| LED Digest 1873: Impulse Searches & Creative Linking |
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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 23, 2004 Issue #1873 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Future of SEO ==-- ~ Aaron Wall "Link building is the bulk of effective SEO." ~ David Yancey "...you will do well to employ creative linking and suggestive methods..." --== Alternative Browsers & Design ==-- ~ Maty Matyszak "...we have put a javascript passthrough on pages with interactive content." ~ John Barendrecht "No matter what browser, email client or OS we use, we need to take security very seriously." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Site Optimization Companies? ==-- ~ Mark Medlicott ~ Tom Anson --== The Web Hosting Thread ==-- ~ Maria Meyers ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Aaron Wall Subject: Future of SEO > Stop worrying about links and PR. Focus > on creating great content. - Michael Martinez, LED 1872 I think people pushing the content concept are usually missing the bigger picture. The power of great content is not that it is great, but that it is so great that it inspires comments and links. My first site had hundreds of pages and just about nobody (including the search engines) cared. Keep creating content. Nobody cares. Keep creating content. Nobody cares... cycle repeats. (no fun) Most "great content" does not inspire too many natural links. I think people would be better off pushing the "create great ideas" angle more than the "great content" concept. Link building is the bulk of effective SEO. Most commercial sites / ideas do not naturally want to spread. If you are in a competitive market try to focus your idea - or - make your site an idea worth spreading (read Purple Cow or other similar "remarkable" books) - or - buy / rent / trade / get / beg for keyword rich inbound links... > The Google backward links tool displays links that > Google considers important i.e. links from pages with > a relatively high PR... if Google considers those links > important then you should too. - Steve Pronger, LED 1872 Actually right now Google is not showing many of the better links as backlinks and is showing many of the links they filtered out in the past... stuff like DMOZ clones, etc. aaron wall http://www.seobook.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: David Yancey Subject: Future of SEO In LED #1861, Dirk Johnson argued for one of the potential advantages of reciprocal links in directory-type (meaning non-crawler) search sites. Directories that accept reciprocal linking tends to be very limited in range, with less than a few hundred listings. The main attribute though, as Dirk pointed out, is that such sites tend to be mainly information sites focused tightly on a special interest, hobby, destination, or type of business service. Responding to their users' interests, many information and e-commerce sites have traditionally provided their visitors with a list of related links, as an "extra" feature. With the emphasis by Google on building good-quality, non-SPAM incoming and outgoing links in your "category", site owners are naturally making these lists into special interest mini-directories, and then exchanging links with sites also serving that special interest. Say I have a site that tells the full story of Italian widgets, and also has a nice catalog of Italian widgets for sale online. As a useful extra feature for my widget-curious visitors, I add a "directory" of other sites that have something to do with widgets. I may also include a section of links pertaining to Italy, Italian travel, or shopping for widgets in Europe. Next, I go find sites in any of these categories, and where possible, trade links with the owners, using the following pitch: I have a private-type directory, and list your site. You'll get some visitors from me. You "reciprocate", putting my link in your private directory, and I get some visitors leaving your site who may otherwise not have found me. Let me say here that when I discussed "directories" in earlier posts as the dominant future source of search-initiated traffic to websites, I was *not* referring to these small, hand-built, micro-focused links lists. These may be called "directories", but they are not the general type like our www.vivante.com, which is designed to include thousands of topics. These little ones are simply a more organized way to present links lists. Jill Whalen asked in LED #1863 if this trend toward micro-directories - - let's call it "directory fragmentation" - - won't result in a whole mess of directories all more or less with the same content. Perhaps, but I don't think so. In my example above, I might well have the only such mini-directory that covers *both* Italy and widgets. Not a really profound accomplishment, I grant. ;) But to those seeking that specific combo of info, my site could well end up near the top of their favorites list. But even assuming a whole mess of micro-directories emerges, will the consumer care? I doubt it, since it would probably mean that the normal consumer finds it easier to find related pages or sites. It turns out that users are quite comfortable with having directory and search information more or less scattered around, so long as it "clusters" along the lines of the topic they are interested in. Or, as in the case of a Yellow Pages, brings together info "about" a specific locality. What is happening here is that the *convenience* of the user is being served, as opposed to the efficiency goals of search site designers and the folks trying to build all-things-to-all-users directories. As Dirk alluded, some still think that this kind of private directory link exchange undermines the quality of the web. The old argument looked at the web the way a librarian would, and argued that all sites should be listed in one place, so all users could know where to go to look for relevant sites. The reasoning says if thousands of little, specialized directories exist, the poor user won't be seeing all the choices available to her or him. I think this point of view is shared at least in part by those such as Pat McCarthy, since it underlies his argument that directories are not as effective as crawlers. He is right, in at least one sense. Assembling a truly universal directory would require an enormous, multi-national, multi-disciplinary team, a not-simple global management scheme, and serious financial resources. DMOZ.org tried and couldn't (yet) do it, and Yahoo tried and couldn't, and Google never even tried. The goal may well be impossible to attain, for various reasons. What we SEO/M and design specialists sometimes forget is that "search" is really two essentially different kinds of user activity, not one. In one case, the one we all tend to focus on when debating search methodologies, users are in a "proactive" search mode. EG, they remember that they promised their partner to check out a nice widget for the new home, and, thinking "I want to find a widget site", go to a search engine or a big directory like ours and look for widget sites and info. But a very large proportion of searches are "reactive", that is, based on *impulse*: I am checking out Italy and happen to see a mention of those cool Italian widgets, and now I want widget info, too. Sure, I could go to Google or the others and look for Italian widgets. But if I see three or four handy links to that topic on the content page, then I am probably going to try them first. Let me be the first to confess that none of us builders of search tools have a clue just what percent of all searches or finding activity is impulse-initiated. My guess, and it is only that, is that for product and services info, including a lot of travel and special interest searching, the proportion of searches based on impulse is perhaps as high as 80%. This will sound crazy, no doubt, to those who go about product searching or buying in a focused, organized way. Well, most people don't, as it happens. That's why supermarkets are set up just like "directories", to make the related product "links" easier for them as they roll down an aisle, and it is also why the stores put a lot of random-interest stuff at the checkout. Maybe someday we will truly understand just why searchers are searching in the first place. But for now, realizing that a large number of searches are spur of the moment activity, it may be easier to see why directory information that is placed "next" to related content information is so handy for the typical user. What does this mean to the typical LED reader? I suggest it means that in you very real world, you will do well to employ creative linking and suggestive methods that easily lets a user find your site, without a formal search process. I'll add that you also need to think about the ways users *exit* from your site. After all, every visitor will do so, at some point. Are you encouraging them to exit is ways and via links that earn you money in return for "introducing" that user to her next URL? David Yancey http://www.vivante.com "Web searching *your* way" ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: Alternative browsers I've been reading the latest round of the 'browser wars' debate with some interest. We do an educational site that needs a lot of interaction with students. As some of our students have er... suboptimal net connections (yesterday's connections included Vietnam and Burkino Faso) we can't rely on regular .php server updates. The obvious solution is dhtml with javascript in IE. This won't even nearly work with Macs or Mozilla, so we have put a javascript passthrough on pages with interactive content. Our IE users access both (and they make up 85%-95% percent of users) and our other visitors are passed seamlessly to more static pages without even knowing they have missed anything. You need to give a bit of thought to design issues to make sure nothing vital is on the IE pages, but these pages can be used to give the site that bit of extra oomph which the richer (yes, and less secure etc etc, but richer) programming environment that IE allows. I'm a Firefox user myself, but WTF, flame me anyway! Maty Matyszak www.english-online.org.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Alternative browsers > ... make your site work with browsers other than IE so that > those of us concerned with security will be able to visit using > a different browser (Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, ???). - Tom Aman, LED 1869 Tom also mentioned that most exploits (viruses, trojans, etc.) are written for IE because it has 95% market share. By his reasoning, if Firefox had 95% market share, it would have most security related exploits and IE would be the safe browser to use. Today, I received the following from US-CERT Technical Cyber Security Alert about Mozilla web browser, email and newsgroup client, Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client. Mozilla Mail vulnerable to buffer overflow Mozilla contains integer overflows in bitmap image decoder Mozilla contains heap overflow in UTF8 conversion of hostname portion of URLs Multiple buffer overflows in Mozilla POP3 protocol handler Mozilla "send page" feature contains a buffer overflow vulnerability Mozilla allows arbitrary code execution via link dragging No matter what browser, email client or operating system we use, we need to take security very seriously. Unfortunately, most newbies don't know and are hit by several viruses, trojans or malware before they learn the hard way. I receive more security alerts about Linux than Windows. Is one safer than the other? It depends on which one you update with security patches. Most attacks are with flaws that could have been patched months ago. Today, if you own a computer and want to surf the web and receive email, you need a firewall, anti-virus solution, pest / malware scanner and spam control. You also need to update these daily, as well as check for security patches for your operating system, mail client, web browser, programs, etc. My AV solution checks for updates every 6 hours. I regularly check my websites for Netscape compatibility as my Windows XP Pro laptop came pre-installed with Netscape! However, we can not blame the web designer for computer security, anymore than we can blame the shop keeper for not installing bullet proof glass because someone owns a gun. Until more countries institute the death penalty for writing viruses, they are here to stay. John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Mark Medlicott Subject: Ranking optimizers > Have any of you tried Internet Advancement or similar > companies that are supposed to optimize your web page > ranking? Are these companies worth spending money on? - Rebecca Neilson, LED 1872 I am not an expert here Rebecca, but regarding submittal companies who submit to the top 15 search engines and continuous monitoring, I think that this would be a waste of your money. General thinking today seems to be that it is better (and faster) for the search engines to find you than to submit. As you already have a reasonable Google PR ranking, their spider is obviously finding you regularly without having to pay. My best suggestion from looking at your website would be for you to add 'title' tags to all your text links using the appropriate keywords and this may in fact help increase your visibility and ranking as much as paying a company to do it with an ongoing expense that you may find hard to keep a track of, or even quantify. The other reason I wouldn't use an Internet Advancement type company in your case (not trying to downgrade my own business interests here), is that from your letter it does not seem that the website is seen as a major part of your business, but more as information for existing customers. If your emphasis was to change to where you need more online business, then you would probably need to take the optimisation one step further and incorporate it with a site redesign. (Not meant offensively, but as a good way to improve SEO). Regards Mark Medlicott Medlicott Design www.medlicottdesign.orcon.net.nz ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Ranking optimizers Hi Rebecca, Run, don't walk, away from Internet Advancement. I had my site done by this company; and while I was able to get my money back (after some hard work), my site has never quite recovered from the problems created by them. I've been in contact with some others who weren't as fortunate as me. The techniques IA uses are spammy. I saw NO benefits whatsoever; but I had a significant drop-off of traffic. There is no substitute for doing the job right. What IA does is definitely NOT right. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Maria K Meyers Subject: Hosting > 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... - Tom Anson, LED 1871 Hi Tom, I switched my personal website last year to HardHatHosting.com and shortly switched all of my other websites to them. I also recommend them to all of my clients. They offer personal one on one support, and have a suite of value apps that you can pick and choose to load. They offer value apps for a shopping cart (Free Merchant), bulletin boards, auto-responders, credit card algorithm verifications, stream servers, and too much to list here. Check out their website: http://www.hardhathosting.com. Their prices are reasonable too. I was looking to get away from huge hosting companies that kept telling me they couldn't help me. Occasionally, I get tired of hearing no. =) One thing that Hard Hat has not told me thus far is no I can't. They are always willing to help me or try and find a work around for my needs. So, I strongly recommend them. Good Luck! Maria Meyers www.mkmkc.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "No legacy is so rich as honesty." - William Shakespeare |
