Self Taught SEO | Search Engine Optimization Blog

Greg Grothaus one of Google Search Quality Engineers discuss duplicate content issues.  It’s a great discussion and he touches on a number of duplicate issues.  Greg couldn’t have been more direct and logical in his conclusions about the way duplicate content can pose a threat or simply not be an issue at all.

So, I got my account deactivated on Mailchimp because they say for SPAM complaints, but that is totally bogus because my subscriber list of about 15 subscribers were all opt-in on their own accord.

I once had a newsletter sign up form on Self Taught SEO, it was for the promotion of my upcoming book.  The basis of the newsletter was to publish pages of my book through the newsletter so essentially subscribers get spoon fed the book before its release.  I signed up for a Mailchimp account about 2-3 weeks ago because it was free and seemed reliable.  Everything was fine until they deactivated my account and kicked me out of their system.

Here is the email they sent me:

Hello Anthony,

Your account was suspended because of excessive direct spam complaints and your content is written as if you are emailing folks that have never heard of your organization before.

Our service is a strict permission based newsletter service, we do not support sales prospecting type messaging.

Noting your content formatting and the complaints, we are not going to be able to assist you with your email delivery needs.  You’ll need to look for a different vendor for assistance.

I don’t have any issue with Mailchimp accounts who violate their terms or those who spam, but in no way did I spam or violate their use.  First, 15 subscribers is not enough to get validated as a spammer — which tells me that one person can call you spammer and that’s it Mailchimp will ban your account.  That’s not good, because people make mistakes and some forget they signed up for some newsletters.

The thing is it is simple for them to see if I am a spammer or not, simply take a look at my account and see the messages I sent out as well as the way I retrieved my subscribers.  They will easily notice that all 15 subscribers came by way of newsletter signup and not manually loaded by myself.

Admittedly, I may needed some help on my copy because it was kinda shabby.  I tried explaining in the first message that I will include affiliate links in future mailings for monterary purposes, but not to take offense and not to click any links if they do not agree with the monetization agenda.  However, I also attempted to make it perfectly clear in the same message that I will not saturate the newsletter with affiliate links nor would I use any affiliate which I do not fully endorse.  With that said, I had about 20-25 autoreponder messages all set up and ready to go week by week, none of these message had any affiliate links within.

I probably could have done without that message as it probably was the reason for my demise, but still my newsletter had no affiliate links in it regardless what I tried to explain.  Even though I did have every intention of sprinkling affiliate links across the newsletter.  But the newsletter itself was valuable for readers, because it was written to help people learn SEO, basically pages from the book optimized for the newsletter.

I honestly think Mailchimp agenda was to release me because of my SEO status and the fact that I had a newsletter that wasn’t to their liking.  You know how you start a website with a vision of a certain audience and visitor.  I remeber years ago when I started a blog hosting website I wanted only a certain visitor to host their blog on my site.  I remember the first active blogger to the site was someone who was into the Goth lifestyle and that’s all they wrote about, it frustrated me to wits end, but I didn’t allow my beliefs and preference dictate who joins my site nor did I allow it to make me discriminate against any particular group.  Another thing that probably got Mailchimp panties in a bunch is the fact I wasn’t a paying member which made it worse.

It’s obvious to me that they had a different agenda or vision for their website and the spam blame was just a way to get rid of me.   That tells me that the business is not being ran by business-minded folks, because just like the Goth blogger on my website — I could have potentially become a faithful member who upgraded to paid services.  I tried rectifying the issue with Mailchimp, here is what I sent them in response:

Hi,

Can I please know about spam complaints?  I haven’t spammed anyone, everyone on the list is opt-in — I only have about 15 subscribers, with no unsubscribes, so how can this raise spam concerns?  Also, my content is written to help people learn — I don’t have one affiliate link in any of the content and links to my website in only one newsletter post.  Is there anyway I can talk to someone over the phone in regards to this matter?  I am a fan of MailChimp and wish to have this matter reinvestigated and my account reinstated.  I think a mistake has been made.  Please advise.

After this email, I heard crickets…no response.  Obviously, they don’t want me as a member.  Am I mad, no … not at all, I’ve been through worse.  But am I disappointed and think Mailchimp is a bunch of crap!  Cold-heartendly…YES.

I wish this company was a little more mature because they have way too much time on their hands if they are reacting harshly to spam complaints from an account with less than 15 subscribers.  Imagine if large autoresponder companies did that, like GetResponse or AWebber?  They would be out of business because I’m sure the spam complaint ratio is really high.  I wouldn’t expect spam reaction until at least an account has 100 subscribers and at least 20% complained.

The proper approach mailchimp should have token is at least contact me with a warning and telling me that they had a number of spam complaints from my account and if they continue to receive complaints then they will be closing my account.  A warning or something.  I can’t be a member with a company who is responsible for storing my subscribers data and make rash decisions to ban members without warning or giving the opportunity for me to download and retrieve subscriber details.

Not one of the 15 subscribers unsubscribed from the newsletter so there is no way for me to know my newsletter wasn’t being well recieved.  Who knows the true reason behind Mailchimp banning me, but I am glad I learned their unruly business practice early before I had hundreds of subscribers or worse paid for upgraded services, because that was my next step if the newsletter continued to grow as it was.

It’s been 5 days now and I’m thinking Mailchimp is not going to respond to my email, but I am at the point where I am better off without them so I doubt I’ll care about being reinstated.  I can’t be with a company who holds crucial data to my business but will delete an account due to a single spam complaint and then leave me with no way to retrieve my crucial data (subscriber info).  I wouldn’t advise you to rely on this company and don’t put all your eggs in one basket, because you may be next!

If you have a current and active Mailchimp account then I advise that you download and save your subscriber data frequently, also have a backup email provider because I warn, the ban comes out of no where!  No warning.

Anyway, I am on a hunt for a great autoresponder company which have good features so if you have any ideas then let me know!

Have you ever felt like your website might be outdated?  It might not have the pizzazz it needs to grab user attention?  Could it be you reached the dog years of Internet web maturity?

It’s said that for every 1 human year a dog ages 7 years.  This mean if a dog is 10 years old then in human years they are actually 70 years old.  I would say the Internet is at least two times years ahead, so a one year old website is outdated by 2 years in terms of web maturity if no major design changes exist.  A 2 year old website is outdated by 4 years, a 4 year old website is outdated by 8 years, and a 8 year website with no design changes is outdated by 16 years.  You know those outdated websites you maintain, either you don’t have the time, money, energy, knowledge, or control to make the changes to update the website, but they do get traffic however you know it can be much better if the design complimented the content.

It’s okay to have a 1 year website (or 2 year outdated website in Internet Years).  It’s even okay to have a 2 year website (or 4 year outdated website in Internet Years), but anything beyond is threatening of becoming a dying breed and harming your website youthfulness.  So every 2-4 human years you should consider changing your website design.

Now that was Internet Years, but there is also Internet Marketing Years or better defined as SEO Years.  These actually have a shorter lifespan of 6 months in human years and 1.5 years in SEO Years.   So every 0.5 human years you should consider updating your SEO strategy.  This doesn’t mean you should neglect the daily SEO task, such as content creation, link building, etc.  But instead every 6 months you should switch up your overall SEO strategy — try changing your target audience, marketing plan, advertising resources, keyword targets, etc.  Create an impactual existence on the web!

The web matures at a greater pace than human life so you have to stay with the times.  You may be operating an out of date website and don’t even realize it.  Considering the creative reach on the web, crowdsourcing, and the overpour of different cultures, geographical locations, languages, social networks, instant communications, and available web pages the Internet ages quite rapidly.

Nurturing your website and keeping it mature will enlist youthful bliss for your website.

Google Analytics free version is an online browser-based analytical web intelligence reporting application.  It tracks your website traffic and outputs it into human readable format.  The great thing, other than the fact its free is that you don’t have to worry about installation or management because Google takes care of that for you, all you need to do is input a few lines of code on the pages you want tracked, log into GA, and check data.  The server side configurations and implementations are managed by Google behind the scenes.

Even with all the features in the world, Google Analytics will have limitations, but it’s not Google fault — it’s Javascript’s.  Browser-based web tracking programs will always have limitations and inaccuracies because the data retrieved will only be partial.  Since Google Analytics depends on Javascript it also depends on no fallacies in the browser and this being the case there will almost always definitely be some decrepencies.

First problem with browser-based programs which rely on Javascript support is that some people may disable Javascript in their browsers and therefore are not being tracked.  Some people surf the web through proxies and this also plays a role in inaccurate data.  Lastly, some people install antivirus/antispyware programs which automatically disable Javascript.

Other discrepancies can be caused by Google Analytics code not being on every page served, this could be because a website could have an large amount of pages and therefore an oversight is made.  And a more likely cause would be the site serves dynamic pages which do not get the code because the page is created on the fly.   However, any of these issues can be addressed with a little bit of web development to make the site behave in the way you wish.

Additionally, the analytics code relies on the page being properly loaded so it can actually report the metrics for that visit, but if the page does not fully load or unsuccessfully loads (without the user knowledge) then that visit does not get reported.  Also, I’ve heard that Google Analytics treat search robots differently than many other analytic programs, whereas Google Analytics will count crawl bots every time it hits a page, while other programs treat this as one visit.  However, I cannot make any claims that this is absolute truth.  Also, this would mean you would more than likely see an increase in Google Analytics visits and not a decrease.

In conclusion, there will always be discrepancies between two different analytics programs as there are different factors for reporting for each program.  In my opinion I think that server based reporting software is typically the best and most accurate even though they also have some disadvantages.  I generally tell clients that they should use Google Analytics in the sense of a backup reporting (or when no reporting exist), but if they have a program which directly examines the server logs then it is probably wise to rely more accurately on that data than any browser-based reporting.  Google Analytics and other browser-based programs have never given a high rate of accuracy when reporting, therefore I advise it be used as a general overview.  You can notice trends using any reporting software, its just the data reported is not always as accurate.

What is your thoughts?  What is your experience with Google Analytics?  Leave a comment!