| LED Digest 1874: Alternatives to Authorize.Net |
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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 28, 2004 Issue #1874 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Alternatives to Authorize.Net ==-- ~ Martha Retallick ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Future of SEO ==-- ~ Michael Martinez ~ Lars Ekdahl ~ Dirk Johnson --== Alternative Browsers & Design ==-- ~ John Smart ~ Tom Aman ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Site Optimization Companies? ==-- ~ Aaron Wall ======= NEW ===================================== From: Martha Retallick Subject: Alternatives to Authorize.Net If you have an online store using Authorize.Net, you may have noticed that sales have been a bit slow lately. This Wired Magazine article explains the Distributed Denial of Service attack that is ongoing against Authorize.Net. http://snipurl.com/9dss [wired.com] Now, if you're an Authorize.Net merchant like I am, you may be finding yourself very interested in finding an alternative arrangement for your credit card payment processing. I've heard that Verisign PayFlow Pro is supposed to be the gold standard in this field. My bank is hooked up with Paymentech, and so far, I haven't heard anything bad about them. What are the recommendations of this group? Martha Retallick Free 3-Part Course on Postcard Marketing: http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Michael Martinez Subject: Future of SEO > 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. - Aaron Wall, LED 1873 The big picture, as it has always been, is that the search engines are interested only in serving up CONTENT. They know that most of their users aren't interested in backlinks, inbound links, or link popularity. I have allowed my inbound links to DECREASE because they are no longer important and have NOT been important for at least two years. You need a few links to validate your site as part of the Web. After that, you're into overkill and will benefit more from focusing your resources on other areas of promotion. > 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) Sorry. That dog won't hunt. People look for content in their searches. They don't look for (or care about) which sites have the most links pointing to them. The only people who make those kinds of searches are the people wasting their time comparing their inbound links to other people's inbound links. Anyone can flood a Web site with badly designed pages and claim that content doesn't work. Quality always tells, and there is a certain mechanical aspect to creating the kind of quality which gets indexed. Following the fundamentals of good Web design works consistently, effectively, and universally. Effective SEO MINIMIZES link building. Link building was the thing to do several years ago when it had a real effect on Google and Inktomi. Now, all the SEO gurus who preach what I used to preach still don't get the fact that the search engines have changed the way they do business. I don't have a problem getting my new content to rank well for my targeted search phrases. That's because I don't waste my time by looking at PR or building link popularity. You don't need it. What you need is good, well-designed content. Fresh content. Michael Martinez ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Lars Ekdahl Subject: Future of SEO I was asked by a consultant if I could make a link to one of his customers. I asked him why he picked one of my sites and it can be of interest for the readers of led-digest.com to read his answer: ------------------------ "Hi Lars, "That particular page of yours had excellent information about digital cameras as well as links to other key sites. "I never pick pages based on what I think the search engines might think, because that's such a moving target. The guy in charge of the PageRank and Link Popularity algorithm over at Google is a friend of mine and we speak together at several conferences a year. He agrees that the best approach to link building is to pay less attention to the search engines and focus on the people who use the site, becasue in the long run people matter more and the search engines can't be fooled forever. :) " ------------------------ Lars Ekdahl http://www.ekdahl.org ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Future of SEO > 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) - Aaron Wall, LED 1873 I'll take a shot at explaining this... Aaron, you've pointed out the "new reality" of the web. Of course, there are exceptions to the frustrating experience that you describe. Occasionally a new site will emerge that enjoys a tremendous amount of buzz, and gets linked gratuitously in a big way. But that is the exception these days. Gratuitous content citation was rampant in the early days of the web, as sites tried to establish themselves as "hubs" and resource sites within a niche. The web was new, and a lot of energy was being thrown at it, just for the novelty of it all. I was on both sides of this rush, and it was fun. Recall that this was before the days of Google AdSense, and even before a lot of merchants had affiliate programs. Many of these amateur website efforts relied solely on the Amazon Associate program for a dribble of income. These were not the VC-backed dot.coms, who were notorious for linking to nobody else (to their eventual demise). I am talking about the tens of thousands of niche interest sites that were established by individuals who just wanted to provide a resource site for their favorite hobby. Some of these sites thrived and survived. Many have gone away. Most have become dormant, as the site owners have come to realize the real work / reward ratio. In addition, we've had a lot of hobby clubs and other special-interest organizations that have put up sites, often with a flurry of initial activity (and some gratuitous linking), only to become stale, as the volunteer webmasters began to ignore their sites, except for the minimal announcement updates and such. Establishing a true "hub" that consolidates the current information about a particular niche interest is now well-known for what it is... a lot of work. A lot fewer people are trying to do it. And of those who do, they usually do it now with an eye toward maximizing their income. They have to justify their time and investments. The successful sites have evolved into legitimate businesses, and the more noble aspects that once drove them may no longer be their primary focus. Of course, there are exceptions. But finding the "noble efforts" who will cite your content gratuitously and willingly is now a real challenge. These days, links have value. Smart webmasters understand this. They may demand compensation, often in the form of reciprocity. Or maybe they only link to sites for which they act as an affiliate. Maybe they no longer need to go out and find and cite new content. Times have changed and the tables have turned, dramatically. There is a lot more content available to be cited, and gratuitous citations are showing up on a lot fewer sites than it did back in the novelty days of the web. It's very hard to get new content from a new domain cited. You have to work at it. You have to promote yourself in some way. You have to find the sites that are willing to do it. Don't expect them to find you. I am all for content citations. I think that they are the most important links that a site can earn, far more important than common reciprocal linking. But what was once relatively easy to accomplish has become a formidable challenge, especially for new sites with new content. Content citations can take long time to develop (if at all, as Aaron found out), and they take a lot of work, in terms of both creation and promotion. Sites should create content try to earn content citations. But they probably need other methods to earn links, too, as relying on content citations alone might be a lonely road. Best regards, Dirk Johnson LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: John Smart Subject: Alternative browsers The current placement for browser compatibility is much, much better than it used to be. Table rendering is much more balanced, and life is wonderful. Or it would be. If only everyone used the latest and greatest web browsers. They don't. Looking at my stats for this month, I see the following figures: MSIE 6.0 71.8% MSIE 5.5 2.1% MSIE 5.23 0.6% MSIE 5.22 1.2% MSIE 5.01 0.7% MSIE 5.0 0.6% MSIE 4.5 0.3% With the volume of traffic we are currently experiencing, 0.3% using MSIE 4.5 is a significant number. Then there is Netscape. In looking at my stats, and talking to my clients, it appears that many prefer Netscape 4.7 to any other version! (I have had a client recently enlist my services in finding version 4.7, as that is the version that he wants, and he got a new PC!). So even if all the latest versions are 100% compatible on all platforms, that really doesn't help us very much yet. Each month we will see it get better, but how many years will it be? We just have to look at the lowest common denominator. Assuming your stats are similar to mine (a reasonable assumption of you have a web hosting/development site - we are all pitching to the same people!), is 0.3% of your traffic enough to worry about? For me it is. In fact, in writing this letter and looking at the stats, I see I have a lot of work to do on our site! John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - "A Human Touch in a Digital World" ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Alternative browsers In LED 1869, I wrote: > ... 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 In LED 1873, commenting on this, John Barendrecht wrote: > Tom also mentioned that most exploits... 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. I agree 100%, John. And even though IE may be getting the majority of attacks, no browser is immune. But my point (not clearly indicated) was that if sites would work well in any browser, then there is some hope that market share between browsers would become spread around more and know one browser would dominate. And ultimately, surfing the Web without good, uptodate virus software installed is just asking from trouble. Personally, I use McAfee online because they notify me whenever an update becomes available (so I don't have to remember to check) and the update process is basically painless. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Aaron Wall 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 a few big problems that recur with these types of deals... (bought one of them myself a while ago) 1.) there is no need to resubmit your site over and over again. if a company is selling frequent resubmit services then they are taking advantage of your lack of search engine knowledge - which is a bit sketchy IMHO. 2.) meta tags are a small part of current search engine relevancy algorithms... they are primarily driven by linkage data and page copy 3.) often times people guarantee rankings and then rank your site for obscure garbage that nobody searches for. make sure you know the phrases and have an approximation of some of the search volumes ahead of time. 4.) not really sure what a directory info page is? obscure terms are usually a bad sign. 5.) if they provide services and do not mention much about link building then likely they are not looking out for your best interests. > Are these companies worth spending money on? some are, most are not. aaron wall http://www.seobook.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. 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