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Opinions are funny things ... everyone has an opinion about something and quite often that opinion is strongly held and based on nothing more substantial that someone's gut feeling. Yet whether we're right or wrong and whether that opinion is based on fact or gut feelings we'll hold to that opinion despite what others may tell us.

Quite often we'll be more than happy to give the world that opinion regardless of whether it's right or wrong too. The other night on Twitter I saw one person give his opinion and sadly lots of people are going to believe him because he looks like he knows what he's talking about ... even though his opinion is way out in left field.

It is his firmly held opinion that the term 'Click Here' is not a valid call to action. That's right, a call to action might be a call to get somebody to do something but when it comes to web pages 'Click Here', in his strange opinion is not a valid call to action.

And what does he base that opinion on? Where is his reasoning for arriving at such a strange opinion? What testing has he done to support such a hypothesis? Well it seems that his reason is based on nothing more than an observation ...you never see 'Click Here' in any of Google's Adsense ads and so it can't be a valid call to action.

Despite the fact that plenty of other online marketing people can point to huge income levels based on that very call to action this guy wants to tell everyone that, just because Google doesn't use it, then it can't be a valid call to action and so people shouldn't be using it on their websites.

Let me tell you that, in case you hadn't noticed, there are some very strange people out there in Internet land who like to think that they have the marketing game sewn up. Not only have they got the marketing game all worked out but now it's their duty to share their strange and twisted view of marketing with the rest of the world.

Sometimes you can tell who these people are simply by the totally dumb statements they make but at other times it's a little harder to separate them from the people who really do know what they're talking about. But if you want to survive in this industry it's important that you develop the ability to pick the idiots before they can damage your business.

Unfortunately these days anyone can look like they're successful ... they can litter their website with all sorts of visual hints to their success and we can be sucked in despite the fact that their 'office' and all those images of success are really only something they put together with a few royalty-free photos.

And equally unfortunately social media sites and webmaster boards seem to be filling up with them as the economy worsens. That's the last thing people who are desperately trying to survive need ... it's enough of a struggle for them to make a buck without getting fed useless and patently wrong information by people who seem to be gurus.

Just in one of the places that I frequent I've come across that guy who thinks that 'Click Here' is not a call to action, a guy who would have you believe that he is a search engine expert but only runs his experiments and tests for a day or two rather than weeks or even months and another who thought keyword ratios were still relevant today.

Sometimes you have to wonder how newbies in adult or mainstream marketing survive at all when there are people like that about.

So if you're a newbie ... or even if you've been around for a while ... take care when you listen to people on the boards and on the social media sites where you hang out. Yes, I know I've said that many times before but these days advice like that is more relevant than ever and you can choose to ignore it at your peril.

On the one hand I do feel very sorry for those who get conned by people who really don't have a clue but on the other there's some satisfaction there too as I see the marketing equivalent of Darwin's Theory cut in.

And that's about it for this month. It sure has been another one that the media and events have filled with financial doom and gloom and I still don't see us as being over the worst of it just yet ... in fact here in Australia we're only just beginning to see layoffs and closures increase and I think that's about where many countries are in the recession cycle

Despite that the month ahead for us is going to be a busy one with plenty of client work on plus a few of our own projects that we want to ramp up. One of our mainstream sites that we use for testing is suddenly hitting the top of the search engine results pages for a lot of local terms so we're going to be putting a lot more effort into that too.

I hope your month ahead is going to be just as exciting as ours... and always remember, 'Click Here' is your friend - use it and you'll make sales.