Web Design, Internet Marketing, E-commerce, SEO Blog | Las Vegas, NV

The Federal Trade Commission recently announced changes to the CAN-SPAM act.   The CAN-SPAM act was first signed into law in 2003 by President Bush.  This law imposed a series of requirements that marketers were to follow in order for their email to NOT be considered spam.  At the same time, this law gave Federal civil and Criminal enforcement authorities new tools to combat commercial email that is unwanted (a.k.a.  ’spam’.)

I ask you the question, “Do you spam your customers?” for a simple reason.  Are you aware of the CAN-SPAM act and the requirements you are supposed to follow when you send out an email marketing campaign?

This list is a brief summary of the CAN-SPAM act and also discusses the new changes that just passed into law.  (For those of you who want to read the full 109 page download, go to FTC website.)

Requirements of the CAN-SPAM act:

1.  You cannot mislead or contain false “header” or From line information. — This is more specific to where the message is being sent from.  When you view an email header, there is a more advanced view that allows you to really dig in to where the message originated from.  This is in respects to that header, along with just blatantly misleading and saying your email is from some other person or company.

2.  You cannot mislead or contain false information in the email Subject line.

3.  You are required to insure that your email contain a functioning email address or similar Internet based opt-out method — in order for your customers to easily be able to stop your email communication if they so choose.

4.  Prohibits you from sending a commercial email to an opt-out recipient more than 10 days after they opted out. — Meaning, once they opt-out, there is a 10 day grace period for you to remove them.  If you send to them after that 10 day grace period, you are in violation of the CAN-SPAM act.

5.  You are required to disclose in your commercial emailing the following three disclosures:

• Make a clear and conspicuous identification of the email as an advertisement or solicitation.

• Make it clear and conspicuous as to how to be removed from your emailings via an opt-out or unsubscribe.

• You must provide a valid physical postal address as a sender of the email. (One of the recent changes that just implemented into law is the ability for you to use a P.O. Box.  Originally, this was not included, but now you can use a P.O. Box as your valid, physical address when sending email messages.)

6.  The Act authorizes the Commission to enforce violations of the Act in the same manner as an FTC trade regulation rule. – Basically this authorized Attorney Generals of States to enforce the law.

Some of the changes that have recently been implemented are:

1.  During the Opt-out process, you must use a one-click method. You cannot require anything other than the email address.

2.  You cannot require comments or reasons why, nor can you require a fee based opt-out method. Basically, make it a simple one step process to unsubscribe and do not require any additional information to unsubscribe other than the email address of the recipient, without any fees associated with the opt-out.

3.  P.O. Boxes are accepted as valid physical postal addresses of the sender.

4.  Can-Spam applies to businesses as well as individuals by defining a ‘person’.

5.  For Commercial emails that are sponsored, written by or originated from multiple companies, the CAN-SPAM act now makes it more clear that ONE company is designated as the sender and has full responsibility to remove an email address.

Email marketing is an important part of any business.  But before you send your next email marketing message, please insure that you follow the CAN-SPAM act requirements.  Or your company could be in jeopardy of violating the Federal CAN-SPAM Act.

What happens once you get your shopping cart up and running?  If you’re like most of my customers, you’ll probably ask what you can do to get as much free promotion as possible.  With Google Base, you can submit your products for free and at no cost to you to if a browser clicks on your item.  So, what exactly is Google Base and how does it work?

Google Base allows you to upload, either one by one through the Google Base website, or multiple items all at once via a bulk data feed.  When a customer does a product search on Google, you have the chance of having your products listed in the results.  Google Base also allows you to sign up as a seller and process payments as a merchant…similar to PayPal.  In fact, our shopping cart allows you to easily integrate Google Checkout as a payment method so you can offer your customers a similar way to pay for items using Google Checkout (just like you would if you used PayPal.com.)

For more information on Google Base and Google Checkout, visit the Google Base website.

Over the past year, as my clients become more aware of the web and how it all works, I’ve received several questions about PPC (Pay-per-click) campaigns. Most of my clients wonder if PPC works, what types of costs they can anticipate, and if they should even dip their toe into the water so to speak.

First, let me clarify that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a process that web developers and marketers do to get your website listed higher in natural search results (or non-paid search engine rankings). SEO is the first place I start with all of my clients. This gives me the information I need from the client’s standpoint as to what keywords and phrases are the most valuable to them. Then, once I get the SEO set for the initial launch of their website, I recommend they try PPC campaigns to hedge the traffic to their website while the natural SEO is taking place.

PPC Campaigns are a great way to market your website right away, as soon as you launch it. It gives you an immediate traffic boost, and hopefully, an immediate return on your investment. PPC campaigns are a valuable source of data that help to complement your marketing analysis as to what keywords and phrases people are typing in when they go to your website. Think of PPC campaigns as advertisements, because that’s exactly what they are. But, the beauty of PPC, is the amount of control you have and how well you can analyze your conversions.

If you are interested in advertising your website with a PPC campaign, my first recommendation is Google Adwords. Adwords is always the first place I suggest, since Google has held the majority search share and continues to grow each month. Google Adwords has a great help menu, if you decide to do it yourself…or you can hire a professional to manage your account. Here are just some of the features on Google Adwords:

• You can choose your geographic location (so if you only want to advertise locally,) you can.

• You can pick your days and times you want your ads to show.

• You can choose to place your ad on the Google Search Network and/or the Content Network.

• You enter the budget you can afford and the system will work its best to stay within it.

• You can track your conversions (i.e. Registrations, Email Subscriptions, Sales, etc.) with their conversion tools so you can really analyze your ROI.

If you’ve been anxious about taking the plunge with a PPC campaign, let us help you. For more information on PPC and other internet marketing opportunities, contact us and we will be glad to help.

Can I have more than one domain name for my website?

Most of my customers don’t realize that you CAN have multiple domain names pointing to one primary domain name. For example: If you own www.yourdomain.com as your primary website that houses all of your content, you could also own www.yourdomain-lasvegas.com as another domain name that points back to your main website. So, owning several domain names is never a bad thing. The most important thing to keep in mind though, is how you redirect the user to the primary domain. That is the key to search engine friendliness.

Domain Alias or a 301 Redirect?

In your hosting control panel, there is a place for you to set up a domain alias. NEVER USE A DOMAIN ALIAS. This is considered spamming the search engines because the domain name DUPLICATES the content on your primary domain and in turn, masks the domain name under the secondary domain. This is a very bad thing to do and you will get dropped in rankings very quickly by Google, Yahoo and other search engines. They feel you are trying to trick the engine when you use a domain alias. Why? Because what they see when they crawl an aliased domain is a website domain that has exactly the same content as the primary domain. So, if you have say…10 domain names all aliased to one domain name…the search engine sees 11 websites all with the same content. Hence, they think you are spamming them with duplicate content to trick the engine into giving you higher rankings.

So…what to do when you have multiple domain names?

Use a 301 Redirect. A 301 redirect tells the search engines that you have moved this domain permanently to a new domain name that you will specify. 301 redirects are search engine friendly redirects. Never use a 302 Redirect. 302 redirects are temporary redirects and are normally used by spammers.

So how do I set up a 301 redirect?

Considering, the domain name you are redirecting has never been hosted on any web server, buy a cheap hosting plan at netmouser.net domains and hosting (or any other hosting provider of your choice) for the domain you want to redirect. Then, you will need to upload a file called a .htaccess into the root of the html folder. This file will ‘direct’ the search engine crawler that you have permanently moved the domain name to a specific domain name.

How to create and setup a .htaccess file:

1. Check your current website ftp to make sure you don’t already have a .htaccess file already. (If you do not know how to do this, check your ftp program for instructions. I know in WS_FTP Pro, you can type -la into your file mask textbox and this will display if a .htaccess file exists.) If file exists, open it and go to #3 below. If not, go to #2 below.

2. Open Notepad or other text editor.

3. Copy and Paste this line into the Notepad file: (change the yourdomain.com to the your primary domain.)

redirect 301 / http://www.yourdomain.com/

4. Now save the file a .htaccess - make sure Notepad doesn’t add a .txt extension at the end.

5. Upload the .htaccess file to your website html root folder.

Now, anytime that domain is typed in by a website visitor it will permanently forward to your primary website. This is now considered a search engine friendly redirect.

Yesterday I was at a meeting discussing internet marketing and the different forms of communicating with clients. One of the things I mentioned was RSS and how much I personally prefer RSS feeds as a way of keeping track of multiple news/content sites I am interested in. So, to expand on this one step further, I thought it would be a good idea to educate readers out there about what RSS is and how you read RSS Feeds.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is an XML-based format for content distribution on the Internet. You’re probably saying “Great…but what does this mean and why should I care?” Well, RSS is an excellent way to receive communications and updated content or news articles without ’searching’ for it or giving your email address to have it come to you.

How does RSS Work?

RSS are XML Feed Links that a website creates which houses the content or news information they want you to read. If you are interested in this particular content, you would ’subscribe’ to their RSS feed simply by clicking the RSS Link, not by email. The main difference between an RSS Feed Link and an Opt-in Newsletter is, the RSS Feed is simply a syndicated link that ’sends’ you the information to a feed reader that you browse through daily. You do not have to give out your email address as you do when you opt-in to an email newsletter. This is a great way to keep your email address private at the same time gathering the news and information you want from other websites. (RSS is not a replacement for email. As email is a two-way communication and RSS is a one-way syndicated feed.)

What is a RSS Feed Reader?

To be able to read RSS Feeds, you will need a software program that will make it easy to subscribe, read and manage your feeds. There are many free RSS feed reader programs available for download online. My personal favorite happens to be FeedDemon. FeedDemon allows you to read your RSS feeds on your desktop or online with their parent company NewsGator Online Product. This way I can synchronize my feeds to the web and always be able to access the feeds wherever I go. That being said, you may like one of the many other free readers out there, so don’t be afraid to try them out.

Simplified Steps to Reading a RSS Feed:

Here is a quick step by step on how to get started using RSS.

1. Download a free RSS Reader Program and install it onto your computer.

2. Subscribe to your favorite RSS Feeds (like our netmouser blog feed) by clicking on RSS links from your favorite websites. Or, if you prefer, you can search for feeds by going to RSS Feed Search Engines or by using your feed reader program’s search function (if it has one.)

3. Open Your Feed Reader daily, sit back and catch up on all your favorite news and information by having it sent directly to your RSS reader. No more hunting down every single website you like and searching their sites for the news or content you want to read. Now, it comes to you…in the form of an RSS Feed.

Should my company have a RSS Feed? What are the benefits?

Yes. Absolutely. But only if you promise to commit yourself to providing new, quality content to your users on a regular basis. Just like every other internet venture, you must show your audience (site visitors) that you care about keeping your website updated with fresh content.

Some of the benefits of RSS you will receive is:

1. Ability to index your RSS Feed in Feed Directories or Feed Search Engines, which can bring you more site traffic.

2. You can attract quality site traffic who is genuinely interested in your company and offerings.

3. If your feed is in the form of a blog, then your blog can bring you more visibility in search engines based on search queries matching your blog’s content.

4. RSS is growing and it is another way for you to use web 2.0 techniques to gain visibility with your customers.

I hope this helps to clarify what RSS is and why it is such a neat technology to start using. If you have any questions about RSS that I might have missed, let me know and I will be happy to address them.