| LED Digest 1870: Searching for the Holy Grail |
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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 ............................................... September 16, 2004 Issue #1870 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Future of SEO ==-- ~ Pat McCarthy "...I'm still not sold that something will overtake the crawler model as the dominant 'find' method..." ~ John Barendrecht "Perhaps PageRank and incoming / outgoing links are not the holy grail." --== Alternative Browsers ==-- ~ Jim Gatton "...would the big powerful sites do better if they were designed more simply?" ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Miva on Macs ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix ~ Gordon Moe ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Pat McCarthy Subject: Future of SEO > The mass of people who can barely send an email > are not going to learn skillful searching in Google. - Michael Linehan, LED 1868 First, let me state that I wholeheartedly agree that in 5-10 years the web will probably be drastically different, it's difficult to predict, and I would not be surprised if someone overtook Google or some other method of finding things on the web took shape. That being said, is Michael's statement really true? I think globally there is obviously lots of room to grow the world's online population, but as it stands now I've seen studies that in "developed" countries they feel the online population will not grow all that much. The penetration level in the USA / Europe / etc. just doesn't have that much further to go. I'm not sure if those studies are accurate or not, but if they are I don't know if there is this huge mass of uneducated internet users who will find Google too difficult and use directories instead. Uneducated internet users would primarily come from the older population who hasn't lived with computers for the majority of their life and don't embrace them. The future growth on the web is all the children and younger generations who are growing up from day one using the internet. My two-year old daughter plays games on the web with me already. Is she going to find searching using Google to be too complicated? She'll probably be able to search Google as soon as she learns how to spell. Plus, uneducated users tend to become educated and better as they use something. So, while it's very well possible that new methods of finding things take shape, I don't buy the argument that people won't master skillful searching on Google. For most searches it doesn't even need to be that skillful. Plus, crawlers are just getting better, and increased competition from Yahoo and MSN should continue to make the crawling method even better. I still think the problem of directory searching lies in having to remember which directories have what kind of content, and the speed it takes to find things in that method. I know I find lots of sites through links, mini-directories on sites, but I'm still not sold that something will overtake the crawler model as the dominant "find" method anytime soon. Pat McCarthy Palo Alto Software http://www.paloalto.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Future of SEO > I reviewed a situation yesterday in which the threshold to > compete effectively on Google would require about 500 > links, just to begin reaching parity with the top 5 sites. - Dirk Johnson, LED 1869 A few weeks ago, I was approached by a SEO company. I looked at their #1 positions on Google. Afterwards, I researched and found other sites they had done with #1 positions and randomly called some owners. They seemed satisfied. The only thing I noticed was all the #1 sites had a Google PageRank of 0, and had no more than 4 incoming links. No hidden text, redirects, links, etc. All searches showed 600,000 to 8 million results in Google. One of my own pages has been #1 or 2 on Google, Yahoo and MSN for the past 2 years. During a Google dance, it may drop off the radar screen for a few days, but it always comes back. This page has PR of 5 but 0 incoming links, and no links outside my site. I don't do optimization as the products change all the time, and I can't change a product description just to suit the SE. I really have no idea why Google likes it. Sorry Dirk, but it is "just dumb luck". Search for my keyword returns 3 to 12 millions results, depending on SE. Perhaps PageRank and incoming / outgoing links are not the holy grail. Maybe writing search engine friendly pages really works. Maybe SEO is not dead. I must agree with David Yancey that perhaps the price of SEO will be out of reach for most newcomers. But this indicates poor business planning rather than cost of SEO and marketing. Build it and they will come? Only in movies! If you built a bottled water store in the middle of the Sahara dessert, how much drive-by traffic can you expect? I have no link strategy but the site has accumulated a few links over the years. If people email me about linking, I go on a case by case basis whether I want to link or not. If it sounds like a canned response, DELETE. One of the problems newcomers face is conflicting reports about what works - high PR value, links strategy, SEO, Google Adwords, Overture, directories, local directories, doorway pages, hidden text, etc. Also, what works for one site, may not work for another. Which one is most effective? Where should I spend 95% of my time? Which SE is most effective in converting traffic into customers? If I only knew ... John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Jim Gatton Subject: Alternative browsers My question regarding the browser and design discussion is, what kinds of sites are we talking about that "break" and need "tweaking" in these non-I.E. browsers? I design sites for I.E. 6.0. I use the word "design" lightly. If anyone ever sues me for being artistic I'll beat that suit easily just by referring the judge to one of my websites. I'm using a little bit of CSS now to reduce code bloat but I structure everything using tables. I think my sites are simple. Very basic. And, people buy stuff. When I view my sites in Mozilla Firefox not only does everything look fine, it looks exactly the same as it does in I.E. So I'm kind of confused and my question becomes at what level of technical complexity do I start worrying about breaking and tweaking? I do know that as soon as I start trying to structure page elements via CSS that I face breaking and tweaking problems. One of my additional questions then is whether the extra code needed for tables is really all that big a deal if we factor in the extra time necessary to structure page design via CSS? Are the majority of LED readers in my position of running very basic sites so that breaking and tweaking are non-issues or is the real reason I'm not a millionaire yet in large part because I'm still designing for Internet Explorer? Or, (much less facetiously) would the big powerful sites do better if they were designed more simply? Jim Gatton castleblade.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Miva on Mac > I'd appreciate it if anyone out there using a Mac could take > a look (at http://www.chooseydiapers.com ) and give me > some insight on code changes I could make. - Susan Reid-Pfau, LED 1868 Dear Susan Reid-Pfau I have a Mac G5 running OS 10.3.5 (Not the very latest) and tested the page http://www.chooseydiapers.com/taffetainfantbib.html as well as the www.chooseydiapers.com page on Mac's Safari, Explorer 5.2 for Mac and Netscape 7.1 for Mac. They all made a mess out of the pages. The drop down menus were only triggered at a hairline location just at the bottom of what look as though they should be buttons at the top and several did not appear to correspond with the product line IDs in the upper buttons (if they are buttons, they are not active links). The drop down menus did not appear to be links since once the mouse passed over the hairline, they did not stay up. The page arrangement was very unstable from browser to browser with content rearranging itself to a large degree. Frankly, I made the mistake of setting up a client with Miva a few years ago at the recommendation of my then host www.addr.com who provided it as a standard e-commerce solution. I spent so much unbillable time trying to make the darn thing work and trying to figure out how the control panel worked (I am a designer not a programmer) that we eventually abandoned Miva for a very simple e-commerce solution gleaned from these very pages of LED that does not have the bells and whistles but has been working without problem for the last couple of years on both PCs and Macs. But then my client is small with not many products and even has to close the store when his products are out of season, so it is perfect. Coupled with Authorize.net or PayPal to handle the money transactions. But if you check your visitor tracking logs, you may find that you have so few Mac user visitors / customers that if Miva works fine for PCs, it is cheaper to retain what you have than change it. My clients sites have from 2% to 10% Mac users depending on the marketing space they occupy. Just like the debate over whether you should build a site that will work perfectly on every browser out there and the pros and cons, this is very similar in many ways. Cost over lost returns. Good luck Peter D'Aprix - Visual Communications http://peterdaprix.com peter, peterdaprix.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Gordon Moe Subject: Miva on Mac Susan, According to my quick audit, the issue is not related to Miva. The problem exists on standard HTML pages and those generated by Miva Merchant. Your drop-down menus appear to be coded incorrectly. While I am not a programmer, I have seen inconsistencies between PCs and Macs as it relates to browsers. (Actually I think it is more of an IE vs. Mozilla issue.) Recent versions of both Safari and Opera browsers display your drop down menu poorly with unusable links. If you insist on keeping the dropdowns, try using the drop down menu code for sale on this site - not cheap, but they have spent considerable time 'cross-platform-browserizing' the code. What is your time worth? Several big dogs use it. http://www.opencube.com/ Hope this helps, Gordon Moe http://www.eBirdseed.com/ using Miva Merchant Your birds deserve the quality, you deserve the convenience. ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun." - Pablo Picasso |
