Copy Rights and Wrongs

As you may already know, I'm a big fan of Ken Evoy's DIY website builder called Site Build It. The other day I decided to do a search for "site build it" on MSN to see where I ranked. I was on page 2 (out of 2,629,684 results) which I thought wasn't too bad considering that most of the pages above me were SBI's own pages and respected authorities like Allan Gardyne. But what caught my eye under the sponsored listings was an ad that read "Don't Buy Site Build It. Read the real SBI and Ken Evoy story"

I thought "hmmm, does somebody have some dirt on Ken?". So I clicked through. But instead of finding dirt here was yet another positive review of SBI. I decided to read on, and then I realised that it all sounded rather familiar. Then it struck me. Yep, I was reading my own review!

The publisher of this review had simply copied my review, changed the intro and outro, and interspersed it with special "offers". Of course I was not amused, but rather than get agitated and start firing off threatening emails I decided to take a different approach. I emailed the site owner and told him that he was taking entirely the wrong approach to affiliate marking. He should promote SBI by talking about his OWN experiences and not mine. As Ken will tell you, successful affiliate marketers don't sell, they recommend. Ken calls this PREselling. By putting all these special offers and inducements into MY review he was very much SELLING, not to mention the fact that he was stealing my copy!

The owner emailed me back and was very apologetic and ashamed. He offered to pay me for use of my copy, but that's not what I wanted. I told him if he wanted to be successful as an affiliate you HAVE to write from your OWN perspective. If a friend says to you "I recommend you buy this product because I use it and find it's great" you'd be inclined to follow his advice, yes? But if he then said "I'll give you all these bonuses if you buy" you'd know you were being "pitched" and would resist.

Anyway, this guy wasn't a bad person. He's actually built quite a good SBI site and has a good product. He still has his "bonuses", so hasn't quite got the point, but he has changed the review to his own, although pockets of my text still remain. But I can live with that.

The moral of the story? Don't steal other people's copy, no matter how good you think it is. Apart from getting you into possible legal hot water you will not be doing yourself any favours. And sooner or later, you'll get found out. Here's a site that's useful for detecting online plagiarism. Read MY Site Build It review.

Why Do Accountants Have Bad Websites?

I recently decided to do some research to help me find and select a local accounting firm. Although much is being made of "local search" these days I didn't find anything that was of much use to me. So, I resorted to the old way and pulled out the local Yellow Pages. A few of the ads mentioned a url (the majority didn't) so I decided to take a look at a couple. Here's the first one:

http://www.richards.net.au

Go ahead and take a look and see what your first impression is. Does it say "we are professionals and our website reflects pride in what we do"? Or does it say "designed by the boss's son because he knows about this web stuff and we thought we'd better get a website, although now we wonder why the heck we did because no one visits it"?

I'm sure Richards Financial Services are great accountants and provide a professional service. But why project an image like that? Here is what's wrong with that website:

• the look and feel is "home made" and not "professional"
• the logo graphic isn't optimised for the web and takes a long time to load
• if you look at the url in the address bar after the page has loaded you'll see that the site is residing on the free web space provided by an ISP. The message here is "we are too cheap to pay for a hosting account"
• "Free Hit Counters" are a sure sign of "designed by an amateur". What's worse is, at 162 visits (when I visited) it says "this site gets hardly any traffic at all". Why put that on your site?
• There is no attempt at search engine optimisation at all. The page title is "RFS Home". That's great if you want to rank well for "RFS Home", which in fact they do, but who is going to search for that? Nobody! When people use the Internet they search for information. They are not looking for you! The page title is one of the most important factors in making a search-engine-friendly website. It tells the search engines what that page is about. So, to Google, this page is about "RFS Home". It ranks highly for that search term because (wisely) very few other sites are competing for that search term.

But, it's not all bad. There is some information located in the Fact Sheets section, and the About Us page lets us see the staff and the location of the office.

The next site I found was here:

http://www.juddfs.com.au

Holy Moly! With apologies to Mr Judd, this site is just plain dreadful. It makes the same mistakes as RFS but adds into the mix:

• graphics that look like they were designed by an 8 year old
• broken image links
• blank pages that pop up for no apparent reason
• inconsistent design

But the worse thing of all is there is no "information". There is nothing that would give a reason for anyone to want to visit. There was nothing said that the Yellow Pages ad hadn't already said.

The point I'm making here is any accountant, or any professional service provider for that matter, has a wealth of knowledge and advice that they can pass on. This is what your visitors are looking for. They already know that you provide the usual services that any accountant does. Give them information that establishes YOU as an expert in your field and builds trust.

Why do people go to accountants?

They need help with their tax?

They want to start a business?

They need help. They need guidance. They need INFORMATION. So give it to them! And then when they search for "how do I start a business in (insert your locality here)", guess whose site they will find? And after being informed and educated on what they wanted to know, guess who they'll trust and be inclined to do business with?

Would it be the site that says "we do bookkeeping, tax returns bla blah blah". Or would it be the site that says "this is what you need to know to start a business".

Ken Evoy has written an excellent course for all accountants and other professionals. It's called the Service Sellers Masters Course. You'll find it on my Free Downloads page.

Addendum

After publishing this update I received a response from a reader in relation to the article above. It said "Did you offer to help those accountants you offended?

Fair comment, so I thought I would make the following points in response:

• No offence was intended to either of the businesses mentioned. My comments relate purely to their websites, which are out there for the world to see and react to.
• I visited those sites not as a web designer looking for something to criticize, but as a potential customer. It's not my habit to criticize other designer's work. Sites like Web Pages That Suck exist for that sole reason!
• Help was contained within the article itself. Specifically, the Service Seller's Masters Course - download from my Free Downloads page.
• But most importantly, these are business websites representing professional service providers. They are not personal, family or public interest type sites where you tend to overlook bad design. And they are by no means unique. In fact they were typical of most of the sites I viewed.

Update: The Judd Financial services site mentioned above has been redesigned since I visited it. Much, much better guys. Here's what it used to look like. What it needs now is a few simple optimisation techniques to have it ranking well in the search engines. It's already ranking fairly well in MSN but Google requires more effort. More info on search engines here.

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