| LED Digest 1792: SEO vs SEM, also Flash Email |
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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 28, 2004 Issue #1792 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO - What to Pay? ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "The pricing will be all over the map, as will be the cost-effectiveness..." ~ Mike Banks Valentine "Gomez wants an SEO to do SEM? Very different animals there." ~ Martha Retallick "...expect to pay anywhere from US$700 to $1,000." --== Reciprocal Linking: Dead or Alive? ==-- ~ Mark Whitman "...flagrant violations...achieved nose bleed positions for *highly* competitive keywords." ~ Michael Martinez "Google is looking at in-page content more than anything else." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Site Stats for Non-techies? ==-- ~ Donald Nelson ~ Lee Roberts --== Emails in Flash Files ==-- ~ Richard Graham --== Monkey Encoding Emails ==-- ~ Tom Aman ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Paying for SEO > What I'm after is some guidelines as to what I can expect > to pay for this kind of [SEO/SEM] service and maybe some > chest puffing from those of you who really know this business. - Gomez, LED 1791 The pricing will be all over the map, as will be the cost-effectiveness of each dollar spent. Sorry, but that is the state of the industry at this point. The most expensive are not always the best and the cheapest are not always the worst. One thing that can make this more easy for someone is to contact www.seopros.org and let them send out an RFP to a large number of qualified companies (including ours) and pick over what responses you get based on what you need. You may decided on two different companies, one for SEO and one for PPC. But the process will not be simple or easy, and is the reason we will be moving into more of a consulting and brokering role this year to help companies through this process, but also to guide service providers to focus on where the real value is for clients. Thank you, Chris Nielsen www.seoby.org ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: Paying for SEO Gomez wants an SEO to do SEM? Very different animals there. Some firms do both but you should know the difference between the two when hiring someone to do one or the other for you. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the part you SAID you can do yourself. > I can do all the work on my end as far as setting meta > tags, exchanging links and all that other optimization stuff. Good for you Gomez, you don't need an SEO! Although I doubt you understand all the variables well enough to fully implement an effective strategy across all four of your company web sites between your trade shows and national product launches. There is far more involved than I think you are willing to fuss with, considering your time constraints. If your company truly valued free organic search traffic, they'd allow you more time to do those tasks that improve your company search engine rankings. I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of unexplored SEO strategies that could justify outsourcing the SEO as well as the SEM. There is far more involved that metatags and links. Strategies such as page architecture, internal linking structure, information libraries, glossaries, online press rooms, directory structure, sitemaps and more. You said: > The company I work for has asked me to put together a plan > to bid on, and manage, key term buys at Google and Overture. This is known as search engine marketing (SEM) or to be more accurate, search engine ADVERTISING. Keyword research, bid management and ROI factoring are handled by specialists that using entirely different strategies, tools and motives than do SEO's. It seems that one obstacle to outsourcing is lack of clarity about the differences between SEO and SEM. Then comes the difficult part of your question - "what I can expect to pay for this kind of service" - and to that, there are dozens of answers. Don't expect a single clear answer on pricing because there are many different business models to choose from. Because buyers are so averse to paying in advance for the service and waiting for results, search engine marketers have worked out a variety of performance based pricing models. Pay-per-lead, pay-per-click and cost-per-action plans abound out there. The problem is that they are usually funneled through third party sites for tracking purposes. I was recently interviewed for an article on SEO pricing because I'm one of the few that posts pricing plans on my site. The problem, as I told that interviewer, is that I put those prices up only to appease those who must have them in order to make a decisison to CONTACT me. I usually find that potential clients don't NEED all the ingredients of a package price and that they would benefit from pieces of multiple packages. Fact is - I always lean toward a custom price based on what that customer needs, which is determined by what their online competition is doing. It's not an easy thing to be in a complex business. ;-) Good luck Gomez. I hope you get the answers and the SEM you need. Mike Banks Valentine http://seoptimism.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: Paying for SEO When you're first getting your site SEO-ed for the first time, expect to pay anywhere from US$700 to $1,000. This is what the reputable SEOs serving small businesses charge. Now, as for measuring ROI, here are some tips: 1. If you're doing e-commerce, code a "referred by" field into your customer order form. I have one in mine, and quite a few people say that they've found me via one of the search engines. 2. Use a server log analysis tool. At this moment, ClickTracks appears to be "best of breed" in this category. 3. Study the positioning reports that your SEO provides. My SEO guy offers links to his reports, and I go through 'em with a fine tooth comb. They tell me what terms I rank well with, and what engines I rank well with. I can correlate this info with what my customers are telling me in the "referred by" field, so I'll know which search terms are bringing me the most traffic from, say, Google. Hope this helps! Martha Retallick "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Reciprocal linking > Yahoo! DIRECTORY listings cannot be influenced by meta > tags, inbound links... Yahoo! determines its search results > rankings on the basis of the title line, descripiton, category, > URL, and click popularity of its directory listings. - Michael Martinez, LED 1789 In the example I gave: > ... I have a customer who paid a SEO company a pretty hefty > price and all they did was [create] full-on spamdex pages that... > have top 5 positions in the Yahoo index for really tough > keywords... - Mark Whitman, LED 1787 I was describing the position these classic spamdex doorway pages hold in the Yahoo index (ooops, I mean Yahoo! :) not the directory. It's common knowledge how Yahoo is *supposed* to determine rank however the fact remains, these flagrant violations of what we all (including me) thought were commandments in the SEO bible achieved nose bleed positions for *highly* competitive keywords. I'd tell you the keywords and URL for you to check it out yourself but obviously the site owner wouldn't be too happy about that. BTW a couple of those pages got picked up by Google as well but they didn't get nearly as high rank. So Michael, you're well informed, how can this be? Mark Whitman -------- new post - same topic ------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Reciprocal linking > ... from where I'm sitting, link farms and worse continue > to propel sites to the top of the rankings... link farms in > the guise of directories, are the most prominently featured > sites for many commercial search queries at Google. - Jill Whalen, LED 1787 I run commercial searches every day and I don't see link farms at all. Here are a few random examples of commercial searches. I have no sites that come up in these results: http://snipurl.com/607p [google.com] http://snipurl.com/607r [google.com] http://snipurl.com/607s [google.com] http://snipurl.com/607t [google.com] [7 more examples removed] Here is one where I do have a site that comes up in the top rankings: http://snipurl.com/607m [google.com] No link farms. No inflated link popularity. It goes on and on. Getting good rankings at Google is not driven by link popularity. That hasn't been the case for ages. Are there link farms out there? Sure. Are the links the secret to getting top rankings? Nope. The fact that some sites may still be coming up high in searches just underscores how confusing today's Google is for most people. Anyone relying on link inflation is just wasting their time. It's not necessary. If people are seeing link farm sites ranking well in search results, it's not the inbound links that are doing the trick. This ancient theory needs to be put to rest. Google is looking at in-page content more than anything else. If you've been out there begging people to link to you in the misguided belief that that is the secret to success, get over it. Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Visualizing Middle-earth http://www.xenite.org/ ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Don Nelson Subject: Website Stats > ... I am ready to purchase a service or a program that > will allow me to gather and view each of my site stats > in a separate, neat, graphical format. The major programs > or services available are too sophisticated and/or too expensive. - Terry Riley, LED 1791 Dear All, In LED 1791 Terry Riley asked about a statistics gathering that is low cost and does not require great technical knowledge. I think a simple log analysis program such as Open Web Scope (costs $100) would do the trick for him. You need to be able to download your access logs from the server, and then run them through program. I find this product easy to use and that it gives a good idea of what is happening on my websites. So if you can get your logs, then I think this is a low-cost solution to the problem of tracking the progress of several websites. (I am not connected with this product, just a user) Sincerely, Donald Nelson www.a1-optimization.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Lee Roberts Subject: Website Stats > ... I am not a techie and don't know how... to crawl > around the files on the server of my hosting company... - Terry Riley, LED 1791 I can appreciate the feeling there and am in no way soliciting your business. However, I'd like to make people aware of other services available. ServerMatrix.com a division of ThePlanet.com offers Urchin 5 on their Linux servers. Each server comes with the ability to monitor 100 accounts. Urchin has some really good statistics. You can learn about them at www.urchin.com. Sincerely, Lee Roberts http://www.roserockdesign.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Richard Graham Subject: Spam proof emails Hello, A while back I picked up the great tip, from the LED, of putting my email addresses in a Flash file. e.g. http://genkienglish.net/email.swf It's hopefully spam resistant, but unlike a picture it's actually clickable. Not everyone has Flash, but I'm sure it would easy for someone to knock up a program that lets you input your email address and it outputs the swf file to use in your site. I'm sure this would be a great service for lots of webmasters, and provide quite a bit of traffic for whoever wrote the application! Be genki, Richard Graham http://www.genkienglish.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Monkey encoding This is sort of a side issue with regard to email addresses - if I am sending in a post in response to something posted by another member, I have been in the habit in sending that person a copy of my response IF their email address appears with the post in LED. That way, even if my response never appears in an issue of LED, at least the original poster will be aware of my response (i.e. it gives them some feedback). Just wondering how other LEDers feel about this - is this a good or bad thing to do?? Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com amant, cyberspyder.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. 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