Paid Exposure search engine topics - Tiscali press release

Like any other marketing medium you can advertise on the Internet and like any other marketing medium the rules are different. Spending money online has the most marvellous advantage over offline advertising. It is very simply just this:

You can exactly measure your return on online adspend. To the cent.

To any Marketing Director this has to be music to your ears. To any MD or CEO, the thought of being able to exactly measure how many sales you got for every cent you spend on online advertising gives you powerful information with which to work and with which to make important decisions.

It doesn't matter if you are Pick 'n Pay or Local Joe's Hammer Shop. The information, provided you know how to get it, is extremely valuable and exciting.

At the moment, online adspend is the only adspend trending higher in growth. It is the key reason behind Google's astronomical share price climb as the company dominates the PPC (Pay Per Click) arena (there's a free stock tip for you!).

But you can also waste money needlessly. As competition heats up online the cost of advertising is going to continue to increase, but with knowledge of how online advertising really works you can undercut your competitors and get more clicks at lower cost.

Online adspend is poorly understood locally. It does not revolve around selecting a few keywords and chucking them into a campaign and then bidding top dollar for position one. This is a really expensive way of doing things and not a sustainable one going forward as more savvy online advertisers cause your price per click to rocket up whilst theirs drops at your expense...

And also, be careful! There are plenty of well meaning bit misguided online advertisers out there seeking to part you from your money. We quote a Tiscali press release (subsequently withdrawn although not publicly acknowledged on their website or anywhere else that we are aware of) that was sent out at the beginning of the year.

Reproduced from a Seoza News Article - Feb 2005.

Tiscali Encourages BAD Internet Marketing ... Why?

The following press release was brought to our notice a few days ago and it is quite shocking. I'm still struggling to believe this was an officially authorized Tiscali release but it does seem so. For the few who may not know Tiscali is a significant player in the ISP league and has large international presence. It recently sold out its World Online client base to MWeb I think ... take a look at their own self serving blurb at the bottom of the press release and see if you can understand any WIIFM (What's In It For Me) in it

The one good thing for readers of this newsletter is that it allows you to get a reinforcement of WHAT NOT TO DO to succeed on the Internet

I have mixed into the press release my own comments (and these are shown in red to differentiate them)

PRESS RELEASE (BLACK WORDING) - TISCALI, For Immediate Release, 8 February 2005

Tiscali launches website traffic maximisation tool

GENERAL POINT ...

All search engines frown upon any tool used to influence the positioning of any web page (note I use webpage NOT website, since search engines rank pages NOT sites) in their rankings. Of course many tools are used but the risk is always there that a penalty may be imposed upon discovery. The worst kind of tools used for these purposes are those that create web pages automatically. Personally I see little point in spending 2 years developing a website only to see it banned from the search engines. Ultimately it is all about creating a great website experience for consumers not about fooling the search engines and I do not understand how machine generated content can do this

Tiscali has announced a new solution that has been developed to make it as easy as possible for companies of all sizes to increase traffic to their Web site. E-traffic is a subscription-based service that ensures Web sites are submitted to key search engines, and re-submitted on an ongoing basis to keep site rankings as high as possible.

Google, Yahoo and MSN all have completely different algorithms that decide upon a web page's ranking. It is impossible to satisfy all the criteria of every search engine for any single web page assuming the criteria were known in the first place ... and they are top secret within the search engine organization concerned.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you were sent the same information on an ongoing basis. Search engines dislike submissions and in fact object to repeat submissions.

Why would anyone wish to pay to upset the search engines? By the way there are only a handful of real search engines (Google, Yahoo, Teoma, MSN). Tiscali are probably referring to directories

E-traffic makes use of all the most popular local and international search engines, including, among others, Google, Ananzi, AltaVista, Excite, Aardvark and Gauteng.com.

This statement is totally meaningless ... I also make use of them and millions of others too? However it appears from my reading there is a level of abuse not use and I have no doubt that is how Google would interpret this press release based upon a casual reading of their terms and conditions.

"Without a pervasive presence, most Web sites are lost among the millions of other sites competing for the attention of the average Internet user," says Julie-Anne Doyle, Head of Consumer Products, at Tiscali South Africa. "If your Web site is not getting the number of hits you expected, it's in all likelihood because you're not doing enough to get right in the face of active online consumers."

Let me deal with HITS first of all. HITS is a much loved term used by people who seek to impress with numbers but really do not understand or, God forbid, seek to mislead. HITS do not buy anything, visitors just might if you are good at what you do. A HIT is a file so if you have a single web page with 10 pictures on it (a jpeg image is a file) then every time that single page is downloaded it will record 11 HITS (1 for each image file and 1 for the html file itself). Many web pages use image links so the number of images on a web page can quite easily amount to 20 and more.

I suspect the words about getting into the face of "active online consumers" are just a bad choice but it sounds a bit like insincere marketing is taking place to me.

E-traffic adds extra value by providing a view of detailed statistic reports on Web site hits, search words used to get to a Web site and search engine spiders visiting a site.

All web hosts we deal with provide stats totally free of charge. This is not added value ... it is a basic absolute requirement from any host 

The service includes re-writing of an organization's home page in Meta tags and hidden words. Doorway pages are created that target specific search engines to improve search engine rankings.

This quite simply is search engine spam guaranteed to get you banned if discovered. I am at a loss for words that Tiscali would even suggest something as wrong as this. Here's a link to Google guidelines as to what and what NOT to do http://www.google.co.za/webmasters/guidelines.html Here's a snippet from those guidelines

Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Google.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

"Indexing all pages, images and links on the Web site further ensures deep registration in the various search engines. Ongoing re-phrasing of power scripting and optimising each individual page for different engines forms part of the service and pages are kept up-to-date with search engine requirements," says Doyle.

Any prospective customer of Tiscali should seek clarity on this ... it sounds a bit like gobbledygook based on my experience

"While the features of E-traffic are very powerful, it takes some time before showing major results. Subscribers should expect an average timeframe of about three months before seeing a notable increase in traffic to their sites," she adds.

This is a way of saying we do not have any control and that is exactly true

E-traffic is available to users who have their Web site hosted with Tiscali and are subscribed to the Livestats statistical package. The service costs R855.00 (incl VAT) per month.

It is staggering to me that anybody would wish to fork out this kind of money for such a low level of poor service. However I'm sure some unsuspecting souls will. We show people how to do things the right way and hosting (with full stats) costs only about R48 per month. 

About Tiscali ... Tiscali (previously World Online) is a premier communications company offering Internet and cellular services to home, business and corporate users. In addition, Tiscali has a popular portal with over 2 million visitors every month. Tiscali is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tiscali International, which is listed on the Paris and Milan Stock Exchanges and is the second largest Internet Service Provider in Europe, providing access and a wide variety of content, applications and services to its customers. It has the largest geographical footprint of any European Internet provider with local operations in 15 countries and 7.6 million active users. The company is set apart from other market players through its ability to offer voice and data communication solutions delivered over both fixed and mobile telecommunications networks. http://www.tiscali.co.za

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