The ‘Out-of-Nowhere Email’
This one, from a website or person I have NEVER heard from, is usually accompanied with some sort of disclosure that you were sent this email because you were on a website that partners with this company. In layman’s terms, you were shopping or searching around on Site A and Site A decided to be asshat enough to sell your contact information (among other info) to Site B (and C, D & E – for a fairly hefty price, too) so that they can email you. Email is the polite word. In my mind, this is spam.

The ‘We-Almost-Sorta-Met Email’
This one was a bit new for me. I used to attend a lot of conferences when I worked for a travel association. However, after a conference I would get emails from the people that I networked with. That’s it. Recently I attended the Internet Summit 09 in Raleigh. It was a decent conference, but just days after I got home I started getting postcards (to fill my recycle bin) and email blasts. Here’s the thing though – these were specifically from companies that I did NOT network with because I had NO interest in their services. I consider myself fairly straightforward and I didn’t talk to folks who I had no need because I feel like it is polite not to waste people’s time. All of the companies that trespassed this theory were sponsors so I’m sure the good people putting on the conference sweetened the sponsorship with access to an attendee list. Still, I don’t consider it all that polite. I had many opportunities to network with the businesses I saw sponsoring the event – their placement and exposure was fantastic. But if I wasn’t interested – why are they pushing themselves on me after the fact. Sure I’m a wee hermetic, but that experience didn’t leave me leaping at the next chance to attend an internet marketing conference. Why are you punishing me for paying to attend your event?! Do you know what a pain it is to get off these people’s email lists once you’re on?

The ‘We-Did-Meet, So-That-Makes-This-OK’ Email
Nope, it sure doesn’t make it ok. Just because I’ve attended one of your meetups doesn’t mean I’m interested in the great e-book super ninja marketing deal your pushing. Especially since you’re pushing it as an affiliate program (meaning if I ordered the book, you’d get paid. That’s fine with me – except I never once opted in to these commercial newsletters and I never showed any interest in any super top secret marketing book. That’s not my dig). And just because I’ve offered free input in a webmaster forum to help you out, also doesn’t mean that you can put me in your email database.Your code was busted, dude – that doesn’t mean I want to buy what you’re selling.

The bottom line is, just because you have access to an email address – doesn’t make it appropriate to spam that person. Yes, I said it – SPAM. Unwanted commercial emails are essentially such. Now, am I being fair? Probably not (which is why I chose not to mention any offenders by name, this time!). There’s a lot of value in email marketing and building up databases. But I don’t think you need to whittle with a chainsaw. There is a great art in building really good databases. Ones full of people that are truly interested in your products. Sure you can go buy 50K contacts, and make 49,327 enemies. But is that how you want to run your business? People are savvy, it’s time to create fans and allies – not alienate people. Be polite. It goes a long way these days.

PS – please!please!please! (as a personal favor), make your opt-out clear and easy to use. Hidden opt-outs, layered opt-outs and opt-out links that are broken are truly awful.

H1 Tags.
H1 tags are like the title of that page – the one sentence that quickly, clearly and concisely defines what the users and bots can expect on that specific page (which is why they need to be unique per page and which is why you should only have one perpage). Without the use of CSS – H1 tags show up as big bold text. They should. Just like the title of a book is the biggest and easiest to see. H2′s are smaller, H3′s even more so, and so on. They are logical ways to break up your content.

With that, why on Earth would anyone use the H1 tag to display small text crammed way up ABOVE your main header? I know you didn’t do that for my sake (or for the sake of any actual users). You purely did that because you know H1 tags matter to SEO and you created that tag specifically for search engines.

Oh, tiny little gray H1 text? FAIL!

Stop. You’re not being tricky or clever. You’re just misusing H tags pure and simple. It’s tacky. Think about the logical ways to structure content and the H tags should come fairly naturally. Remember, make it make sense to people – they are the ones opening their wallet to pay for your products and services, not a bot.

/ABH

PS – Should I mention another pet peeve is when affiliate and consumer sites think that it makes sense to use a .org?
PPS – Is that iPhone detective dude flipping me off?

Here I am. I’ve been playing with the idea of finally organizing my services and my thoughts for quite some time. But that time is now!

I’ve been in the industry for years – I volunteer regularly both at my Raleigh SEO Meetup and by participating heavily in the Google Webmaster Forums (Holla’ for the Bionic Posters!). But I’m ready to finally start offering my services so that I can continue to volunteer and help small businesses for free as much as possible, but to also start finding a supplemental way to support my awesome family and to bring my experience to more people.

So – I’m kicking it off by heading to the Internet Summit in Raleigh tonight. Got my fancy-pants business cards, a very lean and humble site, years of experience and a really, really excited eye toward the future.