| LED Digest 2036: The SEO Discussion isn't Dead |
|
|
|
================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. October 13, 2005 Issue #2036 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== SEO for Unoptimizable Sites? ==-- ~ Beth Earle "Any thoughts on how to optimize for a client who won't let you touch their web site..?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO is Dead ==-- ~ Rohit Sinha "...SEOs will get marginalized. If you find this hard to accept, too bad... The search engines don't care." ~ Steve Pronger "...it's all about building visitor-friendly content." --== The Google Sandbox Effect ==-- ~ Claudiu Spulber "The strategy for now is to act as if nothing happened..." --== What's Wrong with DMOZ ==-- ~ Michael Motherwell "...the natural scepticism of DMOZ is probably working against you..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Views on PayPal ==-- ~ James Miller ======== NEW ==================================== From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: How to search-optimize an unoptimizable site Hi, guys. Recently, we've been approached by the marketing people of several different b2b companies who want their sites to perform better on the search engines (please -- let's set aside for the moment whether this is necessary or possible or whatever and just take their request at face value). We helped them identify search terms that their target audiences seem to use when searching for their products on the search engines and have checked to see whether their sites are performing under these terms -- they aren't. The next step would be rewriting their web site to create content that's really meaty and useful and pertinent and that's focused on the search terms and to make sure the site is useable and friendly and makes people want to contact the owners. But each of the companies (using different content management tools) have sites that serve up different, really long URLs every time a page is called up. And the IT people who maintain the sites refuse to add new pages to the sites that are outside of the content management tools. Sooo ... how do we help these guys get found on the search engines? At least one really does have valid reasoning for wanting to be found relatively high up on the search engines (they've talked to clients and prospective customers and found out that's important and useful to them). Any thoughts on how to optimize for a client who won't let you touch their web site would be greatly appreciated. With appreciation for the great LED Community, Beth Earle Polysort LLC ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Rohit Sinha Subject: SEO is dead Hi everyone, To me, two things seem obvious (sorry if it's "obviously obvious" to you pros): 1) What you claim your site or page is about will get less and less important. This has been happening in the past, and will continue to happen in the future. Nothing new, right? What others think your site is about will increase in importance. Because you will obviously lie and try to game the engine. I can't even pretend to know anything about how the SEs will decide which site is more relevant for a particular query. Those who think they know are in deep denial. The only thing that you can say (about the future, not now) with certainty is that the SEs will get smarter and smarter, and it will get increasingly difficult to influence them artificially. So unless a person searching for "SEO" will really benefit from visiting your site about your book on SEO, I don't see why the SEs should give it a top listing, no matter how many tricks in your own book you employed. 2) As it gets more and more difficult and expensive to influence the results, the return on investment to do such manipulation will diminish. As a result, SEOs will get marginalized. If you find this hard to accept, too bad. The market doesn't care. The search engines don't care. Your frothing but impotent rage will not help you either. VCC (Visitor Centric Content - a term that I just coined) will replace SEO. Note that I'm not talking about SEM. SEO is just a part of SEM. M as in marketing, not manipulation. Or maybe there will still be enough new website owners who don't know better to take the SEO bait. Who knows. Aaron's and Michael's posts in LED #2035 offered little to the discussion, except maybe some entertainment. Aaron's post can be summarized as: "I object to the self promotion in Ken's post. Ken can't control how spiders behave." And Michael's post can be summarized as: "As long as search engines exist, there will be room for manipulation. I am not interested in becoming a SiteSell affiliate." I wish they had posted just the summaries, instead of the longer versions. And without mentioning any names... When I was a little school going kid, we used to have "Reading Comprehension" tests in language classes. Typically, the question setters would give you a passage followed by a list of questions based on that passage. There would be no trick questions, nothing you need to know outside of what is written in the passage. Just reading the passage should enable you to answer the questions successfully. I used to get amazed at how few kids used to be able to answer all the questions correctly. The passage was right there in front of their eyes. Couldn't they read it and answer the questions? Couldn't they see what the passage is about? But at least those were kids. Even so called adults suffer from the same problem. I would be very very afraid to buy a book written by someone who either imagines things or deliberately lies (can't say which), and who has difficulty comprehending what a paragraph is actually about. What s/he writes in the book may be way off the mark. I must be old fashioned, because I prefer coffee to flame wars to get my blood flowing. But flame wars are not too bad either. Especially when you are having coffee too. ;-) Come on, folks. Flame wars don't add value to a discussion. The last few paragraphs for example, are a waste of your time and mine. Cheers, Rohit Sinha ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: SEO is dead > Ken Evoy continues to push his multi-level marketing > service in the guise of informed discussion about whether > SEO is dead or dying. I'm not interested in being a SiteSell > affiliate. Nor are many other people. - Michael Martinez, LED 2035 Which is exactly why Michael has no idea what he is talking about. If he WAS a SiteSell affiliate or user he would know that the suggestion it is a "multi-level marketing service" is ludicrous. It is nothing of the sort. It's true, in my last post I didn't agree with Ken's assertion that SEO is dead. If you've ever built an SBI site you would know that SEO is integral to the product, unlike just about any other site building solution out there. It starts with keyword research, moves on to building optimised pages and finishes with creating relevant links though its Value Exchange tool. Which is what any competent SEO consultant would do. That's why I found it odd that Ken was now saying "SEO is dead". But unlike Michael, I can indeed read past the provocative headline and grasp the message within. And that is, by my reckoning, that once you cover the basic on-page and off-page factors it's all about building visitor-friendly content. And I have no argument with that. In the last few weeks my own site has fallen dramatically on keywords it once held page 1 positions on Google for. Linked to a "bad neighbor"? Blogged and pinged one too many times? I have no idea. But perhaps if I'd paid more attention to building new content than to more "SEO", it wouldn't have happened. Personally, I think it's great that people like Ken find the time to contribute to this digest. As someone who has read just about everything he has published (there is a pile of his works in my study that I couldn't jump over) I can tell you that he has more integrity, real-world experience and web business success in his little finger than most of us on this list. Jibes like "thinly disguised promotional pitches for his multi-level marketing program" and "stick to sales" reflect more on the writers than they do Ken. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Claudiu Spulber Subject: Google sandbox > In July of 2004 I published a website presenting an ebook, > and this site has never gotten high rankings in Google till > this very day, despite excellent rankings in MSN and Yahoo > for important keyword phrases related to the ebook... - Donald Nelson, LED 2035 Thank you for the answer, this is exactly my point too. One example, on MSN we're first for a very competitive keyword (SDK) and we appear in front of websites like Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Google which seems incredible; on the other hand nothing on Google. The strategy for now is to act as if nothing happened, meaning doing frequent updates, getting backlinks and so on, but I do hope that the sandbox exists and that in a couple of months we'll be getting some traffic. I'm just wondering if in this case what SEO companies do for new websites - they just say to their clients that they have to wait for 6, 12, 18 months to get some rankings on Google? Hard to believe that someone would still pay for such services for this long (I'm referring to the other topic in here "SEO is dead"; maybe the proper title would be "short-term SEO is dead"). DMOZ is a lost cause in my opinion, and I don't think we'll get listed before we get out of the sandbox. I have submitted 2 other websites starting one year and a half ago, and still nothing; plus, they have discontinued the "site status check" on the DMOZ forum. So we're waiting. Regards, Claudiu Spulber http://www.novapdf.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Michael Motherwell Subject: DMOZ > The site in question (aboutsanibel.com) is a one page site that > offers advice on things to see and do on Sanibel Island in Florida. - Scott Wang, LED 2034 A ONE page site? I bet DMOZ don't list one page sites as a general rule. I get your point. You do offer something useful and unique. But is that enough? I think you need to turn it around. Not "why won't DMOZ list my site", but "How can I make a site DMOZ will list"? If you view the world from another's persepctive, you have a chance. Not a good one with DMOZ mind, but a chance nonetheless. DMOZ is what it is. Good, bad, ugly, warts and all. Like the tax department, you are stuck playing by their rules, and even they don't know what those rules are some of the time, and even when they do, no two people ever agree. IMHO, a directory, and DMOZ epecially, has three main concerns: 1. Is the listing on topic and good enough? 2. Is it reputable? 3. Will it STAY reputable? I think the info you provide is excellent, no doubt, but the natural scepticism of DMOZ is probably working against you, on perhaps all three counts. Frustrating no doubt, but you best bet is to either redo the site as multiple pages, or write a Grandpa Simpson letter like this one: http://snipurl.com/igbi [insearchofstuff.com] which sure made me feel better when I wrote it :) Michael Motherwell ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: James Miller Subject: Views on PayPal I always thought PayPal was a bit naff. I use it to collect small monies for bits of software, but felt that as a payment system, it is very much second rate. I'm just doing a site for a company called World of Information at www.worldinformation.com. The current site is rubbish and is one of the best examples of a site that actually harms a company. For everybody's information the company produces world business fact books and these are best described as the Not The CIA Fact Books! Anyway, as they don't do any on-line commerce and a quick solution is needed, I suggested that they use PayPal to take on-line payments, as I had heard they now took credit cards. This is because PayPal have a reasonable free shopping cart and the whole thing can be setup quickly and easily with little hassle. Try using one of the largest on-line payments companies in the UK. Talk about purveyors of expensive user-unfriendly solutions geared to large companies with teams of developers. I just checked out PayPal's credit card payment system and it is as good as any. Does anybody have any views on using PayPal on a commercial site. Is it a turn off? James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist." - Novalis |
