| LED Digest 1778: What's the SEO's Job? |
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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 ................................................ April 8, 2004 Issue #1778 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Editors? ==-- ~ Ann Richmond "Anyone have any experience with open source editors?" ~ Rich Dudley "I'd prefer not to have to work with downlevel browsers..." --== Choosing an SEO ==-- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "...in the real world we take SEO to mean search engine marketing which goes much, much deeper." ~ Jill Whalen "The high-rankings part is just a start." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Confused by Alexa's Ranking ==-- ~ Paul J. Kulhavy ~ Ken Evoy --== UK Site Libraries? ==-- ~ Dirk van der Werff ~ Ian Dickson ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Ann Richmond Subject: HTML editors We are developing in Java and are looking for open source page editors. Anyone have any experience with open source editors? We found ekit and are working on some enhancements to it, but would appreciate any input. Thanks Ann Richmond www.randrinc.com ann, randrinc.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Richard Dudley Subject: HTML editors / Downlevel Browsers > And forget about cross-platform nonsense -- in 10 years of web > development, I have yet to meet a client who's EVER asked for it. - Marty R. Milette, LED 1777 Usually, they don't know to ask. I have had clients call in a panic because one of their best customers is using some old or weird browser and can't use their website. I have even fielded calls in my wife's shop from frustrated customers trying to place an order while using older browsers (even as low as AOL 3). I would love to just tell them to upgrade, but the reality is many won't. Many are scared of viruses, or their current machine works perfectly, or they have a US$5.99/month dialup and don't want to wait 10 hours to download the latest browser. In 2001, I built a site for an electronics component manufacturer that used a cool menu that wasn't quite NS4 compliant. We weren't too concerned about it, since NS4 had such a small market share, "no one was using it". No one, that is, except a gigantic industrial conglomerate who was a major customer. Their IT staff was sick of the flaws in IE, and mandated NS4. Their engineers couldn't access my client's technical information, and popped a gasket. So, the menu was made compliant. On another site I didn't build but was starting to service, a panicked CEO called. His best friend and golf buddy couldn't navigate the site, and the CEO didn't want to take the heat on the links. For some reason, the buddy was using some bizarro browser he found somewhere on someone's recommendation it was safer than IE. Problem was, it didn't support frames. A switch to IE 5.5 (already loaded on buddy's computer), and the CEO could razz his buddy for his choice of software (meaning I had a happy client). I'd prefer not to have to work with downlevel browsers, but anything that impacts the bottom line (or saves face on the links) gets attention proportional to its impact. At some point, you do have to make a decision as to how low of a level you will support with your design and features. The AOL 3 lady phones her orders in now. Rich Dudley www.bloomery.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Choosing SEO > With respect - I would say that search engine rankings > alone will not increase your business. All an SEO does > is optimize your rankings. - Samantha Mignano, LED 1777 Samantha, I agree and disagree. By logical definition, an SEO would be just that. A listings or rank optimizer or even a "positioner". However, in the real world we take SEO to mean search engine marketing which goes much, much deeper. As Shari, Dan (Thies) and all the other SEO / LED members know and have posted many times in many different ways, optimizing a site doesn't end with listing or ranking optimization. As you pointed out, the site needs to persuade humans to purchase and for this, you need a blend of search engine friendliness and real world usability. Any good SEO knows this. Even wannabe SEO know this, hence doorway pages, cloaked pages, etc. Going back to the initial question, if your prospective SEO doesn't have a clear understanding of why you need SEO services (to increase sales, drive traffic, increase awareness, whatever!) then give them the boot. People don't pay to be number one on the search engines. They pay to reach potential customers or leads. Anyone selling positions just doesn't get it and your "real" results will be proof positive if you decide to use them anyway. In response to Shari's post regarding "optimizers" [issue 1775], please allow me to share a list of the people I've found to be tops when it comes to true search engine marketing (as Shari described) knowledge, experience and methodology: - Shari Thurow (Grantastic) - Danny Sullivan (Search Engine World) - Bryan Eisenberg (Future Now) Don't get me wrong, I think there are plenty of great SEM out there and one of them may actually work best for YOUR specific needs however these three are tops when it comes to pure search engine marketing and real world usability. To those of you looking for an SEO, start your search at the SEMPO site: http://sempo.org -- I'd go with the companies represented there before anything that comes up on regular search engine results. Thanks for the great post Shari! All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez http://cosmicbreath.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Jill Whalen Subject: Choosing SEO > All an SEO does is optimize your rankings. If the > site the customers then reach does not call them > to action... that cannot surely be the fault of the SEO? > Or am I missing something? - Samantha Mignano, LED 1777 Oh, how I wish that were actually still true! Believe me, it would certainly make my life a lot easier. Getting high rankings is what I know, what I'm good at, and something that's easy to measure. Heck, it's my company name, for goodness' sake. So, I'm certainly a champion of high rankings. I loved it when that was all we had to worry about. That said, whether we old-timers like it or not, the industry is growing up. It's fairly clear these days that where your site shows up in the search engines for certain keyword phrases is only marginally important, and even then, it's only a first step. Sure, it looks great to show the CEO a bunch of ranking reports with his or her site in the top 10 for lots of keyword phrases that appear to be relevant to what they do. And in fact, it may actually be great -- but then again, it may not be so great. What if the targeted keyword phrases were not right for the site? Keywords that are too general may bring traffic, but it will probably be comprised of people who are looking for something totally different than what you offer. On the other hand, keywords that are too specific may never be used by real people at all. High rankings for too-general or too-specific keywords may look good on paper, but never translate to a positive return on investment. Aside from choosing the right keyword phrases, your professional SEO company should be well versed in other Web marketing areas. For instance, once you receive targeted traffic, you need those people to take action at your site. This means that there needs to be a certain level of usability and professionalism with your design, copy that speaks to your target audience and all that other good stuff. Smart SEOs know this and have the in-house resources or partnerships with people and other companies that can provide you with everything you need for a successful campaign. If your site traffic is leaving as soon as they get there, or if people get lost on your site, your SEO company should be able to help you diagnose this. They should also be able to help you measure the effectiveness of your campaign by showing you how to analyze your log files. With the latest Web analytics software packages on the market, you can easily and effectively measure the things that really count. So, the answer to the original question "Isn't an SEO's job to just get high rankings?" is a big fat no. The high-rankings part is just a start. An SEO's job is to make sure your site is found through keyword phrases that ultimately convert into paying customers, and to help you do everything within your power to make your site the best it can be! Jill Whalen High Rankings Chicago Seminar April 23rd http://www.highrankings.com/ledseminar ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Paul Kulhavy Subject: Alexa > My Alexa rank comes out to be 348,670 but my stats show > 2,000 plus visitors a day. Does anyone know why this should > be? Or is there a more reliable way to judge a site's visitors? - Richard Graham, LED 1777 Regarding different rankings on Alexa. Alexa seems to rate sites on just two items. 1) Number of visitors, 2) The number of pages that they read. It ranks both and then seems to take an average of both rankings to come up with a score. Of course the final twist is that it only counts hits from Alexa toolbar installed users - so if you promote their toolbar - or your users fit their target market - then you may find your sites ranks higher than you expect. I rank at about 24,000 (ish), that's for about 25,000 pages read a day and 5,000 different users. Hope this helped ... ;-) Best Regards, Paul J. Kulhavy Your Free Guide to Football Betting http://goonersguide.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ken Evoy Subject: Alexa Hi all, Alexa really interests us and every time I've posted a summary about the "ins and outs" of Alexa, first time ever on Adam's Dad's beloved I-Sales, I get a few "wow-thank-you" so I finally got smart and updated and posted this into the TNT (Tips 'n Techniques) HQ for our own Site Build It! customers... http://build.sitesell.com/tips/alexa-rankings.html The aberrations (above) interest us because they are both so extreme. We study over 10,000 K sites, plotting Alexa score vs. visitor count and the correlation is excellent inside the top 10K sites, very good inside the top 100K, and getting less and less reliable (i.e., more scatter) until it's pretty unreliable after 500,000 and over 1,000,000, you can only make one pretty reliable conclusion -- those sites get very, very little traffic. And even THEN, there is the occasional exception, including a couple worse than the above. In the URL above, note especially the commentary on STATISTICAL ERROR and BIAS. Alexa excels at the first, but has problems with the second, so you have to know HOW to interpret through that bias. Sometimes there are good reasons for "weirdness"... A friend recently asked me why his traffic was going up at his very successful site, while his Alexa score was going down? It depressed him. I looked up three other prominent site in his industry -- all of them going down? Seasonal drop? Ah-ha! I told him to stop looking in the mirror and admiring himself :-) and take pleasure that his raw traffic stats tell his own true tale, and that versus the rest of the industry he was doing fine. Or. for folks with extremely GOOD (i.e., low number) Alexa rankings but low traffic, the most common reason is a YES to the following question... I'd ask if you or your employees have the Alexa toolbar installed, use an ISP that delivers dynamic IPs, and/or you delete cookies. If a few of you do have that combination, you'll give Alexa a falsely good score. But... I'm not sure what the point is if anyone is doing it purposely. While Alexa is a nice indicator of how you're doing versus your competition, it is not the cause of your success, nor will it cause your success. But THAT is for a different discussion. ;-) We at SiteSell do use Alexa scores for promotional purposes, and people bring up the chicken-and-the-egg things. Well, we started using Alexa because we noticed how consistently our own site was growing (inside the Top 250) and we also use it across so many SBI! sites and we have the whole picture, so we're confident that it reflects that true success that our users get with SBI!. It's been years since we've told folks to actually NOT download the toolbar, since you can get all the server-side simply by visiting the site. Hope this helps, Ken Evoy http://www.sitesell.com/ctpm ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dirk van der Werff Subject: Site libraries Hi... intruiged by the new legislation as a publisher... ------------------------- Thou Shalt Deposit Thy Website By Michael Evans The time when all internet web sites "published in the UK" will have to be deposited with the six legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom has arrived. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 came into force on 1st February 2004. Under the Act, the category of publications which must be deposited with the 6 libraries is extended to 'non-print' publications, which include web sites and CD-ROMs (including computer programs) but exclude sound recordings and films. The Act is designed to ensure that the national archive captures all publication media. ------------------------- Why don't they just use the Wayback Machine on the web which already catalogues all versions of every website since 1996 ... Seems much easier! http://www.archive.org/web/web.php Dirk van der Werff, Editor / Publisher Plants / Aquilegia Publishing http://www.plants-magazine.com/index.asp dirk, plants-magazine.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ian Dickson Subject: Site libraries I've just spoken with the British Library. Nothing. Yet. Typical Lawyers scare tactics. The Law allows for the creation of regulations to govern the deposition of web sites. But as yet no regulations have been created. Current regulations are voluntary and DO NOT cover online publications. I've just spoken to the BL and if you'd like to input into this, write to them. And your MP. (Writing to MPs can have an effect, provided that it's not about politically contentious policy, and provided that it offers constructive ideas. A few years ago I wrote pointing out a silliness in regulations, and the regulation was changed, even though my MP is Tory and this was after 1997) They are aware of the technical issues, but perhaps not of the privacy ones, (DPA implications of sites driven by user settings if that site is archived beyond commercial usefulness? Even worse if the whole thing is a database containing personal data) In my conversation with them they do seem to be looking at the online equivalents of offline publishing - eg electronic journals and the like, where content is essentially static. They certainly didn't have a clue what to make of what we do. http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/legaldeposit.html#elec http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/codeprac.html Ian Dickson http://www.commkit.com [follow-up received by Ian prior to publishing. -adam] Hi, British Library just came back to me. Confirmed that they are waiting for secondary legislation (the regs). Also that they intend to be very selective. Currently they have a list of about 100 sites that they want to archive. Actions for webmasters - do nothing. If BL want to archive your site, they'll contact you to explore what and how. ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living at doing what they most enjoy." - Malcolm S. Forbes |
