try again.” then you need to make sure JavaScript and cookies are enabled in your browser. (JavaScript is different from Java. Java is not required.) These are enabled by default in web browsers. The status display will let you know if these are turned on or off (as best the page can detect – occasionally the detection does not work.) If this message comes up consistently even after JavaScript and cookies are enabled, then there most likely is an installation problem, plugin conflict, or JavaScript conflict. Read on for possible solutions.
If you have multiple domains that resolve to the same server, or are parked on the same hosting account, make sure the domain set in the WordPress configuration options matches the domain where you are accessing the blog from. In other words, if you have people going to your blog using http://www.yourdomain.com/ and the WordPress configuration has: http://www.yourdomain2.com/ you will have a problem (not just with this plugin, but with a lot of things.)
Check your WordPress Version. If you are using a release earlier than 2.3, you may want to upgrade for a whole slew of reasons, including features and security.
Check the options you have selected to make sure they are not disabling a feature you want to use.
Make sure that you are not using other front-end anti-spam plugins (CAPTCHA’s, challenge questions, etc) since there’s no longer a need for them, and these could likely conflict. (Back-end anti-spam plugins like Akismet are fine, although unnecessary.)
Visit http://www.yourblog.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamfree/js/wpsf-js.php (where yourblog.comis your blog url) and check two things.First, see if the file comes normally or if it comes up blank or with errors.That would indicate a problem. Submit a support request (see last troubleshooting step) and copy and past any error messages on the page into your message.Second, check for a 403 Forbidden error. (Or a 404 Not Found error.) That means there is a problem with your file permissions. If the files in the wp-spamfree folder don’t have standard permissions (at least 644 or higher for files and 755 for folders) they won’t work. (You may need to try 666 for files and 775 for folders.) This usually only happens by manual modification, but strange things do happen. The AskApache Password Protect Plugin is known to cause this error. Users have reported that using its feature to protect the /wp-content/ directory creates an .htaccess file in that directory that creates improper permissions and conflicts with WP-SpamFree (and most likely other plugins as well). You’ll need to disable this feature, or disable the AskApache Password Protect Plugin and delete any .htaccess files it has created in your /wp-content/ directory before using WP-SpamFree. If changing the files permissions does not fix it, then you may need to contact your web host to see why a file that you know is there, does not have appropriate permissions on the server to be shown in a browser. (Occasionally there is a file ownership issue that only a System Administrator can fix.)
Check for conflicts with other JavaScripts installed on your site. This usually occurs with with JavaScripts unrelated to WordPress or plugins. However some themes contain JavaScripts that aren’t compatible. (And some don’t have the call to the wp_head() function which is also a problem. Read on to see how to test/fix this issue.) If in doubt, try switching themes. If that fixes it, then you know the theme was at fault. If you discover a conflicting theme, please let us know.
Check for conflicts with other WordPress plugins installed on your blog. Although errors don’t occur often, this is one of the most common causes of the errors that do occur. I can’t guarantee how well-written other plugins will be. First, see the Known Plugin Conflictslist. If you’ve disabled any plugins on that list and still have a problem, then proceed.To start testing for conflicts, temporarily deactivate all other plugins except WP-SpamFree. Then check to see if WP-SpamFree works by itself. (For best results make sure you are logged out and clear your cookies. Alternatively you can use another browser for testing.) If WP-SpamFree allows you to post a comment with no errors, then you know there is a plugin conflict. The next step is to activate each plugin, one at a time, log out, and try to post a comment. Then log in, deactivate that plugin, and repeat with the next plugin. (If possible, use a second browser to make it easier. Then you don’t have to keep logging in and out with the first browser.) Be sure to clear cookies between attempts (before loading the page you want to comment on). If you do identify a plugin that conflicts, please let me know so I can work on bridging the compatibility issues.
Make sure the theme you are using has the call to wp_head() (which most properly coded themes do) usually found in the header.php file. It will be located somewhere before the tag. If not, you can insert it before the tag and save the file. If you’ve never edited a theme before, proceed at your own risk:
1. In the WordPress admin, go to Themes (Appearance) – Theme Editor
2. Click on Header (or header.php)
3. Locate the line with and insert before it.
4. Click ‘Save’
On the WP-SpamFree Options page in the WordPress Admin, under “General Options”, check the option “M2 – Use two methods to set cookies.” and see if this helps.
If have checked all of these, and still can’t quite get it working, please submit a support request at the WP-SpamFree Support Page.

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

Q: Where did all the spam go, and can I check it?A:In the admin options page for the plugin, under “General Options”, turn on “Blocked Comment Logging Mode”, a temporary diagnostic mode that logs blocked comments and contact form submissions for 7 days (changed from 3 days to 7 in version 2.1.0.4), then turns off automatically. If you want to see what’s been blocked, or verify that everything is working, turn this on and see what WP-SpamFree is protecting your blog from. The log is cleared each time you turn on this feature. Also, if you experience any technical issues, this will help with diagnosis, as you can email this log file to support if necessary.WP-SpamFree is different from other spam plugins in that it BLOCKS spam at the front door and doesn’t allow it into the WordPress database* at all. (Other spam plugins simply label a comment as spam, leaving you to sort through a queue, which wastes your valuable time.) Since the blocked spam comments aren’t stored in the database, it is not possible to restore them.*Not allowing these into the database improves security by preventing SQL injection exploit attacks through automated comment submissions. It also keeps your WordPress database slimmer and more efficient (keeping your site running faster) by not allowing the thousands of spam comments into it.Also, you’ll be interested to know that internally (both our blogs and our testers’ blogs) we use a special version of the plugin for testing and debugging. This “Debug Version” of the plugin tracks very detailed data about the each comment submission, both spam and legit. This allows us to ensure that everything is working well, and improve the plugin. It provides much more detailed data about each comment submission that you would ever see in WordPress.
Q: How is it possible to have no false positives?A: WP-SpamFree doesn’t have false positives because it uses a different method that can’t have false positives. Other spam plugins label a comment as spam, and aren’t always accurate. This incorrect labeling of a non-spam comment as spam is a “False Positive”. When WP-SpamFree blocks a spammy comment from a human, it gives the commenter another chance to submit a non-spam comment. (Note: In the rare event you are getting reports from multiple users that their comments are being blocked, these are not false positives — it means you most likely have a conflict that is preventing the plugin from functioning properly and you need to run through the Troubleshooting Guide.)
Q: Does WP-SpamFree work on WordPress MU?A:Yes it does.It’s one of the few free spam blockers out there for WPMU.The spam blocking features work fine, which is the main feature of the plugin.Currently sitewide activation does not seem to be working. We will try to have that up and running as soon as possible.There may be other features that are not yet fully compatible with WPMU.Install the plugin normally either through the WordPress admin, or through your FTP client. It should be placed in the plugins folder, not the mu-plugins folder. The plugin currently needs to be activated by each individual blog admin.
Q: The contact form says that email was successfully sent, but an email never seems to reach my inbox. What might be causing this?A:It’s most likely the problem is not with the plugin.You may need to check your spam filters, as well as who is set to be the contact form email recipient. On some email systems, if the email FROM address and TO address are the same, the email might not show up in your inbox. Keep that in mind if you are testing the form using the same email that the forms are set to go to.After that, check that everything is functioning properly on your server with the PHP mail() function – this is basic to most PHP programs that use mail. You may need to call tech support at your host.The plugin has been tested thoroughly, so if the mail still isn’t getting sent, then it’s most likely an issue with the server settings or with email spam filters.Please see this topic on the WordPress Support Forums. (This is for WordPress MU but the advice/solutions given apply universally.)
Q: I have “Blocked Comment Logging Mode” turned on and the spam counter is going up, but I’m getting a blank log file. How can I fix this?A:The file may be cached by your browser. Delete your browser’s cache (or “temporary files”) and then try to view the log file again. (You may need to manually reload it.)If that doesn’t work, it may be related to file permissions. The files need to have the proper read/write permissions, and it’s likely something has interfered with the server’s default settings.Some security plugins alter these. (In many cases, they overstep a bit by modifying permissions that don’t need to be modified. This only hampers other plugins and doesn’t actually increase security.) If permissions for the necessary files are incorrect, the plugin will attempt to fix the permissions, but in the event it cannot, they may need to be manually modified. Make sure that the “/wp-spamfree/data” folder has a permission setting of 755 and the files within to 644, which are common defaults for servers. If that doesn’t work (some server configurations vary in who they let write to a file) then you may want to try 775 for the “/wp-spamfree/data” folder and 666 for the included files. (More information is available on WordPress file permissions.)Also, be aware that the log file is cleared each time you turn it on.
Q: Why should I use WP-SpamFree instead of CAPTCHA-based anti-spam solutions?A:For several reasons, but here are two specific ones.Before creating this plugin, I did a lot of market research to see how people felt about current blog spam solutions being used. Statistics show conclusively that people hate CAPTCHA’s. They end up frustrating users and many end up not commenting or going away permanently.Why would we want to harass our users and customers this way?(Read more: A good article on how CAPTCHA’s may be killing your business.)Also, CAPTCHA’s are becoming less and less effective as programmers are equipping spambots with OCR software that can break CAPTCHA’s.Wow, so they both annoy users, and they often don’t work. Tough choice? WP-SpamFree is a clear winner.
Q: Will WP-SpamFree Be Available in My Language?A: Since the popularity of this plugin has spread across the world, there are now a lot of users whose native language isn’t English. We need to make WP-SpamFree more accessible to users in every language, and we do have localization/internationalization high on our to-do list. Please be patient with us, as this will take a fair amount of work, but we will do it. (Volunteers who speak various languages would be much appreciated for creating different translations.)

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Let Others Know About WP-SpamFree

How does it feel to blog without being bombarded by automated comment spam? If you’re happy with how effectively WP-SpamFree blocks spam on your blog, there’s a few things you can do to let others know:

Rate WP-SpamFree on WordPress.org.
Place a graphic link on your site letting others know how they can help end blog spam. ( )

[ BACK TO TOP ]

WordPress Security Note

As with any WordPress plugin, for security reasons, you should only download plugins from the author’s site and from official WordPress repositories. When other sites host a plugin that is developed by someone else, they may inject code into that could compromise the security of your blog. We cannot endorse a version of this that you may have downloaded from another site. If you have downloaded the “WP-SpamFree” plugin from another site, please download the current release from the official site (http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/library/wp-spamfree/).

[ BACK TO TOP ]

Download Plugin / Documentation

Download Latest Version Plugin Homepage / Documentation: WP-SpamFree WordPress.org Page: WP-SpamFree Tech Support/Questions: WP-SpamFree Support Page Twitter: @WPSpamFree

Version History

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:01:37 +0000

Version 2.1.1.1, released 02/05/10

Fixed a minor bug.

Version 2.1.0.8, released 10/03/09

Fixed a minor bug.

Version 2.1.0.7, released 07/11/09

Improving detection for logged-in users.
Fixed a bug that prevented some users from responding to comments through the admin.

Version 2.1.0.6, released 07/02/09

Fixed a glitch that affected a small percentage of users.

Version 2.1.0.5, released 07/01/09

Improved compatibility on certain quirky servers / web hosts.

Version 2.1.0.4, released 06/30/09

Modified “Blocked Comment Logging Mode” to stay on 7 days instead of 3.
Modified to not run spam tests on logged in Editors and Authors. (It already didn’t run spam tests on blog Administrators.)

Version 2.1.0.3, released 06/27/09

Improved comment spam protection.
Updated dnsstuff.com links. (They updated their site so the previous ones had stopped working.)

Version 2.1.0.2, released 06/19/09

Improved comment spam protection.
Added optional “Company” field to Contact Form.
Added info to the Contact Form emails to let you know which blog it originated from. Helpful if you have multiple blogs. Just be sure that “Include user technical data in email.” is turned on in the options.

Version 2.1.0.1, released 06/11/09

Improved comment spam protection.

Version 2.1, released 06/09/09

Improved comment spam protection.
Added Enhanced Comment Blacklist option. Instead of just sending comments to moderation as with WordPress’s default Comment Blacklist functionality, with this turned on, anything that matches a string in the blacklist will be completely blocked. Also adds a link in the comment notification emails that will let you blacklist a commentor's IP with one click.
Added option to block users behind a proxy server. Many spammers hide behind proxies so you can’t see their real IP. This is turned on by default but you can turn it off in the options.
Added option to hide extra technical data in notification emails.

Version 2.0.1.7, released 06/05/09

Improved comment spam protection.

Version 2.0.1.5, released 06/04/09

Added additional technical data about submitter to comment notification emails, including referrer and more. Helpful if you want to submit a potential spam sample to us for review.

Version 2.0.1.3, released 06/02/09

Fixed a bug that was introduced in 2.0.1.2.

Version 2.0.1.2, released 05/31/09

Improved comment spam protection.
Added option to Log All Comments. When you have Blocked Comment Logging Mode turned on, turn this on as well to log all comments, not just the blocked ones. Also, helpful if you want to submit a spam sample that you feel should have been blocked by the plugin. This provides extra data that helps us improve the plugin.

Version 2.0.1.1, released 05/16/09

Bug fix: Fixed a contact form glitch that was introduced in version 2.0.1.0.

Version 2.0.1.0, released 05/16/09

Improved comment spam protection.
Made minor mods to contact form to make it easier for CSS customization.

Version 2.0.0.9, released 05/14/09

Improved comment spam protection.

Version 2.0.0.8, released 05/12/09

Added an option to set your own thank you message upon successful contact form submission. Can be plain text or HTML. Can be a simple message, can be HTML code, can be an ad…whatever you like. Up to you to make sure it looks good though and doesn’t break your page.

Version 2.0.0.7, released 05/11/09

Improved spam protection.

Version 2.0.0.6, released 05/02/09

Improved compatibility for Blocked Comment Logging Mode.

Version 2.0.0.5, released 04/24/09

Improved spam protection.

Version 2.0.0.4, released 04/18/09

CSS improvement on Contact Form. Prevents CSS glitches in IE.

Version 2.0.0.3, released 04/10/09

Improved spam protection.

Version 2.0.0.2, released 04/08/09

Improved spam protection.

Version 2.0.0.1, released 03/16/09

Fixed a bug caused by WordPress’ built-in plugin-upgrade deleting a file during extraction. (Those who upgraded or installed through WordPress were affected. Those who uploaded v2.0 through FTP were fine.)

Version 2.0, released 03/16/09

Added “Blocked Comment Logging Mode”. Temporary diagnostic mode that logs blocked comments and contact form submissions for 3 days, then turns off automatically. If you want to see what’s been blocked, or verify that everything is working, turn this on and see what WP-SpamFree is protecting your blog from. It writes to a simple text file to keep the spam out of the database (for security) and minimize database access. The log is cleared each time you turn on this feature. Also, if you experience any technical issues, this will help with diagnosis, as you can email this log file to support if necessary.
Added option for small graphic counters to display spam stats in addition to the existing normal-sized ones.
Added Widget for displaying spam counter. Shows small counter #1. Now you can show stats without knowing any code.
Miscellaneous minor interface enhancements.

Version 1.9.9.1, released 03/10/09

Added a Reply-To header in the emails generated by the contact form.

Version 1.9.8.9, released 03/10/09

Fixed a CSS issue.

Version 1.9.8.8, released 03/07/09

Added 3 new background options for the spam counter display.

Version 1.9.8.7, released 02/26/09

Fixed a CSS issue.
Adjusted the frequency of regenerating a new random key. Helpful for high-traffic blogs.
Updated error messages.
Clarified some wording on the options page.

Version 1.9.8.6, released 02/23/09

Fixed a minor formatting issue.

Version 1.9.8.5, released 02/22/09

Improved spam protection.
Added option to use two methods to set cookies. This adds a secondary non-JavaScript method to set cookies in addition to the standard JS method.

Version 1.9.8.4, released 02/20/09

Updated documentation.
Added option to turn off the inclusion of meta user data in email. (Browser, IP Address, User-Agent, etc.)
Modified Installation Status test to be more compliant with new WP 2.6+ customization features. Backward compatible with older versions as well.
Improved error messages.

Version 1.9.8.3, released 02/15/09

Modified contact form email functionality. Switched from mail() function to wp_mail().

Version 1.9.8.2, released 02/12/09

Fixed issue occurring with plugin options page.
Improved code structure to be compliant with new WP 2.6+ customization features. Backward compatible with older versions as well.
Performance improvements.

Version 1.9.8.1, released 02/11/09

Improved overall spam protection.

Version 1.9.8.0, released 02/10/09

Improved compatibility. This mod prevents some plugin conflicts.

Version 1.9.7.2, released 02/09/09

Fixed a minor bug.

Version 1.9.7.1, released 02/09/09

Updated documentation.
Improved overall spam protection.

Version 1.9.6.9, released 02/06/09

Improved compatibility.

Version 1.9.6.8, released 01/21/09

Improved overall spam protection.

Version 1.9.6.7, released 09/18/08

Made error messages more helpful and user-friendly.
Improved comment spam protection.
Improved trackback/pingback spam protection.

Version 1.6.4, released 04/10/08

Improved comment spam protection.
Improved trackback/pingback spam protection.

Version 1.6.3, released 04/08/08

Improved trackback/pingback spam protection.

Version 1.6.1, released 04/07/08

Improved trackback/pingback spam protection.

Version 1.6, released 04/06/08

Improved comment spam protection.
Improved trackback and pingback spam protection.

Version 1.5.8, released 03/30/08

Modified to work with WordPress 2.5. WordPress 2.5 broke many plugins and themes. If you have any problems with 1.5.8, please submit a support request.
Now compatible with WP Super Cache gzip compression.

Version 1.5.7, released 03/27/08

Improved compatibility with WP Super Cache. Ironically, to do this I removed WP Super Cache compatibility mode. Several users reported having trouble with that feature, and after dialog with several users and further testing, we found it worked better without. (One of the joys of programming – sometimes you think you’re fixing one problem and you end up creating a new one. It’s fixed now though.) Seems to be working fine with WP Super Cache now, but if any of you have conflicts with WP super Cache and version 1.5.7, please submit a support request so we can look into it ASAP. (See Troubleshooting for more info.)
Improved spam protection.

Version 1.5.6, released 03/22/08

Addition of Installation Status on plugin admin page to let site owner know if plugin has been installed correctly.
Minor code efficiency improvements.

Version 1.5.4, released 03/15/08

Addition of configuration option to Disable Trackbacks and/or Pingbacks if spam through these channels proves excessive.
Addition of WP Super Cache compatibility mode, which can be turned on in the Options section of admin page.

Version 1.5.3, released 02/27/08

Minor upgrade that slightly improves compatibility and code efficiency.

Version 1.5, released 02/25/08

Improved spam protection!
A counter on your WordPress Dashboard so you can see how many spammers WP-SpamFree has kicked in the head!
Added advanced verification methods that make WP-SpamFree tougher to beat by potential evolutions in spambots.
It now creates multiple randomly generated verification keys, across several methods, including random cookie values (so bots can’t just set a value and hit the page), along a few other tricks that make it extremely difficult for spambots to bypass.
Now uses WordPress’s database to store important data. Don’t worry, though – we’re still keeping the overhead light so it doesn’t slow down your blog.
Even more improvements are in the works for future releases. Stay tuned!

Version 1.3.1, released 01/22/08

This release is a bug fix. It was brought to my attention that one of the recent feature upgrades in version 1.3 disabled a blog’s ability to receive trackbacks and pingbacks. This is now fixed.

Version 1.3, released 01/20/08

This is a major upgrade!!
Super-simple installation – truly plug and play. No need to edit external files!! I’ve been working on making this possible since version 1.01 and finally got the bugs worked out.
[UPDATE - The following is rolled back in 1.3.1, because of compatibility issues, but will be re-released in a future version.]Added advanced verification methods that enable WP-SpamFree to beat potential evolutions in spambots. It now creates multiple randomly generated verification keys, and a few other tricks that make it extremely difficult for comment spambots to bypass.[/UPDATE]

Version 1.2, released 01/17/08

Improved JavaScript compatibility with Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Even though everything worked perfectly in all browsers, it triggered a JavaScript error icon in the bottom of the Internet Explorer browser window due to IE’s lack of standards compliance. This worried a few users, so I took care of it.

Version 1.1, released 01/13/08

Improved security by preventing site visitors from browsing contents of private directories.
Improved SEO by ensuring plugin pages don’t get indexed in search engines. You don’t want backend pages indexed for a number of reason, including security.

Version 1.03, released 12/01/07

Improved compatibility and minor bug fixes.

Version 1.02, released 11/14/07

While 1.01 fixed several of the problems with 1.0, it somehow interfered with comment moderation. To fix it I begrudgingly had to go back to manually editing the wp-comments-post.php file. I was trying to make the installation process as simple as possible for users. That’s one of the frustrating things in development — you fix one problem and another pops up. C’est la vie. I’ll keep working on eliminating the external editing for future versions.
The installation process is still very easy.

Version 1.01, released 11/13/07

Simplified installation — now it’s a breeze. No need to edit external files as in Version 1.0.
Improved compatibility.

Download Plugin / Documentation

Download Latest Version Plugin Homepage / Documentation: WP-SpamFree WordPress.org Page: WP-SpamFree Tech Support/Questions: WP-SpamFree Support Page Twitter: @WPSpamFree

Nofollow Blogroll

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:02:12 +0000

A simple plugin that adds rel=”nofollow” attribute to non-homepage Blogroll Links. Improves SEO while still providing some link love to your favorite sites. The default setting for WordPress Blogrolls does not add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to links. If you are familiar with Search Engine Optimization, you know that linking out to other sites from every single page of your site (as a Blogroll does) can hurt your SEO because you lose too much link juice. It also doesn’t really help the sites you’re linking to because search engine don’t place as much value on sitewide links – all the other sites need is one good link from your site. This plugin will allow you to give link love (via a followed link) to sites in your Blogroll from the homepage of your blog, which is most likely the strongest page anyway in terms of SEO link juice (so that’s a pretty decent link for your Blogroll friends to have). On all the other pages of your site, the rel=”nofollow” attribute will be added to Blogroll links to prevent unnecessary bleeding of link juice. This is different from some other plugins in that it doesn’t add nofollow to the Blogroll links on the homepage. Download Plugin Installation Instructions

After downloading, unzip file and upload the enclosed nofollow-blogroll-seo directory to your WordPress plugins directory: /wp-content/plugins/.
As always, **activate** the plugin on your WordPress plugins page.

Download Plugin / Documentation Latest Version — 1.0: Download Plugin WordPress.org Page: Nofollow Blogroll SEO

Technical Support

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:40:10 +0000

NOTE: If you have a Support issue, please follow the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQ's in the plugin documentation.

Comment Technical Data

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:44:17 +0000

A plugin that adds additional technical information to comment notifications, including referrer, User-Agent, and a lot more. The default WordPress email notifications for moderation and new comments do not add very much technical data. This plugin captures an array of data, including the referrer that brought the user to the page where they commented, the referrer that brought them to the WordPress comments processing page (helps with fighting spam), User-Agent, Remote Host, Reverse DNS, Proxy Info, Browser Language, and more. In web design, there are various applications where this info can be helpful. If you are a technical type, or you just want to have additional info about a comment submitter, or to help stop spam, you might find this plugin useful. (If you are using WP-SpamFree you don’t need this plugin as it already includes this exact functionality.) Download Plugin Installation Instructions

After downloading, unzip file and upload the enclosed comment-technical-data directory to your WordPress plugins directory: /wp-content/plugins/.
As always, **activate** the plugin on your WordPress plugins page.

Download Plugin / Documentation Latest Version — 1.1: Download Plugin WordPress.org Page: Comment Technical Data

eBooks

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:44:39 +0000

You are welcome to download the following e-books written by Stoney deGeyter and the Pole Position Marketing Team.

Link Building Secrets 2012
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist
Keyword Research and Selection
Keyword Research Spreadsheet Tool (.xlsm) (how to use)
Destination Search Engine Marketing
Link Building Secrets 2008
Big Bad List of SEO Questions (coming soon)

If you'd like Stoney deGeyter to speak at your conference, seminar, workshop or provide in-house training to your team, contact him at stoney@polepositionmarketing.com or 866-685-3374.

Firefox Addons

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:44:59 +0000

Pole Position Marketing's list of Firefox extensions we love and use regularly. These tools are essential for all of our website marketing campaigns. Feel free to email us any of the extensions you use. This list is updated periodically as we find new tools. SEO

Google Toolbar: Enhance Google search, receive warnings about web pages that may be unsafe, subscribe to feeds with one click.
SEO for Firefox: Pulls a ton of marketing data right into the search results to help you analyze how competitive a marketplace is.
SEOQuake: Obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly, save them for future work, compare them with the results, obtained for other, competitive, projects
RankQuest SEO Toolbar: Provides you quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools.
HTML Validator: Shows you pages which are or are not validated and suggests corrections to clear up validation issues.
Word Count: Lets you count the number of words on any web page you are viewing.
Show IP: Show the IP address of the current page in the status bar.
Search Status: View any page's Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN - all in one place.
Copy Plain Text: Gives you an option to copy text without the formatting. You can even set it to trim extra space in and around the copied text!
X-Ray Viewer: Lets you view the HTML markup of any page without having to view the source code.
FireFTP: Provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.
Snap Shots for Firefox: Turns ordinary links into inline videos, photo albums, summaries, member profiles, Wikipedia summaries, stock charts and much more.
McAfree Site Advisor: Provides a warning status of sites in Google and Yahoo search results. Also allows you to view the status of any site you're on.

Web Design

Web Developer: Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. Excellent for viewing/editing CSS files, viewing source code, HTML Validation, and more.
IE Tab: See how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool: See what what a page will look like when viewed with Lynx, a text-mode web browser.
Download Embedded: Downloads all or selected embedded objects on a web page. Can be used for downloading movies, mp3s, flash, QuickTime, or other embedded files (although this does NOT work on video embedded in flash.
PDF Download: Allows to choose if you want to view a PDF file inside the browser (as PDF or HTML), if you want to view it outside Firefox with your default or custom PDF reader, or if you want to download it!
Screen Grab: Save the entire page as an image, just the visible portion, or the browser window.
ColorZilla: Get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program.

General all round cool tools

Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer: If you use Firefox on more than one computer, this allows you to synchronize all your bookmarks.
Firefox Environment Backup Extension (FEBE): Backs up your extensions, themes, and (optionally) your bookmarks, preferences, passwords, cookies and just about everything else Firefox offers.
Tab Mix Plus: Enhances Firefox plugins such as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows.
Firefox Showcase: Manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar.
AI RoboForm: RoboForm is Top-rated Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling.
InFormEnter: Adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted - no typing required.
Tabbrowser Extensions: Add-on package for extending operations of tabbed browsing, for example tabs become reorderable by drag and drop.
Read it Later: Lets you create a reading list from interesting links. Once it's installed, you can right-click on any web site or link to save it to your reading list.

SEO Tools

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:45:20 +0000

Quick access to some of the most important and useful tools on the Web for SEO and search engine marketing. Tools updated frequently so bookmark this page! SEO Tools

SEO Browser: See your website as the search engines see it.
Lynx Viewer: Snapshot of what the search engine sees when it spiders your pages.
Spider Simulator: Simulate how a search engine spider moves through your site.
Spider Viewer: See what search engines see when they crawl your site.
MonitorThis: This tool allows you to subscribe to 20 different search engine feeds at the same time.
Site Explorer: See which pages are indexed and who links to them.
MindSet: Tweak your search results to be more or less commercial... in real time.
Detecting Online Commercial Intention: How commercial is your query or web page. Find out here.
SiteMaps: Submit your pages to Google, free. Also provides reports on keywords which delivered traffic and other stats.

Webmaster Tools

W3C HTML Validator: Validate your HTML to professional and search engine preferred standards.
W3C CSS Validator: Validate your CSS to professional and search engine preferred standards.
robots.txt generator: Generate a usable robots.txt file for your site.
Color Blender: Online tool for color palette design and matching, thousands of color blends created by the user.
Colorblind Web Page Filter: This tools helps select colors that will be easiest for people who are colorblind to see.

Analytics and Statistic Tools

Web Page Analyzer: Analyzes your website, providing stats on keyword usage, and estimated download times.
Alexa Traffic Rating: Provides a rating on how your popular your site is compared to the rest of the web.
Robots.txt Generator: Generates a Robots.txt file for your site.
Webpages as Graphs: Visually see how your website links work.
TouchGraph Google Browser: A free java application that shows connections between related websites.
Domain Age Tool: Use this tool to see the approximate age of a website and what it looked like when it first started.
Robot.txt Builder: Generate a free robot.txt file for your site.
DomainTools: A good site overall with plenty of tools to help a webmaster.
HTACCESS File Generator: Free generator that will make a .htaccess file for you website.
Create a .htaccess file: Another free .htaccess generator.

Copywriting Tools

Copyscape: Allows you to see if your web content is being utilized anywhere else on the internet. Great tool to see if your copywritten material has been stolen.
Juicy Studio Readability Test: Checks the readability of the content on your site.
Textalyser: Gives detailed statistics of your text.
Text Content Analysis Tool: gives you statistics about a text including unique words; lexical density; and the Gunning Fog readability index

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword Density Analyzer: Checks the density of selected keywords or keyword phrases.
SEO - Term Target: Gives you a grade based on how well your keywords are used on a page.
SpyFu: Download your competitors keywords and AdWords
Search Based keyword tool: Google's search-based keyword tool that provides keyword ideas.

Link Tools

WeBuild Web Pages Tools
Online Broken Link Checker: Checks your site for broken or invalid links. No software to download, works live online.
Link Popularity Analysis Tool: This tool allows you to analyze a page's link popularity.
SEOMoz Trifecta: Measure the number of sites that link to you and number of times your brand is mention on the web.
Visual PageRank: Allows you to view all the links alone with PageRanks on a certain page.
Site Link Analyzer:A tool that returns a table of data containing outbound links and related anchor text.

SEO/M Research Tools

Customer Focus Calculator: Analyzes text on your pages to determine if your text is customer focused.
WordTracker: Research actively searched-for phrases within your industry.
WordTracker vs. Overture: View keyword search volume comparisons between WordTracker and Overture.
Niche BOT: Keyword research tool that helps you find the terms that produce the highest amount of traffic. Lets you drill down to dig deep and find niche phrases as well.
Metrics Market: How much traffic are you getting compared to your competitors?

Yahoo Research Tools

Keyword Selector: Allows you to retrieve Overture search volume for up to 50 keywords at one time.

MSN Research Tools

Search Funnels: See what people search for before and after your keyword.
Demographics Prediction: Get demographics of your target customer.

Google Tools

AdWords Keyword Tool: Generate potential keywords for your SEO/M campaign,provided.
AdWords Traffic Estimator: Estimates Google search and click-thru traffic for any keyword.
Ontology Finder: Type in a word and find other words treated as similar words by Google.
Suggest: Start typing a search and let Google complete the phrase for you.
Trends: Lets you see and compare search trends for seasonal (or any, really) search phrase.

Link Building Secrets 2012

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:45:41 +0000

Today's top link builders share their hottest link-building tips for Web marketing!

Some time has passed since our first volume of Link Building Secrets was revealed back in 2008. Four years is an eternity in web marketing so we wanted to reach out to the pros once again and asked them to share their latest, greatest and best kept link building secrets, strategies, tactics and analysis. We've read many articles about SEO and link building – and they contain a lot of good theory. Just about every web marketer will tell you why link building is important, but very few explain how to do it, let alone, how to do it well. That’s when we knew it was time, once again, to talk to the pros! So we asked some of the world's foremost link-building experts to share at least one link building secret they cannot live without. Our team was overwhelmed by their response. In the 2012 version of Link Building Secrets Revealed, you’ll find nothing but link-building gold! So, we give you these actionable tips, tricks and strategies of link building – all compiled neatly in a single e-book. Read it. Implement it. Share it! And send us your thoughts on twitter @PolePositionMkg.

Destination SEM

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:46:55 +0000

We help you develop and market your website to become a desired destination for searchers looking for the product, services, and/or information you provide. The principles of Destination Search Engine Marketing is what makes Pole Position Marketing unique from most other SEO firms. We offer complete marketing solutions by combining strong SEO and online marketing as well as competitive off-page marketing without compromising any of it, to make your website better than the sum of its parts. Destination Search Engine Marketing is SEO and SEM without compromising rankings for conversions or conversions for rankings. This is our guiding philosophy at Pole Position Marketing. We want your site to bring your visitors back time and time again and convert them!

Become the "Destination" Visitors Want to Visit

Pioneering the concept of Destination Search Engine Marketing (pdf), Pole position Marketing helps you to build a customer base that will continually return to your site for more. We help your site become notably trustworthy by incorporating expert information with a consistent voice and creating a unique selling proposition that will convince your visitors that your site offers something remarkably different. We focus on every aspect of the internet experience to create a successful website. We're not just plugging in keywords to get high rankings, we take a comprehensive approach by assessing usability issues and design problems. We look at the site from the perspective of a visitor, asking who are you? Do you have a presence on the web? Do you provide expert information or just pages of sales copy? The online marketplace is an extremely competitive venture. Visitors are skeptical when buying online. They want to know that they can trust you, that you know what they need and can provide it with integrity and honesty. As the visitors get smarter each year so do search engines. To gain real results your site needs to not only deliver results for relevant queries, but it needs to set you apart as superior to the rest. Destination Search Engine Marketing Marketing, provided by Pole Position Marketing, is easily the most effective and long-lasting marketing strategy. Turn your website into an industry recognized destination today!

SEO Guarantees

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:47:11 +0000

Pole Position Marketing wants to ensure you–the client—are totally and completely satisfied with our services. There really is no way to guarantee specific rankings in any one particular search engine for any one particular phrase. Even Google will tell you that SEOs cannot guarantee #1 rankings. Those that do give such guarantees include enough small print that they become useless in real-world practice. The most common guarantee claim is that you will get X number of first page rankings. There are a number of ways to "wiggle" out of this with small print. 1) Rankings are achieved for non-competitive (and sometimes non-targeted) keyword phrases that drive virtually no targeted traffic to your site. 2) Rankings achieved on very minor search engines (such as Alta Vista and Excite) are counted toward achieving this goal. We strive to implement the most comprehensive strategies and measures for achieving search engine rankings, return on investment, keyword visibility and more. Pole Position Marketing promises to make the strongest effort to achieve top search engine placement for your chosen targeted keyword phrases on the top four search engines. Our primary goal is to increase your sales, not just rankings and traffic. We understand that our success as a marketing agency depends on your success. In order to keep you as a satisfied client we will do everything within our control and within search engine guidelines to make your online marketing efforts a success.

Uncontrollable Factors that Effect Optimization and Rankings

As search engines continually adapt and adjust their ranking algorithms, there are many factors that are outside of any marketers' control. A sudden shift in a search engine algorithm can cause hard earned rankings to suddenly vanish from the top results. If this happens on a search engine that commands a large search market share, the results can be devastating. To compensate for the normal fluctuations in rankings, Pole Position Marketing can manage your existing or create a new pay-per-click advertising strategy to ensure that traffic will be delivered to your site at all times, regardless of sudden algorithm changes, non-indexing of page changes, sudden surges of competition, or whatever else may cause your rankings to fall suddenly and unexpectedly. For many this can be a worthwhile stop-gap measure until new rankings can be achieved. While most factors in achieving top rankings can and will be implemented on your site, it is impossible for us to accurately predict what rankings will be achieved or the amount of time it will take to achieve them. Below are some factors that can stall, delay or hinder a site from achieving top rankings on the search engines:

Newness of Site Search engines tend to prefer sites with a history behind them. While we achieve numerous top rankings for new websites regularly it should be noted that new sites take quite a bit longer to surpass their competition in the rankings. Overnight success should not be expected.
Link Popularity and Page Rank Search engines rely quite heavily on quality and relevance of inbound links pointing to your site from other websites. Each of our promotion strategies includes a base link-building service; however this may not be enough, especially for newer sites. We strongly recommend purchasing additional link building if rankings are slow in coming.
Keyword Selection Pole Position Marketing will provide as much information as possible during the keyword selection process and will assist you in any way we can, however there are some keywords that due to competition, saturation and context, which are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get ranked. If such terms are ultimately chosen, Pole Position Marketing will work diligently to achieve top rankings for these terms just as any other, however rankings for some keywords may be elusive for months, if not years.
Optimization Strategy Implementation Due to individual site design and constraints, we may not be able to implement all of our optimization recommendations. We will make every effort to communicate with you the necessity of such changes and also work with your webmaster to find solutions so that as many recommended changes as possible may implemented. Failure to implement specific optimization strategies may hinder site rankings.
Promotion Investment The depth and detail of the optimization strategy purchased can greatly effect optimization of your site as a whole. Sites with very few optimized pages will not perform as well, in general, as sites optimizing many pages for many keywords. In fact, it is more difficult to achieve top rankings for a three-page optimization strategy than a 5-page strategy. Search engines tend to prefer sites with numerous pages each targeted and optimized for a general overall site theme.
Search Engine Reliability From time to time search engines go through periods where they become unreliable. Either they are not actively indexing page changes, going through an adjustment period, or inexplicably revert to an old database. These factors are 100% outside of anybody's control except for the search engine engineers, and the only course of action is to wait for the engine to get back on track.

Growth Oriented Strategies

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:47:29 +0000

Optimization for any long-term campaign must remain fluid and be able to constantly adapt in order to succeed in reaching long-term goals. Many businesses come to us wanting to get immediate results with some very competitive keyword phrases. While most SEO firms shy away from anything more difficult than getting a top ranking for "aunt betty's cookie recipe" our optimization team eagerly takes on the challenge. While we don't think any keyword is too difficult to take on, we want to make sure our clients are aware of the challenge ahead, specifically in regards to the time involved. One solution we provide is what we call keyword phase-in. We begin optimizing your pages for these difficult terms right away, but we also go after some less competitive phrases that will bring in targeted traffic more immediately. Going after these "long tail" keywords creates a foundation in which the more competitive phrases can perform with time.

How We Go After Competitive Keywords

In the keyword research phase we work with you to find the most productive keyword phrases for your industry. As with any optimization campaign, we first look at the estimated number of searches being performed in a 24-hour period, and then determine if each phrase is targeted enough to bring in the desired visitors. This is important because highly searched terms that are not targeted for your audience will not bring in traffic that produces sales. We want to make sure you are investing your money to target the right audience.
Once the priority terms are selected we then look at the nature of your competition. Understanding your competition can make or break your optimization campaign. All too often we run across sites that want to rank well on highly-targeted phrases that would appear to be easy achievers, only to find out that the nature of the competition makes ranking those phrases extremely difficult. We must understand the competition before we can overcome the competition!
If your priority terms are determined to be in a highly competitive market competing against large authoritative sites, we then begin looking for a secondary batch of terms which can be targeted to begin building your site's authoritative status. These keyword phrases will usually contain one or more additional words and often focus on your geographic and/or local region.
Once these terms are selected we then build an overall game plan to rank these secondary terms into top search engine positions, then slowly over time begin to phase-in the more highly competitive priority terms, allowing each phrase to rank well across multiple search engines before phasing in the next competitive phrase.

The phase-in process can be a matter of months or years, depending on your industry, number of competitive phrases being targeted, and the competition forces that must be overcome. This is a long-term game plan to put your site at the top of the search engines for the keywords that matter most. As part of our commitment to you, our client, and dedication to providing the highest-quality and best-performing service possible, we do not charge any additional fees for this service. Its all about providing you the service you expect!

Best Practices

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:48:38 +0000

Business ethics center on the relationship between business and client / customer as well as adherence to law. In search engine optimization, this is no less true. In many SEO circles, the term "ethics" is used when discussing particular optimization strategies tactics and strategies. We don't believe there is such a thing as "SEO ethics". There is simply ethical behavior and unethical behavior. Our team believes that our personal ethics play a significant role in our professional behavior. These ethics dictate our relationships that we have with our clients and demand that we maintain an atmosphere of truth and of trust. It also effects the work that we do,ensuring that the strategies we implement do not create negative consequences to our client's websites.

Our Ethical Responsibilities

The search engines themselves often provide guidelines for webmasters with some dos and dont's of website marketing. These ensure that your site can be found and placed in the search engine index without penalty. Many search engine optimization firms circumvent these "rules" as a means of surpassing the competition in the search results. This is where real ethics come into play, not in the particular tactics but in the honesty or lack thereof in regard to these tactics. These SEOs will most often not tell their client about the potential negative ramifications of their tactics. We consider this to be unethical. Pole Position Marketing is proud to subscribe to a set of best practices and SEO ethics that allows us to provide quality results for our clients without putting website performance in jeopardy. In our business practices, Pole Position Marketing will...

always return a client's call or email in a timely manner
not make any knowingly false claims or assumptions in regard to expected performance
use clear contractual language outlining the scope of work to be performed providing detailed timelines for initial and ongoing marketing strategies
not promote service guarantees that are vaguely worded or provide meaningless assurances to the client
bring no harm to a client's business either out of ignorance, neglect, or purposeful negligence
not use any techniques that cannot be fully disclosed to the client
not knowingly violate the law in the course of their marketing efforts
disclose potential conflicts of interest if/when marketing multiple clients within similar industries
not share or distribute proprietary client information with any other third party without express permission from the client
hold critical client information (such as web access and credit card information) in utmost security
establish clear performance, reporting and consultations procedures to ensure client has unfettered access to critical information regarding marketing campaign.
disclose any and all fees required in fulfillment of services (i.e. set-up, ongoing monthly, directory submission, content writing, pay-per-click, etc)
not sell any services that require additional fee-based services in order to achieve initial implied level of success
treat the client with utmost respect and professionalism, treating every client as if they were the only client
not make any false representations of their work, performance or successes
provide internal and external dispute resolution procedures in writing

In our optimization and marketing services, Pole Position Marketing will...

adhere to all known search engine guidelines
target only quality search terms pre-determined and approved by the client
not employ any hidden text or hyperlinks on optimized pages
not duplicate page content on or off the site as a means to "game" the search engine results
not employ sneaky page redirecting or cloaking as a means to provide the visitor a different page than the search engine sees
not use any page-jacking or content theft techniques
not create new pages en masse (usually machine generated), all pages will be manufactured and/or edited by a real person
not employ any link spamming techniques designed to artificially inflate link popularity
seek out only on-topic and high-quality links from industry related websites
constantly work to improve visibility and usability for client's website
remain knowledgeable of current and effective optimization and marketing practices and employing only such practices onto the client's website
not suggest or recommend any tactics that are known to be useless and/or harmful to a website's marketing efforts
not employ unnatural language or keyword stuffing techniques that in any way devalue the user experience
seek to provide professional and validated coding except in cases where validation is impossible due to client and/or site requirements
not maintain ownership of any aspect of the on or off-page elements created or updated as part of the marketing campaign, including content, domain names, etc.

Keyword Research

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:49:41 +0000

Link Strategy

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:50:00 +0000

Keyword & Content Optimization

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:50:17 +0000

Copy that converts is an important part of the optimization process. Expertly written keyword rich content improves rankings, delivers traffic, and helps convert that traffic to profits. Our content optimization edits your existing text to create relevant and optimized content that pleases both the search engine and the site visitor. Our copywriters are skilled at creating quality content that converts visitors while also being properly optimized for search engine rankings. Our content optimization includes...

Overview of existing page textual content
Writing, re-writing, or simply re-working your existing page content to target your keyword phrases
Focusing content on both keyword relevance AND sales performance, to drive the customer to purchase your product or services
Implementation of textual content into live site upon approval

Optimized Copy Increases Overall Search Relevance

One common question we get is "Why do I need text when my competitor's site has top rankings and no text at all?" The simple answer is that there are no magic rules that will move you to the top, but there are certain elements that are known to work and work well. While top rankings may be achieved with little or no text, its usually based on the strength of the site's incoming links. If you have no text, very little text, or your most important keywords are not represented on the page effectively, the search engine will assume that relevance of your site for your keywords is relatively low. In order to increase your site's relevance for your targeted keyword phrases it is important that your site includes keyword rich content on all relevant pages. By properly optimizing your text you are telling the search engine what your site is about and which keywords are relevant while also providing valuable content to your visitors. Professionally optimized text in a well-designed site does more than please the search engines, it also pleases the visitor. There is a common myth that content is bad and graphics are good. While a largely graphical site may provide more eye-candy, it provides very little information that gives your visitors the comfort and confidence that your products or services are better than your competitors. Professionally written and optimized content provides your visitors the information they need to make that purchase decision... to purchase from you rather than your competitor. Good content will ensure them that they have found what they are looking for while also providing them quality information on your products or services.

Technical Site Optimization

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:50:49 +0000

Poor or improperly written HTML code can block search engines from properly spidering your website. We analyze, edit and streamline your code for fast and proper search engine indexing. Many professionally designed websites have serious coding issues that can act as "spider stoppers". This prevents the search engine from even getting past your first page to analyze the content of your site. If these problems are not rectified, no amount of good copy or quality content will matter because the search engine will never see it. Our code optimization includes...

Optimization of Title Tag, Description Meta Tag and Keyword Meta Tag
Details outlining potential issues that may prevent proper search engine indexing
W3C code validation for each optimized page
Creation and implementation of style sheets to eliminate excess coding and improved code streamlining
Suggestions of page renaming and directory structure enhancement
Implementation of all necessary coding changes

Great Design Does Not Always Mean Great Code

Proper code optimization is an essential element to achieving top search engine rankings. Most people--even site designers--don't realize that some of the top-end programs that are used to design and build web sites add a lot of extra junk into the code. These websites may look great and function properly in a browser, but what is "under the hood" can make the difference between a top ranked site and a low ranked site. For the most part this junk code is just unnecessary extra coding that can be moved to external files, cascading style sheets or altogether removed. The net effect of this code, if allowed to remain in place, is to slow the ability of the search engine to quickly parse through your code and find the good stuff. This may cause the search engine to abandon your site or discourage it from continuing on to other pages that may also contain valuable information. Good code allows for good search engine rankings while bad coding can prevent them. There are coding elements that can completely prevent the spider from indexing your site at all. Bad navigation menus, framed sites and improperly closed tags can prevent the search engine from viewing the content of the site as the viewer does. If the search engine cannot see it your rankings will not accurately reflect the relevance of your pages for your most important search terms. Proper optimization of websites is essential in achieving top search engine rankings. Poor site optimization performs badly regardless of how professional the site appears, while a site that has been optimized by a professional service will reach the top positions in search engine results consistently and quickly.

Site Architecture

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:51:08 +0000

Campaign Management

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:51:27 +0000

Great optimization is an ongoing process, not a one-time service. New keywords need to be targeted on an ongoing basis and conversions need to be monitored and improved upon. Every year vast changes are made in the search industry, including almost daily changes made to search engine algorithms. While there is something to be said about "common sense" optimization that does not get into "algorithm chasing", its also common sense to know what is going on in the search industry and to be able to make adjustments to your optimized pages as required to continue to achieve and maintain top search engine positions. Once your site has been optimized it is important to not let it stagnate. After the initial optimization is implemented, inevitably minor changes and tweaks will be required to maximize performance for your targeted keywords. Monitoring rankings regularly and making adjustments as necessary helps push those hard-to-achieve rankings up while combating against normal ranking slippage. Our SEO services provide ongoing optimization for unlimited targeted keyword phrases as well as persistent link building and conversion analysis efforts. We provide...

Continuous, ongoing optimization targeting new keyword phrases each month
Monitoring of your site rankings for fluctuations in performance
Responding to ranking changes with optimization edits as necessary to improve on-the-page keyword relevance
Notification to you of any major optimization changes that are recommended to improve rankings on highly competitive terms
Analyzation of current link popularity status and recommend additional targeted links as necessary
Quick reaction to low or sinking rankings quickly to push rankings higher up in the search results

Optimization from Keywords to Conversions

Instead of trying to optimize each page for X number of keywords, we target keywords that fit in each page's natural theme. It simply comes down to the quality of the keyword research performed. We spend a great deal of time working with you to select the right keywords for your site. Our keyword research is unique because our process allows us to select one or two high-traffic, primary keywords per page along with a tightly knit group of highly-targeted "supporting" keywords. Such a method allows each page to be optimized for up to fifteen distinct keyword phrases, based on the themes the research produced. We work closely with you to ensure that all keywords are highly relevant and produce a measurable flow of traffic to your site. Most of these SEO companies limit your keywords, the pages being optimized, the link building efforts (if provided at all), and you must pay for each and every campaign expansion. We understand that expansion is an integral part of the long-term marketing success we bring to your business. Optimization campaigns that are not expanding are stagnating!

Growth Oriented SEO Solutions

One of our primary goals is to develop your site into an industry recognized authority which will surpass you above your competition in the search results, even for highly competitive phrases. This does not happen over night, which is why our services are designed with both short- and long-term goals in mind. While most SEO contracts are based on a limited number of pages and keywords to be optimized, we provide continuous optimization of your site, with no limit on the number of pages or keywords to be optimized and continues marketing/analytics analysis. Our SEO solutions are considerably less than the cost of an in-house marketing team with half the of knowledge and experience in SEO, research, copywriting, analytics and web-marketing provided by Pole Position Marketing. Our marketing strategies and services are designed not to lock you into one way of doing things, but allows total flexibility for your campaign to grow with your needs. We continually identify new avenues of keyword targeting and on-page optimization so that you will have constantly improving return on investment each and every month. There is no shortage of keywords to target, from primary to supporting to the "long tail" keywords that deliver low volume, yet high conversion, traffic. All of our SEO/Marketing services come with conversion analysis. Not just a one-time report, but an ongoing service designed to monitor your site for maximum conversion effectiveness. We dig through your traffic analysis/server logs to see how your visitors are interacting with your site, pinpoint areas of concern and provide recommendations for conversion improvement. Every change is tracked for effectiveness and compared to previous changes to find the best conversion balance. The bottom line is that you get more for your money. Our process allows you to get more keywords optimized for less, increase the effectiveness of the total optimization efforts, and increase your total return on investment significantly.

Usability

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:52:04 +0000

Analytics

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:52:22 +0000

Paid Search

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:54:37 +0000

When it comes to Web marketing, paid search and pay-per-click advertising are the yin to search engine optimization's yang. With a long-term goal of dominating search results for keywords that will help grow your business, you need a pay-per-click consultant who knows how to reinforce your long-term SEO strategy, resulting in overall lift of visitors and conversions. Since SEO, when done properly, may take several months to gain rankings, well-executed pay-per-click campaigns can be a great vehicle for delivering highly targeted traffic to your website, pronto. At Pole Position Marketing, our pay-per-click consulting is designed to increase your traffic flow, improve visitor quality and accelerate conversions. Because we're more than just a pay-per-click company, we have the experience and the know-how it takes to place your site on search engines almost instantly using quality keyword- and visitor-targeted ads. Our Google-qualified PPC consultant will handle every detail of your conversion tracking, provide AB ad testing and monitor landing page effectiveness.

PPC Consultants Increase Campaign ROI

Skip the stress (and expense) that can come with handling your own paid search advertisement placement or campaign. When you choose Pole Position Marketing pay-per-click consultants, you'll get competitively priced PPC service options that will decrease your ad spending while increasing visitors, sales and return on investment. Our specialist can provide everything you need to succeed in the sponsored ad market! Our experts carefully craft and track each ad for maximum conversions, not just click-thru's – which translates into more value for your business. And, after you ranked well for targeted keywords, you can use PPC to gather intelligence for new directions and greater success in Internet marketing.

PPC consulting includes:

Set-up. PPC set-up encompasses comprehensive keyword research to ensure your PPC campaigns will be effective at delivering high-quality, targeted traffic to your site. This research helps us organize your campaigns effectively to produce the most clicks for the least amount of money, and most importantly – higher conversions. This keyword research can also complement SEO efforts.
Monthly PPC management. We monitor each ad created to ensure it is producing desired results, tweaking it for better conversions and implementing or adjusting better performing landing pages. We'll manage your ads to ensure you get the best (not necessarily the highest) rankings that produce the optimal return on investment. We perform ongoing A/B ad testing to ensure each ad group is getting the best possible click thru rate, as well as focusing on the most targeted traffic possible.
Landing Pages: In order to maximize your return on investment even further, we can build and/or optimize your landing pages as needed for maximum conversions.

We allow you to maintain total control of your monthly budget and marketing expenses as we add, remove, replace or adjust ads as required to meet your cost-per-conversion goals. You will gain long-term return on investment growth as your campaign is tracked and optimized for maximum performance.

Our Paid Search Programs

You can’t make a sale unless your prospects know you exist. On the web, if you’re not in search results, you’re leaving money on the table. Google AdWords, Bing adCenter and other paid search platforms are an immediate way to open the doors to your site and do business with prospects hanging out in the “parking lot.” Your competitors are there and your prospects are doing business with them. Google AdWords Google AdWords sets the standard for paid search advertising. Consistently gaining over 60% market share, AdWords is the place to start to acquire targeted prospects and conversions to your site through this advertising channel. Almost instantly, you can start doing profitable business with searchers looking for what you offer by placing ads on Google search results pages for keyword they’re using to research and purchase what you offer. As a Google AdWords qualified company, we use advanced paid search management techniques to build and optimize campaigns in AdWords to continually improve and maximize your profits for long-term business success. Bing adCenter Bing adCenter has matured along with other paid advertising channels. In late 2010, Microsoft’s adCenter began to power Yahoo! search results, giving them approximately 30% market share. This combination makes Bing an important player in the paid search advertising space and an important part of any paid search advertising strategy. Other Paid Search Platforms The viability and success of paid search as an advertising channel on the web has motivated numerous web sites to get involved in the space, thereby creating more opportunity for businesses to reach targeted prospects on the web. Social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), local business directories (Yelp) and other types of sites give you more opportunity than ever to reach your prospects with advertising messages that will interest them.

Social Network Advertising

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:56:12 +0000

The rise of social networking has brought a new and effective way to reach targeted customers for your business. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have leveraged their popularity on the web by partnering with businesses to offer targeted ads to prospects who interact on their platforms. The amount of information they have about each participant has allowed them to create advertising opportunities that can target very specific characteristics, interests and topics in ways like never before. This sophistication has created an avenue for businesses to get ahead of their competition by staying on the cutting edge of ways to reach target prospects.

Social Network Advertising Platforms

Facebook Facebook has become the top social network advertising platform to reach your targeted customers with ad messages. With the ability to hyper-target prospects according to demographics, interests and other characteristics, Facebook gives businesses an advertising channel that is highly relevant to what they offer as well as highly accountable to every advertising dollar spent. For example, if you’re an extreme sports clothing store and you’re having an upcoming sidewalk sale, you could target Facebook users in Canton, OH who are between the ages of 35-70 and ride a motorcycle and show them some of the items you’ll have on deep discount. Targeted exposure doesn’t get much better than that. Twitter Twitter’s “Promoted Tweets” allows businesses to target relevant users with tweets or re-tweets as ads that are placed contextually in relevant Twitter streams. Businesses are charged on an engagement basis. If a Twitter user clicks on a link, favorites, re-tweets, or replies to a sponsored tweet, it counts as an engagement. This new advertising platform allows businesses to move into a relevant advertising space that not many competitors, if any, are using in their industry. This channel is a very viable solution to increasing the exposure of your brand, as well as your products and services. YouTube As the world’s largest online video community, YouTube provides a very large and effective space for your business advertising investment. YouTube places video advertisements contextually within highly relevant video content, exposing your business, products and services to highly targeted audiences using the web. This exposure will lead to increased brand awareness, traffic and conversions for your business. At Pole Position, we stay on top of what’s new in the world of PPC, and this includes social network advertising. We’ll use advanced PPC management tactics to get the most out of your advertising investment and use social networks to build long-term business growth for you.

Display Advertising

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 17:59:14 +0000

Your prospects are surfing numerous sites around the web that have to do with your industry; which presents a golden opportunity to capture their attention right at the moment when they’re thinking about the things that have to do with what you can offer to make their lives better. Display advertising offers a great avenue to move targeted prospects into the shopping funnel, starting them on the road to a relationship with your business. Through Display advertising, you can target specific websites with specific ad messages to create highly targeted advertising at a great investment; all at an ROI that works for your business. With variables that are fully controllable, you can decide how much you want to spend on what kinds of sites to what kinds of people. Then, if you have a great website, watch prospects turn into customers. At Pole Position, we are on top of the latest and greatest techniques for effective display advertising that will help take your business to the next level. We’ll put together a media plan and optimize that plan for long-term business success.

Website Placement

The kinds of websites your online ads show on is critical to your success. You don’t want to pay for clicks from visitors that aren’t really interested in what you offer. So, it’s important to be able to choose and optimize websites very carefully for the correct placement of your ads. Long-term, this leads to traffic and revenue streams that are positive for your business instead of paying for clicks that don’t end up in added revenue for your company. Putting together a plan to place ads on websites and then continually optimizing the campaigns takes time, energy and accountability. At Pole Position, we use advance techniques to find and optimize placements for your online ads so that you build long-term business growth by reaching the right web users in the right places.

Retargeting

Retargeting is a form of web marketing that allows you to target the most qualified and relevant prospects…those that have already visited your site. You can target all different kinds of groups that come to your site including those that…

Did not convert
Converted
Signed up for an email newsletter
Abandoned a shopping cart
Sign up for a subscription
Etc.

This type of campaign can be the final push that someone needs to realize how valuable your service can be to them or an encouragement to come back and do business with you again. With this form of advertising, you can use your ads to test reasons why visitors may have not converted on your site by offering incentives that may overcome their objections. For this reason, retargeting is known to have the greatest potential for success than almost all other forms of web marketing. At Pole Position Marketing, we understand how to use advance retargeting techniques to reach users that have been to your site at an ROI that makes sense for your business. We will use our knowledge to help build loyal customers to your site, resulting in long-term business growth.

Landing Page Optimization

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:00:10 +0000

PPC landing pages should be designed very differently from other site pages. On your main site, you need to provide for all of the reasons that a visitor would come to your site in a way that makes many different navigational paths easy and accessible. But, the PPC visitor has very different needs. They typically need to know very quickly that they are in the right place to find the specific information, product or service they’re looking for or they’re likely to hit the back button. This is because the PPC visitor typically is on a hunt for something specific that they want satisfied quickly and easily. Since you only get a few seconds to persuade the PPC visitor to continue interacting with your conversion process, it’s very important that you answer the questions going on in the searcher’s mind with just enough information to make them want to complete your call-to-action. If you don’t succeed at this, they may be gone forever. At Pole Position, we know how to create PPC landing pages that create customers for you. We understand how to match search intent with landing pages that deliver what searchers are looking for in a way that compels them to convert; leading to business growth for you.

Design & Testing

With more than 1,100 factors affecting a site’s ability to close, experimentation and testing is essential to improving site performance and return on investment. When it comes to your site design, the only opinions that count are your prospects’. The truth is that you’ll never build a better site than the one they can build for you. With landing page testing, you allow your visitors to “tell” you what they want. Then, you can deliver it for them and watch your business grow. At Pole Position, we understand how to evaluate and test website landing pages to build a persuasive system that results in loyal customers for your business.

Performance Reports

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:00:46 +0000

When investing in online marketing campaigns, it’s important that you keep your investment dollars accountable to provide results for you. This is important not only to justify your spending, but to make optimization and business decisions based on real data that gives you insights into your business, your customers, and the profitable relationships that you’re developing. Seeing progressive trends of performance over time provides the insights that are needed to build confidence in the investment you’ve made in ad spend as well as our optimization services. At Pole Position, we believe in accountability. We’ll provide you with frequent performance reports of your marketing campaigns and what we’re going to do to improve performance based upon what’s happened and what our expert insight believes will make it better. Over time, you will see the value that we bring to your company as you see report that “go up and to the right” for the metrics that you most care about.

Campaign Management

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:01:48 +0000

Content Calendar

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:02:02 +0000

Team Training

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:02:36 +0000

Reputation Monitoring / Management

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:02:57 +0000

Social Engagement

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:03:46 +0000

Editorial Linking

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:04:15 +0000

We create editorial links by placing links within content. There can be content that is already in existence where we see an opportunity to place a link, or you can provide original content that is researched and created. If you want us to find content that has already been written, it takes time and research. If you create content, we will find online distribution sites that will provide value for your content. In both instances, we want the information to be unique and targeted to a specific audience. Examples of editorial links are links in news articles, press releases and blogs.

Guest Blogging

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:04:30 +0000

We conduct research to find respected industry related blogs for your team to build relationships with through interaction. When you connect with the blogger by commenting on their blog and share their content via your social streams on a regular basis, over time - link opportunities will open up. This is a long-term strategy, because it takes time to research and build relationships. Once relationships are built, we can help you craft an outreach e-mail to the blogger to ask about the possibility of writing a guest post on their blog. We also offer assistance in choosing keyword anchor text to build into your content linking back to the URL that is optimized for that keyword.

Comment Strategy

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:04:44 +0000

We will research to find a list of forums and/or discussion panels. Someone from your team can join conversations that are applicable to your industry. This could be answering questions, asking questions, giving advice, giving reviews, offering education on the topic, etc. This helps to build your brand, and display your authority on the topic. Often times you are able to leave a link in the signature or profile of these communities.

Directory Submissions

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:05:15 +0000

We research to find directories in your niche that have value. When we find a directory that meets those criteria we will submit to it. There are also local directories which are great for businesses that have storefronts, or provide services to a specific area. We will check to make sure your site is submitted to the major web directories for increased exposure and a highly valued link back to your site. A properly submitted site can create a boost in your site’s importance and can lead to increased traffic. Directory submissions include...

Research of each primary directory to determine best possible category placement
Professionally written titles and description utilizing your keywords
Submission to relevant directories
Follow-up each submission to be sure site is included and resubmission if necessary

Press Release Strategy

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:05:47 +0000

Press Releases are used to make an announcement to the public. We can find press release distribution sites that allow you to place relevant keyword anchor text links within the release. These links will lead to your optimized page for the targeted keyword. Press Releases can also act as link bait. If it’s an announcement that creates buzz and people find interesting, they are likely to share it via their social networks. They may even link to it in an article or blog post they write.

Conversion Testing

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:08:07 +0000

Maybe the biggest mistake site owners make is designing their site in a way THEY think will serve their customers the best, and then leaving it that way. The problem? Just because the site owner understands what they mean, where everything is, and what they want people to do; doesn’t mean the visitors do. A much better approach is to let your visitors design your site for you by performing conversion testing. Conversion testing allows you to meet the needs of your customers better by listening to what they have to say through their actions; allowing you to make decisions based on real data, not uninformed opinions. Not testing with your website is like conceding that you don’t want improved performance and increased ROI. Your actions are saying that you are totally and completely satisfied with the amount of profit you make and aren’t interested in making any more. At Pole Position, we understand how to set up, run and analyze tests to give you solid optimization recommendations for improving the performance of your website and growing your business.

A/B & Multivariate Usability Testing

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:08:22 +0000

The advantage that experimentation and testing affords is that you don’t have to guess anymore. You can find out where you’re wrong quickly and repeatedly in order to improve your site experience and ultimately, your bottom line. With A/B & Multivariate testing, you can test web pages and their elements against one another to find insights into what serves your website visitor the best and builds more long-lasting relationships. Over time, your website becomes the destination that web users trust when it comes to your products and services. At Pole Position, we have extensive knowledge and experience in usability practices that allow us to perform worthwhile experiments on important elements of your website that lead to optimization that leads to long-term business growth.

Copywriting

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:08:37 +0000

Professional SEO copywriting services that help you generate visitor interest, and conversions while helping you maintain or improve top search engine positions. We create copy that does more than informs your visitors of your products and services. We develop copy that excites your audience, draws them in and engages with them and drives them to the point of sale. Increase hits, customer retention and conversion rates by turning drive-by visitors into repeat customers.

Comprehensive SEO Copywriting Solutions

Our professional copywriters can take your existing content and edit, rework or rewrite it so that your website contains the necessary ingredients needed to push your visitors to conversion. Your text will be improved not only verbally but visually allowing visitors to skim, scan, or fluently read their way through your site. Copywriting helps you...

Draw visitors attention to the most important sales elements
Increase visitor interest and site conversions
Improve your site's readability and ability to speak directly to your audience
Build visitor confidence in your product or services and improve repeat customer rate

Training

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:15:30 +0000

Training Services...

In-House Team Training
Phone or Video Conferencing
Speaking Engagements
Webinar Presentations

Intelligence Reports

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:17:12 +0000

We offer a variety of reports and website audits that give you crucial information about your website. Each report is designed to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your site's performance within the given sphere of influence. Not only do we provided a critical assessment of how your site performs, but we also include a comprehensive list of recommendations that you can implement to fix problems, plug holes and gain a competitive advantage against your competition. Reports and Audits:

Keyword Research

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:17:31 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1219" align="alignright" width="200"] Complete Core Term and Key Phrase Research[/caption] We provide effective keyword research and uncover and organize high-volume, targeted keyword phrases to help you improve search engine optimization. We implement a 4-Phase research strategy:

Core-Term Research: We comb your site noting all major and minor keyword themes presented. Then we dig into additional tools to find even more core term variations that will bring in relevant traffic.
Search Phrase Research: Taking each core term we search even deeper looking for any and all relevant core term qualifiers producing a targeted list of thousands of highly-targeted phrases.
Analysis and Elimination: We begin eliminating less-relevant or poor performing phrases that won't provide you with good ROI leaving only those phrases which should be optimized into your site.
Organizing for Success: We sort, categorize and organize all your keywords into targeted keyword groups designed to make optimization easy and effective.

Our keyword research process gathers together all potentially relevant phrases pertaining to your industry and helps you pinpoint high-ROI phrases that hit your targeted audience. Keywords are then grouped together for maximum campaign effectiveness. We then establish the proper page to keyword ration on the most effective pages to increase your overall effectiveness in both rankings and conversion.

Maximum Keywords for Maximum Exposure

Report Includes:
Consultation Server Log Analysis Competitor Analysis Deep Research	Data Collection Data Report Data Consultations Raw Data Report	Keyword Organization Page Recommendations Recommendations Keyword Theming

There are a number of free tools that will allow anybody to gather the raw keyword data. Our multi-keyword research and analysis process goes far beyond simple data collection and into the actual marketing implementations of the data. Our research helps eliminate low ROI phrases, themes keyword groups, and assigns keyword groups to relevant pages. Our research puts you in a position to maximize your marketing efforts, ensuring that your audience is delivered directly to a highly focused page that provides them the exact information they are looking for.

Comprehensive Keyword Research Solutions

Proper keyword research will help you build an effective marketing strategy, maximize your marketing efforts and produce substantial return on investment. Our keyword research and analysis report is the most complete and comprehensive keyword analysis report that you will find anywhere else. No, this isn't just hype. Our analysis seeks out all of the keywords for your industry and we go through multiple stages of communication with you to ensure accuracy, completeness, and common sense application of the data gathered. Our research specialists specialize in researching and analyzing keywords for your optimization and pay-per-click marketing campaigns. We say "research and analysis" because we know that its not just finding the keywords that is important (that's the easy part), but analyzing and organizing those keywords properly in a way that will maximize your total online marketing efforts. Our experience researching and analyzing keywords for online marketing efforts has proven successful time and again as our clients have seen their return on investment increase consistently after implementing our keyword research recommendations. At a time when automated online tools seem to reign supreme, many are finding that they simply don't provide the quality of information one seeks. Automated keyword research tools can be great ways together bits and pieces of information but there is simply no substitute for good old fashioned manual research to get the job done, and get it done right! Contact us today to get an estimate for a full keyword research report for your website.

Website Architecture & Usability

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:17:47 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1212" align="alignright" width="200" caption="16 Topics, 400 points covered"][/caption] This 400+ point website analysis provides you with actionable intelligence that will help you turn your website into a robust marketing tool, achieving top search engine rankings and improved visitor performance. You will receive a full and comprehensive analysis of your website providing you with a blueprint for building an effective marketing strategy that produces measurable increases. You'll better understand the current state of your website in the search engine marketing landscape and attain crucial knowledge to achieve success in your marketing efforts. Report Includes:

Organic Ranking Analysis
Effectiveness Analysis
Website Content Analysis
Credibility Score
Website Value Score
Website Accessibility

Code Analysis
Link Analysis
Keyword Targeting
Company Branding Score
Visual/Aesthetic Score

Recommendations
Search Engine View
Search Engine Snapshot
Website Value Score
User Experience Score

Comprehensive Website Analysis and Solutions

Our 400+ point website analysis report provides specific and actionable information that will help you understand where your site is and what you need to do to surpass your competition. We'll analyze your sites keyword usage, search optimization implementation, usability and color friendliness and ecommerce security issues. This report will provide the information you need to begin a well organized and highly effective online marketing campaign.

Architectural / Usability report helps you...

Obtain real statistics on current optimization of your site
Improve marketability of your product or service
Uncover elements of your site that need improvement
Take action to improve your site's return on investment

Our analysis report lets you attain knowledge for success giving you a blueprint for building a highly effective and well organized online marketing campaign. We offer an extremely detailed site analysis report covering all the essential marketing components of your website. Our 400+ point report provides extensive and detailed analysis of your website dissecting critical elements for the success of your online marketing efforts.

Our 400+ Point Site Analysis Strategy

Organic Domain Ranking Analysis:

Keyword ranking report for provided keywords on top search engines
Keyword Ranking Performance score
Our professional conclusions as to your overall keyword performance and areas for improvement

Keyword Targeting Analysis:

Analysis of chosen keywords for audience targeting ability
Our professional insight on proper keyword targeting
Our professional conclusions as to your ability to fine-tune your marketing focus to achieve more targeted leads

Website Content Analysis:

Word usage analysis of text in the spider-viewable areas
Marketing relevance analysis of home page content
Marketing analysis of the overall appeal of your site
Browser compatibility analysis
Site navigation usability analysis
Ecommerce usability analysis (where applicable)
Ecommerce security analysis (where applicable)
Our professional conclusions and analysis pertaining to how your site complies with professional content standards and areas for improvement

Code Optimization Analysis:

Detailed look at your home page Title, Meta Description and Keywords tags
Our professional insight on your site's usage of the above tags
Analysis of existing code bloat
Analysis of existing coding errors
Our professional conclusions regarding compliance with the above elements and recommendations for improvement

Link Analysis:

Backlink comparison between your site and three of your competitors
Google backlink stats
Total backlink stats
Google PageRank stats
Alexa traffic rating stats
Analysis of internal link structure
Search engine saturation analysis
Our professional conclusions to how your site compares to your competition and suggestions for improvement and competitor domination

Search Engine Snapshot:

Detailed view on how your home page appears to the search engines
Overall page size analysis
Download time analysis
Total word count analysis
Unique word usage analysis
Our professional conclusions on the above stats and recommendations how to improve site for optimal performance

Credibility Score:

Referencing to external authorities
Up-to-date content
Typo and grammatical errors
Adherence to W3C standards
Credentials and references
Accuracy of information

Website Value Score:

Usefulness of site as a whole
Navigational ease
Addresses a specific need
Unique approach
Logical topical progression
Audience focused

User Experience Score:

Content Organization
Accessibility of content
On-Page distractions
Cross-browser compatibility
Visually appealing
Site Consistency
E-commerce Security

Company Branding Score:

Descriptive name
Conveys purpose
Representation of strengths
Accessibility of company news
Accessibility of industry news
Info on company leaders

Visual/Aesthetic Score:

Images enhancing content
Unique design
Content readability
Professional appearance
Consistent site-wide formatting
Excess on-site ads

Website Accessibility Score:

Image alt text used appropriately
Proper color usage
Hyperlink descriptions
Compatible with older browsers
Viewable in multiple browsers
Internal linking

You will receive detailed information and constructive critiques of your website, analyzing how your site currently functions in the search marketing landscape. Each section capped with our professional conclusions with extensive pointers on changes that you can make today. Contact us today to get a quote for a full Website Architecture and usability analysis for your website.

Competitive Analysis

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:18:09 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1222" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Understand your competitors and what it will take to stay ahead of them."][/caption] Our in-depth, 30+ page competitive arena analysis report helps you to better understand your competition so you can know what they are doing that works and what you need to be doing in order to remain competitive. We provide you a breakdown of their tactical advantages and disadvantages and how you can take advantage of their weaknesses and push beyond their strengths. We provide analysis of four critical areas of your competitive landscape:

Keyword Competition: We determine your current top online competitors, their keyword strengths and weaknesses, and how well you can compete for both long and short-term success.
Competitive Strengths: We provide a comparative analysis of your business against your top competitors. We look at overall site quality and outline your competitors’ strengths, both current and future.
Keyword Community: We find words which are frequently associated with your targeted keyword phrases which can help build content a stronger keyword focus, increasing search engine performance.
Topical Community: We analyze your topical community and uncover thematically related web sites for targeted link building efforts.

You'll get a point by point outline of the marketing strategies actively being pursued by your competitors with a complete competitive analysis solution. You'll discover the keyword phrases they are utilizing, niche markets being targeted, paid ad campaigns being implemented and much more.

Competitive Knowledge to Help You Overcome and Conquer

Report Includes:
Keyword Review Site Optimization Review Related Keyword Analysis Competitive Threats	Online Marketing Review Top Competitor Review Strengths Analysis	Top Ranking Review Topical Overview Weakness Analysis

Competitive Analysis report helps you...

Find out what makes your competitor's successful and use it to your advantage
Shows you what's right or wrong with your competitors marketing campaigns, so you don’t make the same mistakes or neglect an important strategy
Provides you with a detailed analysis of various marketing strategies that you can implement to better your business
Outline effective techniques to boost your site's exposure to your target audience to maximize your conversion rates

We help you clearly define the scope of your competitive environment. Our detailed report on your competition will uncover valuable insight and strategies that you can turn into a successful marketing campaign. Contact us today to get a quote for a full Competitive Analysis report for your website.

UVP & Branding Report

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:18:27 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1226" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Unique value proposition and site branding review."][/caption] Developing a strong Unique Value Proposition increases brand awareness and recognition in an increasingly competitive field. Our UVP, Branding & Reputation report furnishes you with industry intelligence and current website standings. We assess the brand strength of your website in three critical areas:

UVP: We analyze your website's unique value compared to other businesses in your industry and uncover new potential areas to go after.
Branding: We explore your brand strengths and weaknesses, and how well your site stands against your competition.
Reputation: We provide a snapshot of your business' reputation online and uncovering negative mentions that need to be addressed.

With this report comes pages of actionable recommendations that can be used to substantially improve your online presence. We outline workable strategies for increasing your brand, reach and develop strategies for overcoming any online negativity while capitalizing on positive mentions.

Increase Your Conversions by Targeting the Right Market

Report Includes:
UVP Development Competitive Comparison Target Market Analysis	Trends and Demographics Audience Temperaments Visitor Personas	Branding Effects S.W.O.T Analysis Reputation Management

The UVP / Branding report helps you...

Protect your copyrights and identify how, when, and where others online are discussing your company, product, or service
Hone in on your target market and get the most return on your investment
Address and sell to your visitors temperament type
Get trend and demographics to make educated decisions regarding your marketing efforts maximizing return on investment
Increase consumer trust and sales with a consistent voice

Based upon extensive research we'll help you develop a list of the features and benefits of your site from a customers' perspective. In order to do this, a unique set of personas will be developed to symbolize potential visitors to your site. These personas will identify the needs each of each visitor in order to become a paying customer. Persona development helps identify your site's strengths and weaknesses. This section of the report is accompanied by a SWOT analysis to determine not only your strengths and weaknesses, but your opportunities and threats as well. To further the exploration into your UVP, your site will be analyzed to determine the specific areas that need to speak to each of the four visitor temperaments. We'll tell you the pros and cons for each of these temperaments and exactly what you need to do to speak to each temperament:

The Competitive visitor is the hardest to sell and wants to see all their options.
The Spontaneous visitor is a follower of trends.
The Humanistic visitor wants to know who you are and how you can meet her needs.
The Methodical visitor is the one who read everything on a page.

Determine and Secure your Brand

Based upon the targeted search phrases uncovered during the keyword research process, along with an analysis of your website topical focus and offered products, we will identify your primary target market as existing within your keyword scope of influence and overall target market demographics. You'll get the answers you need to match you site's focus to the appropriate demographics. You'll get an extensive exploration into the branding effects of your UVP through a competitive comparison. We help you strategically position and brand your website to establish a competitive angle. To assist you in managing your digital reputation we'll provide the information you need to create specialized RSS feeds that automatically search the top search engines for references to your business and we'll tell you exactly what you should be looking for. As part of your search marketing campaign, we will also be monitoring a variety of sources to ensure the integrity of your digital brand. Crafting your online reputation is an important part of your online success. Monitoring is an essential part of reputation management. You need to be active in branding your site and crafting your image. We'll provide a comprehensive report outlining the way to become involved in crafting and maintaining your reputation. This 25+ page report gives you the knowledge you need to be on top of your market now! Contact us today to get a quote for a full UVP & Branding report for your website.

Information Architecture Development

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:18:42 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1234" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Information architecture site mapping"][/caption] The information architecture of a website is basically the floor plan of how your site will layout, how your pages and categories will be connected and how your navigation will present the information to your visitors. Having a properly constructed site architecture is crucial to employing an effective site optimization campaign, and ensuring that your site engages visitors on their level providing them their informational needs. Who needs information architecture?

Brand new web sites
Sites being re-designed
Sites upgrading to a CMS

Build a Better Website the First Time

Our information architecture reports provide your developers with an easy-to-read and understand site map and flow chart they can use to build your site from. By looking at your site as a whole, rather than a collection of pages, we are able to better categorize and group your content into sections, areas and categories that make sense both from a search engine optimization and usability standpoint. Our IA reports are developed by first performing basic keyword research. This gives us a better understanding of how visitors are searching for information and what information is most important to them. Then we map those keywords to key pages of your site and determine how that information should be reached. From there we are able to identify and map out additional keywords and pages giving us a cohesive site map structure that allows for future site expansion, less clutter and more intuitive navigation. Using this outline, your developers won't be guessing their way through the project but instead will have a page of how the site's navigation and directory structure should be organized to ensure user-friendliness.

Site Wire Framing

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:18:57 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1236" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Page and Site Wire Frames"][/caption] Web designers are great at developing professional-looking web sites that look good and make everyone happy. But what they often overlook is the visual construction of the site. Now how it looks, but how it lays out. Too often this is left to someone's preference rather than being built with the visitors in mind. Site wire framing allows your site pages to be built before they are designed. This doesn't in any way impede your designer's ability to create a professional look for you, but instead allows them to build that look upon user-friendly standards. This ensures that the site design not only meets the visibility requirements, but the usability requirements that are needed to ensure that you get maximum conversion rates through your website.

From Page Concept to Page Design

Building a web page is no simple task. You can design a page all day but if the layout isn't just right you're going to lose your visitors. What's important won't be where it's needed and what's needed isn't shown where it's important. When we wire frame your site's main pages we help create a page structure that engages the visitor, displays elements where they are most needed, and helps your visitors navigate through the maze of information. Our IA reports are developed by first performing basic keyword research. This gives us a better understanding of how visitors are searching for information and what information is most important to them. Then we map those keywords to key pages of your site and determine how that information should be reached. From there we are able to identify and map out additional keywords and pages giving us a cohesive site map structure that allows for future site expansion, less clutter and more intuitive navigation. Using this outline, your developers won't be guessing their way through the project but instead will have a page of how the site's navigation and directory structure should be organized to ensure user-friendliness.

Analytics

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:19:11 +0000

[caption id="attachment_1241" align="alignright" width="200" caption="Comprehensive analytics and site traffic review."][/caption] Looking through your log files can be a daunting task. If you don't know what you're looking for it's all just a bunch of confusing numbers and pretty graphs. But underneath all that techno babble are the keys to your web site's success. Our analytics team is skilled at looking at analytics reports and interpreting them into a user-friendly format. We don't just provide you a bunch of data but we find answers to the questions you didn't even know to ask. What kinds of questions our analytics report will answer:

Where are people coming from?
Where should I invest my money?
Why aren't my visitors engaged with my website?
What keywords give me the best conversion rates?
Is my navigation helping customers find what they need?
What content are my visitors looking for?
How can I make my site more user-friendly?
What can I do to get more sales?
And more...

Analtyics Report that Make Sense

Our reports combine charts and graphs with easy to understand explanations of what it means, how it affects you, and what kinds of changes you need to make to improve. We show you where you are succeeding, where there is room for improvement, and offer a detailed list of recommendations that will help you better reach and target your audience.

Upcoming Events

Stoneygd — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:27:41 +0000

Site Map

Stoneygd — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:36:35 +0000

Privacy

Stoneygd — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:45:55 +0000

This privacy policy covers all Pole Position Marketing web properties. Because we want to demonstrate our commitment to our users' privacy, we disclose the following information. What personally identifiable information Pole Position Marketing collects. What personally identifiable information third parties collect through the Website. What organization collects the information. How Pole Position Marketing uses the information. With whom Pole Position Marketing may share user information. What choices are available to users regarding collection, use and distribution of the information. What types of security procedures are in place to protect the loss, misuse or alteration of information under Pole Position Marketing control. How users can correct any inaccuracies in the information. Information Collection and Use Pole Position Marketing is the sole owner of the information collected on our website. Pole Position Marketing collects information at several different points on our Website. Non-personal clickstream information is collected about all users for the purpose of general tracking of web traffic to our site. Additional personal information is collected through an optional website form when prospective customers request information a Users have the option to participate in this activity for the purpose of contacting by email or regular mail. A user must provide the clickstream information (internet protocol address, internet service provider, platform type, date/time stamp, operating system), http protocol information (last uri requested and browser type), interaction information (browser interaction such as when the mouse moves over an image), computer information (computer and browser information), state management mechanisms (data allowing a user to be tracked consistently), search terms (search text), user's name, user's employer, user's business contact information, business/organization name and contact information for the business/organization. It is optional for the user to provide User's Name, User's Employer, User's Business Contact Information, Business/Organization Name and Contact Information for the Business/Organization. We encourage users to provide optional information so we can provide a more personalized experience on our site. The reason we use this information is to complete the current transaction, contact by email or regular mail, enhance our site and product offerings and maintain and secure our site. We retain this information for an indeterminate period of time. Cookies A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer tied to information about the user. For the session ID cookie, once users close the browser, the cookie simply terminates. A persistent cookie is a small text file stored on the user's hard drive for an extended period of time. Persistent cookies can be removed by following Internet browser help file directions. You can set your browser to notify you to either accept or deny the cookie according to the following information. in IE6, see Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web Privacy page. in Netscape 6, see Netscape 6 - Safety with More Control. in Opera 5 or 6, see Opera Preferences: Privacy. Our website uses cookies to enhance our site. Profiles Pole Position Marketing does not use or create users profiles that store information for visitors. Clien't profiles are created and held in a secure portion of the site. Communications from the Site When customers provide us contact information for Website (user participation is voluntary) we use the information to contact the user to deliver sales and product information that will be useful to the them. Sharing Information Legal Disclaimer Though we make every effort to preserve user privacy, we may need to disclose personal information when required by law wherein we have a good-faith belief that such action is necessary to comply with a current judicial proceeding, a court order or legal process served on our website. Personally Identifiable Information Personally identifiable information is not shared with any third parties. Aggregate Information (non-personally identifiable) Aggregate information is not shared with any third parties. Data Security Pole Position Marketing has physical security in our facilities to protect against the loss, misuse, or alteration of information. Our company does not handle sensitive financial or health related information. Correcting, Updating, Deleting and/or Deactivating Personal Information If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as zip code, phone, email or postal address) they cannot change information we collect. If a user wishes to correct/update information or no longer desires our service, they can notify us of what they desire by contacting us using any of the information in the Contact section of this policy. Links and Advertisements Our website contains links to other sites. We do not partner with or have special relationships with any ad server companies. We, Pole Position Marketing, are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Website that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Website. Changes to the Privacy Statement The information you submit to us is controlled by the privacy policy in effect at the time you submit it. If we significantly change our policy, we will post a notice in a conspicuous place on our website notifying visitors of policy changes. Contact Information You may contact us if you have questions about our privacy policy. Resolving Privacy Policy Disputes If you think we have not followed our privacy policy in some way, it can be resolved by contacting us.

{event_subject}

Stoneygd — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:40:40 +0000

{event_startdate; fmt=F j Y} - {event_enddate; fmt=F j Y; alwaysshowenddate=y; } {event_description}

Standard Page Template

Stoneygd — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 20:30:38 +0000

Jim Roberts

Stoneygd — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:24:42 +0000

Company Chaplain

CCMFT, CCPC, CCLC Reverend James (Jim) Roberts is a former professor and dean of a local Canton area college. Jim is a certified Christian life-coach, a certified Christian marriage and family therapists, and a certified clinical pastoral counselor. He is also the founder of The Soul Care Center where he is instrumental in transforming, training and empowering people to be fully mature in Christ and to live out their destiny. Jim has been in ministry for over 30 years and, with his wife Jodi, are making disciples of men and women according to the scriptures. Jim is currently one of the pastors of Life Song Church in Massillon, Ohio. He has a heart of compassion while teaching biblical truth to help others live out their faith and is dedicated to helping others become healthy, mature disciples of Christ. Jim was recently installed as Bishop for the State of Ohio with the Incorporated Christian Assemblies.

Effective SEO

Stoneygd — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:50:45 +0000

Research is the basis of all our SEO campaigns. Solid research coupled with skilled implementation creates long-term marketing success. If keyword research is the foundation for an effective optimization strategy, then optimization research is the architect that builds upon that foundation thereby creating a successful campaign. Our professional SEO specialists live and breath search engines, algorithms and marketing strategies. We undergo complete and comprehensive research of your website, industry competitors, top ranked competitors, search engine algorithmic industry trends and more. It's more than just researching your site, your competition or your industry, its about digging deep and analyzing each and every aspect of your future campaign that may possibly effect your sites performance on the search engines.

Issues That Can Hinder Effective Optimization

Website does not contain original, unique content. Many sites owners build their sites utilizing content found from other, more authoritative, sources. While this can make it easier to build your site, it can also cause duplicate content penalties from the search engines.
Product descriptions pulled from manufacturer templates. Similar to the unique content issue above, utilizing product descriptions provided by manufacturers can make putting together your database easier, many other sites are undoubtedly using the exact same content. To search engines, this does nothing to separate your site for the masses, which can be a rankings killer.
Website designed from template that is copied across the web. Having a site built from a template is not, in itself, problematic, however many of the software packages that provide these templates also provide interfaces that limit access to some of the more important optimization elements. Workarounds for this can be implemented, however its best to know up front the limitations faced.
Owns multiple sites targeting same audience. Several years ago it was common practice for a site owner to develop multiple sites in order to "dominate" the top search rankings. This method no longer works and is subject to severe spamming penalties.
Owns multiple URLs redirecting to main site. This can be a great strategy to bring in "type-in" traffic--those who search by typing in a url directly. However, if not implemented properly, these URLs can be indexed by the search engines as a different, yet duplicate, site causing potential penalties to incur.
Owns similar sites on same C Block. This is another issue that may not be a big deal but it's good to know up front. Proper research will determine whether this will cause problems in the future.

Peter van der Graaf

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:18:18 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Peter van der Graaf and 10 of Today’s Best Link Builders.

Penalty Domains I haven’t used this tactic for quite some time, but before I wrote the article I checked if it still works. Surprisingly it did, so here’s how to do it. In February 2008, I wrote an article on John Bukkake as my contribution to [the previous edition of] Link Building Secrets Revealed. Based on the same principles – where you redirect an entire domain name to pass its link value – you can also apply this to domains that seem to have received a penalty from Google. You probably think, “What purpose will that serve?” But, there is something funny about penalties. Google Penalties When you use obscure techniques to gain ranking, you risk getting a penalty on a domain. Old-fashioned -50 drops and total bans from Google's index still exist. People with a banned domain will try to regain their original positions for some time, but eventually give up. This is where the interesting part comes in: They don’t believe the domain has any remaining value for anyone and could sell it cheaply. It doesn't really matter if the domain has gotten a real penalty or not. People often mistake bad SEO for a penalty. If they once were very dependent on a strategy that's no longer effective, they could see the same kind of drop in ranking. For our purpose, real penalties work just as well. Check the incoming links of the domain and, based on what would remain after take-over (links from his own sites and partnerships can be discontinued), name your price. I often end up swapping an alternative domain (which has no previous links to it) without any money involved. Redirecting a Domain When you redirect a domain for its link value, everything needs to look like a natural activity. Natural migrations like mergers, name changes or take-overs are condoned by Google. In most cases, all link value is transferred (something that can’t be done by intensively linking between domains). To look natural, make certain you don’t trigger any resets.

Don't change ownership, hosting and content all at the same time, and don’t take over domains that have switched hands a couple of times after links were attracted.
Don't take over domains that have (had) placeholders or error messages on them instead of the original content.
Don't take over domains that have been redirected a couple of times before.

In most cases you change ownership first but keep DNS and hosting the same. Then copy the original content on the original page URLs to your server (may be a static representation) and after a month change DNS, too. After another month or so, you put up the redirect to wherever the link value is needed. Redirecting a Penalty So what about redirecting the penalty? Won't your site be infected? If penalties could be redirected, it would become an even more powerful tactic! Then, I would redirect them at my competitors! Regrettably, I found no proof of a negative effect of a redirected penalty domain. There can be two outcomes:

The unnatural behavior reduces the link value in a way that little value is left, or
The penalty is lifted and the remaining value can be used to rank better.

In most cases both apply to some extent. A redirect lifts penalties, but penalties shouldn’t be mistaken for dampening effects on quality indicators. Not Taking Any Risks? So you’re doing this for the first time and you don’t want to trust a black hat SEO. I can’t blame you. A safer way is using the link value to boost the ranking of an external website. You can use it to boost positive news about you and other search engine reputation management purposes. If it doesn’t work that well, no harm done. Disclaimer This is by all means a black hat SEO tactic. There is nothing ethical about it and, if enough proof points in your direction, Google can still hurt your site for doing so. If too many people start abusing such loopholes, they stop working entirely. I wouldn’t advice anyone to use this trick. Learn what you can, but don’t copy it blindly! Peter van der Graaf is normally the most decent corporate SEO available, but the people at Pole Position Marketing always draw out the worst in him. He’s gotten used to being called John Bukkake, but please don’t ruin his reputation with this entertaining strategy. Peter van der Graaf SearchSpecialist.nl @pvdgraaf

Peter da Vanzo

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:24:18 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Peter da Vanzo and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

What would you rather do? Spend years begging for links, or have the best links in your industry come to you, without you having to ask? Then write killer – and I mean absolutely killer – content. Undertake unique research. Don't just recycle what is already in the public domain. If you've seen it, so has everyone else. Publish an article based on your unique research. Include data. People love charts and data. In the article, link out to the top influencers in your market. Quote something they have said in the past that relates to your topic. The top influencers are likely to follow the inbound links back to your site, and what will they find? An article worth shouting about. Repeat every few months. Links you can't even buy will come to you – for free. Peter Da Vanzo GoFish Media Ltd. @peterdavanzo

Michele Baldoni

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:26:54 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Michele Baldoni and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

Link Building On-page: How to Improve Theming of Internal Pages As everybody knows, links on Web pages are very important for search engine optimization. SEO techniques have quickly improved in recent years, allowing faster web-page indexing. One of the most popular and efficient of them is not always used in the proper way, reducing the potential results. I refer to the habits of placing, especially in the homepage, optimized links to internal pages. An example of the incorrect application of this technique is shown in the screen shot below. On this homepage has been placed two different links having the same href attribute (“/ferrari-rental.php”), an image that easily attracts the user’s attention and an optimized textual link inserted in the copy. The same procedure has been repeated for further three pictures shown in the page. Recently, I completed a test proving that if, in a webpage, there are two or more links having the same URL in the href attribute, the spider (Googlebot in particular) follows only the first link found in the HTML code. I also have verified that, if the first link is a “no follow” link, the spider does not use it and goes to the first “do follow” link. This is a scheme of the spider’s behavior:

Link 1 do follow + Link 2 do follow + Link 3 do follow => Theming B = Link 1 do follow
Link 1 do follow + Link 2 no follow + Link 3 do follow => Theming B = Link 1 do follow
Link 1 no follow+ Link 2 do follow + Link 3 do follow => Theming B = Link 2 do follow

Considering these test results, the linking strategy used for the website above is effective only for the page’s usability, but it is absolutely not efficient for the SEO. How then is it possible to optimize this important SEO strategy? I discovered during my test a method that allows you to increase both the page’s usability and its SEO efficiency. It consists of appending an anchor (#) at the end of the URL of the second do-follow link. Links are, in this way, considered differently by the spider that follows both of them. With this simple trick, it is possible to have two links in the same page with different anchor text. See below how to implement the code:

First link on page Second link on page Ferrari rental

This solution is particularity useful, for example, when is not possible to modify the menu anchor text. A similar method is to hang a parameter on the end of the URL (like page.php?a=text), but this will create duplicate content. With the use of anchors, despite the two different URLs and links the same resource we will not create duplicate content in search engine indexes. Michele Baldoni MBWeb @dottorseo

Melanie Nathan

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:28:37 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Melanie Nathan and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

It's a well-known fact that Google considers government sites extremely trustworthy sources because they have strict quality policies and they won’t just link to anyone. This is why, when it comes to high-quality backlinks for your site, a link from a .gov is like the Holy Grail. Unfortunately it’s also why .gov links are pretty much unattainable for most websites. Luckily though, you can acquire at least one .gov backlink by participating and offering your expertise to help other business owners at community.sba.gov. If you enjoy helping and have the extra time, other .gov communities exist, too. Experiment with Google operators, such as [allinurl: .gov “your niche”] to find even more holy grail opportunities. Melanie Nathan CanadianSEO.com @melanienathan

John Doherty

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:30:24 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by John Doherty and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

If you are trying to build .edu links for your website (this works especially well in the online education niche), enlist the people at your office to sign up for their college alumni networks. On most networks, you can fill out a website for your place of work. Put in your company's website. You won't get targeted anchor text, but you will get a lot of .edu links! John Doherty SEO Consultant at Distilled @dohertyjf

Jim Boykin

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:31:47 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Jim Boykin and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

The size of your team makes a difference. One person can be a successful, dedicated link builder, but when you have multiple people working together toward the same goal you have an advantage. Aside from the intangibles, like support, motivation and inspiration, there is a cross-sharing of information, opportunities and resources. It also makes a huge difference in scalability. The principle of two heads being better than one definitely applies in link building. Social media and information sharing networks are extremely valuable. But when it comes to getting links, with all the tools and mass contact opportunities on the Web, my favorite way to get links is still one-on-one contact. Getting trusted back links is a function of three things: quality content, domain credibility and the right promotion. If any one of those is missing, your link campaign will most likely fail. Quality content comes from research on what people WANT to share. Domain credibility is based on your level of expertise as it applies to your content. And the right promotion comes from targeting the best audience for your content in a personal way. Tools are an amazing resource when it comes to link building. They help with the research and strategic planning for your campaign. They also help provide opportunities and resources. Finally, tools will help your monitor your KPI’s and track your success. Without the right tools, building links is like digging a ditch with a spoon. Yeah, you’ll get there eventually, but it would have gone a lot faster with a back hoe. Jim Boykin SEO and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas @jimboykin

Jason Acidre

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:33:28 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Jason Acidre and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

Here's something that I don’t often see discussed over the web, though I'm quite sure that most experts/pros already know this one. Building Links to Resource Pages Resources pages are mostly known to be just another filler page of a website or a secondary sitemap, but not many realize how powerful this type of page is, particularly in containing traffic within the website, as it has high user activity (low bounce rates if used as an entry point for search engine traffic). Several factors that make a resources page powerful as a destination for links:

High user activity, knowing that people will instantly click-through the links within the page.
Houses links to highly relevant and resourceful pages within the site, which makes the page more viable to target major industry keywords.
The page then becomes a powerful vote for the internal pages it’s linking to, especially when their targeted keywords were used for the internal links. It basically supports/pushes your other pages’ search rankings.
There’s a rich snippet version for list pages on Google’s search results, which can increase CTR.
Have greater chances of achieving higher search rankings for highly competitive keywords based on the page’s relevance and usability.

Here’s a quick sample: My blog's SEO strategies resources page, which is currently ranking #1 for the keyword “SEO strategies.” The page has a low bounce rate (46.53%) and has high activity from search engine traffic. Essentially, link building is easier when your links have strong destination pages. Pro tip: Hustle on getting the #1 spot, because when you&'re already in the top spot for an exact match and specialized industry keyword, you’ll certainly attract and acquire a lot of natural links for that page with your keyword(s) used as anchor text. It’s then easier to request for links directing to your other landing pages with your preferred anchor texts from these new linkers Jason Acidre KaiserTheSage.com @jasonacidre

Garrett French

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:34:55 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Garrett French and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

We all know the standard guest post opportunity search queries, right? I'm talking about stuff like [KW “guest post”], [KW “about the author”] and even [KW in title “write for us”]. Those queries alone can deliver, depending on the publishing vertical you're targeting and how deep you query (perhaps hundreds of strong opportunities). That said, some of my clients sometimes require EVEN LARGER volumes of guest posting opportunities. And sometimes we need opportunities with less strenuous editorial and/or thematic guidelines. Now, as I evaluate prospective guest post publishers, I copy and paste out several author names I see. Once I've finished qualifying my list of prospects, I can then take the authors I found and run them in queries like [KW “Author Name”] and [“Author Name” guest]. You'll find a few author names that return only a few results that you've already seen. Then you'll hit the jackpot with a single author who's published at hundreds of sites along verticals you may not have considered. Often the more prolific authors have specialized in finding those lower-barrier-of-entry, get-your-link-and-go opportunities. My TRUE secret is my link prospecting tool (contact me for beta test), which I plug my queries into. It queries for me and brings results back in CSV format. Garrett French CitationLabs.com @GarrettFrench

Eric Ward

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:36:49 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Eric Ward and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

Contrarian Backlink Analysis When studying backlinks for a number of sites, most people take the top ten Google results, plug them into their tool of choice, and then let the tool aggregate as many links as possible. Then, the real work begins: trying to decipher and score and triage the target sites to go after for links. While I won’t say this is a useless strategy, there are some inherent biases and flaws to this strategy that I use to help make my own backlink analysis more useful for developing a link-building strategy. Here are my secret tips:

First, make sure you are logged out of Google so you aren't getting personalized search results. Now, when you see the top ten search results on page one, stop for a moment and consider the following.
A site that is ranked at position 11, 12 or 13 is very close to cracking the top ten. Ask yourself, if you were in charge of the site ranked at position 11, wouldn't you be heavily invested right now in a link-building campaign, given that all you have to do is move up one or two spots to make it to page one, or even higher up page one? Yes, you would. And when I study the link profiles of sites ranked at positions 11, 12 and 13 over time, I can see plain as day exactly what links they are chasing and if it's going to work.
Further, when analyzing links, very often the most active link builders among the top 20 sites are the sites at positions 11, 12, 13, 21, 22 and 23. And it makes sense. They are close to making a huge gain. The lesson here is include a few sites on the cusp of page one in your linking analytics.
A site that ranks on page two of the results and is paying for position 1, 2 or 3 in the Pay Per Click (PPC) results is a very unhappy site. Why? Because they are spending a fortune on PPC all the while being ever so close to attaining page-one organic ranking. The higher they can rank organically, the less they may potentially spend on PPC. It makes sense. If you rank #2 organically, why pay money to rank third in PPC?While I am aware some studies have shown that some (but not all) sites that appear in both organic and paid results do perform better, I can share with you that I had a client that was spending $16,000 per month in PPC while their site ranked organically at position 14.After a six-month linking campaign, we were up organically to position three and reduced their PPC spend to $4,000 per month. He had spent $48,000 in PPC over those three months, and now he is spending about $12,000 every three months, saving him $100,000 per year in PPC spend. While nothing is forever, he is happy now. He spent about $10,000 with me and will save $100,000 as a result.

The takeaway? Sometimes the sites that are just outside the Promised Land are the sites that can tell you the most about the linking strategies that will help you even more. Eric Ward EricWard.com @ericward

Arnie Kuenn

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:38:41 +0000

Link Building Secrets Revealed by Arnie Kuenn and 10 of Today's Best Link Builders.

By now everyone reading this understands the value of engaging content on their website. If you didn’t believe it before 2011, Google’s Panda roll out should have made you a believer by now. Beyond the onsite SEO benefits, excellent content can be a great link building tool as well. I am not talking about creating “link bait,” per se. I am talking about valuable, evergreen content that people will want to naturally share and link to for the benefit of their readers. Content that will be useful years from now – and still attracting links. Although not a scientific study, we recently analyzed several different types of content on hundreds of websites. We looked to see what content attracted the highest quality links from highest quantity of unique domains. Was it infographics, blog posts, videos, free guides or free tools? It turns out the good old-fashioned blog post that aggregated a number of items is still the best draw. Here are two examples that managed to attract some nice backlinks:

Top 100+ Link Building Resources (which I thought was appropriate for this article) – 103 backlinks from 32 unique domains.
How to Write Magnetic Headlines – 1,173 backlinks from 510 unique domains!

These links help build the authority of your entire domain. So, your challenge is to spend the time to create one awesome piece of content for your website and then promote it. I am willing to bet that instead of spending 10 hours on manual or other link building techniques, if you spend that same time on creating and promoting some “magnetic content,” you will attract more link juice to your site. We are recommending to more and more of our clients that they move half of their link-building budget to this type of an approach. It takes patience, but it works. Not to mention it has zero risk involved. To learn more about this and how to come up with content ideas, you can view my recent presentation from Pubcon on SlideShare. And, check out my newly published book Accelerate!, for sale on Amazon.com. Arnie Kuenn Vertical Measures – Search, Social & Content Marketing Services @ArnieK

Link Building Secrets 2008

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:43:11 +0000

What happens when you ask some of the world's foremost link building experts to dish out one of their most guarded secrets to the world in a single collaborative effort? They respond! The world's top link building experts have come together to provide a single source of never-before revealed link building tips, tricks and strategies. Over the years of studying and implementing SEO and link building strategies I have found that with all the information readily available, very little of it is actually revealing in any real way. I set out to remedy that. I asked each of the experts below to disclose ONE link building secret that they use and are pretty sure hasn't ever been made public. The secret could be in the form of a strategy, tactic, way to analyze, a tool that you use (one that is publicly available), etc. I didn't ask anybody to give away their best secret and asked that they don't share anything that's easy and/or likely to be abused by spammers. Below you'll find links to the link building secrets of each of the participants in this project. Some are short, quick and easy while others are a bit more complex. I'm sure all of them are helpful.

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Rand Fishkin

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:54:58 +0000

Link building expert Rand Fishkin dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy.

Here's a quick one: Add the words "sponsor" and/or "charity" to any of your link searches for keywords you'd like to rank for. These "paid links" fall under the "perfectly acceptable" category in most senses, and offering to sponsor an event or participate in a charitable donation or effort is usually a surefire way to get a link from some very powerful pages. For example, let's say you wanted to rank well for "chicago real estate," you might run a search like chicago "real estate" sponsor charity - and get a list of very good companies and websites to call/email for potential opportunities. You can broaden these searches considerably by geography or by broadening the topical focus, too. Rand Fishkin CEO & Co-Founder of SEOMoz rand@seomoz.org

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Peter van der Graaf

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:59:35 +0000

Link building expert Peter van der Graaf dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy.

"Nobody will ever link to this!" So how do I score in search engines? Creating linkable sites and redirecting them The dilemma Many industries pose a problem when it comes to getting links. For instance, how do you get links to a porn site? I had this problem with a website about bukkake (What? A Japanese fetish of mass ejaculation on a woman). When I was asked to get links for the Bukkake website I first got many links from crappy porn directories and traded a few links with other porn sites, but that was all I could get. It provided me with a top 20 position but because budget was limited, I couldn’t rent/buy the amount of links the results above me had. So how could I get links to a porn site with a limited budget? Good links would require some relevance to bukkake and in an ideal case the anchor text would contain the word bukkake. The solution The real question was: What would people link to? As I began brainstorming for linkbait it was clear to me that it would be hard to get any links to the Bukkake website. I needed a decent site that had little to do with erotic content. Should I explain the working of bukkake in a clinical fashion? Should I publish some research explaining a mental illness causing the crave for bukkake? Or should I just take all sexuality out of bukkake? The last option gave me an idea. Not that many people know the word bukkake (or act as if they don’t). The best related keyword to bukkake is “facial”. I would create a website about “John Bukkake” a professor of “facial dermatology” on the University of Calcutta, India. Click image to enlarge. Because this website was more about proving the success of the following technique, I can be very open about what we did. The website is still live, but it has no financial value for the customer anymore. Naturally I’m very discrete about other projects that still use suspicious techniques. The problem with sharing techniques, is that search engines develop cures for them once they get overused. Once you share them, they lose their value. Hopefully this example won’t be copied exactly, but it should serve as an eye-opener to create your own mutation. http://www.johnbukkake.com Read on to find out more about the used techniques. The details Creating the website To make the site look more authentic we copied the look and feel of the original University of Calcutta. We took a picture of a serious looking Indian man and made him our professor. To add some extra credibility we added research and more linkable content like the Bukkake fund for research in facial dermatology. A couple of jokes were added, like the buildup of semen that would work good as a treatment against eczema. Getting links After we created a non-commercial, non-erotic website it was fairly easy to get links in all kinds of directories. The anchor texts all contained the words “bukkake” and “facial”. But could we get even better links? This joke worked better than planned so we wanted to try even harder links. We created some fake Bukkake research that confirmed that the chemical compounds in Bayer eczema treatment worked under certain circumstances. The result was astounding, we got a couple of great links from Bayer that also included the search terms we were focusing on. Getting links from Wikipedia wasn’t that hard either, but eventually somebody that knew the word bukkake removed it. And yes, there are still link types in Wikipedia they forgot to nofollow. The Bukkake Fund pages got many links by trading them with other medical funds. The link pages were eventually removed from johnbukkake.com because it also showed where we got links from. As you can imagine we got many links from many different places and if we wanted to, johnbukkake.com would rank number one on "bukkak"”. Diverting links We needed the links for a porn site, so how did we get the links there? We cloaked a 301-redirect! First we created a rewritemap text file that contained the IP addresses of all search engine bots. In this case http://www.fantomaster.com/ provided us with a nice up-to-date list we imported on a daily basis. Then we used rewrite rules to redirect search engines the correct way. Only the Yahoo and Google search bots received a 301-redirect instead of the normal professor website. Normally cloaking can be detected by humans when they look at for instance the Google cache. Because of the 301, Google didn’t index the site and didn’t show any cache. This could arouse suspicion, so we added an obvious noindex, nofollow to each page, so not being indexed had an obvious cause. They could also use Google translate to see something like Googlebot sees it. But Google translate uses its own IP ranges and we excluded those from the redirect. Detecting the cloak should be very difficult, but please mail me if you know other ways? Other advantages In stead of cloaking you can also add the 301 for all visitors after you’ve gotten the links. After I stopped my involvement in the website, that is just what the owner did. He removed the cloak and placed the 301 for everybody to see/follow. It caused the removal of many links, because people found out. He has recontinued the cloak, so it should work again. So this proves that a cloaked 301 is more efficient in the long run. We also stole/borrowed some content and research about facial dermatology. Normally a Google query would reveal our fraud to the original author. But because johnbukkake.com isn’t indexed it will never show up. The porn site has a PageRank of 5, but when you do a Yahoo linkdomain: it shows only a few crappy links. 301-redirects never show in any reports, so it made the ranking of the porn site even more mysterious. Conclusion When nobody will link to you, what will they link to? Create a separate website with much more linkable content. Non-commercial messages work best. Requesting links still works You could hope for people to find your site, but it is better to create linkable content specifically for a linker. Then you mail them to get their attention. 301redirects divert all linkpoints A cloaked 301 however diverts all linkpoints without showing to normal visitors. Tricks are fun until they get overused This is a trick and nothing more. When it is detected a cure can be devised and it stops working for everybody. Learn what you can but don’t copy it blindly. Peter van der Graaf http://www.vdgraaf.info

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Peter da Vanzo

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:03:54 +0000

Link building expert Peter da Vanzo dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy.

Embrace controversy Links are markers of conversations, and conversations are most interesting, and most active, when people become polarized over an issue. This doesn’t necessarily mean you must set out to offend people, or bait hostile reactions, but you must aim to generate heart-felt reactions from opposing sides of the fence. Choose a topic that has a fair degree of truth on both sides, put the cat amongst the pigeons with an informed, controversial post, and watch your inbound links skyrocket. Forums, social network sites, and blogs are all good venues for this style of link building technique - anywhere people regularly express an opinion. Peter Da Vanzo www.linkjuicy.com

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Patrick Altoft

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:05:52 +0000

Link building expert Patrick Altoft dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy:

OK, here goes: I cloak links so that MSN and Yahoo see different links than Google. For example if I had a site with thousands of pages I would add a site wide link to one of my other sites. I would do some simple cloaking so that Google didn't see the site wide link but MSN & Yahoo did. This allows you to be really aggressive with link building for Yahoo & MSN and not raise any flags with Google. You get quick rankings in 2 search engines without harming your link profile in the one that matters. Patrick Altoft Branded3.com Blogstorm.co.uk patrick@branded3.com

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Michael Gray

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:08:46 +0000

Link building expert Michael Gray dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy:

In many cases it's hard to build links to commercial pages where you are selling something, so some people create an informational page build links and then 301 it to commercial page later on. Why not avoid the middle step, instead of 301-ing the page later on put the commercial content on that URL and relocate the informational content to another URL. If you're really clever you can get try and get links to the new URl as well. Michael Gray Graywolf SEO Blog

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Maurizio Petrone

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:26:58 +0000

Link building expert Maurizio Petrone dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy.

Link Building Secrets: Two Ways To Turn Your Next Image Hotlinks Into Clean Backlinks (and you choose the anchor text) Table of contents:

A little introduction to Image Searches and hotlinking
How to build backlinks on image searches for hotlinking Method #1: The Cloaked Landing Page
How to build backlinks on image searches for hotlinking Method #2: The Magic Image URL
Final Considerations
The author: Contacts and credits
Italian version of this article (it's an external link)

My Dear SEOs, Let me some minutes to describe a well-known situation: Let's say that you have a website with many beautiful images in it. As you're a good SEO, you have optimized all of them at the best, and when people run searches in their favourite Images Search Engines, they often find your images at the top of their Image Searches: Your client is happy because he receives loads of good traffic from clicks into Image Searches. But you know that not everything is as good as it seems: in fact, you sure know that many lazy webmasters and bloggers are just searching for images they are going to hotlink from your server into their web pages. When a webmaster creates a hotlink to your image, he likely will:

Use your image without asking for your permission (which you and your client may not consider a problem)
Use your bandwidth (which costs money): more hits his website receives, more bandwidth you will spend
Almost often gives no credit and no back link to your site, and we're going to fight right this last issue in this article.

Note: in my opinion, blocking hotlinking server-side (which is usually done by forbidding the access to the hotlinked image if the HTTP REFERER is not empty and does not belong to our hostname) is not always a good idea: you could always brand your images by replacing the hotlinked ones with a watermarked version, but you have an opportunity to earn a backlink, so why waste it?

You can earn backlinks from your images receiving search traffic...

Google Images is the source that is sending the most of image referrals to me, and I've conducted a study that proven the following: when an user is interested in the website, he is likely to navigate it within the Google frameset; but when an user wants to take the image for an hotlink or download, he is likely to click on the thumbnail version of the image, in the upper part of the Google frameset. In that case, your server sends the image itself to the client (the browser calls your image directly), and the HTTP REFERER field is set to be images.google.com/yadda-yadda. By controlling what happens and what is served to the client on such clicks, you have a powerful way (well, actually two) to convince -and force- a significant part of these webmasters who search, find and hotlink your images to give you a clean backlink with the anchor text of your choice. Actually, what happens after such a click looks like this: The user is looking at the image, if he still likes it and if he wants to hotlink it, the only thing he has to do (and the only way available to him, at this step) is to copy the URL from his browser's address bar and copy it in the SRC attribute of his tag in the HTML source (or in the CMS input field that will do the job for him, but it's the same). Now I will tell you two ways that are an opportunity for you to build backlinks upon your images that receive search traffic. In both cases you will have to deal with some server side scripting and, in one case, you'll have to reconfigure your web server.

METHOD ONE

The Cloaked Landing Page This is a one you may already know of, but I found it's not a very common strategy yet. And no, even if you read "cloaking" this is not black hat - we are not going to deceive the user because he will find a content that is substantially what he is expecting to find after his click on the SERP (we'll add just a little call-to-action). The method consists in serving a landing page showing the image instead of the image itself alone, on requests that shown an Image SERP's URL as their referrer. The landing page could be very simple, just showing a message like "copy this code to insert the image in your web page" and the relative HTML source, or be more complex - but the goal remains the same: the user should take the HTML that will provide an hotlink of your image and a clean text link, instead of just copying the image URL.

Efficiency: Low to almost nothing (depending mainly on your landing page quality and image appeal)
Fairness: High (you are serving the image the user was looking for, adding just a call-to-action and the code)
Difficulty: Medium to Low (depending mainly on the type and physical location of your images)

HOW TO DO IT

Basically, you should set up your server to rewrite all of your images to a script. The script will control where the user is coming from, and act accordingly: it will show to users coming from image searches the landing page showing the image they've found, and will continue to serve to regular users the image as usual. If your server runs Apache with PHP and you can use the .htaccess file, you may set it up like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) /script.php?imgpath=$1 [PT]

This will tell to your web server to rewrite any URL that ends with a dot which is followed by "jpg", "jpeg", "gif", "png" or "bmp" (case insensitive) to your script "script.php" on your domain root, passing the entire REQUEST_URI as the "imgpath" parameter in the querystring. Then, in script.php you will check the HTTP REFERER value, and if you find that it contains "images.google.com" (or any other image search engine you may want to include), the script will serve the landing page. In any other case, the image will be shown as usual. Example code follows (please, read the comments): Now, go and test which version of your landing page works better and makes more users to take your code with backlink embedded when they want to put your image in their web pages (don't forget to track actions made on your landing!) Note: if you provide your image content in a database-driven way, you may need to tweak everything a bit in order to make it compliant with your CMS.

METHOD TWO

The Magic Image URL This one is really more subtle: you are going to exploit the lack of knowledge of the users about how web pages works, and exploit also their laziness, in order to make them give you a backlink even if they don't know they're doing that nor willing to do that. And it's magic (well - sort of), because you have to force a non-standard behavior between your server and the client's browser. Let's tell the truth: you can do your best in crafting your landing's design and copy, but the vast majority of webmasters will not convert: they will steal and hotlink your image anyway, leaving you with your bandwidth expenses and not much more. Depressing, isn't it? What if you had a method to... well... force them to give you a backlink anyway, fighting them in their own battlefield? What if you had a way to provide, in the image URL they are going to copy from their browser's address bar without ever taking a look at it, the source code for your backlink to put in their web pages? You may wonder at this, but YOU HAVE THE WAY TO DO THAT (and it works a lot!)

How the Magic Works

This is the logic flow of a backlink earned thanks to an Image with a Magic URL that has been hotlinked after a click on it on an Image SERP:

The webmaster looking for an image to hotlink runs a search on an Image Search Engine, and click on your image
You know, from referrer, that he came from http://images.google.com/yadda-yadda (or another Image Search Engine URL)
In this case, you replace the URL in the address bar from

http://example.com/image.jpg

http://example.com/image.jpg?foo=">Anchortext

The user copies your URL and pastes it in his web page (he will paste it in his IMG tag SRC attribute field)
His HTML turns from

to (note the first closing of the IMG tag, that is before the code of the link):

?foo="> Anchortext">

The user's web page will now present a working hotlink to your image, followed by a clean text link (which code will be out of the IMG tag)!

Efficiency: Very high (The vast majority of users will never notice the "strangeness" in your image URL)
Fairness: Very low in my opinion (You are acting with the aim to go against user's will, and probably you are going to cause some minor troubles in their web pages design)
Difficulty: High (you have to put your hands in many places around your server and website files)

Pros

High efficiency (depending in the niche you're working with), that equals to Many Backlinks

Cons

You have to set up an intermediate page that forces a Javascript redirect
You have to call your image in its Magic URL version with a Foo parameter in the querystring (image will be hotlinked at this one URL)
Works only with MS Internet Explorer (version 7 too)
As far as I know, it doesn't work with Apache2
You may have conflict troubles in your web server setup (in Apache)
You have to deal with potential security leaks in your web server (Apache again)
You can provide only an anchor text without spaces in it (Apache only, there's no such limitation in IIS 5.0)
It's Not fair. (But are they?)

HOW TO DO IT

Pre-requisites

As stated, this method needs to have some specific (but really common) server AND client configuration environment settings available as a prerequisite, in order to work. As for the client, any Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) from 5 to 7 would work. I've tested this in a Microsoft Windows XP environment (By far that is the most common home/personal computer configuration for browsing nowadays). As for the web server:

I have done my tests with an Apache 1.3.33 web server, but it should work with every version Apache 1.3 series, since 1.3.27 - also with some previous ones should be Ok but I did not test them. For every test the protocol active by default was HTTP/1.1 (most common by far).
You will need to edit your httpd.conf configuration file (.htaccess isn't available for that, sorry) – and by applying what I'm describing, you are likely to expose your web server to security flaws, if you don't know EXACTLY what you are doing, so... Be careful, and if not sure, ask your IT consultant before doing this on production servers.
In Windows/IIS machines you shouldn't have such problems, and you likely won't need to change your configuration (I've done tests with Microsoft IIS 5.0).

Why the Magic Works

This trick is possible because sometimes Internet Explorer does not encode some characters (including spaces) in URLs. In fact, if you write unencoded un-safe characters in the destination URL of a redirect, Internet Explorer will encode them (spaces will turn in %20) - this happens with server-side redirects and with Meta Refresh redirects too, but IE does not encode spaces and other characters in javascript redirects. So we will set up a javascript that will redirect every image being clicked on an Image Serp (we'll check this server-side after a rewrite) to the same image, and we'll append to that image URL a querystring with a foo parameter containing our custom HTML (that will break up the IMG tag, and insert a backlink, if copied in an IMG tag SRC attribute field). The "foo" parameter is necessary, because we want to keep the image file name unchanged, and put our "magic" HTML only in the querystring. Further, in Apache we'll have to turn off the Protocol Integrity Check. With that check active (it's active by default from version 1.3.27), Apache will read the part of the URL that follows the white space as the HTTP protocol, and this would generate an HTTP 400 - Bad Request error because the stated protocol would not be a valid one. This is also the reason why you can't have an anchor text with spaces in it: you have only one available space, and you'll use it to separate "a" from "href". Every other space would be encoded before it is sent to the client (this does not apply to Microsoft IIS 5.0).

How to Set-up Magic URLs for your Images

Like in the "Cloaked Landing" previous example, you'll have to rewrite all of your images to a controller script. You can use the same .htaccess provided before, but it's better to add a browser check in it this time (you can move this check in script.php if you like):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MSIE.*

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) /script.php?imgpath=$1 [PT]

Now you can use the script.php provided before, with some adjustments (see below). Instead of showing the landing page this time, you will redirect to a script called magic.php: that script will accept the image path as its "imgpath" parameter in the querystring. This magic.php, on the Body Onload event, will call a javascript function that will redirect the client to the same image passed as parameter, and will append the foo parameter containing the code for the backlink to it (you may edit your anchor text and URL here). Let's now adjust the script.php so it will redirect to magic.php without creating an infinite loop (I'm commenting only the changing parts): If your server runs Microsoft IIS 5.0 (I had only a version 5.0 available for testing), that's all. If your server runs Apache, you will have to edit your httpd.conf file and add the following:

ProtocolReqCheck off

This flag is available from Apache from version 1.3.27 and works until any Apache which version is minor than 2 (for further reference on this, see this thread on Webmasterworld and the Apache documentation).

Final Considerations

If you receive good traffic from Image Searches, you can build easy and fast backlinks to any website using either the first method (The Cloaked Landing Page) or the second one (The Magic Image URL) – or you can use the two methods in a combo. Which one is better is a decision that only you can take. But, especially if you want to use the second method described, you have to ask yourself: it's okay to fool my users only to pursue my goals?

A final thought

If you run Yahoo Site Explorer on your site, you will find in the InLinks list also web pages that contain only hotlinks to your images (they don't have to include any regular backlink). Wonder why? ;-)

Contacts and credits

Let me know if you found this interesting, and if it worked for you: Drop me a line at: This article was brought to you by Maurizio Petrone (A.k.a. Petro) - Professional SEO and Web Marketer based in Italy. Visit my SEO Blog (it's italian reading) and my LinkedIn profile page, from which you can add me to your network of LinkedIn contacts.

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Jim Boykin

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:30:23 +0000

Link building expert Jim Boykin dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy.

Here's one that I believe in, that few people talk about. I like getting links that get clicks... now I'm not just talking about getting links on relevant pages, I mean links that get clicks. I wonder if Google assigns more value to links that get clicks over links that don't get clicks. We know they've got the data to track that information, so it wouldn't surprise me if they're using that info. For example, a link that doesn't ever get a click is not worth nearly as much as a link that get a 10% click through rate. SO... If we can get link/ad placement in such a way that it will get a high percent of click-throughs it makes the link more valuable, A) for more traffic, and B) in case Google is using click through data, our links will be worth more. There's 1 of my "secrets". Jim Boykin We Build Pages SEO Company

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Hamlet Batista

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:37:16 +0000

Link building expert Hamlet Batista dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy:

When PageRank just isn’t enough: How to determine the true value of a link. Not all links are created equal. We know that some links help more than others in getting high search engine rankings. For some time now, link builders have primarily relied on Google's toolbar PageRank as a good measure of the quality of a link. Higher PageRank values were ostensibly better than lower ones. Unfortunately, Google has played so much with the PageRank values it displays that it has become increasingly less useful. Here's why:

The PageRank displayed is an approximation of the real PageRank. Google computes the real PageRank of a link at least once a month, probably sooner, but it purposely chooses to update the displayed PageRank only after several months. The last update took six months to happen.
Google is reducing the visible PageRank of sites they catch selling or buying links. The real PageRank, however, has not been affected, as such sites report no drop in traffic or rankings.
PageRank doesn't mean much to other top search engines. They use their own link-based algorithms to evaluate the importance of a link.
PageRank only measures the absolute importance of a page, but doesn't tell us how much Google trusts a page. Search engines internally label pages as SPAM or not SPAM. Pages labeled as SPAM are not trusted and their links might carry negative weight.

There are already other, better methods in place to determine the value of links. Some of them take into account a multitude of factors, including number of links, indexed pages of a site, traffic, and so on. Those are all good measurement techniques, and I want to introduce a new one to your arsenal. Crawl Rate and Indexing Rate It is known that search engines use their link analysis algorithms not only to measure the importance of a page, but also to determine how frequently it should be crawled and indexed. Why? Important pages are seen by the general public the most. Search engines crawl and index important pages, say the New York Times home page, more frequently so that search results look up to date. By studying the crawling and indexing rate of a page we can have an indirect measure of its true value for link building. To do this properly, though, we also need to consider how frequently the page gets updated, as that is another factor search engines consider when determining how often to crawl and index. Determining the crawl rate of a page Click image to enlarge. In order to determine the crawl rate of a page we need to monitor the search engine cache. The date of the cache is the date the page was crawled. The process of crawling involves downloading the page and storing it in a repository for further analysis. For example, if you see a page whose cache is several weeks or months old, you know that the link will not be very valuable. On the other hand, if a page has a cache date of Yesterday, it should be a good link. In reality, you need to look at the page at a later date when it has been crawled again to determine how many days/hours it takes in between crawls. Determining the indexing rate of a page This is a technique you can do with Google. Ideally, pages should be indexed right after they are crawled, but that is not necessarily the case. Crawling is simply downloading pages, but indexing is a far more complex process that once upon a time took a full month to complete. It is fairly obvious to see on the SERPs that the process is an incremental one. Another reason to check the indexing rate is that some pages may be crawled but never indexed because the crawling process detected some duplicity. So, it is important to know when a page is indexed. In order to check when a page was indexed, we can do an advanced search using the date range filter. When you specify a date, past 24 hours for example, Google will display the time the page was indexed. You can see that it is not the same time as when the page was crawled by clicking on the "cache" link. The cache date is logically sooner. Same as with the crawl rate, you need to monitor the SERPs to see when the page is last indexed. That way you can see how frequently the page gets indexed. Determining the update rate of a page Click image to enlarge. As I mentioned above, the crawl and indexing rate also depend upon how frequently the page author updates the page. Pages that are updated several times during a day are very likely to be crawled and indexed in hours instead of days. That is, of course, assuming that the page is deemed important by the search engine. Instead of going to the page and hitting 'Refresh' every hour to see how frequently it gets updated, there is a simpler method used and supported by most search engines but not by most web hosting software: the last-modified and if-modified-since header combo, also known as conditional HTTP GET. Conditional getting is a technical process designed to save bandwidth. If there have been no changes to a page, downloading it a second time is rather inefficient. In order to save bandwidth, popular browsers and search engine robots (including MSNBot) support conditional getting. When the browser/crawler pulls a page, the server returns a header (last-modified) that says when the page was last updated by the author. The second time the server will only return the page if it has been modified. If it has not, it will simply return a status code (3xx) to tell the browser client to come back later. We can use this insight to determine how frequently a page is updated. We look at the last-modified header and by monitoring when it changes we can tell the rate at which the page gets updated by its author. Putting it all together Once you know these three rates, you can use the following matrix to determine the true value of the link. This technique is definitely more practical with a tool to automate the process. If there is enough interest, I might be able to make it public. Please let me know. Hamlet Batista Hamlet Batista dot Com

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Eric Ward

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:43:20 +0000

Link building expert Eric Ward dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy:

Google Alerts for Link Target Site ID. By Eric Ward Here's how I use Google Alerts to give me a steady flow of subject specific high trust link targets. It won't work for every subject, and at times there's some junk to weed through, but then again, it's free. Let's say you are seeking links for the following content Travel Channel - http://www.travelchannel.com/ You know the content is linkworthy, plus this search shows the content already has proven itself able to attract high trust links from high trust targets, such as http://library.jwu.edu/research/websites/travel_gen.htm So, go to Google Alerts, and set up this specific alert "useful travel sites" library -travelchannel site:.edu Set one Google Alert to do a web search only, and set a second alert to do a comprehensive search. Send yourself the alert once a day. The effect of this will be any time Google comes across a library based web site that has a list of travel resources that DOES NOT already include the Travel Channel, you will get an email alert about it. You can then contact that venue and lobby for the link. I use this tactic for just about every client as one piece of the target site discovery puzzle. Sometimes it works so well it's scary to think it's free. Bonus tips: Modify the search terms to account for the various terminology that might be used, such as useful travel links, or helpful travel websites. Also, don't feel you have to restrict your search to just .edu's. There are some sweet high trust trees growing out in public library land.

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Debra Mastaler

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:45:48 +0000

Link building expert Debra Mastaler dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy:

Look for blog posts hosting the Show Top Commentators or The Top Commentator widget and make note of who's leaving the most comments. Find their blogs, start reading, commenting and eventually offer guest writing services/hosted content. Debra Mastaler Alliance-Link.com

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Bob Gladstein

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:47:42 +0000

Link building expert Bob Gladstein dishes out a never-before revealed link building strategy. My methods are pretty straightforward. I'm big on:

Niche directories (getting listed in them and sometimes building them).
Professional organizations.
Getting videos onto YouTube with a link back to the client site in the description (although very few of my clients have had any reason for video).
Blogging, or really any concerted effort to create a good deal of content that will mark them as knowledge leaders in their field.
Getting the client involved in niche forums, blogs, and other social networks.
I'm planning on trying out Vanessa Fox's recent suggestion of using flickr.
I'll occasionally check a competitor's links, but usually just when it's fairly apparent that it's their links that are getting them their rankings.

What I generally don't do:

I almost never do the old reciprocal link email request bit anymore. There has to be a very good reason for me to try it, and I know it's probably not going to work.
I limit general directory submissions to a handful of reliable ones.
I never outsource link building.
I've only bought advertisements a few times, and they were never text link ads.
Press releases are pretty rare, too. I won't do one unless there's actually something worth announcing (although a little experiment of mine from a few years back did earn a bit of notoriety.

Bob Gladstein Raise My Rank SEO Services

Read all the 2008 link building secrets

Download the 24-Page PDF.

Local SEO

Stoneygd — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:27:28 +0000

Calendar

Stoneygd — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:15:02 +0000

Thank You For Contacting Us

Stoneygd — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:10:32 +0000

Thanks for giving Pole Position Marketing a chance to earn your business. We'll get back to you within 24 business hours (usually sooner!). Feel free to call if you have an immediate need.

WPSpam Thank You

Stoneygd — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 16:17:13 +0000

Your Support Request has Been Received

Thank you for submitting a support request for WP-SpamFree. We are unable to respond to every support ticket as management of this plugin is limited.

You may also wish to check out other tools in our library.

Consulting Thank you

Stoneygd — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:07:24 +0000

Thanks for signing up for our consulting services. We'll give you a call to collect your payment information and schedule your first consulting call. Feel free to call if you have an immediate need.

Write For Us

Stoneygd — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:11:32 +0000

We've had great guest authors in the past, if think you're among the qualified we welcome your audition. We must warn you though, our standards are lofty. If you think you're up to the challenge the following is our criteria:

The content must be original meaning it's never been or going to be published anywhere else.
The content must be topically relevant to web marketing.
The content must be substantially useful. (typically between 600-800 words)

If you've got a stellar idea, we're willing to work with you. However, it may require that you go through several rounds of revisions before it's deemed ready for publishing.

Ready to submit? Follow the steps below:

Send us an e-mail with your idea. We'll get back to you within a couple days to let you know if the idea is approved or not. If we don't approve it, feel free to make adjustments and resubmit. If it's approved go to the next step.
Send us your written post. In a Word document. Please proof read and make final edits before sending. You may include links to your stuff, to our stuff or to other stuff in the post. Just remember links need to be relevant and value-adding.
Prepare to make revisions. If we request revisions, don't take it as a rejection. Take our suggestions and make the revisions, we want your content to be the best it can be. If we request revisions, don't take it as a rejection. Take our suggestions and make the revisions, we want your content to be the best it can be.
Help spread the word. Share your hard work and knowledge with those in your networks.

Other Considerations:

We plan our editorial calendar several months in advance and only schedule one guest post per week. We have a queue of posts to be published so it your post may not be published for several weeks.
We encourage you to engage with the readers in the comments. So remember to check back a few times a day when the post goes live.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you're contact us about guest posting, make sure to read our criteria for submitting first. If you send in a guest post submission and you obviously haven't read our guidelines, it will be marked as spam.

Pricing

Stoneygd — Tue, 22 May 2012 15:22:20 +0000

Since every service we provide is custom designed for your needs, it's difficult to answer the question, "How much does SEO cost?" Every website has unique needs, varying goals, and specific desires that all need to be met within a set of budgetary guidelines. This allows us to custom craft a web marketing service or package that is a perfect fit for you and you alone. While there are definitely cheaper web marketing providers out there, you won't find anyone that can give you the results we give you for less. That's because Pole Position Marketing provides Fortune-500 service even while we maintain pricing that is perfect for small and medium businesses. We provide top-quality service at every level! That means you can expect a greater return for your investment than what most SEO companies can provide. And we can offer that because we are a professional SEO company with a team of skilled web marketers! With our vast expertise and wide-range of professional web marketing services we are able to craft a proposal for any business with any budget. Here we have put together some basic price ranges for each of our services to give you an idea of what we might be able to do for you depending on your specific needs.

Pole Position Marketing Pricing Options

When reviewing these pricing options, please keep in mind that your return is often only as good as your investment. Small investments generally yield small returns. More aggressive investments yield far greater returns.

Content Strategy $70-120 per hour for content development $150-200 per hour for strategy review Consulting $150-200 per hour Social Media $150-200 per hour Intelligence Reports $2000-4000 per report Analytics $1000+ per month

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Management 15% of ad spend per month ($750/mo min) Link Building $1000+ per month Conversion Optimization $1500+ per month Search Engine Optimization $2000+ per month Training Negotiable based on needs.

Kevin Nisly

Stoneygd — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:38:09 +0000

Client Relations Specialists & Ambassador of Tomfoolery

Kevin has a tough time keeping a straight face. He doesn’t frown often, either. You could call him the company cut-up, which might just be why “ambassador of tomfoolery” is part of his title. However, there are several things Kevin takes very seriously: his family, his outreach ministry and our clients. With more than a decade of sales experience (yes, we know he looks like he must have started at age four), he loves to use his God-given knack for building rapport almost instantly to help potential clients overcome their business hurdles and to ensure that current clients receive everything they expect from Pole Position Marketing and more. If he tells you, “I want to make your website famous,” please believe him. He’s not “tomfooling” around. With our web marketing team and nearly 150 years of combined industry experience behind him, he knows he (we) can deliver! Kevin is also Earnest (well, he’s actually Kevin) when it comes to his wife Carol – the high school sweetheart he married at age 18 – and their four beautiful children. They only regret their decision to marry young when it’s close to bedtime and everyone is grumpy. In addition to coaching his sons’ baseball team, and serving as a committee member for the AultCare Fast Break Breakfast for the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce, Kevin also owns a real estate investment business. And, he and Carol are living out their passion to give through aLittleBirdie.org, a non-profit that’s dedicated to the mission of serving people through small, tangible (and usually unexpected) acts and gifts. Simply put, “see a need, fill a need.” In all seriousness, Kevin is one active guy bent on making a difference in this world! Now you know the real reason why he’s always smiling.

Kathy Gray

Stoneygd — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:03:28 +0000

Social Media Marketing Strategist & The Geek Next Door

Having grown up in a cornfield, well, close to one, Kathy hails from the booming metropolis of Grand Rapids, Ohio. Yes, you heard that right, there really is a Grand Rapids, OHIO. She even has the button to prove it. Although a totally shy kid, she was forced to become social by working in the her family’s store, even appearing as a friendly elf in the display window during the holiday season. Eventually, Kathy left one cornfield for another to pursue a degree in social work at Bowling Green State University. However, much to the chagrin of the parental loan department, she decided to change majors halfway through her junior year to something more upbeat: tourism marketing. In her first gig out of college as Marketing Manager for a small Convention & Visitors’ Bureau, she discovered she had a knack for web marketing. Later, when she moved to the big city (Canton), she transitioned to the role of Web Content Manager for the Canton/Stark County Convention & Visitors’ Bureau, handling all of their digital marketing. As the official tourism geek for Stark County, she quickly jumped on the marketing opportunities that social media offered. Her social media prowess was quickly noticed, and she began to consult with businesses and speak frequently about how to effectively integrate social media into their overall marketing strategy. Kathy is happy to now be a focused social media geek and enjoys the challenges that each new business and industry brings to social media. And, that early coursework in social work comes in handy when understanding human behavior on social networks. When not on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram or reading her favorite blogs, Kathy can be found spending time with her husband and wrangling their two young children. She also has a garage sale addiction and can smell a deal a mile away!

Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!

kathygray — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:04:22 +0000

Marketing a website isn't particularly difficult. It's usually just a matter of knowing what to do, how to do it and having the skills and time to get it done. With that said, marketing a website isn't particularly easy either. There are so many factors and variables in play that at any given time that the job can be quite overwhelming. Obviously we can't address the issue of whether or not you have the skills or time, but we can help you out with the "what to do" piece of the puzzle. We've always been lovers of checklists, especially when it comes to getting things done. Especially when it comes to remembering what things need to be done! Our Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! covers over 400 specific items over 23 topics. These topics include things such as website development, SEO, usability, accessibility, etc. [gravityform id="4" name="Get the Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist"]

Ask the Pit Crew

kathygray — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:43:09 +0000

Do you have a search engine optimization, PPC advertising, analytics, content marketing, link building, social media or other web marketing question? Ask the Pole Position Marketing pit crew! Complete the form below and we may use your in an upcoming Ask the Pit Crew blog post! [gravityform id="5" name="Ask the Pit Crew" title="false"]

User ID:
Password:

	Forgot your password?Click Here

Pole Position Marketing

404-Redirect

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Quality, Growth-oriented SEO Services that Get Results

Our SEO campaigns help you:

High-Performance SEO from an Experienced Team

Our SEO Services

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Organic and PPC Rankings Together Deliver More

Fully Accountable Paid Search and PPC Campaigns

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Consulting and Optimization Solutions

Related Social Media Optimization and Consulting Options

Link Building

Professional Link-building Services that Increase Website Visibility

Build Links via Short- and Long-term Strategies

Analytics & Conversion Optimization

Goal Analysis and Recommendations

Website Architecture

Monthly Status Reports

Content Strategy

Experience with Diverse Content Marketing Options

How We Use Content Strategy

Consulting & Training

About Us

The Crew Chief

The Pit Chief

Pit Crew Leaders

Company Chaplain

Company Mascot

A Leading SEO Firm That Drives You to the Top

Contact Us

Serving Canton, Akron, the rest of Ohio and beyond!

PPM Library

Library Directory

Our Philosophies

How our philosophies impact you

Client Login

Blog

The Pole Position Marketing Pit Crew

Stoney deGeyter

President, CEO & All-Around Nice Guy

Stoney's Life in Pictures

Mike Fleming

Analytics, PPC Strategist & Employee of Every Month

Mike's Life in Pictures

Ad-minister data holder

EMP Book

E-Marketing Performance

eMarketing Information That will Tune Your Site for Maximum Performance

See What Others are Saying about the Author and the EMP Book

E-Marketing Performance

Subscribe

Debbie Briggs

Content Marketing Strategist & Confirmed Shopaholic

Annalisa Hilliard

Local SEO, Link Strategist & Supernatural Wunderkind

Annalisa's Life in Pictures

Maria Paschen

Office Manager & Team Favorite

Maria's Life in Pictures

Max Speed

Stoney's Alter Ego

Why Choose PPM

Experience and Knowledge

Our Search Engine Marketing Firm:

Our Operating Principles

Testimonials

Pole Position Marketing Client Testimonials

Specialty Pet Product Website Growth Stats

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

Plastic Card Manufacturer Growth Stats

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

High-Tech Company Growth Stats

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

Winter Ski Clothing Website Growth Stats

More Web Marketing Client Testimonials

Outreach

Advertising Comparison

Advertising Cost Comparison Chart