Or, “How Not to Get the Dreaded PSAs (Public Service Announcements).”

As a webmaster, I learned some good lessons recently about Adsense’s over-sensitivity to certain words. Immediately upon publishing a page about mesothelioma, a specific type of cancer, the Adsense ads were replaced with PSAs. No matter what I did, it seemed that I was getting the PSAs. Now I knew that “mesothelioma” is one of the highest paying adwords due to all the mesothelioma litigation that has been going on– So I knew the ads were out there! I tried checking if my domain was blocked by Google due to the previous owners’ actions, by using Google Webmaster Tools (appparently it will tell you if your domain is blocked, and it wasn’t). Some further research revealed that Google bots scan the page for certain “stop words” that when found will block any paid advertisements from being displayed on a particular web page.

Apparently Google faced some criticism from disturbed web page viewers when it inadvertently served ads for luggage to an article about a dismembered body found in a suitcase. Ouch. While I can certainly understand why they would want to prevent this from happening again (and especially why Gucci & Samsonite would want to prevent this from happening again), what I do not understand is why Google fails to reveal these key “stop words” to their publishers.

Now you might be wondering what the offensive word was… It was “cancer.” Yes, really. Apparently “disease” is OK, but not “cancer.” And nevermind that almost all the ads that get served say “cancer” in them! I even had to take out links to two of the most respected cancer sites on the internet: cancer.gov and cancer.org!! Even if the text did not say “cancer,” the URL was enough to offend the Google Gods. Sigh. Far be it from me to criticize Google — Perhaps they are still perfecting this technology. This site helped me locate the offending word: Finding Stop Words. Don’t ask me how they got their list of key words (probably painstaking trial and error), because Google’s lips are sealed.

Once you’ve published a page and it has been found to contain one or more “stop words,” the PSAs appear immediately. Simply changing the wording will not help at this point, as it takes an undisclosed amount of days for your page to be re-checked by the damn Google bots (I tested three days later and it is still blocked). Since I loaded my page as “index.html” I was screwed. After finding and replacing the “offending” words, I tried renaming it to “index.htm” but that didn’t help. Then I tried “test.html” and I got ads. Hmmph. So I redesigned the site with a splash page as the index, and that seemed to work out really well anyhow. Actually it helped me realize another thing: Google is assigning a large weight to the name of the actual html file. When I uploaded the page about mesothelioma as “test.html” I got ads about SAT Tests!! Seriously. I gotta tell you it took me a few thinks to make that connection. So I got wise and renamed it to “mesothelioma.html” and bingo! Lesson here: Always upload your pages with a temporary file name to test whether ads get served! If there are PSAs, there is probably something wrong. Ads for anything else, however strange, is a go.

Now, ways to get around this… I can think of two. One, put the offending words (or whole paragraph) in an image file. The other way is to use a Javascript to display the text, as currently Google bots do not execute the Javascript and therefore ignore the resulting text (However, I don’t know if this will change in the future). With a Javascript, it would be possible to have the text appear perfectly normal to the user, whereas if you have a block of text and only the word “cancer” is a graphic, for example, that might look strange, at least in some browsers, inevitably. On the other hand, Javascripts sometimes take a while to load. Flash may be an option as well, but I have not tested that. Now, if the words are actually offensive, and not just “offensive to the bots” then a real human at Google may end up blocking your page, due to a complaint, or random chance. Furthermore, I understand that chronic abusers get their entire domains blocked, and naturally you can get kicked out of Adsense altogether. Of course I do not recommend that; if you want to display Adsense, your site should have a professional tone.

To that point, and since I am not using Adsense on this blog, I am free to say whatever the hell I want (well, within reason). So if you found this helpful, put some love in my daggone coffee cup.

And now I present— four easy steps to getting your business on the web, for absolute beginners.

Domain Name – Buy from Moniker – The best registrar.

Every business needs its own virtual “real estate”—it’s own “dot com” domain name. This is one of the simplest steps, but also one of the most important. There are many domain name registrars, but I recommend Moniker, as it costs only $10.49/year for each domain and the tools for managing your domain are extremely user-friendly. Search on Moniker now to see if your domain name is still available.

Choosing your domain name
If your business is already “named”– this is what you should choose for your first domain name. Choose the simplest version of your business name that is available. For example, if you business is called “Tastee Pies,” you should first check on Moniker to see if tastee.com is available. This would be an especially good choice if you intend to someday expand your business into other arenas (ie, Tastee Cakes, Tastee Foods, etc). However, if the simplest version isn’t available, don’t fret, tasteepies.com is also a good choice, and it has the added benefit of having your product keyword “pies” in the domain name. 

If your business doesn’t have a name yet, then a domain search is a great place to start.

WARNING! If you find a good domain name, you should register it immediately. It is has come to light that some unscrupulous persons scour search data and register the good domains that others have discovered. If you find a good name, and go back a few days later to buy, it is often the case that it has been mysteriously registered. I recommend only “shopping” (searching for domains) when you are ready to buy.

If your business name coupled with your product type is not available, you may consider attempting to buy the domain from the owner. Type the domain name into your browser to see whether it seems to be in use as a legitimate business website. If not, you can try making an offer through Moniker (search for the domain name and then click on “Make Offer.”) Barring that, if you haven’t invested a lot of time/money in it, you may consider changing your business name to one that has a domain available to match.

Later you can expand with some good “generic” domains that describe what your business does. Tastee Pies could also be advertised under americasbestpie.com or amishcountrypies.com. It is a simple process to point an unlimited number of domain names to your existing website. You can track which ones draw the most traffic and new customers to your business, and drop or sell any duds. This is also the way that some experts find the perfect name for their businesses. At around $10 per domain name, this strategy is cheaper than hiring any marketing consultant.

Lastly, for most businesses, you will want to choose a classic “.com” name rather than .net, .tv, or any of the other hundreds of choices that are now available. Dot com is easiest for your customers to remember. It is far more likely that a customer would accidentally type in “.com” for a “.net” address than vice-versa. Choose the shortest, easiest to remember domain name that you can come up with.
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Web Hosting – Buy from Host Gator - The best web host.

I highly recommend Host Gator, as it starts at only $4.95/month (or $7.95/month to host unlimited domain names/websites!) and has many, many outstanding features.

Chief among these:

• It’s an American company
• Great customer service & help desk system
• American employees (No language barrier that you sometimes come across with outsourced customer service/tech support depts.)
• Absolutely awesome free tools for your website, including shopping carts, bulletin boards, blogs—and Fantastico, which self-installs some of the hottest and easiest to use features to your website (One click and you’ve got a Wordpress blog shell installed, for example). Once you have these tools, you will never want to live without them.
• You can pay by the month! Most discount web hosts make you pay 3 to 6 months or more at a time. This can really help with your cash flow when you are just starting out.

Web Design – Options.

You have three choices here—maybe four. One, you can learn HTML yourself. The basics are not difficult, but take it from me, it can sometimes be a royal pain in the $!**@. This can be avoided by paying someone else to build your website for you, which is surprisingly affordable. By using elance or scriptlance, you can post your project and get bids from website designers all over the world. A simple WordPress website (this website where you are reading this very article is an example of a WordPress powered site) which you can easily update yourself with no HTML knowledge could be setup for as little as $35. A more elaborate online shopping website will cost a bit more. Another possibility may be to buy an established website, which you can customize to your business. You can search for finished websites or place a classified ad with your requirements at Digital Point Forums or SitePoint. When all else fails, try bribing a geeky friend—a freshly baked “Tastee Pie” could go a long way!

Traffic – Build it and they will come? Well, not so much.

Traffic is the name of the game—After all, it doesn’t do any good to have a lick-the-monitor Pie website if nobody knows about it. There are entire books, websites, and video courses on how to drive traffic to your site, so I will just cover the basics here.

Firstly, you want to make sure your website has good “content”—that’s just a fancy way to say “stuff that makes sense.” A site with 12 well-written pages on varieties of pie and some nice photos which is updated every few weeks will be more highly ranked than one with 500 pages of nonsense and ad links.

Secondly, you need to make sure your website is submitted to the top 3 search engines. These are:

http://www.google.com/addurl
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

If you update your content regularly, Google will tend to rank your page higher due to the fresh content. The easily updated blog-format website is especially attractive to the search engines. Even a simple post once a week about the incredibly delicious new pie recipe you just invented, with a picture, will suffice to improve your freshness quotient (if it also makes your customers drool, that can’t hurt either).

Other things that will help your Google “Pagerank” (how high on the page your website appears when a user searches for a specific keyword) is if your site is frequently linked to from other websites (Google has fancy ways of recording this info). You can encourage these “linkbacks” by offering a free cool-looking graphic or banner for your customers to add to their own websites (if you are not above bribing, offer a coupon or other reward to do so). Another method is to submit your site to social bookmarking sites such as Digg or del.icio.us, as well as adding buttons to your site or blog posts to allow your users to easily submit your website to these. Google tends to pick up the content of these types of sites and rank them highly, thereby getting the link to your website noticed faster.

While there are many ways to advertise for free online, another option with which some find great success is PPC (pay per click). You can open an account with Adsense by Google and create simple text link ads or upload banners for your website. Hundreds of websites will showcase your advertisements, but you only pay for actual “click-throughs” to your website. Typically you will pay between $0.15 to $0.25 per visitor, depending on the keyword. This is a relatively inexpensive way to hone your ads and even to test different domain names for effectiveness.

Conversely, certain types of web businesses best use Google Adsense in the opposite way: Get paid for every click away from your website. This works best for blog writers and journalists, all types of reviewers and critics (movies, restaurants, products, etc.), humor sites and others who are putting content on the web but not primarily selling their own products.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to “kick it old school” and advertise in print. If you expect that most of your customers are local, it can really pay off to advertise your website address with some inexpensive flyers or in local free press papers. For national or international businesses, seek out niche and trade magazines related to your product, and don’t overlook trade show opportunities.

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In parting, I would like to recommend a hugely inspiring book. No matter what business you are in, you will gain something valuable from reading The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss. Whether you need to deal effectively with your overloaded email inbox nightmares, outsource your most tedious and unpleasant work tasks, or completely automate your online business while you go sailing around the globe, what you learn from this book will be at least a thousand times more valuable than the $12 you pay for it! (You can also read Tim’s musings on his blog.)

Bon chance! (Good luck!)
-Basil