| LED Digest 1805: Navigating the SEO Jungle |
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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 ................................................ May 19, 2004 Issue #1805 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Credible SEOs and SEMs ==-- ~ James Miller "My company works with BDO Stoy Hayward in the UK in verifying suppliers..." ~ Chris Nielsen "At this time there is no real 'recognized authority', but there are some to claim to be." ~ Shari Thurow "...this is coming from an SEO - there really isn't a good organization." --== The Demise of Email? ==-- ~ Karl L. Baldwin "I have been using SpamCop for several years." ~ Stu Langley "I did not realize that to join a group at Yahoogroups was as permanent as marriage." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Yahoo Site Match ==-- ~ Janet Attard ~ Aaron Wall ~ Mike Banks Valentine ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: James Miller Subject: Credible SEOs > Where can I find an industry standard or required > credentials that I can use to validate a potential SEO? > Is there a published list of "Who's Who" among credible > SEO's who meet an industry standard? - Clint Whitsett, LED 1804 My company works with BDO Stoy Hayward in the UK in verifying suppliers. The same techniques would work for CEO's and in fact anybody who applies for a job. Although the techniques are UK based at present, they should work in most other countries. Basically, you type the name, address, phone, e-mail etc. of a person into a dialog and the program then generates a validity report on what it knows about these things. We use various commercially available look-ups, so we don't break any confidences. The program then generates a series of Google, map and news feed searches, which then find anything known about the person. In the UK (and Canada) this is easier as the post codes are so distinctive and refer to about a dozen houses. For instance type my post code "CB8 9LU" into Google and see what you get. Add "Miller" to it and you find a lot about me. We use this to check the conformity of a person with the information he has submitted. There is also this fact, that if a person is not nice to know, someone will put his details on the web in a blog or something. The correct narrow search will find it. One thing we have proven though, is that it is great for spotting fake references in CV's. James Miller Daisy Analysis www.daisy.co.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Credible SEOs > I'd be a lot more willing to talk to someone who's solicitation > indicates that they are "Google certified number 92PKJ-4372" > and I can look up that number to verify. - Clint Whitsett, LED 1804 Ah Clint, if only it were that easy. At this time there is no real "recognized authority", but there are some to claim to be. Most of what is going on in this area is divisive and self-serving, or at least that is my opinion. Until there is a "standard" as such for search engines, there can be no standard for SEO services. There are many companies that either provide specific information for each search engine guided by it's posted rules, distill all of the rules and requirements and provide search engines with a somewhat "generic" format that does not offend any, but may not be optimal for all, and those that provide slap-dash services that will return some good results in some systems and little or no results in others. Cost for these services generally range from very high to low in the same order. As I have said many times, how can any SEO company or marketing company that sends you spam really have a service that works? If they cannot get themselves customers, how can they get them for you? I tell potential clients, to visit www.SeoPros.org as a starting point to locate SEO professionals. There as some other sites that also list service provides, and you should use these resources, but keep in mind that several of these sites have set up "standards" that they decided upon and may not represent the industry as a whole. We have started what we hope will develop into a bona fide professional organization not only for SEOs, but also search engine and directory operators at www.SEOBy.org, but at this time we have little to offer clients seeking a wide selection of providers. In the end, your choice of consulting company or service provider should be based on the following: 1). References. Any legit company will have several for you that you can confirm. 2). Client list so you can see a number of sites they have worked on. 3). Do the recommendations, services, and pricing make sense? Ask how much time a project will take in hours and you can get an idea how much you are being charged when quoted a flat fee. 4) Our feeling is that an experienced company should be able to give you pricing for a defined "average project". Some companies say each site is different and that is true, however, some use this as an excuse to "price to the budget". We use a 10 page basic HTML site as a benchmark and have a set price. We know how long it will take and what the expected results are. 5). Ask questions on controversial SEO topics. Are they comfortable with that? Do they take hard positions or are they more flexible with their opinions to reflect an industry with few real standards? 6). What is your overall impression of the company and your contact with them? Do they respond quickly to your emails? Do they answer the phone or call you back quickly? If you act like a small company, are you still treated well? Is the company very busy, or ready to get started today? And the most important part of this is, do they cause you to want to do business with them, because you feel good about what you see and hear? To me #1 and #6 are the most important. If you have been reading LED and doing other research for a while, then you are better prepared than the average person for this process. Thank you, Chris Nielsen Nielsen Technical Services www.best-free-search-engine-list.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Credible SEOs and SEMs Hi all- This is in response to Clint Whitsett's post regarding credible (ethical) SEMs. I certainly identify with his sentiments. Unfortunately, there really aren't any organizations who can verify with 100% certainty that an SEM firm is on the up-and-up. And this is coming from an SEO - there really isn't a good organization. Sure, some of them claim they are ethical, but I do not agree with them. If you pay certain organizations the $200 or $500 or whatever, you can be a member. Well, what if that member spams the engines, will the organization cancel the membership and refund the membership fee? Or do they cancel membership only? Second, I speak from experience. I used to be on the board of a so-called "ethical" SEM organization. But they let known spammers (who continued to spam) into the organization. Kind of defeats the purpose of being an "ethical" organization, doesn't it? I realize that not all SEM organizations are the same. Maybe there is a good one out there, but I don't know about it. Here's a link to the most recent article about search engine spam, written by Danny Sullivan, which I think is applicable to Clint's situation: http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3344581 These are links to some of his earlier articles, which I think contain important information as well: http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2164371 http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/2165161 I can't be 100% objective because I am an SEO. I can tell you that the one site that had the most rigorous screening and did not cost any money to enroll. The site is seoconsultants.com. As for the validity of their screening process? I don't believe any search engine has validated it. I can only say that they reject a lot of applicants. You might want to give them a try. Best wishes, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director ~ Search Engine Visibility book now available http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Karl Baldwin Subject: Email demise > Maybe someone should start a spam-reporting service, > where all of us can forward the spam, and the service > could do the grunt work of reporting to parent companies. ;-) - Tom Anson, LED 1801 Regarding Tom Anson's wish for a place to report spam, there are many. I have been using SpamCop for several years. IT WORKS. Best Regards, Karl L. Baldwin, President/Webmaster Websites Online Inc. www.websites-online.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Stu Langley Subject: Email demise I guess it is not technically spam, but I did not realize that to join a group at Yahoogroups.com was as permanent as marriage. In fact, unsubscribe@yahoogroups was just finger exercise like the Budweiser finger walker. I subscribed to a couple of business groups out of the 600 perused on a cozy Saturday morning as I explored yahoogroups as a resource for finding sales people and business partners in various parts of the country. After a dozen tries, I started adding a copy to the abuse@yahoogroups and the automated response changed. I actually sent the header details when yahoo said that I was not a member of such a group. Any suggestions? I have always assumed there were no real people at yahoo groups support just various email responses but I always figured an unsubscribe was an automated response also. Help! Stu Langley www.stulangley.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Janet Attard Subject: Yahoo Site Match > Has anyone tried Yahoo Site Match? Do you get a > lot of traffic, and does that traffic deliver high value leads? - Dave Roberts, LED 1804 Well, first you have to make sure Yahoo hasn't banned your web site for some undisclosed reason. If it has, paying the review fee and the per-click deposit to Yahoo is a waste of money. Your paid listing will never be seen. Janet Attard Business Know-How http://www.businessknowhow.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Aaron Wall Subject: Yahoo Site Match Using Site Match will not guarantee you more traffic, just more charges. Site Match is good if: 1.) you are going to actively tweak the pages 2.) you are having dynamic site indexing problems 3.) you need a page included quickly 4.) you have rapidly rotating stock 5.) you need the tracking service that comes with it For most sites Site Match is a complete waste of money in my opinion. The money spent on Site Match would usually be spent way better on registering sites with directories and link building. aaron wall http://www.seobook.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: Yahoo Site Match After a period of two months that we've been testing client sites in Yahoo/Overture SiteMatch, we've come to an initial conclusion that it's simply not worth the money. To submit one URL to SiteMatch, it costs a total of US$100 -- $50 so they can pay a "reviewer" to look at the site being submitted, and $50 more to fund a "clickthrough" pot that is charged 30 cents each time a Yahoo searcher clicks on your listing (15 cents for some categories). Our early concern was that the odd LookSmart-style hybrid PPC model would cost too much in clickthrough fees for our clients, since we've provided them with well optimized pages that rank well in Google. But that concern turns out to be unwarranted since those clients we have submitted to SiteMatch have gotten tiny trickles of clickthrough traffic and none have exhausted their initial $50 clickthrough fund from first submission two months ago. On top of that, it appears that Yahoo muddies the waters of traffic monitoring by showing visitors coming from those SiteMatch clickthroughs as originating at Yahoo organic searches. Now we've discovered that Overture PPC ads also appear as originating from Yahoo organic searches. We are using traffic analysis software to track and monitor traffic, and so far, all Yahoo referred traffic traces back to Overture PPC ads. Whether this is a weakness in the software or intentional on Yahoo's part, we have yet to determine. We'll be picking apart raw traffic logs to trace them all. The new Yahoo "free" search appears to be non-existent for our clients based on study of the traffic since the end of March when we first submitted these sites to SiteMatch. One of those clients suffered a dramatic loss of business over the last two months and traffic logs show that most of that loss was due to losing ALL Yahoo traffic, when he had done well there before - mostly from Google listings provided to Yahoo before the Yahoo/Google divorce. Early results suggest that the Yahoo absorbtion of Inktomi, AltaVista and Overture and finally dropping Google results, has lead to Overture PPC becoming the only source of traffic from any Yahoo owned search property. It appears Yahoo simply gobbled up the competitors and dumped all their traffic while providing none of their own to make up for the loss! Stay tuned, we'll be looking closer and monitoring trends thoroughly. Mike Banks Valentine http://seoptimism.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems." - Homer Simpson |
