Yesterday I went shopping, while in Asda (Wallmart for you Murcans) I couldn’t find a product I was looking for, so I asked. The assistant was fine, she said ‘certainly sir follow me’. I was then led half the length of the store and taken to the exact spot where the range I was looking for was situated. She then proceeded to tell me they had threeproducts, and told me the pros and cons of each product, she asked me if I was allergic to a certain item, (I was) which left 2 options. I asked her if she had tried them, she said that she had, and that she preferred brand A. I picked them up and threw them in my basket a happy man.

 Now call me a sad man if you like, but it made me think about how online selling should reflect offline selling.

1. I needed assistance to find something, if I could not find it I would not have bought it. (bad navigation can cost a sale)

2. I requested help, and immediately found what I was looking for (a good search facility saved the day)

3. I was delivered to a selection of products (good grouping of your products in the catalogue)

4. I needed help to make my decision to buy (good copywriting information about the products)

5. I Asked for advice and was given it, even down to asking for a recommendation (cover every aspect of the product in your decription, think of any question that  might be asked, and answer it), with regard the recommend, customer comments and/or product reviews would acomplish this.

Here is a question though, and it is one that ANYONE selling online or offline should think about. WHY do I drive 12 miles to go to Asda Walmart having to physically drive past A tesco hypermarket, Tesco Extra supermarket, and a Morrisions supermarket?

I am loyal to the brand, their selection of goods is fantastic, their value for money is great, their range of products vast (although Tesco extra have a far superior range now). I STILL shop at Asda! The staff you see are great, they smile, are helpfull, knowledgable and friendly. The store is well laid out and they rarely move things around so you can’t find them. In short, it is my kind of shop!

Is your online store like this?

At LONG last, Google has worked out a drum that I have been banging for a long time now. You can NOT fiddle outbound links!

In his blog Matt Cutts has posted how a change to the algorithm has altered rankings and crawling dramatically, and how your outbound links can affect how your viewed. WELL HELLO GOOGLE! So you have finally woken up to start smelling the coffee

 For a long time now I and a few others have posted across forums how it is nigh on impossible to spam out bound linking. ? How so OWG I hear you ask . Well it is simple—-

 Just say you want to game the search engines by linking out, so off you go and you get some good copy written for your page, in your page you get some research done for the sites that are most relevant. It takes some time, but you figure ‘hey I WILL spam this algorithm, I WILL beat the search engine system’. Eventually your page is complete, you release it to the spiders in all its glory, decked out in quality focused content, with top quality out  bound links on it to what you consider to be the best resources on the page subject. HA! You Beat the search engines

 Or did you?

In your attempt to spam the algorithm, you have in fact created a VERY valuable page in the grand scheme of the internet. Your copy is on topic, your extensive research has created one of the best resources online for that particular subject. As realisation dawns that in fact you have NOT ‘beaten’ the algorithm, in fact it has beaten YOU, you crawl away to sulk having put on your sad face that is normally reserved for sad Sunday!

But wait, HARK, what is that noise? It is the annoying bleep bleep of your mail programme telling you you have mail. YOU have MAIL? but your a spammer ? WHO would send a spammer mail? Curious you take a look. The mail all starts off with the same sort of words, such words are alien to you…….

Hi there, I just wanted to say thanks for the information I found on your site at www. spamtheworld.com.

WHAT are these people talking about? I mean people don’t THANK ME! Are they nuts? This is a spam page designed to game the algorithm!!!

In time you get more mails, as those who sent you the original thank you emails thank you further by linking to your site so others can enjoy the site. This results in an ever increasing spiral of visitors emails, thank you’s and MORE people linking to you. WORSE than the fact they link to you is the fact that THEIR sites are relevant to yours, so they are sending more and more traffic.

But HA— YOU have the last laugh because these people that are coming to your site, buying stuff from the affiliate links you have on the subject, or clicking on the adverts you have on the site are DUMB, because they don’t realise they are being spammed, and they visit, come back and click again, many of them even link to the site they are so dumb. They just don’t realise they are being spammed.

As the cheques arrive, you sit back and laugh, thinking,  ’how good is this on topic resource building spamming is!’ You drift off to sleep deep in the thought of how you can spend many hours creating your next high quality, top notch page to fool the search engines.

——————–

The moral of this story is that it is almost impossible to spam outbound links. comments appreciated!

Lots has been happening in the last week, with some meaty changes and happenings in search. I have also been pulling together some of the questions that visitors have sent me, so if your one of them then expect an answer to it over the next day or two.

I can answer one or two questions immediately though.

1. I would not like to enlarge my manhood

2. I do not need to reduce my mortgage

3. I really don’t think my wife would approve of  my new Russian Bride, so I will pass on meeting you, even though you are in town tonight.

4. My sexual health is just fine, I feel like a real man already, and I do not want to ‘make her happy all night’ We have a child for heavens sake, she has to get out of bed early in the mornings .

5. I do not want a replica Rolex, I had a real one and it didn’t keep time that well, also you need a  winch to view it as lifting your own arm up is out of the question thanks to the sheer weight.

Hopefully that answers the easy questions, that I KNOW you have all been waiting to hear answered

If like me you are the sort of person who need a roundtooit, then please read on.

What is a roundtooit? I hear you ask. Well a roundtooit is in fact what we need to get things done. The wife asks you to do something, and the standard reply is ‘I’ll get a roundtooit!

So now you can do some good and not exert yourselves, by throwing a £ or 2 into a sponsorship of a brave man who is going to do the Great North Run. Paul of Aardvark fame is going to run around in the cold for miles and miles to help lazy buggers like us who eat pie and chips and drink red wine. YES he is going to save us gluttons, those of us who have turned overindulgence and under-exertion into an Olympic sport.

Click this link and give the old bugger some money so he can give it to the British Heart Foundation, so they can give it to the hospitals etc, so that when we us lazy buggers are in the back of an ambulance being taken to hospital them there paramedics can have batteries in their heart restarting defiblirators.

I have given him a couple of quid, so stump up and help him, tell him OWG sent you LOL

Well I kind of thought about it for a little while, even set one up on blogger, then left it. I like forums, I like to know that I am actually achieving something here. so blogging has really never appealed to me. All that will change now though as I force myself kicking and screaming into the bloggospher  AAAARRGGGHHHHHHI decided to do this because of a comment made on a post at Digital Point Forums . The comment was made by Peter Hugo (who runs Freewarepub ) the post was made  here and really it made me think of the fact that while I post on many forums, there really is no central point for all things ‘Old Welsh Guy;

 So here it is, the new Old Welsh Guy blog that is really ‘answers by Old Welsh Guy! Ask away and I will answer at least one question about Web marketing and SEO daily.