| LED Digest 1818: PHP on the Cheap, also Ebooks |
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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 9, 2004 Issue #1818 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Website Structure & Profitability ==-- ~ Kelly Hilmer "We are in the process of updating [our] site using ASP as it is datadriven..." ~ Shari Thurow "...the answer is no, the site is not being penalized for the robots.txt file." ~ Ivan Jimenez ".php sites are almost always less expensive to host than .asp sites." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Ebooks ==-- ~ Nancy Cardinali --== Outbound Links Increasing Rankings ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Kelly Hilmer Subject: Site structure > I was told to re-design the site (which I am willing to do) and > to create sections of each page as PHP. Does this make sense > or will the URL have to end in PHP? - Brian R., LED 1817 Brian~ I've been in your position before with making changes to each and every page and it gets completely out of control! We have three websites and two of the three are in HTML. We are in the process of updating the third site using ASP as it is datadriven. A datadriven site may be your answer, however if that is too much to take on at this point, you could redesign the site in a program like Dreamweaver MX. We recently re-designed our sites in DW and took advantage of their templates and libraries features that make the site extremely easy to update. There is even a CD tutorial available at http://www.lynda.com (coincidentally in my area... but I don't have any ties to them other than a happy customer) that only takes about 16 hours to complete. It was great! It gave me all the tips and tricks I needed in a practical hands on approach. We launched our new redesign and have had nothing but compliments since. Plus, when I make a change to the navigation menu, it automatically changes all the pages that have that navigation menu on it as well. If you are willing to redesign the site and want to keep it in HTML, this is the program that I recommend. As you grow your site to other technologies (ASP, PHP etc.) DW will also work for you then as well. It is a great program and very reasonably priced too! I almost don't remember designing the old site in notepad back in the old days. :-) Kelly Hilmer, Director of Online Services http://www.atra.com khilmer, atra.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Web structure & profitability Hi all- This is in response to Brian R.'s post in LED #1817. He asked a number of questions that I would like to share my opinion about. > Has my site been penalized [in Google] just because I do > not want some directories to be indexed in their image search? I have been dealing with this very question at Search Engine Strategies conference since 1999. Google gives the same answer at the conference, and I give the same answer at the conference. And the answer is NO. Capital "N" and capital "O". Google, or any search engine for that matter, is not going to penalize a site just because you don't want parts of it indexed. In fact, I regularly robots exclusion the entire images directory on the sites we design because many of our clients do not want their images to be available in the search results on image searches. The only exception would be if the excluded areas, such as maybe a Javascript or CSS directory, were being used to spam the search engines. But the penalty wouldn't be for the exclusion. It would be for the spam. To be perfectly honest, I had to take this section out of my presentations (robots.txt the images directory) because some of the audience members got too paranoid about this topic. They felt that if their images ranked better in Google, then their text-based Web pages would rank better, too. I do not understand the paranoia. I do not understand the statement Brian R. makes because it seems completely illogical. If any LED subscriber can explain this to me better, I would greatly appreciate it. I can make better presentations on the topic. In the meantime, the answer is no, the site is not being penalized for the robots.txt file. > I even noticed that I lost a bit of ground with Alexa. Alexa has never been and will never be the be-all-that-ends-all in competitive analysis. It does not give you accurate numbers about a site's traffic. It does not give you accurate numbers about a site's conversion rate. Alexa only measures data from people who have downloaded the Alexa toolbar. How Alexa measures traffic is available on this URL: http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html I have been reading and analyzing Web site statistics for years. We give monthly reports to our clients regarding the effectiveness of various conversion points (micro and macro) on a site based on statistics. Among other things. Not once has Alexa even come near matching what our ClickTracks or WebTrends numbers show. I understand the desire to do a competitive analysis on a site. I understand there is software that can help you do that. But it is absolutely no substitute for Web analytics / site statistics software. And your competitors will not be giving you access to that information. So please everyone. Stop obsessing over Alexa. Look at your site statistics. Analyze from those numbers. > I was told [by an Internet advertising agency] to re-design > the site... and to create sections of each page as PHP. When I hear advice from advertising agencies about site design? I tend to cringe. You can use any programming you want for your site. It doesn't have to be PHP. You can use Cold Fusion, Active Server Pages, Java Server Pages, whatever. The file type doesn't matter to the search engines. It's even on the Google site. The URL structure, on the other hand, can cause problems with search engine indexing. I think you are getting bad advice from the agency. Your site needs a usability overhaul, which would address design and site architecture issues. I'd take advice from a usability-based design firm before I'd take advice from an ad agency. Just my 2 cents. Best wishes, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director ~ Search Engine Visibility book now available http://www.searchenginesbook.com/ ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Ivan Jimenez Subject: Site structure Hi Brian, I'm going to keep this short and sweet -- and in the interim, ask the same question many LEDers are probably wondering...: ".php" sites are almost always less expensive to host than ".asp" sites. Pair Networks offers a great product (for ".php") at a really great price Why would you intentionally force Google to decrease the amount of free traffic they're sending you? I "see" your point however I don't necessarily agree with it. Traffic equals $$$ for many informational sites like yours. Sell some advertising space (while Adsense is decent, you could find much better niche-market networks willing to pay you more for your real estate) and keep attracting searchers. They'll inevitably help you profit. Ivan J. Jimenez http://cosmicbreath.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Nancy Cardinali Subject: New Post - Ebooks Hi all, I think this subject was recently touched upon, however, I was not interested then; I am now. Ebooks 1) I have the physical document (published or not) 2) I'm interested in selling chapters &/or entire book 3) I have seen companies who offer to do all the work, but I'm terribly UNimpressed with their website -- esp. the code. 4) I'm wondering what programs are good to use on one's own website; one that is not a commerce website, but an information site. (I have tried to simplify my needs, so be kind!) Anybody have any suggestions? Ideas? Thanks, Nancy Cardinali nancy52, cwo.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Outbound Links > ... where Google is concerned, there is no longer > anything such as "a mutually beneficial link trade". - Michael Martinez, LED 1816 Many people who have posted on this subject have demanded some form of "proof" from the other people who have made various claims on this subject. That's understandable. Unfortunately, it probably doesn't exist in an easily accessible report, especially with respect to detailed link analysis. Most search engine studies are focused on keyword analysis, with linking taking a distinct back seat. Undertaking such a project in a "scientific way" that holds up to close scrutiny involves a considerable investment of time and resources. Of the published reports that I have read about linking, I've found them to be somewhat shallow in depth, with the subsequent conclusions leaving a lot of doubt. Of course, this does not prevent them from being widely circulated as fact on the web. Fortunately, anyone can do their own link back analysis. I do them almost daily, in one form or another. Some are more complex than others, depending upon the need at the moment. Here's how you can do this yourself. Buy a copy of LinkSurvey ( www.linksurvey.com ). Enter some keyword terms into Google. Use terms that represent actual and real life competitive search terms. The word "travel" is a very popular search, but it is not realistic from the typical site-owner's perspective. The term "Myrtle Beach vacation rental" is a lot more representative of what most people search for when they have a destination in mind. The same goes for real estate, so add locality qualifiers. Try some product terms for automotive items, or household items, or your hobby. For the most practical results, don't be too arcane, or too general. For each search term that you choose, enter the top 10 listed domains into LinkSurvey, and run the link back reports. This will provide a lot of raw data. Then take that and parse it down to determine where those links come from. Look for things like the number of unique domains pointing to a site, the number of multiple links from a single domain, and what type of page each link comes from, such as a link directory, a guestbook, a forum posting, an editorial mention, an affiliate link, etc. Compile the results. After you've done dozens of these reviews (note that a few examples is not a "sample". I've done probably a couple of hundred over the years, in a lot of industries), certain trends will emerge. At that point, you will not need a "white paper" study to know what works with respect to linking. And you will see that a lot of the "popular" theories and myths that have been circulated on the forum boards are completely worthless. Those theories are often based on assumptions and that the theorists desperately *want* to be true, but that don't hold up consistently in real examples. Which was the basis of my post in LED Digest #1811, exposing many of these myths and unfounded theories. Yes, I am in the linking business. So I am suspect by that condition, if that's the position anyone wants to take. But I am also not some anonymous poster in a discussion board using some kind of strange alias and a pre-conceived theory to drive home. Instead, I prefer to look hard at what works and what is cost effective, and then act on it. There are a lot of ways to get links, and many are quite valid. Each one of them has a cost of time and money, and a time-frame to success. So far, basic directory-to-directory reciprocal linking, done honestly and with vigor, has held up very well from the cost / benefit / time perspective. So that's what I decided to focus on. A site owner should deploy as many ways to get links as is practical, and focus on those that yield the best return-on-investment for their situation. In some cases, that may not be directory-to-directory reciprocal linking. It might be content citations. Or an in-house affiliate program. No matter what, it takes some effort to find out what works. The ability to arrive at the facts is out there, for anyone who wants to take the time to look into it. I've described the methodology here. Curiously, those who hold dear to these many unproven linking theories rarely seem to explain how this analysis can be done, or make any references to having done it. Maybe they don't know how, or maybe they just don't want to do it, or maybe they have seen too many contradictions to their theories. But they never seem to mention how to get to the bottom of the issue. Thanks. Dirk Johnson LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com djohnson, roiwebsites.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of "King Lear": it misses the point somehow..." - Nick Hornby |
