Aartek is pleased to announce a new partnership with Aaron Computers, based in Anderson, South Carolina. Aaron Computers is opening a branch service center at 111 Ashmore Bridge Road in Mauldin, South Carolina and will be handling all IT-related service requests formerly handled by Aartek. We are Aartek are focusing our efforts on web design and search engine optimization services, and Aaron Computers will be referring all such requests to us.

Aaron Computers has been in the IT service business since 1993 and has established a loyal following in Anderson County. After 15 years of excellence, they have decided to expand into the Greenville, Mauldin, and Simpsonville market. We welcome the move and look forward to working together.

Almost on a daily basis, I am amazed that there are still businesses in the Greenville area (or any area, for that matter) that do not have a web site.  Read the rest of this entry »

As any knowledgeable internet marketer knows, incoming links are a very important part of your site promotion strategy. Be aware, however, that just as spammers have proliferated in an attempt to manipulate the search engines, unethical “link partners” are popping up all over the web to take advantage of unsuspecting webmasters and their eagerness to acquire incoming links at all costs.

It starts innocently enough: you are contacted by a webmaster for a site that wants to trade links with you. You do your due diligence and check the site out, and everything seems to be in order. You agree to place a link on your site in exchange for a link back. One fairly common scam occurs when the requesting webmaster links back to your site, but only long enough to get your link. At some point in the future, the webmaster removes your link without notifying you, and suddenly your link exchange has become a one-way link in his favor. Such unethical tactics require you to either periodically perform a time-consuming audit of your link partners or utilize one of the many automated software packages or online services that specialize in keeping tabs on such things.

Recently, however, I was almost victimized by a more devious strategy. I received a link exchange request from the webmaster of a site that seemed of good quality and related to my site. I replied that I would be glad to post a link back to him as soon as my link was up on his end. Within a few hours I received a confirmation email notifying me that my link was ready. I clicked on the URL, and, sure enough, there was my link. It wasn’t until I hovered my mouse over the link that I discovered that the link actually linked back to his site, not mine. In every other way, the link looked just like the html code I had provided him. The only way to know it was different was to look at the source code itself.

In short, when manually verifying the presence of a link on another site, be sure to look at the source code, not just the displayed text. It’s too easy to fake a link to your site.