If you and your business have ever encountered unethical business practices as it relates search engine marketing or search engine optimization, please know that it is your right to report such companies to the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Not another business or person should have to suffer due to such unethical business practices.  The FTC will and can handle complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint, visit: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click on “File a Complaint Online,” call 1-877-FTC-HELP, or write to:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, D.C. 20580

If your complaint is against a company in a country other than the United States, please file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.

Have you or anyone you known ever encountered unethical business practices that cost your business in time and money?

Why do premium domain names cost so much?  What is the difference in a premium domain name versus a domain name?

Domain names are quite powerful entities in the world of the internet, and can make or break a business when an owner allows the domain name to expire.

If the owners fail to pay the yearly or quarterly domain name renewal fees, the domains become the property of the registrar.

You may know this or have already experienced this costly lesson.

Nevertheless, expired domain names become available to general public once again if no one purchases the domains in public auction.

Expired domain names sometimes become the property of domain investors, known as domainers, or sometimes trademarked expired domain names end up in the hands of unethical cybersquatters.

However, no matter who owns a given domain name, there is a different class of domain names on the market known as premium domain names.

Typically, premium domain names have been previously registered for quite some time.

Some are put to use while some are no longer used by the owners or registered.

In most cases, many of these valuable domains are redirected while others are parked in hopes that someone would come along want to purchase the domain name for their business.

Most business owners are busy with the day-to-day tasks of ensuring their customers are properly serviced and satisfied, employees are showing up and performing at an optimal level and payroll and bills are paid to name just a few.

And should the business garner most of its sales online, then all eyes are glued on ensuring the website is functional at all times and without show stopping glitches that could harm sales.

In today’s post, I will cover the common pitfalls of untidy code and how it greatly harms search engine rankings as well as potentially harms online sales.

Are you trying to figure out what the pros and cons of SEO and PPC are?

Well, there are many businesses, small and large alike, around the world on a daily trying to figure out how to get the best bang out of the buck in both SEO and PPC.

Whether your business selects SEO or PPC will all depend upon your line of business and how your business markets and advertises to customers.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) have one thing in common: both sources are means of driving traffic to your website.

You have a domain name, check. You have a website, check. You wait on search engines to index website, check. You have amazing traffic, *crickets*.

The above is typical response received when conversing about search engine optimization (SEO) with potential customers.

I have noticed there are a number of different steps a customer can take in optimizing their website. One of the most overlooked steps is the use of Google Webmaster Tools.

This value-add tool provides a website owner (a.k.a. webmaster) imperative information about their website and website’s overall health as Google sees it.

In today’s post, I’ll discuss the importance of Google Webmaster Tools.  I’ll also provide a very easy step-by-step, downloadable guide explaining how to use Google Webmaster Tools to complete the following:

• verify your website
• create a sitemap file for your website
• submit a sitemap file for your website

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”  Matthew 26:52 (NIV)

Today’s post took me back scripture and without apology.

Most business owners operating in the online space have come to recognize the importance and role that major search engines play in regards to their revenue stream.

From organic or natural search to link building to pay-per-click advertising, businesses throughout the world are counting on search engines to make the cash register ring each and every day.

As much as I love honest search engine marketing and, more so, organic search engine optimization, I would like to share a story with you of a business owner and their business reaping the harvest of a SEM firm sewing bad link building strategies.

Be forewarned about who and what company(ies) are allowed to optimize your website or provide search engine marketing services for your online business.

If your business is heavily dependent upon major search engines or they are the only source of driving revenue, your business that is desperately living by SEM could very well find itself signing a death certificate for a slow and painful death by SEM.

Today’s cautionary tale of living and dying by SEM is provided by a premium generic domain: Candy.com. 

As we all know, the key thing to search engine optimization is having search engines to crawl and index your website.

Today, we’re going to discuss the opposite: how not to allow search engines to crawl and index your website or a specific page.

Maybe you have duplicate content throughout your website that you don’t want to delete, yet you don’t want search engines to index and penalize your website.

Or have you ever wanted to have a private page not visible to search engines but make it available to users?

For instance, let’s say you want a quick and simple page guarding users from receiving content until they give their email.

This is very popular online experience for those trying to build their mailing list.  They’ll offer a free resource of some sort in exchange for your email address.