| LED Digest 1903: Banned! also Blog Ads |
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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 ............................................... December 1, 2004 Issue #1903 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Banned! ==-- ~ Dave Roberts "One of my clients suddenly stopped getting free search traffic from Google!" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Advertising on Blogs ==-- ~ Steve Lenier "Be aware of the social climate. Blogs are current, they change as frequently as warranted." --== New ICANN Transfer Policy ==-- ~ Noah Price "There's a lot of hysteria on this topic..." --== Most Popular Search Engines Outside US? ==-- ~ Dirk van der Werff "In the UK: google.co.uk" --== The PayPal vs Merchant Accounts Debate ==-- ~ Tom Aman "I ran across an article that actually puts some dollar numbers on the wisdom of using PayPal..." ~ Lorelle Smith "Paypal no longer requires shoppers to set up a membership to use a credit card." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Why Firefox? ==-- ~ Mark Whitman ======== NEW ==================================== From: Dave Roberts Subject: Banned by Google! I've heard of getting banned, but in seven years of Web marketing -- being careful to drive between the white lines -- had never seen it happen, until just now. One of my clients suddenly stopped getting free search traffic from Google! That's right, his Adwords kept delivering, but the free traffic was zero. I looked him up, using all of our favorite keywords that I had so carefully optimized for, and nothing -- I couldn't find his site in the search results. Needless to say, he was upset, because the phone was not ringing very much. I was stumped, had no idea how this had happened! I looked over my Webposition Gold logs, and saw that failures were being encountered when submitting his site; a page was missing. So I checked the site, and found that the site map had disappeared, and that was causing the submit mission to fail. I decided to take a look at the html on the home page to make sure the link was good, and surprise! Tucked into the background color of the home page was a long list of keywords. The client told me that he had recently changed Webmasters, and the new Webmaster had this great idea of putting this long list of keywords on the site... he hadn't thought to mention it to me. We now have a clearer understanding of the role of Web marketing and how much Web marketing this new Webmaster should be doing. I've cleaned up the site, and now we're waiting for Google to let us out of the penalty box. Dave Roberts http://www.davedoesitall.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Steve Lenier Subject: Blogs > When advertising on blogs, it's useful to think of customers > like starlings. They flock to a tree, make a racket for a while, > and then... land in a different tree. The problem is to figure > out what tree they are in and where they are headed next. - Sandy Galvin, LED 1902 I recently completed an ad campaign for a client, using the services of blogad.com. It was my first experience advertising on blogs, and we learned a lot as we went. We had a positive experience overall, and I would recommend it with the following tips. - Before signing up, learn where your ad will appear on the page, and the policy for rotating back to the top vs. dwelling at the bottom. Determine if the "premier placement" options are worthwhile. In one case the answer was a resounding yes, in another we ended up in worse position than if we had signed up for the cheaper rate. - Obviously learn whatever you can about the audience of a particular blog, and aim carefully. - Change your ad frequently! This is a wonderful thing about blogad.com, they have a dynamic server system where you can change your ad whenever you wish. Sometimes it took a day or two for the ad to catch up, but usually it happened within minutes. We always got a lift in click-thrus whenever we changed the ad. You can pretty much change daily, linking to a different page, highlighting a different product, or saying something to reflect the day's events, whatever you want. - Be aware of the social climate. Blogs are current, they change as frequently as warranted. Sandy Galvin mentioned a drop in traffic after the election, we experienced the same thing to a huge degree. - Don't be afraid to communicate with the people at blogad.com, they're quite friendly and helpful. Even more importantly, you can communicate directly with the people running each blog site you advertise on, to get assistance. This proved very valuable in a couple cases. As I said, we had a good experience with it and we will certainly use it again. We were aiming for a political audience pre-election, but there are many other types of blogs out there and we'll be trying a new direction soon. Blogs are very "hip", and a good way to reach people within a certain demographic. Steve Lenier Lenier Editing, Etc. http://www.stevelenier.com --------- new post - new topic --------- From: Noah Price Subject: Domain transfers > ... the new ICANN Transfer Policy [states that] if you > have a domain name, and you don't lock it someone > could transfer it without your approval! - Dejan Bizinger, LED 1902 There's a lot of hysteria on this topic. For reference, here is the complete transfer policy: http://www.icann.org/transfers/policy-12jul04.htm The critical point: "A transfer must not be allowed to proceed if no confirmation is received by the Gaining Registrar." This does rely on the honesty of the "gaining" registrar, but there is still a requirement for approval. A registrar isn't going to be able to fake approval without putting their accreditation at risk. This is far better than the prior situation where transfers routinely failed or people using some registrars found it nearly impossible to transfer away, effectively having their domains held hostage. Of course you don't want to trust over 350 accredited registrars to behave properly. As suggested, the solution is simple: Lock your domain. If you can't lock your domain at your current registrar or reseller, take advantage of the new transfer procedures and move it to a service which lets you lock and unlock your domain! We lock all our customers domains upon registration or transfer into our system. It's always been the best solution to secure your domain. Noah Price prxy Internet Services www.prxy.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dirk van der Werff Subject: International SEs > ... we don't know what search engines people in other parts > of the world use. We're particularly interested in the habits > of business people outside the U.S., because our own > clients are all B2B... - Beth Earle, LED 1902 In the Uk: http://www.google.co.uk followed by: http://www.yahoo.co.uk and of course: http://www.msn.co.uk many thanks Dirk van der Werff http://www.plants-magazine.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Tom Aman Subject: PayPal vs other Regarding the PayPal debate, I ran across an item that actually puts some dollar numbers on the wisdom of using PayPal, a third party processor or your own merchant account. For the merchant account option, it factors in the other costs this option involves and the results may be surprising to some. The article is called "At What Point Is a Merchant Account Better Than PayPal or CCNow?" and can be found at http://www.wilsonweb.com/wct4/pg-merchacct.htm Tom Aman Aman Software ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Lorelle Smith Subject: PayPal vs other I'd like to clear up some misinformation in Lennart Svanberg's post in #1902 (sorry, Lennart, but you're behind the times!): > What is a problem with Paypal is the requirement > of membership. Many buyers don't want to become > members just in order to leave their credit card numbers. Paypal no longer requires shoppers to set up a membership to use a credit card. There's a button on their checkout page that says "If you do not currently have a PayPal account click here." > Another big dis-advantage with Paypal is that I as > a seller can't do a transaction on behalf of the buyer. Not true. I can process a phone order transaction by going to my own site and pretending to be the customer. > The advantage of having a merchant account [is that] you can use > any kind of shopping cart / e-commerce system on the market I use the Americart shopping cart system, which accepts Paypal along with or as an alternative to credit cards. This way I don't have to use the Paypal shopping cart codes, which are a pain to set up if you have a lot of products. (As an aside, Americart even generates static-html product pages for you, complete with cart codes for each item.) The only downside is that Paypal forces the customer to type their address information again after clicking the "do not have a Paypal account" button. I do have a merchant account for my gift store (eMercantile.com) but I've decided to cancel it and accept Paypal only *IF* I can get Americart to add a blurb on the checkout page that tells shoppers they can pay by credit card without joining Paypal. > You need to have a business bank-account in order to have > a merchant account, Paypal doesn't require that I don't know how it is for Lennart in Sweden, but in the US you need a biz bank account in order to accept checks for your business anyway. Lorelle Smith, wearer of many hats :-) www.lorellesmith.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Mark Whitman Subject: Firefox > Why design for anything else besides IE? Because... - Theresa Mesa, LED 1902 Theresa's reasons for not designing sites exclusively for IE is that *relatively* tiny groups of alternate browser users exist. Obviously, everyone should be able to use whatever browser they want and have the same web experience as everyone else in terms of the way pages look and operate. The browser makers however put the burden of making that happen on website developers rather than developing browsers that are compatible with some core set of page display standards. Developing browser standards was a hot topic in the 90's but it seemed to be much more of a concern of website developers than browser manufacturers. As a result, website developers struggle to tweak sites so that they will look and operate pretty much the same with all browsers. This can be time consuming and frustrating. Every time the topic of browser compatibility recycles in some discussion group I push the following 2 step concept and it appears that more and more developers are taking a similar stance. - develop websites for IE because it's still the most widely used browser, by far. I'm not defending IE as the best browser, only as the most widely used. - stop If developers don't take the time to make web sites compatible with all browsers that shifts the burden of compatibility back to the browser maker. Obviously if websites don't look good in Firefox for instance, then Firefox users aren't going to be very happy with the browser and won't use it for long. Firefox could and would make compatibility happen if necessary. BTW - Firefox appears to be very highly compatible with pages designed for IE, page tweaks are rarely needed and very minor. I suggest that website developers force the browser makers to deal with compatibility issues. Develop for the most widely used browser at the time and be done with it. Mark Whitman ------------------------------------------------------- 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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