Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

That would be Wikipedia then!  I have a confession to make.  I'm looking for a meeting that I can attend where I can stand up and say "I am Tim Trent, and I am a recovering Wikipedia editor", but the lure of editing articles there is too strong!

The thing about dear old WP is that it is glorious anarchy.  It has policies, guidelines, administrators, bureaucrats (no idea!) and stewards (less idea still!) and the great Jimbo Wales whose word, ultimately, is law.  Oh, and ordinary folk like me who find it fun sometimes to contribute.

It's a great place to be a barrack room lawyer.  You can argue days and nights away tilting at windmills to your heart's content.  And, allegedly, "consensus" carries the day.  Except, of course, consensus is  judged by some other editor, admin, bureaucrat etc, who is not someone necessarily dealing from a full deck.  Not that I ever said I wasn't a sandwich short of a picnic either, you understand.

The fun thing there is that it is a great example of why Douglas Adams knows that we are descended from the original passengers of the B Ark.  Consensus means either that policies and guidelines carry the day (good) or that big mouthed imbeciles carry the day (expected).  The former happens with simple things like technical articles where only the informed have an opinion.  The latter?  Ah things like patriotism and hero worship get in the way of good sense.

Go near an article about 9/11 with any critical faculties intact, especially the conspiracy theory articles, and you'll see what I mean.  Same with the recent appalling atrocities in Mumbai.  Hero worship prevents rules from being enforced.

With this type of approach, with the "wisdom of crowds", does the human race stand a chance?  Is it time for B Ark 2?

Intelligent design? Not a chance.

Nothing at all to do with marketing, but I was just kicked, metaphorically, in the crotch by the idea of intelligent design.

I am sitting here, quietly writing a novel about my teenage experiences in the British Public School system, and I've been diverted to the blog.  You see, I wriggled.

And, like so many chaps, when I wriggled, I had the misfortune to squish my right testicle twixt undergarment and a thigh.  And it hurt.  It could have been the left one, but it wasn't.

And I was led straight away into thinking "What a poor design.  Who would put those there?"  Which led me on to Billy Connolly's words along the lines of "Who ever heard the words 'What a magnificent scrotum?'"

I know no heterosexual ladies not homosexual gentlemen who admire the scrotum.  It's just a thing that gets in the way!

So, if there is a deity who designed us with his or her alleged Intelligent Design principles, just how bad a designer could that all knowing being be?

There's no such thing.  The human scrotum proves it.

Words and phrases guaranteed to anger your customer

I suspect I attract them.  I am a magnet for badly trained call centre operatives.  Customer Service is part of marketing, whether it likes it or not.  And customer service needs to think before it speaks!

My all time favourite is "With all due respect" or its baby variant "with respect".

I really do not understand how anyone can possibly believe that this is polite.  They must hear it in parliamentary debates and believe that something about it conveys respect.  yet It means exactly the reverse.  The words that come after it are almost always able to be rendered as "you are wrong".

The caller may be wrong.  The caller may be so wrong they are off the scale of wrongness, but that is not the way to handle it.  Try instead "I see what you mean," and then use the old Pace, Pace and Lead technique, or the Feel, Felt Found technique - you know the one.  "I know how you feel.  Others have felt that before.  What they have found is..."  Odd as it seems, this alms most irate customers.  It means "You are listening and understand."

Close behind is "I'm sorry, but...", which means, of course, "I am saying I am sorry, but I am not."  And the next words are pretty much "you are wrong".  Ah, OK, we're back to that again!

Then "It's against our policy" is a great follow on.  I find that, when policy comes in to the conversation, service leaves it.  The policy item tells me that there is no hope of anyone even attempting to meet my needs because they have a policy to hide behind.  Customer Service may run out of options, of course It may.  But this is not the way to handle it.

"You will have to..."  No, I will not.  I have to do nothing at all, least of all when told this over the phone by someone in a call centre.  How about "Let me help you sort this out.  I have a process I need to go through, and if you can help me with (answers) the I can help you with (problem)"

"When would be convenient to call you back?" This sounds great.  However, it is too often unchecked.  If offering a callback, and if it can not, for some reason happen at that time, you must call to state the reason why it cannot happen.  Today I was offered a callback for which I gave the entire morning as a window.  I expect a call before noon.  Neither the call nor an apology for the lack of ability to call ever came.  My expectation was set incorrectly, and I now have a new thing to complain about.  We do not want to give folk new things to complain about.

"You can't speak to a manager." Always an interesting one, that.  Why not?  Seriously, why not?  What is the manager for?  What about a different operative whose role is to "be" the manager?

"They left the office at 4,and there is no-one else who can take your call" Oh, really?  Well, why not?  I appreciate that staff work staggered shifts, but make sure that you service my needs as a customer.  I'm one of the people who pay your salary by buying stuff from your organisation after all.

"I haven't been able to speak much during this conversation"  I just had that!  Well, no, she hadn't.  I was delivering information about my complaint.  It wasn't a matter of taking turns, it was a matter of her recording what had to be recorded.  I'm truly sorry she felt the need for a bigger part.  What an extraordinary attitude and what a huge lack of goof role playing training. It's not a common one.   I think it was a one off. But it got very high on the Richter Scale immediately.

I'll add some more as I think of them.  Meanwhile how about you?  Use the comments and tell me your pet hates!

Barclays and Customer Service

I expect people to make mistakes, but I expect them to put them right fast and to handle complaints well.  Wake up, Barclays, and smell the scent of Northern Rock!  I hope you all take this personally, because your jobs are at stake.

In October I opened what I instructed Barclays to open as a joint account with my wife.  We did everything right.  Everything.  Copies of passports, the lot.

In November I discovered that they had opened the account in my name only.  This means that, had my wife and I fallen out badly during that period Barclays would have taken her money and given it to me as sole account holder.  Interesting, huh?

I complained.

The complaint was meant, according to their letter, to have been answered by 19 November.  I called them last night.  Apparently they wrote to me on 18 November apologising for the delay in issuing my wife with a debit card.  Not that the letter has actually arrived.

That's very sweet of them, but she doesn't want a debit card.  She and I want a full answer to our complaint about the lack of opening a joint account.

Wrong complaint, then.

So I explained this with patience to the very pleasant lady who answered in the call centre and asked for it to be handled at once.

She could not even promise a callback today!

Oh, the copies of the passports?  It appears from the letter that they have been lost because it says that we will have to go again into the branch to present them.  Interesting.  If that is so they have not safeguarded our personal data, which, under the Data Protection Act 1998 they must do.

What is the point of offering customer service out of office hours if you can not do anything out of business hours?

There is no F in Customer Service with Barclays, it seems.

I have a sub prime mortgage

But I didn't buy it, I wasn't sold it and I never expected to have one.  I object to having one, and object even more that it ended up with Lehman Brothers, now gone to the wall.

I bought it from Alliance & Leicester.  And that is where I thought it would stay.  I'm a landlord, a sane one with a rational portfolio of properties and a realistic expectation of the market.  And they sold me a buy to let mortgage.  Their site today says "Whether you’re a new landlord or looking to extend your existing portfolio, we have a range of specially designed buy to let mortgages to suit your needs."

What they never told me is that they would sell the mortgage on 18 or so months ago to someone I had never heard of.

I though I knew where I was with Alliance & Leicester.

How lucky I am to have good tenants at present and to have aimed at a sector of the market where tenants tend to abound.

How unlucky I feel I was to have dealt with a bank who didn't care at all about me, its customer, and sold me on as a commodity to a bank who then went bust.

I made the purchase through a trusted IFA who also had no expectation that the mortgage would be sold on.  They were as surprised as was I.  Alliance & Leicester has lost me for ever as a customer, even if Santander owns that brand today.  I don't hold Santander responsible for the commercial actions of Alliance & Leicester, but I will be looking at not doing business with them either.

Screw the recession! Let's innovate!!

And that is just what Amazon has done.  Will their new site work?  Frankly, who knows?  But I went there to look and I remembered that I want to rent Hancock when it comes by.  That worked for Blockbuster, not Amazon, but adverts do that!

I got to hear music snippets that reminded me that I really do not like some artists.  I didn't need to be reminded, but so what!

And there is no mouse involved!  Arrow keys and spacebar.  That so reminds me of old PC games. Ah nostalgia isn't what it used to be!

Recession?  Bah, Humbug!

"I'm sorry, we're going to have to let you go." The Marketing of Redundancy.

I'm a regular reader of the 1to1 blog.  It's a great place to find articles on current marketing and CRM stuff.  But imagine my surprise when I saw an article called Chins Up! What an ironic title!

Yes, it's about the current financial crisis, and it's about how to be a good uncle in the workplace.  Look, click the link and read it.  It starts off:

A day hardly passes without news of significant layoffs at some financial, publishing, or automaking concern, which set me to wondering how companies can maintain employee morale in such a climate. There seems to be no end of advice out there.

That's good.  There is.  There's a shed load of advice.  But some of the things the article distills are bizarre:

For the remaining employees, onsite counseling can help; many times, the non-laidoff end up more traumatized by a poorly handled job reduction than those who were actually reduced.

I wonder if there's a market for a "They've been laid off, but you have been left behind, and, gosh, you have a salary, how unlucky can you be?" counselling business.  I wonder if I am empathic enough to start one?

Unbelievably it also cites:

One site recommends sending letters to a former employee's family thanking them for the support of "their" family member during this tough time.

I wonder if that's before or after the axe falls?

Now, do not get the idea that I'm slating 1to1 over the article.  All they're doing is synthesising an article from the inordinate amount of mealy mouthed trash out there.  And what a lot there is.  But I did place a comment at the foot of their article, and I thought that, just maybe, you would like to see it here, too.

I said:

Oh. Yes. "Softening the blow of redundancy".

This is, of course, "great" for the folks left behind by this tranche of redundancies. I watched this in the early nineties when I had what proved to be the mixed fortune of working for Wang Laboratories.

The first round of redundancies (layoff does sound so much nicer, but you still get to not be able to pay your bills!) had security guards leading the unfortunate first swathe from the premises.

That first swathe were the folk that "everyone hated anyway", so they never mattered to anyone left behind. Yeah, right!

The next swathe was done a little kinder, then the next, then the next. By the time they got to me I was sitting in the VP of HR's office while he finished a phone call and then told me I was finished, too.

And all the empathy in the world did not make that last recession any easier.

A few years ago I watched Gartner make people redundant. The announcement came round that the redundancies had finished. A sigh of relief went up and the tension eased. Then a colleague was called to the management suite and made redundant. That worked well. She was more upset than anyone could possibly imagine.

Fancy words and fancy letters to the family (give me strength!) mean nothing. The only thing that softens the blow is hard cash. And that is pretty much the only thing that softens it for the folk left in employment in the organisation, too - the hope that, when you get your appointment for summary execution, you get as good a payoff as the last round did.

The real advice for the current time is "Do not own shares in your employer, because you lose your savings as well as your job when it goes belly up!

I guess you do have to be in my age group to "get" it. 

You have to have lived through the last recession and wondered how you were, as a skilled professional, ever going to get another job, because so many other skilled professionals were also suddenly in the job market wondering how they were ever going to get another job.  

You have to be someone who thought you had a career and who discovered that you just had a very disposable thing:  A job.

And you have to realise that the personnel department (or Human Resources, as they love to be called nowadays) work to protect the employer, not the employee.

The minute HR starts saying stuff about how valuable everyone is, start looking.  And hope you can land a payoff and a new job on the same day.

No, never have shares in your employer's organisation.  Never.  Take stock options and exercise them for a same day trading profit, but never hold their shares.  They don't care about you, so why would you ever care about them?

We are "between" blog mailing lists

I just received a notice from Zookoda, who manage the mailing list for this blog.  It says:

Hello!

First and foremost, we want to thank you for being a loyal part of the Zookoda family! 

Unfortunately, we have some sad news to share with you. Zookoda will be closing its doors officially on December 1, 2009. [I bet they mean 2008! Tim] Until that time you may continue to schedule and send broadcasts as normal. Be that as it may, only a very limited customer support team will be available to service your needs from this point forward until the close date.

(I've snipped a bit)

Thank you,
Zookoda Support

This means that, until I find another service to subscribe to, subscribers will not receive weekly emails with blog updates.

I've found a new service.  But I can not import subscription details into it, so, if you are someone who wants email delivery, please subscribe to the new service (left margin, and in this post at the foot).  Thus Permission Based Marketing works in reality!

Zookoda closes on 1 December.  That means we will get one or two more emails with them before the service dies.

Permission based Marketing is great until the service provider goes pop!

Enter your email address:

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How secure is your data against loss?

Do you even have a Data Security Policy? Have you looked at InfoSec as an issue that is relevant to you?  Do you realise that The Data Protection Act covers data security?

Look at the data losses that have happened recently, and think "If this happened to me, would I lose my job?"

The current economic climate means that it's going to be damned hard to find another job, especially if you lost a USB data stick! Who's going to give you a reference? And far better risks than you are on the job market right now.

"But that's my employer's job. They make me take stuff home to work on!"

And it is, yes. You have a duty of care, but they also have a duty to you.

I've been discussing the use of policies and secure devices in the UK Data Protection email discussion group. The thoughts run in various ways.  One of the main ways is encryption and policies.

I contend that an organisation needs to recognise the existence of the USB port, and realise that it cannot just use araldite to make it unusable.  After all, USB is not the only way of getting data off the office machine.  There's bluetooth and a load of other stuff, too.  Email is one way.  And, if we're going into theft prevention, there is a whole raft of strong protective measures to be taken.

If we recognise that we will find it hard to stop malicious data removal, we should also recognise that the press loves stories about accidental data loss.  And we are, and we employ, idiots at times.

So let's try to get rid of some of the idiocy.

The simplest route is encryption.  Don't get me wrong here.  Encryption is not the universal aspirin.  Encryption just makes It hard to lose data in a way that lets outsiders have casual access to it.  Encryption can be broken, encryption can be circumvented, but encryption is a quick and simple process to render data that has been lost by an idiot inaccessible, at least for now.

"All" you need is a policy, enshrined in your Human Resources policies, with the very real prospect of summary dismissal for a breach that states:

The only data devices that may be used for the transfer of data between machines are those issued by, or formally approved by, the [choose an exciting job title here, or name the organisation].  Staff may expect inspections without warning, and devices that do not comply may be confiscated or have their contents securely erased.  Staff using unauthorised devices will be subject to the disciplinary process.  Such unauthorised use may be classified as gross misconduct, for which the penalties include summary dismissal.

Then you invest in a supply of correctly encrypted items and issue them freely to staff who need to move data in this manner.

And you do spot checks.

Someone said to me "Tim, encryption is a red herring.  You can always insert an encrypted data stick in your home computer and unencrypt it.  People work at home."

They do.  But why do they use their home computer to do it?  If you think there is a danger of that, make it part of the policy.  You can't prevent it, but you can make it a disciplinary offence.

If you have homeworkers who need computers, equip them with excellent and well secured equipment.  You're saving money on office space, so spend some on securing your business.  And lock the image down so that software cannot be installed without your IT team doing it and knowing what is present.

And make the simple point:

You are not entitled to download porn onto our computers.  In the same way you are not entitled to use our data on your computers.  This computer and this data is owned by us.  Any unauthorised use may be subject to our disciplinary process.

Encryption and policies together will not be 100% effective, primarily because you are dealing with people.  And people are stupid.  But minds will be concentrated.  And, even if Bloggins leaves his laptop in the train, if it is a properly secured laptop with an encrypted disk drive, the data will be too hard to get at to make it a real data loss.

A spammer asked me for a referral!

That is so easy to do.  It is a total pleasure to make a referral for this spam!

It seems to me that they have trawled cyberspace looking for email addresses, and have then sent out their exciting marketing message (that would be SPAM!) to me having found my address.

The message is sweet.  It says:

Hi Tim,

I hope you're the right person to talk about E-mail marketing and lead generation for your company? Can we have a quick call to discuss about new age marketing initiatives? We at ListGalaxy  are a leading online source for business sales leads, email lists, direct mail lists and telemarketing lists. Best part of our Lists is they include verified (opt-in) email with each record. You can target based on industry type, job title, geography, company size or revenue etc. We can build any custom database that you are looking for, based on your targeted verticals. Any business list, you name it, we have it.

 

If you would let me know your target criteria. I can send you samples which is free of cost and most importantly you can also check as to whether it
clicks or not for you. If you wish to discuss further, please let me know a convenient time to call you.

Await your response.

 

 

Regards, 
 
Andy Morgan 

+1-415-240-4071

 

If you appreciate our work talk about us, because the biggest compliment we can get is a referral.

We respect your privacy hence if you wish not to hear from us please reply with the subject line "LEAVE OUT"

It's in pretty colours, too.  Gosh!  It's a work of art.  So I am obeying the exhortation.  I do appreciate their work.  I really do.  It's pretty.

And what it is not, is Permission Based Marketing.  Oh, Andy Morgan does have an email address.  It's andym@smails69.com and smails69.com is registered to an address in Bangalore, India.  

See http://samspade.org/whois/smails69.com for details there.

Will I be calling Andy Morgan?  Well, what do you think?

I have forwarded the email to the real ListGalaxy folks.  I am betting this is not really from them at all.  I also replied to Andy Morgan and got a reply:

Hi Tim,

 

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the inconvenience caused. The email you received this morning was from me and the email ID andym@smails69.com is the email address that I use to send emails to new prospects. Tim, we also have servers in other parts of the world that we use to send emails to generate leads. We also follow the can-spam rules by providing the valid phone number and also giving you an option to reply to the email and let us know if you don't want to receive emails from us in the future. However, I would like to know if you wish to talk to us and discuss about services. Please let me know.

 

Look forward for your response.

 

Regards, 
 
Andy Morgan | ListGalaxy | 415-240-4071 | andym@listgalaxy.net

 

If you appreciate our work talk about us, because the biggest compliment we can get is a referral.

It's still pretty, isn't it?  I like the colours particularly.  Restful on the eye.  And now he has a listgalaxy.net email address.  So these are folks that I will absolutely not be using when I need a list.

I don't like spammers.  I don't like spammers who conceal their identity by not identifying their company properly, and I don't like spammers who justify their alleged compliance with some US law.

Now the domain registration is interesting.  http://samspade.org/whois/listgalaxy.net shows the domain as registered in Cambridge in the UK, but with a London phone number of 0208  676 2622.  And the contact has a gmail address! creaters9@gmail.com which is all rather odd.

I have to say that this seems to pass the Duck Test for fishiness.

Is the Data Protection Act too successful?

I lodged a complaint with the UK  Information Commissioner on August 23rd over an organisation who "didn't pick up" the fact that my phone is Telephone Preference Service registered, and bored me rigid with an intrusive sales call.  Yeah, right!

The acknowledgement arrived by email today.

Yes, it apologised for the delay and cited pressure of casework.  But something is wrong here.  If our public servants are to work efficiently and effectively they need better funding.  So why not let them keep any fines they achieve when they prosecute?

Let's put the UK Information Commissioner on commission!

Let's Hide Behind the Law

I've just been shown a letter sent by a public body to what I perceive, though I have no context to prove it, to be a private individual. I'm not going to reveal the name of the public body, not because I feel it is wrong to do so, but because the person who showed it to me had an expectation of a level of privacy. If I'd received this letter myself I would be publicising it, and naming and shaming it.

The circumstances in which the letter was generated will have been difficult. The public body deals with individuals in need who are on a low income. These are sensitive people, often under stress, and often feeling aggrieved. It's the challenging position that many of our front line public servants find themselves in, and unpleasantness can happen easily when the person being served is under stress.

It seems that an individual was recording phone calls with the public body, and that this was objected to.

I have two views on that. I feel that a public servant should behave at all times as if they were being recorded with TV cameras for immediate broadcast, but I also would feel, as that public servant, that some of my privacy was being invaded. So it's an awkward area. And that area is barely covered by the law. It's not as if there was a CCTV camera with a telephoto lens pointed at the public servant's bedroom, after all.

The public body was having trouble persuading the individual to stop recording. So they sent a letter:

I understand that you have been recording telephone conversations in your dealings with [us]. I should point out that this is inappropriate and is also a violation of the following legislation:

• Communications Privacy Regulations 2003
• Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA)
• Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000 (LBP Regulations)
• The Data Protection Act 1998
• Human Rights Act 1998

I would therefore ask you to please desist from any recording of conversations in any future contact with [us].

I've redacted the organisation's name to read "[us]".

That's a pretty blunt instrument. Not only is it blunt, it's incorrect at so many levels. I am not a lawyer. Even so I look at these laws quoted (in one case pseudo-quoted, since the name is wrong) and they simply do not refer to the actions of a private individual (unless, of course, you know different).

My beef with this is the appalling customer service message this sends.  To me it is bullying and hectoring in tone, and tries to hide behind a set of laws that it cannot possibly hide behind.  They might as well have said "You can't record this because The Dangerous Dogs Act prevents you from doing so!"

An attitude like this opens the organisation to the potential for being pilloried in the press, and to have formal complaints levied against them.

I keep coming back to Vodafone UK.  Amanda Chandler there has done her best to remove words like "Data Protection" from customer facing staff's vocabulary.  She views it as abhorrent for a staff member to pretend to be a mini-lawyer.  Instead they are trained to adopt good business practice and to explain why they act as they do using business rationale, not legalese.  Go Vodafone.

As for "[us]"... "[us]" should be very ashamed.

Careless data breach costs lives?

I follow data protection stories ranging from the bizarre to the mundane.  This major source of data breaches, and potential identity theft hit my newsfeed this morning.  It's from Newsbiscuit.

I do get the joke.  No, really.  I do.  I know what Newsbiscuit is.

But many a true word...

What do you think about having this list of personal data left on a doorstep?

Why is Search Engine Optimisation Such a Mystery?

I read an excellent article today by Ron Belanger of Yahoo entitled Is it time to fire your SEO agency? on iMedia.  Ron is trying to cut through the level of SEO Agency bullshit and get to the nitty gritty.

I suspect he will agree with me on the main simple principles of Search Engine Optimisation:

1. Content is King

You need content that truly reflects your product, service, or business.  Most important, that content needs to have the main key words (note that I did not say "keywords") by which your business is recognised.

Your content needs to be written well, written using industry expected terms, avoid undue trade puffery, not sink into marketing speak, and be easy for search engines to find and index.

2. Graphics do Not Index Well

I keep finding sites that embed their key marketing messages in graphics.  Animated gifs, Flash, all look pretty, and none of them have their content indexed.  No indexing equals no ability to find you!  If you don't want to be found, why have a web site at all?

3. Sneaky Tricks Penalise You

This is no longer the age when you can fool Google and Yahoo by using sneaky tricks.  About ten years ago I experimented with a site that was not being well ranked by search engines.  With a colleague (actually by the colleague, coz he understands how to do stuff!) I cloaked the site to present a far better image to search engines than to surfers.  We stuffed the cloaking page with as much as we could.

The indexing did not improve!

We uncloaked it about five years later.  The indexing improved.  Nuff said?

Oh, search engines can unindex you if they find you cloak your site.  And they make a lot of PR capital out of doing just that.  BMW did it.  Look what happened!

4. Inbound Links are Good

Having links from pages on sites relevant to your site is great.  Having them describe your site in the link text is better.  Search engines notice such things.  An example is Unix Linux and FreeBSD Man Pages (which contains the text description) as opposed to simply http://www.manpagehelp.net (which doesn't).

Having links from Link Farms and "bad neighbourhoods" is not great.  This does not mean that "paying for a link" is universally bad.  After all, an advert is a paid link.  But it means that sites whose sole purpose is to create links to other sites are deprecated, especially by search engines. Mature judgement is required when advertising.

Oh, generally a "links page" is a poor thing to be linked to from.  Even on a good site a links page says precisely what it is - a page of no real content except links!

5. Standards are Important

HTML standards, that is.  We all know that Internet Explorer "pushes the standards envelope" (non standard!), so develop for W3C compliance, not for IE.  I hate a site that makes me load IE in order to function, I hate a site that fails to work with Chrome, too.  Develop for standards and search engine spidering bots will not get indigestion.  It's not that they'll fail, they can cope with most things, but you'll get better mileage out of bots that have easy access.

And imagine usiing your favourite browser to arive ion a site and find the blasted thing doesn;t work for you.  You won't change browser, you'll move on.  All that optimisation... wasted.

6. Use a Sitemap

I don't mean one that lets a person navigate the site.  I mean one that you give to Yahoo and Google as an XML file and that they use to base their indexing on.  This saves their having to "walk the links" within the site and tells them what you have present, when it was last updates, etc.  It makes their lives easier.

7. Use Your title tag

There's a good one here, on ComplianceAndPrivacy.Com, and bad ones pretty much everywhere.  And here is a dreadful one.  Search engines index the title tag.  They give it maximum weight (09. probability). It has to be short, to the point, and full enough to get value from the index.  Lose 'waste words', keep action words.

8. Update Your Content

Static sites are like the Marie Celeste.  Search engines like proof that your site has not been abandoned, so update pages, add pages and make sure you tell them in your sitemap file by uploading new versions on a regular basis.

So, Can You Do This Yourself?

You bet you can.  This does not require an SEO agency.  This is simple, good web development. One comment on Ron's article disagrees.  He positions himself as essential. And for the time pressured, for the webmaster unwilling to learn, he is. He'll always have a market, but it need not be you unless you make a positive choice to outsource.

Monitor your visitors with a good analytics package (Google has a free one), see what terms they use to find your site and see if you want to develop the wording in the site to enhance the user experience and pull more visitors in.  Unless your server is woefully small it won't matter a whole lot if you get a load of irrelevant visitors land there.  What matters is to capture the ones you want as business!

I know it's SPAM, but why...?

I received this email today, and I see no reason not to reply to it, nor to refuse what they offer. It looks like a free lunch, albeit Spam fritters!

Hello,

I was just looking at your website [url removed] and I liked it. I would like to know if it is OK for me to talk to you about linking TO your website from my website using this email address I got from your website.

Please let me know if this is OK or not. If not you can simply click this link and I won't email you again:

http://www.hicellullar.com/sendstudionx/[and an unsubscribe link]

 

Thanks.

Kathy.

 

Now this is weird.  Search engines like inbound links.  My reaction is "Link away!"  But there are some oddities, not least of which is the website with the unsubscribe link.  I'm not linking to it so you get to copy and paste if you choose.

The other oddity is that the email address "Kathy" used is one that has not been on that site for about 4 years!  So where did that one come from?

Anyone able to tell me what this is about?