| LED Digest 1782: FrontPage Doesn't Kill |
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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 14, 2004 Issue #1782 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Reciprocal Linking: Dead or Alive? ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "I don't like linking." ~ Will Bontrager "...I can't help but assume there is more supporting the 'it need be free' statement..." ~ Dan Thies "There is no concrete evidence that reciprocal linking is ineffective." --== Choosing an SEO ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "Hate to criticize my own industry..." --== HTML Editors? ==-- ~ Derek Andrews "Saying that FrontPage creates bad code is like saying cars kill people." ~ Sheryl Coppenger "...someone who comes in and wants to change the server should be treated with suspicion." --== The Local Search Buzz ==-- ~ Rupert Dick "...we have chosen a different approach which we have been running successfully for over 4 years." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== AdWord Analyzer? ==-- ~ Steve Pronger ===== CONTINUING ================================= <Moderator Comment> I've been feeling a bit under the weather this week. Good timing though because the LED has been superb reading lately, and the posts keep on coming. I've got a few thread-starters, too... just waiting for a window to get them published. Do me a favor and take a peek at our sponsor this week, www.Zairmail.com. They offer direct mail services that may be of use to your business. It's worth a quick look, and you'll be supporting an LED advertiser. If you do check them out, let us know what you think. Feedback is (usually) always good, and maybe we can put our heads together on the direct mail topic. Thanks! Best wishes, Adam ------------------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Reciprocal linking > ... many of the SEO gurus seem to have taken the approach > that if they publicly denounce directory-to-directory reciprocal > linking, maybe they will collectively "disarm" the marketplace, > thus restoring their old advantages... - Dirk Johnson, LED 1780 An interesting post by someone firmly embedded in the link-providing marketplace... Ah the truth, not an easy thing to find in the search industry. But here is the truth, at least as how I, as one hawking SEO services, see it: I don't like linking. There's no challenge to me in doing it. There is however, some real benefit from the traffic it can bring to a site, but we just focus on "linking" from search engines and directories. Our clients best know what sites should be linking to them after we advise them to get links from related sites, "for the traffic, not Page Rank". Yes, linking has and currently does bring benefit to a site, but we feel the linking should approached from the standpoint of receiving related traffic, not in getting "votes" from other sites, and there is a long-view reason for this. History has shown that anything you can do to affect ranking and placement will at some point be detected and countered. If you focus on something that seems to work well today and put your effort into trying to manipulate that and are counting on links to get you good ranking and have it last forever, then you have not seen the changes that have happened in the past. The one thing that we practice is good "General Optimization". No tricks, no rankings, no keyword density, no magic, no spam (as we see it, but your SEO's opinion may be differ...), and just the use of search phrases that people use in the proper way. Good SEO techniques are going to result in a site that will get it's "fair share" of traffic, and that's all we ask. Link away if you must, but also put effort into your text content (still the most effective after all these years), site design, and functionality, and you will avoid being caught up in any fads or lop-sided strategy that comes from looking at but one side of the beast we call a search engine. Thank you, Chris Nielsen The Best Free Search Engine List www.best-free-search-engine-list.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Reciprocal linking > At the same time [the external service that controls > linkage] needs to be free. Such a service needs to > derive its revenue from other venues such as qualified > advertising opt-in. - Rick Gortatowsky, LED 1781 Because of the tone of finality I perceive in it, I can't help but assume there is more supporting the "it need be free" statement than the post contained. Without benefit of considering what wasn't included in the post, which may be things obvious to others, I think I would rather pay for such a service than have it supported by advertising. Several reasons: Companies seem to pay more attention to the needs of those who give them cash, and I would rather have that attention than trading it to supporting advertisers. When sites within the service link to each other, and the service is paid for by the sites, I could count on linking to and from sites that are considered by someone to be valuable enough to pay with cash -- and the quality of the sites are likely to reflect that attitude. Will Bontrager Sooner or later you need CGI. http://willmaster.com/ ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Dan Thies Subject: Reciprocal linking > The SEO pundits seem to be releasing a new wave of "Reciprocal > Linking is Dead" articles. A recent one in particular will likely > get passed around on the "SEO article re-publication circuit"... - Dirk Johnson, LED 1780 Dirk's comments here are right on the money. There is no concrete evidence that reciprocal linking is ineffective. Even if search engines wanted to discount reciprocal links, it's not exactly the easiest thing to do. Having heard presentations from representatives of Google, Teoma, and Yahoo in recent months, specifically on linking, I've heard nothing to validate the theory that they don't like reciprocal links. If you look at the Google approach with PageRank, there isn't really much need for them to "discount" reciprocal links, because the deeper the links page is buried, and the more links it carries, the less it will impact rankings. With Teoma's approach, high quality resource sites are very likely to link to each other, and this reinforces the concept of "community." So from that perspective, quality links will be quality links, regardless of whether there is a link back. Dan Thies SEO Research Labs http://www.seoresearchlabs.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Choosing an SEO Hi all- The "Choosing an SEO" thread can go on forever. So I'd just like to point out a couple of other resources. Interactivemarketing.org has a search engine marketing council, and SEOconsultants.com has a tough screening process. What I like about SEO Consultants is that they group companies by state. So you might have a qualified search engine marketing (SEM) firm in your backyard. I hope Adam will give me a little latitude to share my experiences with professional SEO organizations and training companies. A few years ago, I was a founding board member of an international SEM organization. We had the same goal that other SEO organizations have -- to promote ethical SEM practices. Well, one of the board members was in the adult industry. I didn't have a problem with that because (like it or not) the adult industry is huge on the Web. And it was good that there was someone in the group who was willing to represent that area. Jump ahead a few months. I find out that he is a heavy-duty search engine spammer. Keyword stuffing in tags, multiple pop-up windows, alternative HTML and so forth. Not exactly someone I want to be associated with as a SEM professional. Did the board do anything about the spammer? No. And that's when I realized that it is very difficult to find "ethical" search engine marketing organizations that really practice what they preach. If someone violated Google's terms of services, do you think the organization would tell the member to clean up his act (within 30 days for example) or the membership will be terminated? I doubt it. Believe me, we end up helping company sites get unbanned and unpenalized from what many would consider "ethical" SEM firms. I've seen search engine spammers on boards, with professional training certification, and so forth. Basically, until I hear search engine software engineers (not sales / ad people) endorse an organization, I have my doubts. Hate to criticize my own industry, but that is my personal opinion. Maybe if I didn't regularly help sites get unbanned, I'd have a different opinion. Just my 2 cents. Best wishes, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director ~ Search Engine Visibility book now available http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Derek Andrews Subject: HTML editors I use Front Page 2000 and I am quite happy with it. But like any tool one uses, it takes time to learn how to use it effectively, and understand its limitations. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't have an understanding of HTML. My first websites were handcoded, and although I couldn't remember the syntax well enough to write it, I do understand how HTML works and can undertand the code well enough to go in and fix problems. Sometimes this happens when I manage to get a break tag placed inside the end of a link tag, a problem which can be avoided in WYSIWYG if it is used with care. I am currently writing code that uses CSS for style and tables for layout. I don't use any of the more advanced things that FP can do, partly because I don't want to spend the time it will take to figure out the implications this may have on the code. So whenever I start a new site, I go in to Tools > Page Options > Compatibility, and set Browsers, Browser versions and Servers to 'Custom', and turn off all the 'technologies' except CSS 1.0. This leads to fairly simple and clean code which I am perfectly happy with. Probably better than the results I could achieve now by handcoding, and FrontPage certainly make me more productive. But like any tool, one needs to know how to use it and understand the limitations of the tool and the user. Saying that FrontPage creates bad code is like saying cars kill people. Derek Andrews, woodturner. Wedding favors and other great gift ideas. http://www.seafoamwoodturning.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Sheryl Coppenger Subject: HTML editors > One of the biggest 'red herrings' I hear from the Unix guys > is that Microsoft-based web sites suck because they aren't > 'cross-platform' portable. Again, I restate myself by saying > "WHO CARES". - Marty R. Milette, LED 1781 Excuse me, but I'm a "UNIX guy" (of the female persuasion) and when I'm talking about cross-platform compatibility I'm always talking about browser / client compatibility rather than whether the web site would run on a UNIX or Linux machine. I agree with you that someone who comes in and wants to change the server should be treated with suspicion. So should someone who wants to rewrite the site because he doesn't understand the language. However, I've seen UNIX-ignorant consultants pull that trick in the opposite direction myself. That said, most of the sites that I have problems with viewing on a non-Explorer browser or on a non-PC client machine have been written for a Microsoft-based server. I think that's mostly because there are a lot of people out there who never use anything but a PC and Explorer developing web sites. Our site runs Apache on UNIX servers and provides mySQL database. Apache has about twice the web server market share of Microsoft last I looked. The server architecture and software are well-documented in our facility documentation area. But a couple of times a year I get a user who's all in a dither because he's developed a site in ASP and ACCESS and was expecting to just dump it on the web server here and go. If I had enough resources, there are ASP emulators I could run here but that doesn't take care of the ACCESS problem. And most of the people who are developing this way are using ACCESS inappropriately anyway. It's meant for an individual's desktop database, not for a web site with a lot of updates. That's why you want an SQL or some other truly multi-user database (which ACCESS wasn't last I looked). A cross-browser-, cross-client-capable web site can be built on either a Microsoft or a UNIX / Linux platform. "UNIX guys" I'm familiar with generally get in "Microsoft sucks" mode because of some of the security history that goes along with Microsoft products. Both IIS and Explorer have had some very bad bugs that were fixed very slowly. The Gartner Research group recommended that people switch away from the IIS server in the wake of the Nimda and Code Red worms and Explorer's willingness to spread viruses has been meat for satirists. See links below. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/02/gartner_slams_ms_security_after/ http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtml Sheryl Coppenger, SEAS Computing Facility Staff The George Washington University http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~sheryl ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Rupert Dick Subject: Local search > C. B. Malley wonders why the Internet cannot just be divided > up for "local search" purposes, such as into separate domain > names. The problem isn't simply the massive number of > domain names that would be needed... - David Yancey, LED 1779 In the UK sites have been attempted that use multiple domain names (15,000+) to deliver local information and it doesn't work, It is also expensive with the initial purchase and the renewals. As David Yancey states it doesn't really work. At UKVillages.co.uk we have chosen a different approach which we have been running successfully for over 4 years. We have one domain that handles all villages, towns, suburbs and cities across the UK. The site works as a set of geographical points (32,115 to be exact) which represent broadly where people live. At this level all information is collected and presented at in a "local" way usually meaning within 4 miles of the point. Local towns also collect information in a wider area - defined as their catchment. The site uses a dynamic portal that automatically delivers local information from a wide range of websites - deep linking using a range of "geographical information". Users can then add their own information - Local Business, Society, Group, Notice, Event , Wanted/Forsale - and some of these will not include websites. To cover off Davids other point - > They are travellers and others who want to know > more about the areas *outside* their local area. .. UKVillages.co.uk recognised the importance of certain categories these are Accommodation Local Attractions Schools Jobs These are covered in a much wider area. So UKVillages successfully delivers a national website but at a local level. We are constantly improving the model to allow for the way people live. I hope this stimulated some thoughts. Rupert Dick http://www.ukvillages.co.uk ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Steve Pronger Subject: Adword Analyzer > My emails have gone unanswered. Does anyone > know whats going on with [Adword Analyzer]? - Richard Lindner, LED 1780 Richard, I sent a copy of your post to Jeff Alderson, AdWord Analyzer developer, and received a reply within the hour. Jeff suggested that it might be spam filters preventing you from receiving updates because "I send email updates to ALL active users". Perhaps if you try contacting Jeff from a different email account. I've actually switched from AdWords Analyzer to Keyword Analyzer. It does pretty much the same thing but has a better user interface in my opinion. Its developer, Goran Nagy, has been quick to respond with updates and has actually implemented some changes I suggested. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while." - Kin Hubbard |
