| LED Digest 1871: The Challenge of High Rankings |
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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 21, 2004 Issue #1871 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Future of SEO ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "I'd challenge anyone to rank on the first page of Google index results for highly-competitive terms..." ~ Jake Baillie "There is proof that the Google link: command is intentionally broken." --== Alternative Browsers & Design ==-- ~ Trevor Johnson "Today, all browsers render HTML (non-CSS) tables the same. No more compatability problems." ~ John Barrick "...new technologies promise better web sites, but may be troublesome at first..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== The Web Hosting Thread ==-- ~ Tom Anson --== Miva on Macs ==-- ~ Tom Aman ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Future of SEO > Perhaps PageRank and incoming / outgoing links are > not the holy grail. Maybe writing search engine friendly > pages really works. Maybe SEO is not dead. - John Barendrecht, LED 1870 John, I need to defend myself. Spin control...:) You overlooked this statement in my post: "I still see many situations where "doing the right things" can turn into first page SERP results rather quickly." The situations you mention, and probably many others like them that can still be found, reflect that specific and highly-focused keyword terms and combinations can still provide these "dumb luck" results you mention, if the pages are what Google likes. Nevertheless, in the course of my own work, I need to review a lot of very competitive keyword situations for my clients, and not just carefully selected ones that make for good exceptions. By and large, it is a combination of page optimization and linking that drives the Google index results. One without the other usually relegates a site to the hinterlands. And most often, because the optimization is similar among the top indexed sites, it is the site with dominant link popularity that gets the top index position in Google. And the other sites following right behind it in the results will have their own significant link popularity, but with generally decreasing frequency that reflects their index position. I just never see sites with small numbers of back links (less than 10) showing up near the top for the truly competitive search terms (defined here by me as having Wordtracker numbers over 1000). It could happen, and probably does, but I have just never seen it myself, after doing analysis on hundreds of terms over the years. I am not saying that those links necessarily come from the kind of reciprocal linking work that I do. Maybe they do, maybe not. But they come from somewhere. Establishing link popularity properly and honestly, by whatever method, takes time and money. Google's algorithm rewards and reflects this investment. People may disagree with this philosophically, and they publicly "demand" that Google make changes, but this approach to rewarding links seems to have served Google very well, so far. I'd challenge anyone to rank on the first page of Google index results for highly-competitive terms like "merchant account" or "car loan" or "florida vacation rental", etc. using only page optimization and very few links. I am not trying to be glib, but if it was that easy, everybody would do it. Actually, a lot of people do try this, with most having no luck at all. They end up with just another lost and lonely page, left out there in cold-hearted cyberspace, desperate for attention. Digital litter. Page 1,269,675 of the 1,569,325 other pages. The only visitors are an occasional robot. :( Which leaves their owners at Plan B, where things begin to cost time and money. Serious players who truly want and can use the traffic from a particular term will then decide to make serious SEO / linking investments. It all kind of falls into place, in the same way that traditional marketing costs time and money. Those who are best prepared to capitalize on it will do more of it. I am not an idealist about search engines. They all follow algorithmic rules. People with a financial stake in the results will try to reverse engineer them, and they will react accordingly to what they find. John, I agree with you, and disagree. Anomalies do occur. But site owners who need specific results in highly competitive situations cannot rely on anomalies and dumb luck. They usually prefer to be more proactive. Than means taking the steps that have proven to work in the vast majority of situations. As more sites begin to do this, the cost of competing will continue to climb. Anomalies will gradually begin to be displaced by sites that are tweaked to better fit the profile of what has proven to work best. People are starting to seriously compete for Wordtracker terms with less than 100 results. In my own review of competitive situations, I see only this constant drumbeat of raising the threshold. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Owner LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com djohnson, roiwebsites.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Jake Baillie Subject: Searching for the Holy Grail > 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. - John Barendrecht, LED 1840 The biggest problem newcomers face is that the tools they are told to use are usually broken. There is proof that the Google link: command is intentionally broken. There is solid evidence that Toolbar PR is inaccurate. Almost to the point of maliciousness on their part. > This page has PR of 5 but 0 incoming links, and > no links outside my site. This is not possible. If there are no incoming links to your site, your site has no PR. Google probably doesn't know about it either. Have you checked Yahoo? Newcomers wouldn't know to do that. They would assume it is "just dumb luck". They would not know to go check Yahoo's link command, or to perform a more advanced query on Google to actually find out what the database actually contains. Newcomers don't know how to determine the difference between what a search engine database actually contains, and what a search engine is displaying for a particular query. That separation is key to actually understanding why things rank the way that they do. When consulting for large corporations, this is typically the first thing we drill into their heads. And it takes a really long time. Conflicting information on what works SEO wise isn't the problem with newcomers - most are smart enough to know that industries are different. But if 1000 people who don't agree on techniques but do agree on tools suggest to the newcomer to use the same broken tool, they're going to use it. Jake Baillie ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Trevor Johnson Subject: Alternative browsers Jim Gatton (LED 1870) raises a very valid point regarding browser compatibility. He mentions that he encounters no problems by continuing with HTML tables-based layouts while using CSS to reduce other code-bloat. Experience has taught me to do the same. There are CSS zealots out there who deride the thought, almost as if it constitutes religious heresy. Maybe these zealots do not remember or are too new to web development to recall the days when Netscape 3 was the overwhelmingly dominant web browser and IE 3 was the new kid on the block struggling for marketshare. In those days, tables layout caused problems due to browser incompatability. Today, all browsers render HTML (non-CSS) tables the same. No more compatability problems. It's amazing what convergence between competitors there can be that takes ONLY a decade to achieve. The serious CSS browser compatability problems of today are a replay of those days. I have no doubt that, maybe five or more years from now, the competing browsers will agree on correct CSS rendering. Until then, I do what works - and it seems that Jim Gatton does, too. Hybrid HTML / CSS designing works wonders in all browsers. Trevor Johnson http://www.dietwords.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: John Barrick Subject: Alternative browsers > 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? - Jim Gatton, LED 1870 There are no hard and fast rules. It really depends on what you are trying to achieve and how you've built the site. I've seen IE screw up simple thing like not listening to a width on a TD (table cell) but not all the time. Different combinations of code sometimes trigger obscure bugs. There are some more common ones. Some browsers collapse any cells that do not have content, which can cause weird issues. So, always put some code in a TD or DIV (span, etc), like " " (non-breaking space character). It goes on and on. Sometimes with simple table layouts you won't have any problems. It is very unusual for me to work on a site that simple, it's just the nature of the designs we code. That doesn't mean you'll face the same issues, or that you even need to worry about it. However, if you don't test it you'll never know. It is true that CSS designs pose more cross-browser problems than table-based layouts, in my experience. The problem is the same as we always experience on the net - new technologies promise better web sites, but may be troublesome at first until the technologies are more widely accepted. CSS promises more ease in dealing with your code, more ease in changing or updating content and the "look" of the site. Go look at CSS Zengarden ( http://www.csszengarden.com/ ) and you will be amazed at what you see - this web site has content that becomes TOTALLY different looking when you change the "design". You select the design and the page re-renders with the EXACT same content but a totally different look. That sort of thing may not specifically be of help to YOUR Web site but it shows a part of the promise of moving toward this "new" way of coding a Web site. Some organizations HAVE to care about changing their sites from tables to pure CSS display because the government of the US mandated that sites become more readily accessible to physically challenged folks. It's called Section 508. Using tables for layout in your HTML makes it tough for the screenreaders in use by legally blind users to navigate your site. John Barrick http://www.waycoolwebdesign.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Anson Subject: Web hosting packages Hi LED-ers, I'm facing a bit of a dilemma, and don't know quite what to do. I'm hoping some of you can give me some direction. I have a couple of website that I built using ICServ's EZ-Net Tools. They seemed to be really great when I was starting out (I didn't even know what a search engine was, for sure), but I've been running into problems over the last year related to limitations of the Tools. It recently dawned on me that I had a very high percentage of incomplete orders for every order that cleared. I took another test run through my shopping cart and found that, when you click on the "Continue Shopping" button, you're taken either to a blank page or one that says "Forbidden... ". I know what to do in the situation, but wonder if my potential customers might just click away from the site. I know I'd be inclined to, if I was the customer. I've contacted ICServ, but have not gotten the results I'd like, so I'm thinking about moving my site. The question is WHERE???? I've looked at a few options, including pairNET, but can't find a package that offers me the integration of services I've come to expect. Everything is an add-on, at a nicely added price!! What I'd like to find is a host that offers reliable up-time, plenty of disk space, shopping cart with secure processing, tracking, e-mail accounts with autoresponders... you know, the basics of running a commercial website, at an affordable price. A bulletin board would also be nice, but is not required. I'd like a reliable way to send out my newsletter, too. ICServ doesn't work well (I suspect its connected to spammers somewhere along the line). Do any of you know anywhere I can find all of this? And, does anyone know of hosts I should avoid at all costs? Thanks for the help. Tom Anson Discover the wonder of therapeutic-grade... the real deal in aromatherapy. http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Tom Aman 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 > I have the latest Mac Powerbook and Safari browser, and > had a go... I clicked on the name in the first tab but this produced > no result. I clicked around for the hot spot, and eventually found it... - Valerie Beeby, LED 1869 I had a look at the site with my PC (both IE 6.0 and Netscape 7.1) and found the navigation was not much better. On the mauve rectangles, I only get the drop down menus if I am point near the borders of the rectangles. If my mouse points within the text area, nothing happens. Makes the site hard to navigate even not using a Mac. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "I never let schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain |
