It’s hard to find a great place to sleep

By Steve Gerencser

We really needed a little mini vacation last week to get out and recharge a bit. We decided that hitting the new casino would be very relaxing, if not inexpensive. Four Winds Casino, in New Buffalo, Michigan, is a new Indian Casino, can I say that or should I say Native American Casino?, and it seemed a great chance to go see what it was like.

Normally I stay “at” the casino because I don’t really gamble all that much and love the ease of going up to the room and catching a nap. But the only rooms available were $350/night.. I’m not exactly cheap, but $350/night for a casino room? I can go to Vegas for that much money. So the quest was on to find a nice place to stay, for a fair price, close to New Buffalo. Who knew that it would be such a challenge?

If you are running just about anything in New Buffalo local search is wide open for you. It took far too long to find a nice bed and breakfast reasonably close to the casino, well, not really, but if it weren’t for the new maps in Google we would have never found the place we wound up staying. Sans Souci Euro Inn and Cottages (yeah, it’s their title and it’s on every page). Angie and Sue run an amazing little operation on 50 acres with a small private lake just full of fish. It’s quiet, it’s well furnished, it’s 3 miles from the casino, and it’s incredibly reasonably priced. We already have reservations for a full week later in the summer.

So what’s the point of this long post? Am I just trying to rub in the fact that I found a great place to stay? Well, yeah, sorta. But more importantly it’s about how few people are taking advantage of promoting their local business on the internet. And more specifically, on Google. A simple search for new buffalo michigan bed and breakfast on Google returns just 85,000 results, and barring the map, and just “one” real bed and breakfast, ranked #7. There is a B&B that is closed, it even says so on their website, that ranks #5. If it weren’t for the fact that Angie is looking to retire I’d offer to rebuild her site for her. I may still make an offer, but it might be to just buy the place and change careers!

While looking for something to do other than the casino I did a search for charter fishing new buffalo michigan. Not a single charter boat based in New Buffalo has a tag on the Google local map. Not one. Any SEO in New Buffalo Michigan may want to take a drive around the docks and look for a few new clients. Or maybe not, I may be up there in August fishing and could use the work.

To recap,

• Casino getaway = great!
• Quiet B&B to relax at = fabulous!
• Have a website for a business and not taking advantage of local search = epic fail

Posted in Business Issues, Life In The Fat Lane, Local Search, Marketing, SEO, Web Development | What Do You Think? »

More Corporate Anthems

By Steve Gerencser

I love them, God help me I do love them so.

I’ve come across a few more Corporate Anthems that I just had to add to my collection.

The latest additions include the theme song for the Drupa International Printing and Paper Fair another great tune for the fine folks at IBM a major change from the music of the 50s , and a great after school special ditty from KPMG .

But the biggest score this month is this cool video of Richard Stallman singing about free software. Not really a “corporate” anthem, but it’s just too good to not include in this list.

Check out the complete collection over on my Corporate Anthems page.

Posted in Don't Do This, Old School Business | What Do You Think? »

PayPal alternative, finally

By Steve Gerencser

I have made no secret of my dislike of PayPal. There has always been something loan sharkish about them. Often there is no recourse when they do something against you, they have become a haven for people of questionable ethics, and they are totally unregulated yet pretend they are a bank. I like my banks with rules I can count on.

Enter Revolution Money Exchange. Based in St. Petersburg, FL, RevolutionMoneyExchange is actually using accounts issued by a real bank with real rules! First Bank & Trust, Brookings, SD, is a real bank, a member of the FDIC, and is part of the Fishback Financial Corporation.

RevolutionMoneyExchange isn’t some basement operation either. Started by Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, it has received venture capital funding from Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank.

Just to make their startup spectacular RevolutionMoneyExchange is giving everyone that signs up between now and April 15th gets $25, FREE! It also sends me $10 for the affiliate code used in these links, so please, use my affiliate code. Even if you don’t use my code, sign up, take the free money. And let’s start putting the hurt on PayPal. Maybe this will spur them in to adopting some real oversight. But I doubt it.

Posted in Affiliate Stuff, Business Issues | 3 Comments »

Forum spam gets organized

By Steve Gerencser

Spammers are a crafty bunch, a crafty bunch that may need to be crushed under heel at some point, but crafty non-the-less.

It all started with a simple need. Getting links. At first it was about getting friends to link to you, or joining a webring. Then it was trading links with other people whether you liked them or not. That was soon followed by submitting your website to hundreds of directories, free and paid. But what happened when you needed thousands of links submitted? Simple, you outsource it like everything else. $50 gets you 1000 link submissions!

Well, it seems like making money submitting websites to directories isn’t as lucrative as it once was. Take a look at this email Dave over at ChainzOnline got, I assume by mistake.

Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:01:53 +0300
From: SEO Company <info@seo4experts.com>
To:
Subject: Looking for Link Builder. Job Offer.

Hi,

We are a SEO company. We are looking to hire several link builders.

We want you to build links from forums. NOTE: we do NOT need any other type of links. Please do NOT reply to this email with your offers of other kinds of links. Thanks.

We’ve got a list of ~1,000 computer & software related forums. We want you to make 3 posts on each forum regularly. You will need to put a link in your signature. We want to hire you for a long period of time (month, year, several years++).

For how much are you ready to do this kind of work? How much do you want per forum? [UTF-8?](You’ll need to make 3 posts on each forum.)

We are sending out this email to several hundreds of Indian link builders in order to find the cheapest price. So please make as low quote as you can.

Who we want to find:

a) responsible person who wants to work
b) a person with good English
c) a person who knows how to make posts on forums

Please reply to this email if you are interested.

Thanks,
SEO Company

Here is a company spamming to find spammers that we can thank for a lot of the new spam heading our way. No link for you ( http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com/view.php/forum_link_building_service ). Take a look at this quote from their page:

Unique: We will build links to your website using forums. We will create 3 posts on each forum linking to your website from 3 different pages. We never spam forums.

They “never” spam forums yet they create accounts specifically to get three posts with links in them? Isn’t this spam? I’m sure we can all go on for hours about these types of “people”, but they won’t care. So what to do about it?

Over at WebWorkshop we set it up so that you need 50 posts to get any live links or sigs at all. And I talked with a mod at WebProWorld and they also instituted a min post count to get sig links. And I suspect that most other forums will do the same to help stem the flood of low income workers spamming our forums with “I like what you said” or “Hi, I’m from New York” via an India IP address posts.

I think my new hobby will be contacting all these companies that hire these guys and ask them why they are spamming our forums. Hmmmm, possible client recruitment potential. Forget that last part, you don’t need those clients.

Posted in Don't Do This, Linkerbation, Spammage | What Do You Think? »

Feed the pig - Really?

By Steve Gerencser

I’m sure that you have all seen this public service announcement on TV,

Maybe I’m wired wrong, but every time I see that PSA the only thing running through my head is, how is that poor salesman supposed to feed his kids? As a bit of marketing it does seem to grab your attention, but it does a terrible job at actually providing a solution. Buy me, don’t buy me, why should I want this? It doesn’t trigger a call to action response like it should.

Americans have been notorious for not saving money over the last couple of decades, the current economic issues lend a lot of support to this. The me economy of get it now pay for it later has hurt a lot of people. People that should have known better. If you make $30,000 a year you should not be buying a $600,000 house no matter how much you want it. The same can be said for many businesses out there.

Everyone wants to be the next Blue Nile or Amazon. And they seem to approach it from one of two directions.

1. They open up their wallets, dig a hole, and start filling the hole until they get what they think they want. This approach never works because you are competing with other companies with bigger wallets, bigger holes, and are just as crazy as you are.

2. They hire little Jimmy, their golf buddies high school kid that “builds web sites” for $10 an hour and then wonder why the world isn’t beating a path to their door.

Just like the Feed The Pig PSA’s, there never really seems to be a good plan in place for getting where they want to be, a stable economy with financially responsible people helping it recover. They have an idea, think it’s a great idea, and charge full speed ahead without taking the time to really think over their options and possible solutions and problems that the plan can introduce. The problem with the Feed the Pig commercials is that they say “Don’t spend money” without explaining why, or how to be more financially responsible. There is no plan, no solution, just a dressed up pig.

There is another commercial out there where the family decides to buy a new TV and you see the husband looking at the mega screen plasma super TVs, yet when they get home they have a reasonably sized TV that we assume they can afford comfortably. Reasoned and responsible spending.

What about your web site? Has it be reasoned out? Is there a plan, a goal, a solution? Or is it just a dressed up pig and you are hoping that your viewers “get it”??

Posted in Business Issues, Old School Business, Web Development | What Do You Think? »

Jingles and Anthems - the end of a marketing mainstay?

By Steve Gerencser

Corporate Anthems are a guilty little pleasure of mine.

Some of them are a tribute to an age of business and marketing that has long since passed, while others are simply a tribute to the egos of the people behind them. In either case there is something about them makes me smile. The same smile when watching a teenager at the mall walk in to a glass door while trying to look cool for some girl.

When it comes to anthems most people know about the IBM song from the 50s Ever Onward but not as many know that people are still making these things. I’m not why, but someone at Salesforce.Com decided that making a music video about the Dev Life was a good idea. Take a look at some of my collection and laugh. I hope to be adding to it soon.

Corporate Anthems

Posted in Business Issues, Don't Do This, Old School Business | What Do You Think? »

WebmasterRadio.fm

By Steve Gerencser

ebmasterRadio.fm is one of my guilty pleasures during the day. It’s talk radio for geeks. Delivered live, streamed over the web, or in downloadable podcast format, you can find out the latest news in search, marketing, affiliate programs, or just a wild rant from Daron.

Some of my favorite shows are Danny Sullivan’s Daily Searchcast, Strike Point with Dave Naylor (DaveN) and Mikkel deMib (Mikkel), and SEO 101 with Carolyn Shelby (cshel), Brian Mark and David Brown (Ne0).

You can listen to the live stream for free, and even some of the not so old episodes for free, but to get to all of the back issue stuff, and it is worth reading, you need to sign up.. Hence the affiliate link here. Of course you can go there for free, but hey, momma needs new shoes so a little affiliate love for a good resource shouldn’t be too painful, should it? Go give Webmaster Radio a listen, you are bound to learn something.

Posted in Academe, Business Issues, SEO | What Do You Think? »

A new ADVenture

By Steve Gerencser

had started what I hoped to be a series of posts explaining how I use local search to help a company compete online in an industry overrun by international competition.. Seems like the owners of the company had other ideas and merged with another company in a complimentary business in a similar situation..

The good is that we are going to be starting with a clean slate, with a new business, competing in a local market that they know well.. The bad is that we are going to be starting with a clean slate (with a few 301s), with a new business (run by people with plenty of experience) in a local market overrun by international competition..

This should prove quite educational for all of us, stay tuned for updates.

Posted in Business Issues, Local Search, Web Development | What Do You Think? »