| LED Digest 2039: Does Content Trump SEO? |
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================================================== 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 19, 2005 Issue #2039 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Selling Pixels ==-- ~ James Miller ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO for Unoptimizable Sites? ==-- ~ Kathy Wilson ~ Michael Linehan ~ Don Baker --== SEO is Dead ==-- ~ Rohit Sinha ~ Steve Pronger ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Views on PayPal ==-- ~ Tom Aman ~ Jack Allison ======= NEW ===================================== From: James Miller Subject: Million Dollar Home Page http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ Thought up by a student at Nottingham University in the UK, this is a really wacky method of promotion. I've used it for my wife's thoroughbred stud and had several click-throughs on the first day. It's the red and yellow F just above the logo for The Times. The Times actually had a long article on Andy Tew who set the whole thing up. James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Kathy Wilson Subject: Unoptimizable sites > Any thoughts on how to optimize for a client who won't > let you touch their web site would be greatly appreciated. - Beth Earle, LED Digest 2036 Often I run into the same issue, but for different reasons. I work with solopreneurs and very small companies, so usually the reason for not going all-out to optimize the website is financial and not a control issue by one department or another. My recommendation to these folks is to use PPC ads. Using this method, they can control their financial output and still see decent results on the major search engines. In the case of the larger company and control issues concerning one group of people, this might be one way to bypass the entire group while still getting the results that the company desires - search engine exposure to the largest amount of people for their top keywords. Love, Kathy Wilson ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Unoptimizable sites First the warning from experience... I'd strongly recommend you do not do a half-way job in the spirit of "well it's some work", or "doing something for them is better than nothing". I've done that maybe three times. Each time I explained carefully how the IT staff (or webmaster) was putting constraints on what I could do, and how those constraints would appreciably diminish the effect of optimization. In each case the business owner ended up having the same expectations anyway for what the half-way job would give them - and then being either disappointed or angry with me. So, no more. Now if I encounter such a circumstance, I say... Mr./ Ms. Business Owner, this is what needs to be done and why. This is what these changes can do. Your IT staff don't want to implement or allow me to. It's your business and your site. The choice is yours. (Of course, I'm more diplomatic than this short summary, but I am very clear.) So I'd say give the clear information and let them choose. If they don't want to choose to let you do your work properly, walk. Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Donald L. Baker Subject: Unoptimizable sites Beth Earle told a sad story in LED 2036 about sites driven by content management systems having nonexistent SE rankings, and closed with: > Any thoughts on how to optimize for a client who won't > let you touch their web site would be greatly appreciated. We've encountered this low-rankings problem with sites powered by content management systems (CMS), and found some workarounds. However, our client's IT staff was much more helpful than the ones you described. Our first step was to have a sitemap page built that included and linked to all site pages, and was linked from the home page. That helped the spiders find and index the pages. Google had no problems at all with the long URLs, incidentally. Our second step was to establish a serious PPC campaign whose ads pointed to those dynamic pages (usually below the top-level navigation) with the most important information. After this, we started on workarounds. Our first work-around was to coordinate with the IT staff to build static HTML pages for some important keyword topics, that closely resembled existing dynamic pages, We optimized these pages, and all page links were redirected to the appropriate dynamic URLs. (This is the step that Beth says her clients' IT staffs won't allow.) The better workaround was to get serious with the CMS programmers, explain our client's goals, explain the basics of SEO, and describe what we needed to have happen to increase site visibility. They saw the light and decided they could indeed help. They tweaked the CMS program code to ensure that TITLE and META data for each page was actually passed through from the fields on the editor interface, to the actual pages when dynamically generated. (Hard to believe they had created fields for TITLE and META tag info, but hadn't made that info "live" before!) That appears to be working -- TITLE info now appears on the pages when served up, and rankings have improved significantly. We got permission to use the CMS editor interface ourselves, so we could insert tags, as well as modify headlines and text as necessary to insert some relevant KW phrases. As we had established a climate of trust and our client rep was overworked already, it wasn't difficult to get this access. You may not have the luxury of direct access to the controls, however. Beth, if the IT staffs are truly intransigent, then you need a champion in each of your clients' organizations with the authority to explain to the IT directors why they *WILL* modify the CMS to make the websites visible to search engine spiders. The websites aren't artifacts of IT brilliance -- they're sales and marketing tools! It shouldn't be too hard for the VPs of sales/marketing to explain why an invisible website is surrendering online sales to the competition. (The IT folks you're dealing with remind me of a network administrator I used to work with, whose stated goal -- only half in jest -- was to attain 100% network-resource availability. Of course, 100% resources available = no workstations in use!) Good luck! Don Baker NSI Partners ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Rohit Sinha Subject: SEO is dead > As for SEO, the "visitor-centric content" statement that I did not > quote made me "smirk". Dudes, that is what good SEO is all about: > creating content for visitors. You just have to go through search > engines to get the content to the visitors. - Michael Martinez, LED #2038 Of course you have to go through the search engines to get your content to the visitors. You have to market to the search engines, just like you market to your visitors, your existing and potential customers, media, other experts in your field, etc. Search engine marketing is an important part of your overall marketing campaign. But let's not confuse search engine marketing with search engine optimization? Optimizing your pages and site is just one way (out of several) to market yourself to the search engines. You can't optimize what you don't control. So let's not call link building a part of SEO for example. (I am not saying anyone did.) Link management is another one of SEM methods, like SEO. So I'll repeat my earlier statement, to give everyone a chance to quote me this time, if they want. With or without the smirk. Visitor centric content will replace SEO. This basically means that what will bring visitors to your site is quality content that they will actually find useful, not what your keyword density or keyword prominence is, for example. And yes, the SEs will bring most of your visitors, if you do things right. You won't have to tweak or optimize anything for this to happen though. Good quality will trigger a lot of events on its own, that will improve your rankings. And my dear dudes and darling dudettes, as for creating content for visitors now being called a part of SEO, well. It doesn't matter what name you give it. If tomorrow you call good usability, good design, a lovely "Look and Feel," and being nice to mom, parts of SEO too, that's OK. As long as you do the right things, you will benefit from them, no matter what you call them. Being nice to mom will get you cookies, for example. It's already getting tougher and tougher to get good rankings because of SEO alone. Not just because the SEs are getting smarter, but because of the competition too. But even if we assume you are way smarter than your competition, you can only optimize so much. Sure, for plenty of keywords it's still possible to score high because of SEO alone, but for how long? And how many people are searching for these low competition keywords anyway? And if there really are a lot of searches being performed for these keywords, how long will it take for your competition to catch up? What will happen then? I read a report somewhere that there are more new searches performed everyday than the old searches repeated. I'm sure many others have read it too. I *think* that I got the report here: http://www.keywordworkshop.com/report/index.php (Disclaimer: I don't have anything to do with the site I linked to, and I will not profit in any way if you click the link. I found the link in Allan Gardyne's newsletter.) If what the report says is true, what are you going to optimize for? Optimizing a page for a wide variety of keywords or variations of them will only dilute your optimization. And since new searches keep cropping up everyday, you can't possibly create new pages for each variation, because you can't keep up with the pace for one, or if you try to, the expenses will soon overwhelm the returns. Secondly, you can't maintain good quality if you try to. Third, you can't predict exactly what search phrases are going to be used in the future. If you consider this, you have to focus on getting recognition as an expert on that "subject," not just particular keywords. Which again means you can't rely on SEO, if you really want to reach those new searchers joining the internet everyday. Of course you can choose to ignore new searches and focus entirely on existing and popular keywords. But that's your choice, if you choose to compete where everyone is competing, and spend more money and time than you could get away with. But my guess is that more and more such popular keywords will join keywords like "business" or "travel" etc. There is simply no value in optimizing for such keywords. Not just because the traffic will be untargeted, but because it's downright impossible to rank high for them. That's why you focus on a niche. Or the low hanging fruit. But with time, as the competition gets more severe, the low hanging fruit will get out of reach too, don't you think? Or you can simply bypass this race to the top positions and think long term, focusing on returns on your investments of time, money, and other resources. Any good marketing person knows that you don't base your marketing on tactics, but on strategies. Focusing on devising new tactics and modifying existing ones eats up a lot of your resources without giving you any long term benefits. As soon as the benefits of the current tactic wear off, you have to devise a new one. SEO is a bag of search engine marketing tactics that keep changing as the SEs change their algorithms and the competition gets tougher. Focus on long term strategies that will sustain and build your business, not on short term tactics. Writing content for your visitors is one such strategy. A lot of good things will happen if you do it. Sure, leave some clues in your pages for the SEs, to help them decide or even prioritize. But don't build your content around these clues. Build your content for your visitors, give them value, and the SEs will reward you for it. Because your visitors are their products. The product that they are delivering to their advertisers (think adsense and YPN). The more relevant your page is to their search, the more successful the advertisements on that page are likely to be. As a result, everyone involved benefits. I think you should just read the Tao of CTPM. The link is in Ken's earlier post that started this discussion. Off topic: I am embarrassed that my posts tend to get this long. What do others do in such a situation? Do they edit their posts to make them shorter or do they put the bulk of it somewhere and post just a summary and the URL here? Cheers, Rohit Sinha ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: SEO is dead > While I fully expect Ken's paying customers to... OVERemphasize > the 47 jurisdictions that don't define the program as MLM, it's > MLM... even if it's only 2-tier MLM. - Michael Martinez, LED 2038 I find it extremely hard to believe that Michael doesn't understand the difference between MLM and 2-tier affiliate programs. After all, he is a member of the Allposters affiliate program, which is 2-tier: "AllPosters.com will also pay you bonuses and commission on sales made by Websites you recruit to the Affiliates Program." http://snipurl.com/iony [affiliates.allposters.com] This is not unusual. Many web affiliate programs are 2-tier. They are not MLM. I could repeat that 3 times for dramatic effect but anyone who has been involved in both endeavors clearly understands the different ideologies involved. If Michael wants to draw support from the purely legal definition in two states of the US (SiteSell is a Canadian based company) then so be it. But what I'd like to know is, does he consider the Allposters program to be MLM? If so, why does he promote it if MLM is bad? If not, why is it not MLM while the SiteSell program is? Perhaps we can encourage Allan Gardyne, a recognized authority on affiliate programs to chime in here. I know Allan has posted in the Digest before. I'd be interested to know if Allan believes he is involved in an MLM program: http://www.associateprograms.com/search/favourite.shtml > I'll continue to be honest, direct, and blunt. Let's hope so. Believe it not, I do actually enjoy Michael's posts. They always add some zing to LED, even though I tend to not agree with pretty much everything he says. But as Adam rightly points out, let's keep our good humour here and not let LED descend into flame wars. It's counter-productive and time wasting. Wait! Michael did say something I'm in total agreement with! > Ken Evoy is not the enemy. If someone whose site ranks in the top 100 is ever an enemy of LED I'm outa here! Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Aman Subject: Paypal > (Compare this with the set-up fees and recurring fees of a 'real' > merchant account -- not to mention the retina scan, dna sample > and other stuff you need to submit :) - Marty R. Milette, LED 2038 I have a suspicion that the incredible difficulties associated with getting a 'real' merchant account may now be somewhat of an 'urban myth'. Before you write off a 'real' merchant account as 'impossible to get', 'too expensive', etc., I suggest you check it out to see exactly what would be involved in your situation and what the actual costs would be. My wife, who sells handmade jewellery in an open air market and at various craft shows and whose business is small and very new (no track record), initially assumed it would be impossible and/or too expensive but we decided to make enquiries anyway since she was losing sales. She is glad we did because we found out things we didn't know: 1. The monthly fee was only $10.00CAD and, since her business is very seasonal (no sales during the winter), no fees will be charged when she is not actually selling. 2. Rates per transaction are low. 3. Funds appear in her bank account usually within 24 hours or less. 4. She can accept credit cards at any location where she has a phone available. What this means is that, as long as she can get a cell phone signal, she can accept credit cards anywhere she is selling. Everything needed to process the card is keyed in via the phone thus avoiding the expense of having to rent a special terminal. It is a good system where the number of credit cards processed is not really high. As presently set up, she can only accept Mastercard and Visa, but that seems to cover most customers who want to use plastic. It appears that, at least with this company here in Canada, the merchant account people have started to make provision for 'the little guy' and the unusual situation. They have a number of different plans that appear tailored for various situations. I realize that selling over the Internet is a little different since you need a secure server and other things but, in some situations, it could be well worth your time to check out. Paypal, 2Checkout, etc. may well be your best solution but don't assume that getting a 'real' merchant account would be difficult or expensive because that may not be true. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Jack Allison Subject: Paypal > The "Big Boys" still have us stitched up tight > here in the UK for there expensive options. - Philip Scriver, LED 2037 Have a look at NoChex if you want a UK only option. Free setup and low charges. I've used them on one of my sites now for 5 months without a problem. Find them at www.nochex.com Jack Allison http://www.whenthemusicstops.com ------------------------------------------------------- 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We are rarely proud when we are alone." - Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet) |
