More on Valid E-mails and Spam Filters

I’d like to share some information about spam filters in connection with an issue that Dale Delph, of The Mayor’s Inn, brought up about e-mail addresses, in response to the article, “Does Your Website Have the Credibility it Needs?

Spam filters use complicated algorithms when determining whether an e-mail is spam. Most of the time, they are correct, but often, they are not. This is why most spam filters offer the ability to adjust their settings. If you notice a valid e-mail is being held as spam by your spam filter, you should be able to set the filter to always allow e-mail from this address (or even all addresses from that particular domain) to not be filtered. This also works in reverse. When spam gets through the filter, you should also be able to set the filter to block all mail from this address (or from all addresses from this domain). We strongly recommend people who have spam filters to check these filters as least once a week to ensure that no valid e-mails are being caught in the filter, and to make necessary adjustments to the settings.

Greg Yoas – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

How Does Googlebot Work?

Googlebot is Google’s web crawler, which is often referred to as a spider. It’s a network of powerful computers that work together like a gigantic, super-speedy web browser. It visits web servers, requests thousands of pages at a time, then downloads those pages and delivers them to the Google indexers.

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Are You Ahead of the Fortune 100?

If you have already teamed up with Blizzard Internet Marketing, chances are that you’re already one step ahead of 87% of the marketing efforts for those companies included in the Fortune 100. A recent report indicates that only 13 of these businesses are currently utilizing effective SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) strategies! Their biggest reason why is quoted as, “Don’t understand SEO, overall complexity”. Lucky for you, this is where the Blizzard staff comes in.

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Google Responds to Click Fraud

Click fraud has received attention recently, as Google has agreed to pay up to $90-million to settle a lawsuit alleging that the search engine overcharged advertisers who paid for false sales referrals, or for “click fraud.”

In a recent blog posting, Google’s Business Product Manager for Trust & Safety, Shuman Ghosemajumder, addressed questions regarding this lawsuit, “click fraud,” and methods Google uses to filter out invalid clicks.

Included below are a few highlights from that posting, followed by a few of my thoughts on the subject:

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More on Finding Backlinks

I received a comment from Pam Pozniak at The Barnyard Inn in response to my recent article, “Top 10 Link Tips“, asking for clarification in finding backlinks in Google. I’d like to share my response:

Hi Pam,

To see the backlinks for any website, go to the search bar for that particular search engine – this works in Google, Yahoo and MSN – not the address bar in your browser. Then type in link:www.barnyardinn.com and hit search. The results will show you the incoming links recognized by that search engine. This is what I found in Google for your website:

Google backlink example

Google is in the middle of a backlink update right now, so you may get differing results because you may be searching different data centers.

Mary Bowling – Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

Erin Blank Earns Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador Certification

Just like everything else in the world of Internet marketing, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is becoming more complex all the time. So much so that both Yahoo and Google are now offering professional certifications for those able to master their advertising programs.

To become certified PPC pros in each of those search engines, one must demonstrate knowledge and expertise in using all of the diverse tools and opportunities available to advertisers. These skills include choosing the most profitable keywords, creating optimized ads, continually split-testing ads, choosing the best markets in which to advertise, managing bids for the highest return-on-investment, tracking conversions, and much, much more.

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Top 10 Link Tips

Incoming links have always been one of the major factors for ranking well in Google. However, Google continually becomes more discriminating about which links they reward websites for having. Here are Blizzard’s top 10 criteria for building good links:

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