| LED Digest 2286: Sued for SEO, Booted from AdSense |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration 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 .............................................. November 10, 2006 Issue no. 2286 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Getting Sued for SEO Work ==-- ~ Anonymous "Apparently I am being sued by a previous client..." --== Booted from AdSense for Click Fraud ==-- ~ Paul Johnston "...ultimately it is up to Google to decide what an invalid click is." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Editors ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix "...consider hiring someone who already knows how to do this stuff..." ~ Mark Frank "Why bother to update the site yourself?" --== Web Accelerator and Traffic Stats ==-- ~ John Smart "Also, are there not meta tags that prevent caching?" ~ Tom Aman "A broadband accelerator works mainly by intelligent caching of data..." ~ Val Waldeck "[Would you] take a look at my website and advise me how to make it load faster." ======== NEW ===================================== [please note that this LEDer requested anonymity because of the delicacy of their situation. -ed] ---------------- From: [name withheld] Subject: Getting Sued over SEO Work While I don't like posting anonymously I am forced to for competitive reasons. Thanks to Adam for obliging this time. I am caught between a rock and a hard place so it seems. Apparently I am being sued by a previous client because I have performed SEO duties for their competitor(s) and given them higher listings on SERPs that my previous client used to dominate. They're now somewhere near ~20 with competitors "taking away their business" up on ~3-15 spots. They seem to feel that these higher results were their's by right or something. I work in a very narrowly defined niche, marketing SEO/M services to this market exclusively. It's never been a problem before. I tell potential clients flat-out what I do and who I may work for. Every incoming job is required to sign a non-compete so I can work for their potential competitors, too. I never have exclusivity with any of the clients I take on. It works because a lot of the optimization depends on a local element. My work is kind of spendy compared to your "run-of-the-mill" search optimization work. People know what they get, what they pay for and generally have pretty decent ROI. I'm not hurting for work, let's put it that way. The client sueing me is whining about work done 4 years ago. After my services it's obvious nothing new was done and the site got stale. Then unfortunately for them I took on a few other clients in the exact same market and localized in the same area. This is what raised the red flag because their SERPs are heavily local-search dependent like most of my clients. Am I compelled in any way to deal with this (namely pay them off)? I have an attorney but don't want to use her unless necessary (her rates are very high). Has anyone dealt with these kinds of things before. The client is pretty aggressive and I have to admit has already intimidated me (a little), and I've got thick skin from being in this industry awhile. Guidance, input, advice appreciated. [name withheld] -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Paul Johnston Subject: Booted from Adsense for Invalid Clicks? Hi, When it comes to Adsense, ultimately it is up to Google to decide what an invalid click is. I have (had) 10 websites running Adsense. One day I received the following from Google: -------------------- "It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account." -------------------- I asked Google to tell me which site generated the invalid clicks and when it happened. Their response: -------------------- "We understand that you wish to receive specific information regarding invalid clicks. However, due to the proprietary nature of our algorithm, we cannot disclose any details about how our monitoring technology works." -------------------- Their appeal mechanism requires you to provide specific details about the site that generated the invalid clicks - a classic catch 22 situation. Needless to say my appeal failed because I could not provide any evidence to support my innocence, other than to declare my ignorance. Their final communication was this: -------------------- "As you may know, publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed any further participation in AdSense. For this reason, you may not open a new account. "Please bear in mind that subsequent or duplicate appeals may not be considered and you may not receive any further communication from us. We appreciate your understanding." -------------------- Regards, Paul Johnston instant-webpage-editor.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: HTML editors > Does anyone know a good website editor? - Mary Findley, LED Digest 2284 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1326/55/ Mary I would suggest that you carefully consider hiring someone who already knows how to do this stuff and is willing to work for short periods of time to update content. I agree with Barry Mills that your time is more valuable than that of a standard person who does not have to design and build a site, just has to modify content. Plus they are less likely to damage the site which is a major risk you are taking in trying to do the work yourself. Having said that, I know full well that sometimes time is in supply, funds are not. Barry Mills has a good point. Have the site redesigned from the ground up by someone using a content management system or even have someone set up the site with PHP and a control admin module. But then, that again costs money. Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver is an excellent wizywig program which costs a lot less than having your site completely redesigned but has a reasonably steep learning curve as does Adobe GoLive. On the other hand, if you really have to do this yourself, you could try the end user site management tool made by Adobe Macromedia to complement their Dreamweaver called "Contribute" (www.adobe.com/products/contribute/) $149.00 from their site. While it is made to work seamlessly with Dreamweaver for exactly needs like your own, some of my clients have found it works fine also with almost any HTML site including Adobe GoLive. While it does not work on the site on your hard drive, using the site host server instead, it does work on a copy of the page held on your computer so if you mess up, you don't change the original page on the server until you hit the "save to sever button". But I would suggest to be safe, you use it in tandem with an FTP program, saving the current site to your hard drive before making sever side changes with Contribute. That way you are covered. You can copy pages and make new pages as well. It has its limitations, but the learning curve is not steep although there is one. It has a built in tutorial. But the main thing is that you need to choose a tool that suits you and your needs. The best tool in the world, if it does not work for you, is useless. So you can download 30 day free trial versions of both Dreamweaver and Contribute to check the fit. Then if you find this just is not for you, you might just decide to hire outside professional help having only invested time not money. Also you need to determine which, if any, of these tools will work happily with the code that is used for your site. Lastly there have been many posts over the years here on just this topic. You might also comb the LED archives. Good luck with this. Peter D'Aprix peter, daprix.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Frank Subject: HTML editors Mary, A couple of suggestions: 1) If you are familiar with Microsoft products, FrontPage has a similar interface, so it will minimize your learning curve. 2) Why bother to update the site yourself? Learning a new software package and website design will chew up countless hours with no financial return. Pay someone else to do this. There are a lot of new and experienced designers who subscribe to LED Digest who can help. Spend your time marketing and working on your core business. That's where your profit is. Mark Frank, Author Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business -------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Web Accelerator > Google's new accelerator threatens to invalidate all traffic > data. The accelerator pre-fetches web pages to your browser > so, when you click on links, pages will appear immediately. > It means a lot of pages will be prefetched that are never viewed. - Shaun Johnston, LED Digest 2283 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1320/55/ Clearly it is time to de more dynamic. My understanding is that if your page is .php or .asp (whatever your flavor) or especially if it is .php?a=b then it will not be cached. Also, are there not meta tags that prevent caching? Are the proxy servers ignoring these now? It should not be too hard to include some java script that does something that cannot be cached. I know that AW stats has an optional module that is javascript and feeds back the users settings (color depth, screen size etc). It would appear to me that such a mechanism would circumvent any caching doohickey that is out there ("Caching doohickey" -- clearly I am an authority on this subject!) We cannot give up on our site stats -- we all need them to see what ideas work. If the cache is intercepting the request for the page, it will also collect the search fields provided by the engines -- how will we know what key words are using -- how far will this go -- will googlebot be reading cached pages? That could be restrictive. And could this spill in to other debates? If I have PPC, and someone clicks, and I have to pay -- if the page the ppclicker sees is cached, won't it look like a fraudulent click to me? Conspirisists out there may think that Google is doing this so that they can say "No, Really, you did get 800 visitors -- they all saw the page from our cache!" I don't go for conspiracy theories very often and this is a very week one! John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Web Accelerator > So I find it rather galling that Google didn't even consider > dialup users when developing its accelerator! - Veronica Yuill, LED Digest 2285 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1327/55/ Don't be too hard on Google over this as they really don't have a choice. A broadband accelerator works mainly by intelligent caching of data and "best guess" of the next link likely to be clicked so it can pre-download that data. I did test their accelerator over my dialup connection and it made no difference at all. My dialup normally connects at either 44 Kbps or 42.6 Kbps and, when I am actively surfing, the connection is kept busy most of the time - not much chance for the accelerator to pre-download data and not much (or any) benefit from using pages cached on Google servers. There are dialup accelerators available - usually at a price because of the way they work. Some ISPs have accelerators available free to their own subscribers. As I understand it, a dialup accelerator requires 2 components, one on your PC, the other on the server and everything you access is routed through that server component. The component on the server compresses the requested page (and its content, where possible), sends the compressed data to your PC where the PC component decompresses it for your browser. While text can be compressed a lot, image files cannot as they are usually already compressed (jpg, gif, etc. images use compression schemes). To get around this particular problem, the server component of the accelerator usually reduces the quality of images so the actual file sent is much smaller. The surfer may be given the option of viewing any image at its original quality, if desired. Tom Aman Aman Software -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Val Waldeck Subject: Web Accelerator I have learned so much from this newsletter and I wondered is someone would be prepared to take a look at my website and advise me how to make it load faster. Val Waldeck www.valwaldeck.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him." - Aldous Huxley |
