Online Business Mistake Number 459

Sometimes, It’s OK to lie

For example.. if your company makes fire suppressant products and your factory catches fire and burns down… it’s probably not a good idea to Advertise that fact.

If only there were something nearby that could help suppress the fire…

September 29th, 2006

New Parental Responsibility Law

WASHINGTON DC — In a 6-1 decision, the supreme court ruled today that not only game makers, but parents and grandparents as well can be held accountable if their child commits a crime as a result of playing a video game.

Recently passed House Bill 2718 states that if anyone under 18 commits a crime that is in any way related to a video game, the video game company can be held legally liable.

House Bill 2719 expands on that, to hold parents and grandparents responsible as well.

Supporters of the bill say that depsite their MA rating, kids under 18 are playing games like GTA and becoming desensitized to violence.

The purpose of the bill is to shift all responsibility from the person who actually commited the crime. “Parents who allow their children to play games, despite their age requirement should take full responsibility for whatever actions occur,” says representative Joe Fisher of Utah.

Today”s children are so desensitized to violence, that they don”t know it”s wrong to walk up to somebody on the street and hit them in the head with a baseball bat.

“Parents should know better” says Teresa Scaggs, a homemaker from rural Wisconsin. “If they can”t raise their children to know the difference between reality and videogames they should be punished.”

“Just like John Madden Football helps prepare our children for multi-million dollar NFL careers, games like GTA and America”s Army only prepare our children for a life behind bars” says concerned parent Sheryl Haggardy of Mount Pelier.

In extreme cases, the law even applies to grandparents citing “failure to raise children who are capable of properly raising children”. While a juvenile may recieve probation for commting a video-game related crime, parents and grandmothers can face anywhere from 3 years for a first time offender up to 15 years for a parent of a repeat offender.

“While it”s true we banned the death penalty for juveniles who commited their crimes before they were 18, there is no law stating we can”t execute their parents,” says Supreme Court Justice Roland Phizer (R Texas), “We”re always thinking of creative ways to apply the death penalty and eliminate prison overcrowding.”

Bill 2179 is just the latest in a series of attempts to put the blame where it really belongs: Corporate America. Similiar legislation was first attempted, but fell 3 votes short of passing in August 1983 after a rash of Yogi Bear inspired picnic basket thefts.

September 29th, 2006

Brand Hijacking

In his book Brand Hijack, Alex Wipperfurth defines a brand hijack as “Consumer takover. The consumer’s act of commandeering a brand from the marketing professionals and driving its evolution.” Basically, a brand hijack is every marketer’s wet dream. It’s marketing without marketing. It’s why we still refer to Puffs brand facial tissues as Kleenex, It’s why the Blair Witch Project was so successfull, it’s why Google exists as a verb in the dictionary, and it’s a phenomenon that Apple doesn’t understand.

So now you’ll understand why I’m utterly confused when I see that Apple is sending nasty cease and desist letters to PodcastReady over the terms “podcast ready” and “my pod.”

It’s clear that nobody in their right mind would confuse these terms with the Apple Ipod but what’s worse is that Apple doesn’t own the trademark on any of those terms. They don’t even (as of the time I write this) own the word podcast, nor do they control the word pod. To be fair, the word pod was used in products way before Apple ever thought to use it.

I know that trademark law requires you defend it or lose it, but in this case they don’t own the trademark to defend. Worse, even if they did it’s clearly more beneficial for them to not defend it. It’s a little know fact that a “podcast” is nothing more than a fancy word for a “recording.” It may shock you more to know that you don’t even need an ipod to listen to a podcast; winamp works just fine.

A clear argument can be made that using the term “podcast” instead of “recording” or “mp3″ actually drives sales of ipods.

Is there something I’m missing here, or does Apple just not get it?

September 27th, 2006

Not So Easy SEO

In the last post I talked about how to choose good keywords for your site in order to have a better chance at showing up in the top of search engines, but what happens when all of your keywords are monsters?

What do I mean by “Monster Keywords?” A Monster Keyword is a very broad word that has a lot of competition. For example terms like Sex, Poker, Search, Cars, etc. The one I want to examine today is Linux.

Anybody who’s dabbled in SEO knows that unless you’re already a major player in one of the above industries, (or willing to do some dirty tricks) you’re not going to easily rank in the first page of Google for these words. If you’ve read my last post, you’ll know why you shouldn’t rank for them. But that’s ok!

Sticking with the linux theme, let’s look at a random site. Since it’s new and local, (and I don’t have any ties to it) I’ll pick the Wayne State University Linux Users Group. How on earth does one SEO a site like this?

Sure you could stuff some keywords in there, but that wouldn’t really help users would it? For a site like this we’re going to need to do a little more than just proper keyword analysis. The trick to SEOing a site like this is all about generating traffic. Yup, I’m talking linkbait. So what can the WSULUG do?

To start, I’d start trading some links with other sites. In this case though, I wouldn’t care at all about PageRank. I’d be more interested in links that will bring me actual visitors. But wait.. They’re not selling anything, why do they want visitors? For the linkbait…

While all that link building is going on, I’d start writing some useful articles. To find topics, we can use our copy of “Good Keywords” or just head over to overture. We see that people are searching for stuff like “how to use tx file”, “how to configure samba”, “how to use command line text editors”, “how to burn a cd”, and “how to open a word file in linux”. These would be a good start. In fact, one of the crucial things missing from the WSULUG site (and most of the web in general) is a good clear concise guide for newbies. That’d be a great place to start.

So if you’re a small site trying to capture big keywords, my advice is to start small. Don’t worry about capturing the “wayne state linux” type stuff… you should have that anyway. Find a niche, create something useful in that niche, and wait for the links to come your way.

Remember SEO isn’t about getting to #1 in Google or Yahoo, it’s about getting more targeted visitors to your website.

September 26th, 2006

SEO Keyword Selection Advice

In her latest High Rankings Newsletter, Jill Whalen tackles the following question:

We would like to optimise for the conditions she treats such as back pain,
insomnia, headaches, etc – about 40 different in all. What is the best way
to present this to a search engine without having to write “acupuncture for
colds and flu” or some such other boring list which no real person would
want to plough through?

Her advice is simple:

I would create a “symptoms” or “conditions” main category page. Then list
each of the various conditions, with a few sentences describing that
condition. From each of those, you would place a link to go to a specific
page with more information about that symptom and how it can be treated
through acupuncture

This is good advice, but it’s not as good as it can be. She should have discussed usefulness and whether or not these keywords relate. (see one of my previous articles on usefulness.) Let me explain:

This approach certainly makes the website more useful to a visitor which is a huge key of SEO, but does it make the website useful in terms of the query? Let’s have a look:

The term the client is after here is “Back Pain,” but I think that’s way too broad. A quick look at the first 10 results in Google shows that most of these results have a common theme: Causes of back pain.

You may also notice the Google “onebox” here, which offers you to refine your search. Some of the options are “treatment”, “sytmptoms” , “tests”, etc. The very existence of the onebox and “refine your search” seem to support my theory that this is a very broad term.

Since the search was for the broad term, a site that only deals with treatment of back pain probably wouldn’t be viewed as useful as a site that deals with all aspects of back pain.

While Jill’s approach is a step in the right direction, I would advice her client to re-think his chosen keywords. A quick visit to Overture shows that some better terms for the accupuncture clinic to focus on would be “back pain relief”, “back pain treatment”, or even “back pain excercise” depending upon what services they offer.

While these terms get less overall searches than “back pain”, they are terms that the site should be a useful result for. Not only that, but they’ll probably deliver visitors who are more likely to come in for a consultation anyway.

September 22nd, 2006

Flying Through College

Have you guys read about this kid who Graduated College in 1 year? Yeah.. 1 year.

It seems that somehow he earned 73 credits in high school, then took a 23 credit hour semester, a 30 some semster, then 1 summer class and graduated from Virginia with a dual degree in math and physics. Amazing

The kid may be smart, but I think he’s at a big disadvantage. There’s something to say about the quality of your degree when over 1/2 your credits come from freshman level classes.

I took just over 5 years to graduate college and if it were up to me, I’d have stayed longer. There’s just so much one can learn from outside of class that you can’t elsewhere. College is about meeting people, expanding your mind, and making the relationships that will help you once you get your degree. Of course, it’s arguable that this guy was only after a degree anyway.

Oddly enough, he wants to be a patent lawyer… I’ll save my comments on that.

In other news, This study shows that business majors are more likely to cheat in college than other majors. The scary part is, that 56% said they cheated because they believe it’s an acceptable business practice. Keep that in mind when you meet your next young boss fresh out of college.

September 21st, 2006

Free Internet

Has anyone heard about the plans that Fon has for a $5 Router and free internet access?

Their goal is to offer up a bunch of really cheap routers with the condition that everybody who uses them share the wireless on it. The goal is so their users can get wireless access virtually anywhere.

The problem thatTechDirt points out is that most ISPs prohibit the sharing of their internet connection. So technically, nobody’s allowed to use this service.

Worse, what are the privacy implications of using this service? What would happen if somebody were to use Fon access to commit fraud, spam, send nigerian emails, download child porn or worse: download music. Who’s liable here?

Obviously the person who did it for one, but what about me for letting them use my internet? After all the IP address will point to me with no way to trace it to the person who used it, and let’s not forget I’m violating my TOS in allowing them to do it. What about Fon? Essentially they have no foolproof way of knowing exactly who was doing it either.

Anonyminity is an important part of the internet and I won’t want to give that up, but we’re going to have some interesting court cases once Fon roles out.

September 20th, 2006