| LED Digest 1813: Controlling Forum Moaners |
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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 ................................................ June 2, 2004 Issue #1813 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Controlling Forum Moaners ==-- ~ Richard Graham "But what do you do about the small group of eternal pessimists who keep on dragging boards down?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Affiliate Sales Reps ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "How much time and effort are you willing to put into training affiliates?" --== Credible SEOs and SEMs ==-- ~ Bob Wakfer "SEO and good design goes hand in hand." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Searchclimbers ==-- ~ Aaron Wall ~ Bonnie Jo Davis --== Outbound Links Increasing Rankings ==-- ~ Simon McArdle ======= NEW ===================================== From: Richard Graham Subject: Moaners on discussion boards Like many sites I have a discussion and ideas board where people can post comments or ideas or whatever, the idea being to create a community where people can help each other out. But what do you do about the small group of eternal pessimists who keep on dragging boards down? I've tried barring DNS numbers, deleting messages, I tried making it members only, but they just keep re-registering under different names, I even tried an "Acceptable Use Policy" but they started arguing against having a "let's keep things positive" comment in there!!! Normally I'd let it go, but when new visitors come to my site and all they see is these types of posts that's the impression they take away from the site. I know there's a solution out there, anyone care to share? Thanks in advance, Be genki, Richard Graham ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Michael Martinez Subject: Affiliate reps > I'd like some advice on how to deal with my affiliates. > I'd like to treat them as independent sales representatives, > and need help with the following... > 1. What sort of legal contract I should have with them - Martha Retallick, LED 1812 Look at the contracts offered by successful online merchants. Most of them are fairly simple. > 2. How to train them. This is where you run into trouble. How much time and effort are you willing to put into training affiliates? I am an experienced affiliate, but I deal with multiple merchants. While some of them offer tutorials, none of them actually train affiliates. In fact, your disgust at the lack of performance with your previous affiliate program leads me to wonder just how well you understand online business. Even successful Web operators have a difficult time making sales. The big guys like Amazon succeed on volume, not "quality". > 3. How to monitor their performance Sign up with a service like Commission Junction or Linkshare (although I still won't go back to Linkshare). > 4. How to help them become better sellers Don't do what AllPosters.Com just did to me. They took away my ability to easily create links and replaced it with a "New! Improved!" service that, so far, sucks. I am struggling to figure out their XML Web services, which so far appears to be way too complicated. I don't do business with Amazon, but I understand they also have XML Web services. XML is a very cool standard. But it appears to me that this first generation of Web services tools needs a lot of fixing. > 5. How to screen applicants Don't make more work for yourself than you need to. State your requirements in clear and simple language and provide a form for applicants to fill out. You will not be able to verify their claims of traffic no matter how badly you want to. Until you put your code on their sites. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Bob Wakfer Subject: Credible SEOs > If we write our sites for the search engines, they won't be very > nice for the humans. If we write it solely for the humans, we > may not get all we need to into the search engines. What to do? - John Smart, LED 1812 I have read this type of comment upon numerous occasions and can only conclude that they are written by people with a very limited and faulty understandings of the principles and techniques of SEO. I think this comment is based on the fact that early SEO often included what is know as "keyword stuffing" -- filling a page with 100s or 1,000s of repeated keywords. This practice went out with the covered wagons several years ago. In fact even in well written page content there is a tendency today to reduce keyword density, because it is thought that Google may be penalizing pages that over do it. The major element of SEO today, after designing a page with a good title, the proper use of heading tags, "<.H>", navigation the search engine bots can follow and good informative content, is inbound links. Now inbound links don't appear anywhere on the web site or page. So how can they spoil the page for humans? It is this type of gratuitous advice from people who haven't studied and don't know what they are talking about that continues to give SEO a bad name. SEO without a human friendly site for the visitors to land on is totally in vain. SEO and good design goes hand in hand. They are not opposing forces. Regards, Bob Wakfer Computer Partners http://www.compar.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Aaron Wall Subject: Searchclimbers > ... I have been approached by a company called "searchclimbers." > They offer a pop-up of your web site's home page when certain > keywords are entered in the search engines. You pay an annual fee > per keyword. But first, the searcher must have installed their > software in order to get the pop-up. - William Ernest Waites, LED 1812 Search is such an effective marketing medium because it is not intrusive. Popups may work, but if they approached you out of the blue to sell you some keywords then they may have installed their software via ways which are not in the best interest of the users. Unwanted popups may actually work rather well to damage or completely destroy your brand. Since they only have a Google PageRank of 2 they are either brand new or probably do not know a ton about internet marketing (not that PageRank is an end all be all, but an ad network with 16,000,000 subscribers should probably have been noticed a bit more than that on a social network as large as the web is). This was the Google page abstract from the #2 listing site in Google for Siteclimbers: ------------------ "... Searchclimbers Software, Spyware. ... Unregistered, Hello, Just wanted to let you know of this terrible piece of software called 'Searchclimbers'. ... " http://snipurl.com/6t3p [mickeytheman.com] ------------------ aaron wall http://www.seobook.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bonnie Jo Davis Subject: Searchclimbers William, Late last year a client of mine was approached by "searchclimbers" and was suckered into paying US$700 for the keywords "motivational speaker." She agreed to purchase the keywords without consulting me and should have been alarmed when they refused to accept credit card payment (which would protect her purchase) and insisted that she have a check ready for a courier to pick up the next morning. Sure enough, the courier showed up at 8:00 am, insisted she sign the contract without reading, took the check and left. I found out about this after she paid and signed the contract. I investigated the company and couldn't find one person out of the hundreds that I know that has actually installed their software. I installed it myself and it highjacked my computer and caused it to crash. When I called the company for a refund of the money my client paid they refused. They activated her account without her accepting the online terms and to this day she does get some traffic from it but it is very little. None of it has converted to sales. Beware of companies that require searchers to install a toolbar. As far as I can tell most of the people who download the "searchclimbers" toolbar are actually teenagers. This is not the target audience of most business professionals and "searchclimbers" downloads Kazaa and all sorts of scumware along with their toolbar so a reputable professional would not keep it installed on their system for long. Bonnie Jo Davis Davis Virtual Assistance ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Simon McArdle Subject: Outbound links > Outbound links work for two reasons with Google... - Michael Martinez, LED 1810 Hi Michael, I did not see in any of the information that you posted that says outbound links work with Google. What did I miss? I did hear some guy from Google (marketing dept?... not sure) unwilling to discuss the facts though. Thus adding to the hype. Confirming nothing. > First, as you are adding them, you are creating new content. Since when was adding links considered to be content? I don't know of an official definition of what equates to be content but I would say a link was a pretty week case in anyone's book. Can you show me where in the information that you posted that links are considered to be content with Google and also their definition of content. > Secondly, as you increase your ratio of unreciprocated outbound > links to reciprocated, your site becomes more authoritative. Ah... there is my point confirmed as true. The old authoritive site case. The new 53rd element from the Google algorithm after the infamous Florida update. You have been reading forums on this I see. I do not disagree that there were considerable changes after a major update and there seem to be more and more of these updates from Google... (part of the master Google plan no doubt). What I do disagree with though is people (from whichever side of the linking debate) stating guesses and rumours as fact. Please show me where the facts are to prove the point about ratios and authoritive sites. The scientific proof is lacking from the "WHOLE" SEO world about what Google does and does not count. This is of course part and parcel of the game. Where the game gets cloudy though is when self appointed experts feed the rumour machine until soon fiction really does appear to be fact. Just chip the surface though and you will see that there is not a shred of evidence to prove the points. Only speculation and educated guesses. Please also explain Goggles' definition of a NATURAL link as opposed to an artificial one. I am sure you are very passionate about this linking debate Michael as I have read previous posts from you on this subject. Please do not think I am picking holes in you Michael because I am not. It is your argument that I would like to see the proof for. Regards, Simon McArdle The Logo Company http://thelogocompany.net ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll." - Spinal Tap |
