| LED Digest 1819: Ebooks, Linking and Useless Alexa |
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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 10, 2004 Issue #1819 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Website Structure & Profitability ==-- ~ Brad Waller "[AdSense] optimized the price for the advertiser, potentially lowering the value of a click." ~ John Smart "...you can easily show a smaller image to those coming through Google Images..." ~ Aaron Wall "Alexa rankings are useless for most websites." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Ebooks ==-- ~ Martha Retallick --== Outbound Links Increasing Rankings ==-- ~ Michael Martinez ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Brad Waller 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 has a somewhat enviable problem with advertising and his ancient site structure. I'll try to answer the questions I'm competent on... > (2) I added Google ads to about 20% of the site ... the amount > paid over the last month has been decreasing. Anyone know why? There are many factors. They changed the way it all worked to improve things for the advertisers and they warned that some sites would see lower earnings. They optimized the ads, increasing your chance of getting a good ad and a click, but they also optimized the price for the advertiser, potentially lowering the value of a click. When I reviewed your site, I noticed that you rarely got a full complement of ads which leads me to believe that your problem is lack of appropriate inventory. Have you noticed a lot of times where you only have 2 ads (many times the same 2) instead of the usual 4? This indicates that they only have two ads they think will work. I think this means you are leaving a lot on the table. As good as AdSense is, I fear that you could add it to every page and not earn substantially more unless their inventory changed. First, you need to set up channels and name them to match each area of your site. You can then find out which parts of your site do well with AdSense and which ones are not working as well. You can also better determine a "Market" rate for advertising you sell on these pages. Next, if you can get an account with any agency or affiliate program, use those ads as a default for when Google does not have a paid ad to show. This can be a help, but these ads rarely pay better than the AdSense overall. But if you can earn 50 cents CPM from the views AdSense will pay you zero for, you are still ahead. > (3) I was told to re-design the site (which I am willing > to do) and to create sections of each page as PHP. I can't exactly say about the PHP as I'm not technical. I do know that database driven sites *can* be set up for the search engines, but you need to know how to do it. How much do you know? How much will it cost to re-write? I expect the cost outweighs the benefits, as you do have alternatives. I like Dreamweaver, but I'm sure other programs have simple ways to setup a template that makes a certain section of every page update when you make changes. You can set up a master template, and then one for the advertising area for each section and use the program to update pages when you need to. This is still a lot of work, which is why <sales pitch> we developed a service to help you manage your display advertising. Our latest service at Adjungle.com allows you to set up "Zones" where you paste in two lines of Javascript into your site where you want the ads to be displayed, and then you never need to touch your site again. We give each Zone 10 slots where your potential advertisers can buy any or all of them from your site. When the slots are not sold, you have control of 8 of the 10 slots default ad content. Since this content can be AdSense or any other service, you can still use this if it works for you. We make attempts to sell your space, as well as try to get the best default content to show in the default ads we control. </sales pitch> This service is still very new, and we are still developing the default content so our defaults are not paying very well yet. Even so, we should be able to help you get set up with dozen or so ad Zones you will want to properly sell your ad space. > (4) How do I know how many ads... are just > enough without bombarding the visitor? Think like a visitor. When you look at your page and can't find the content, or get distracted by the ads, you will know it is too much. Temper this with your bank account. You can experiment by adding a new ad to your layout for a week and see if users continue to use the site as before (time on site, page views, usual paths, etc.). If the new ad does not impact your numbers, and the traffic and pageviews are still there, you can make more from the additional ads. You can safely use a left side skyscraper and top banner with your current layout. Your left side navigation works very well with skyscrapers. You could add in a bottom banner, or a few "badge" types of ads in the footer or left side, but that starts to get distracting. Many news sites are using the larger formats inside their articles, and you could try that instead of the skyscraper, but I've never really liked the way the page looks with them. The only reason to use the big square and half page sizes would be that you have a buyer ready to pay, and the rate is GOOD. Brad Waller www.adjungle.com waller, ep.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: John Smart Subject: Site structure Hi Brian, To answer issue 1, we have seen a lot of traffic from Google images (given our sites, it amazes me! Who would want those images??). I have been playing with readily available technologies, and discovered that you can easily show a smaller image to those coming through Google Images (or any of the other image search tools that are appearing). You would have the option to give them a 404, or something telling them that their activity is hurting your service, so would they kindly reconsider, or consider donating to the cause! If you want to look into this, all you would have to do is track for access from Google image search (I forget the label, but it is all over my stats) and if that is the referring agent, replace the requested page/image with your choice of new one. This work adds a little to your processor usage, but given the speed that your site is moving at, I think your processor can spare some cycles :o) John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - "A Human touch in a Digital World" ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Aaron Wall Subject: Site structure It does not hurt your PageRank to block your images. Alexa rankings are useless for most websites. Alexa is only mildly accurate if you are in the top 10,000 or so sites. Google changes the rates they pay on ads based on the value they assume the click is worth. They don't give out a bunch on how the technology works (else people would manipulate it) but they made the change not that long ago. It is fine to have file extensions of PHP. If you have a bunch of inbound links to inner pages you will probably want to rerout the links using a 301 redirect or to use php without changing the file extension. If you feel like your ads are bombarding the visitor then they probably are. Always good to stop short of that point. thanks aaron wall http://www.seobook.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Martha Retallick Subject: Ebooks > 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) - Nancy Cardinali, LED 1818 In answer to Nancy's questions about e-books: In order to produce an e-book, it's best to have your manuscript in digital format. Then, after you've edited it and had it proofread, turn it over to someone who is an experienced e-book designer. Your most important design considerations will be an e-book file size that is fairly small. I'd say no bigger than 2-3 megabytes. Be forewarned that using a lot of graphics will blow up your file size in a hurry. Also, if you want to have your e-books printed, make sure that your designer takes this into account. If you look at printed books, the right and left pages have different layouts. However, when viewing PDF files, most people prefer to view one page at a time. This leads a lot of e-book designers to create right-page layouts throughout the entire book. What you want is a "neutral" layout that could be used for a right or left page in a printed book. BTW, if you want to get your e-books printed, I'm told that Cafe Press does a pretty good job. > 2) I'm interested in selling chapters &/or entire book Both business models are viable. In fact, I'm doing this in my e-bookstore right now. > 3) I have seen companies who offer to do all the work, but > I'm terribly UNimpressed with their website -- esp. the code. Truth be told, I haven't found the perfect "do it all" company yet. But I'm still looking! > 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. If, by this, you mean a shopping cart, I would suggest outsourcing the cart to another company. A lot of people in the e-book field use ClickBank. You don't need a merchant account to deal with them. Others, who have merchant accounts, tend to go with 1ShoppingCart.com or one of its resellers. Hope this helps! Martha Retallick "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Outbound links > Most search engine studies are focused on keyword > analysis, with linking taking a distinct back seat... - Dirk Johnson, LED 1818 (snip of lengthy proposal for people to study backlinks) If anyone wants to understand the effect links have on Web site RANKINGS IN GOOGLE'S SEARCH RESULTS, they need to do more than just study the backlinks. They need to take into account the 100+ other factors Google refers to. Simply looking at links provides absolutely no statistical information of any value whatsoever. If anyone wants to know whether they NEED hundreds or thousands of backlinks, that is easily enough acccomplished. Just follow Google's advice on what to put into your page content: title tags, header tags, etc. Add some text and a few outbound links. Put the page up on your existing site, add it to your site, and link to it from your main index page. Then go submit the URL to Google, if one is feeling anxious Wait a couple of months (usually takes less time for me, but your mileage may vary). Go look for your page. Then decide how much effort you need to put into exchanging links with other Webmasters. There are a few -- VERY FEW -- search phrase categories which are so competitive that you need to do more than the basics. Most commercial search categories (which the majority of you are concerned with) are dominated by poorly designed Web sites. It's usually easy to get past them with a well-designed page and a minimum of links. Many of these sites look really good. They have beautiful graphics. They use all the latest gizmos. They are obviously designed by professional Web designers. Through the years, I have created sites for search terms related to pharmacies / medicines, extremely popular movies, celebrities posters, books, etc. I have pushed out affiliate link pages, essays, discussion forums, and combination pages. I don't always get the number 1 ranking on search results. I consistently get into the top ten with the majority of my first efforts. I DO NOT SOLICIT LINK EXCHANGES. Haven't done that for years. You don't need them. If *I* don't need them, *YOU* don't need them. I DO limit my content to a small handful of domains. By building up content, I make each domain more valuable in Google's over assessment. But Google's valuation really doesn't mean anything (and I am referring to the Toolbar PageRank, the 1..10 valuation). What matters to google the most is how relevant your content is to whatever is being searched for. I can find many of my pages through multiple searches. They come up better in some searches than others. Some of my number 1 listings come up in the low hundreds for different search terms. You have to pick your target and go for that. Anything else is just cream (and with enough content, you get LOTS of cream -- it is inevitable). The hardest Web site format to optimize for search engine results is the database-driven catalogue site. Let me tell you a secret that Amazon has exploited: let your customers review your products, and then provide your content to your affiliate sites through XML "Web services" feeds. Lately, I have been running to a LOT of these kinds of content sites. They cannot be avoided. Some retailers will find this easier to do than others. (For example: How many people will want to review screw drivers and wrenches? But if even one person is willing, you have INSTANT CONTENT.) Now, maybe Google will get tired of serving up Amazon XML affiliate content. Google never does the same thing for long anyway. After all, they got tired of serving up link popular sites a very long time ago. Google wants content over links. Links remain important to their strategy, but if you're just focusing on links, and wondering why the other guys keep doing better, I just told you. I'm not here to sell anything to anyone on this list. I'm just here to learn and share. I HAVE learned, and I AM sharing. Take that for what it's worth. Michael Martinez, Author Understanding Middle-earth, Parma Endorion, and Visualizing Middle-earth http://www.michael-martinez.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We find it's always better to fire people on a Friday. 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