| LED Digest 1773: Choosing a SEO, also HTML Editors |
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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 adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ March 31, 2004 Issue #1773 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Editors? ==-- ~ Brad Waller "Easy answer: Dreamweaver." ~ Maureen Beattie "Once you learn to handcode you will never do anything else." --== Advertising: Internet vs Print? ==-- ~ Rebecca Neilson "My website serves to enhance not replace my store." ~ Bob Ceccarelli "I've had little success in moving people directly from print ads to the web." --== Choosing an SEO [was: Attraction Pages] ==-- ~ Mark Scriven "... ask for a list of client references along with contact details." --== The Local Search Buzz ==-- ~ David Yancey "...the online Yellow Pages are years ahead of Google and the other web crawlers." --== Drowning at DMOZ ==-- ~ Donald Nelson "[There's] another way of contacting the DMOZ editors..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Problems with Topica ==-- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez ~ Erik Bledsoe ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Brad Waller Subject: HTML editors > I'd like some opinions on HTML editors... Dreamweaver, > Frontpage (2000 or newer), others? What can you recommend > for a "skilled amateur" (not a pro)? - Carol O'Leary, LED 1771 Easy answer: Dreamweaver. You can know next to nothing and create a great site. I know enough HTML to be dangerous, and Dreamweaver made it really easy to make a few sites from scratch. I built a site for my daughter's preschool in a few hours, and I did the entire public site for our latest project (once you are past login, you are into someone else's territory). I use it to edit JSPs and complex HTML pages set up by the master developers and programmers, all in a simple WYSIWYG interface and I never screw up their programming. You can create a basic idea and make it into a template for your site, which makes all the rest of the pages really easy to build. It can set up styles so you can use a style sheet and clean up your code if you want. Tables and formatting are a breeze. Best of all, it creates very clean code (FrontPage makes really bulky code and uses lots of formatting that is not cross browser compatible) that works in all browsers. As you learn, the program can expand. I'd say I use 20% of the capabilities of the program and can do just about everything I want to. Brad Waller, VP Affiliate & Business Development www.adjungle.com - Let advertisers buy space on your site! ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Maureen Beattie Subject: HTML editors I am not a purity geek -- heck I am not even a geek -- but I am becoming "skilled amateur" and I prefer to handcode. I started with notepad but now use HTML-Kit for XHTML or content and Topstyle for CSS or style. Once you learn to handcode you will never do anything else. Maureen Beattie ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Rebecca Neilson Subject: Internet vs print > My website has been up and running since 2000 or 2001. > If this was a retail with a storefront, stock etc. I would have > already had to close the doors. Why aren't people buying > via the internet? - Andrew Craig, LED 1771 I have had a website for almost 10 years in addition to my brick and mortar store of 23 years. My website serves to enhance not replace my store. The sales are hit and miss, it all depends on what the potential customer is searching for. If I had to rely on my website I would be out of business also. I have found the my regular store, online store and now e-bay store are all ways to enhance my business but my brick and mortar store is the one that pays 90% of the bills. There are shoppers on the internet. The only problem is there are no boundaries to where they can go versus a brick and mortar store they would have to physically go to. This makes their shopping choices almost unlimited, unless you can corner your nitch market with something they can't find anywhere else in the world you still have competition. Rebecca Neilson H.L. Supply Co. www.hansons.net ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Bob Ceccarelli Subject: Internet vs print Andrew, Your post caught my interest because not too long ago my wife came home with an artistic bird house gourd. It is really fascinating. To your question: I've had little success in moving people directly from print ads to the web. On the other hand, I've had good success using the web to sell to existing customers and in B2B sales. I think how my wife came to be the owner of that cool birdhouse gourd is instructive. Our local library has this home and garden thing every year where vendors can showcase their wares. My wife saw the gourds and impulse took over. I doubt if you can get new customers any other way. Possibly you could sell more to your existing customers via your web site. Hope that helps. Bob Ceccarelli bobc [at] dfnow [dot] com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Scriven Subject: Choosing an SEO [was: Attraction pages] > There are some really unsavory characters claiming to be > quality SEO's. Genuine quality SEO companies are quite > pricey! Get a written contract and KNOW what you are getting > before you leap. Otherwise, RUN! when approached by an SEO! - Bill Davison, LED 1771 I think that this is a bit extreme. There are many, many SEO businesses that do offer a high quality and effective service. However, I agree that it is more than likely that those less professional businesses are the ones using unsolicited approaches and "top ten guarantees". As an SEO myself, I would strongly recommend that anyone considering hiring an SEO company from an email or phone solicitation should ask for a list of client references along with contact details. Call several of these clients and speak to the business owner about their experiences with the SEO in question. My advice, though, would be to ignore these emails and phone calls promising guaranteed positions, and ask around your business associates, friends and colleagues to see if anyone knows of a good SEO. Somebody usually does. In my opinion, personal recommendation is the safest way of finding a good, professional SEO. Mark Scriven www.turismotec.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: David Yancey Subject: Local search In LED #1772, Greg Watson makes a telling point about the effectiveness of locally-focused online search tools. Greg reminds us that: > The key to Local Search is going to be the > *timeliness* of relevant *current* search results. People ask me how listing their site in a locally-smart search site like ours differs from merely placing an ad in the Internet Yellow Pages. A big part of the answer is that with a listing in www.vivante.com, the website owner can easily change his descriptive or ad copy to reflect changes in his shop, service, or products. She can even use our search listings to make special, time-valued announcements, something not possible with a Yellow Pages listing, and not reliably possible with a so-called "organic" search engine listing. Greg suggests that search engine crawlers might be able to detect constantly changing site or page content, if they would just spider more frequently. But that won't do the trick, IMO: web crawlers cannot detect the many nuances of ad copy well enough to be able to infer something like the announcement of an upcoming local wellness seminar, the availability of a new product feature, or the opening of a new store location, much less a sale that begins today and will end after the following weekend. This is the reason Google's newest attempt at combining local Yellow Page listings with web search falls down: the website pages as parsed by Google's present technology simply don't yield enough reliable and meaningful data to indicate time-dependency, newly added or recently modified content, or even physical location. It is simply a built-in limitation of the web crawler idea; what worked well to find linked web pages for generalized online search just doesn't cut it for the sorts of information-delivery requirements of local businesses that Greg is talking about. The only reliable way to build and maintain accurate, truly current, clearly described online summaries of website pages or business listings is for the website publisher or business owner to provide the necessary descriptive, indexing info, and marker data to the search site database -- and then provide a *human* to validate the entry. In this sense, the online Yellow Pages are years ahead of Google and the other web crawlers. But in their ability to do this process quickly and cheaply, they are way behind where they need to be. Our emphasis on local geo-smarts is therefore not our only concern. Our number one priority is to be able to allow website and business owners to describe their sites and services with a whole new level of precision, better relevance to the query, *and* timeliness of content, so that it gradually becomes much easier for search users to find the pages and services they want, be the site locally-based, in the next city or state, or across the seas. David Yancey http://www.vivante.com "Web searching *your* way" ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Don Nelson Subject: DMOZ Dear All, I read Joanne Cannell's post in LED 1771, and sympthize with her. However she can also try another way of contacting the DMOZ editors, and that is through their excellent bulletin board located at www.resource-zone.com . The board gives you a chance to inquire about the status of any submission or about other maters concerning DMOZ. This forum is run by DMOZ editors and you will always get a response. You will find out about what is happening, but it will not necessarily speed up the process of getting accepted. Sincerely, Donald Nelson www.a1-optimization.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Topica > For a long time I have happily used Topica... I lost > my log in information. Three emails and five days later, > I've not yet gotten a response from Topica. Is anyone > else experiencing similar problems? - Dan Rosenfield, LED 1772 Dan, I had the same issue with GotMarketing. It seems like the bigger they get, the less us "little guys" matter. Even though GotMarketing (as well as Topica) put together a great program, I had to find an alternative. I did. IntelliContact Pro. They offer everything the "big guys" do in addition to something else, customer service -- and not only when things go wrong! I had upper management contact me just to make sure everything was okay and to see if they could help with any other issues. They also offer an excellent affiliate program and haven't lost track of the reason they're in business. Customers. Test drive the program and see if it works for you: http://www.intellicontact.com. Ivan J. Jimenez CosmicBreath.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Erik Bledsoe Subject: Topica I can never seem to get any issues resolved with topica. I have been a customer for some time and service has never been great. Erik Bledsoe, Web Master/Advertising Director ACE Adventure Center www.aceraft.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all." - Sam Ewig |
