| LED Digest 1913: The New Linking, also Happy Holidays! |
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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 23, 2004 Issue #1913 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Happy Holidays Fellow LEDer! --== Problems for Linkers ==-- ~ Dave Roberts "...it's gettng hard to conduct a reciprocal link campaign..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Image Galleries & Search Spiders ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "...search engines can find the images on your pages as long as they are not excluded in some way." --== Dynamic DNS? ==-- ~ Waitman Gobble "I have run servers out of the living room since 1997." --== The PayPal vs Merchant Accounts Debate ==-- ~ Mary Lee "...it is so important to all computer users to be wary and stay informed about the newest threats." ~ Richard Jones "...here's additional information that you can see on some email clients." ~ Roger Holden "I personally think that the choice of whether to use Paypal should be based upon your type of customers." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Inside PageRank ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson --== Theft of Copywritten Material ==-- ~ Joe Hussar ======== NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, I hope you have a wonderful holiday and spend it with friends and family. As is tradition here, we'll be taking the holidays off -- so don't expect another issue of the LED until Tuesday January 1, 2005. May your Holiday and New Year be filled with love and happiness. I'll see you in 2005! Best wishes, Adam --------------------- From: Dave Roberts Subject: Problems for linkers For years I've found that a reciprocal link campaign is one of the best things I can do for my clients. I build up a list of sites that are relevant to the client's site but aren't competitors, I put them all into a links page, and then I solicit all of them for a reciprocal link. In the fullness of time, typically 6 months or so, I remove the sites that haven't linked back. This works well, and raises page rank significantly. I've taken page rank from 1 up to 5 with this method. These days, though, it's gettng hard to conduct a reciprocal link campaign. Many sites don't have explicit email addresses on them, so it's harder to find a good email address. And, technically, a link solicitation is spam, since they are sent in bulk (although small bulk) and they are not solicited. So they are actually illegal. In this new environment, how do we conduct linking campaigns? I've tried a couple of the link exchanges, but the results are lousy links -- it's easy to get cell phone and viagra links, but if you have a high-end client who wants other high-end companies in the link list, these companies don't use the link exchanges. So far, my ISP tells me that if I keep the solictations to a couple hundred at a time I should be OK, at least for now. But I'm concerned that my days of conducting reciprocal link campaigns using traditional techniques are about to end, and that there isn't another good way to do it. Any ideas among the bright LED Digest readers? Thanks Dave Roberts http://www.davedoesitall.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Shari Thurow Subject: Image galleries and spiders Hi all- This is in response to Rob Bishop's post in LED #1911 regarding image galleries and search engine spiders. Rob, before you go out and purchase image gallery scripts, you (and other LEDers) should be aware that all of the search engines can find the images on your pages as long as they are not excluded in some way. For example, when I create Web sites, I put all of the graphic images in a folder/subdirectory entitled either images or graphics. As long as I don't put the robots exclusion protocol (in the form of a robots.txt file) on that directory, all of the search engines can find those images and will include them in their Image Search. One of the biggest misconceptions about search engine marketing is if your images are available in the Google or Yahoo index, your site will rank better in the main search results. I robots exclude images directories all of the time because I don't want the images to be found in an Image Search. And this has never affected "natural" search engine traffic. I am aware that what I just stated in the previous paragraph is anecdotal evidence, except for one thing. It's not completely anecdotal. I have lectured on this very topic at Search Engine Strategies conferences since 1999, and this question comes up at every conference. My answer is the same, and software engineers from Google, Yahoo, and Teoma/Ask have backed up my statements. If you want your graphic images to be found in the search engines' Image Search, then it's important to name the file using descriptive keywords (one usually suffices), put descriptive alt-text in the img tag, and to surround the graphic image with appropriate, descriptive text. In reality, this procedure is quite normal for most designers/developers. It's natural to name a teddy bear graphic as teddybear1.jpg, for example. It's natural to put the alt-text as "Light brown teddy bear - photo" and maybe even include the SKU number. Usually, when a commerce site has a product photo, it is surrounded by a product description, quite often with keywords. This procedure is really effect for your target audience, including people who must use screen readers. But please don't kid yourself into thinking that being found in the search engines' Image Search will boost other rankings. Different databases. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director ~ For FREE design and marketing tips, visit us at: http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html -------- new post - new topic ------- From: Waitman C. Gobble Subject: Dynamic DNS > Network Solutions has partnered with No-IP.com to > offer Dynamic DNS a service that allows you to run your > own Web or e-mail server using your cable or DSL > connection - no matter when your IP address changes. - Brett Swooshman, LED 1910 I have run servers out of the living room since 1997. You would be better off getting static IP(s) to do it. Cable won't work well, it isn't a switched / routed network. I started with a 144k DSL line, and back in the day when most traffic came from dial up hardly anyone ever noticed. In this day and age if you have less than about 750k customers will notice and complain. Anyhow, when you start getting 20,000 visitors per day to all the sites, and your VOIP line sounds like crap, it is time to lease servers on real networks. Over the past year I have been disbanding my living room server farm and moving everything to leased and rented. There are pros and cons to doing it out of the house. The biggest con things: dirt, noise, and security. But upgrading or replacing an operating system remotely is a very nerve racking task. And you can easily and cheaply stick in tons of storage space in the living room. Take care Waitman Gobble ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mary Lee Subject: PayPal vs other > I have received similar emails supposedly from CitiBank > but I have no account at CitiBank so it was obvious immediately > it was a trawl for identity theft. - Peter D'Aprix, LED 1912 These emails are called phishers or spoofing. I have an extensive article about what they are and how to handle it if you are a victim on my forum. I have many newbie computer users that browse my site so I try to keep them informed about computer threats. http://dinnerandamurder.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25 Your getting that spoof email has nothing to do with you signing up for paypal or ebay. It is just some malicious spam mass emailed in an effort to steal someone's identity. You may get these from a multitude of 'fake' companies including eBay, Paypal, AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink, MSN, Microsoft, AT&T, Hotmail, FDIC, MBNA, Citibank, Barclays iBank, Nat West, Bank One, Nationwide, Halifax, Fleet Bank, SunTrust Bank and eGold. There are always new ones cropping up. Rule of thumb is to ignore ANY email asking or demanding your personal information including user id's, passwords and most importantly your social security number. PayPal & eBay will never ask you for personal information and they will always address you by your full name in the email. As soon as I get one if these (and I get about 3 a day!) I will immediately forward them complete to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it This helps them to get these people shut down before harm can be done (hopefully). This would be why you suddenly got a 404 on that page, because they immediately go to work to shut them down as soon as they learn of a threat. Phishers are just one more evil we have to deal with everyday as internet users. This is why it is so important to all computer users to be wary and stay informed about the newest threats. Be smart and use common sense. Mary Lee Dinner and a Murder Mystery Games http://www.dinnerandamurder.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Richard Jones Subject: PayPal vs other Hello LEDers, Commenting on the well written info from Peter D'Aprix, here's additional information that you can see on some email clients. I use Eudora and anytime I place my cursor over a click-able link, it acts just like a browser, in that it displays the actual link of the server receiving this form information at the bottom left of the window. You may see http://paypalupdates.home-page.org as a click-able link in the email message, but look at the bottom of your email client's window... you may see something like this: http://123.456.789.01/cgi-bin/paypal/spoof.cgi. This is a tip off that the server's address receiving the information is 123.456.789.01 instead of paypalupdates.home-page.org. Please make sure that the link that you see in the message is the same as what gets displayed in the browser when you click on it (or before you click). I've received numerous of these messages and I immediately forward them to This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . ----------------------- "Dear Member "We Here at PayPal, are sorry to inform you that we are having problem's with the billing information on your account. We would appreciate it if you would go to our website and fill out the proper information that we need to keep you as an PayPal member. "Please Update your account information by visiting our updates web site below. paypalupdates.home-page.org Steve Johnson. Billing Updates Center Account Updates Team. ----------------------- Richard Jones RJ Web Services rj-web.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Roger Holden Subject: PayPal vs other Well, whether we like it or not, I think we'd all agree that Paypal appears to some customers as less 'professional' than having a merchant account. Now, the big quesion is - does that matter? I personally think that the choice of whether to use Paypal or not, should be based upon your type of customers. Families, individuals, and the average Joe Public, probably has no problem with using Paypal, and a lot of them already have Paypal accounts set-up already. But, I'm not sure the same is true for businesses. If you are selling purely to other businesses/corporations, I think the somewhat less 'professional' image of Paypal is a factor. The majority of my sales are to other businesses, and I don't use Paypal for that reason. I can't imagine losing a business customer because I don't have Paypal, and personally I think the extra costs associated with a merchant account outweigh any negative impact a Paypal logo might have on my website. Now, I think Paypal is a great product - but I do think it unfortunately does have an image problem, perhaps only with other business customers, which should be taken into account when deciding on Paypal vs other systems. If you sell predominantly to homes and individuals - I don't think it's an issue. Perhaps I'm wrong and times have changed, but my extra costs are negligible and I don't see any sales lost because of it - and yes, I think I would know if I had lost sales, because for my business I believe I would have got at least a few inquiries over the past few years if a customer wanted to use Paypal instead. Best Regards, Roger Holden Holden Systems, Inc. ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Dirk Johnson Subject: More on Google's Page Rank > Economist online has a easy to understand explanation > of Google Page Rank and how it works to rank pages... > I've already sent an email to Yahoo asking them to drop > everyone's site but mine. That should really drive my site's > page rank through the roof. - Mark Frank, LED 1911 Mark, I am glad to see that you are not taking that article very seriously. I hope. First, that article is all about the original PageRank algorithm. It's kind like studying quantum physics in order to make a race car go faster. Lots of geeky theory and lots of time spent off-target, while everyone else is doing far more practical things and winning the race. It's the same situation here. Quite possibly, the original PageRank formula has little or nothing to do with actual Google index results, also known as SERPs (search engine results pages). SERPs are how various sites are placed in the free results for a particular search term. Having a PR of 9 and lousy index results is a worthless situation. These kinds of PR "studies" come out all the time,and they are usually promoted by people who desperately want to deny the truth. The Economist article, fortunately, is just a mathematical analysis in layman's terms, and skips the SEO rhetoric that usually accompanies these "studies". The truth is, sites that have dominant link popularity, coming from as many unique domain names as possible, combined with good optimization and depth of content, are the sites that are winning the SERPs wars. It matters little what their PR is, but usually they have good PR, for doing the right things that I just described. Now, people are quite welcome to dislike "link farms" (the definition seems to vary with each person). So they try to devise all kinds of strategies to "beat" the PR algorithm without resorting to "link farms". Instead, they concoct all kinds of other linking games, both internal and external. It becomes bizarre, at it's most extreme. The latest complex linking games du jour are "three-way links" and "article swapping". What is never presented in these PR articles is any shred of proof that these theories work in SERPs. I am beginning to sound like a broken record with respect to this, (I've posted about this in LED many, many times) but here we go again.... If you want proof of what works, anyone reading this can prove it to themselves. Don't take my word for it. Go to Google, type in 10 different keyword terms (unrelated, for a better sample) and analyze the results. Here's what they will find, in nearly every case: The site with the most number of unique domains pointing to it, combined with good optimization for that term, and deep content, will usually be placed at or near the top of the SERPs. Then it cascades down from there. However anyone wants to conceive of a way to beat that with a limited linking, high-PR strategy, I wish them luck. I have yet to see it work against a site with a well-established foundation of links pointing to it. Those are what I call the 800-pound link gorillas. Their back links come from a wide variety of pages. Those links can come from reciprocation, or from content citation, or from forum postings, or guestbooks (gasp!), or direct affiliate links, or paid text link ads, or whatever. The driving factor is genuine raw link popularity from as many unique domains as possible, and there is really not much of a need to over analyze it. These 800-pound gorilla sites realized long ago that a high-PR strategy is just a lot of SEO babble. They just go out and get links, the more relevant, the better. Anyone who thinks that they will compete with these well-established 800-pound-link gorillas with a handful of carefully placed high-PR links is more than likely setting themselves up for a big disappointment. Especially if they are paying through the nose for those high PR links. I regularly encounter reciprocal link prospect sites that turn down links from my clients because my client's link page is not PR4. I've started to look at the SERPs for these prospect sites, and they are often getting hammered by the 800 pound gorilla in their category, who is not so constrained by PR games. When these people finally wake up from their high-PR dream state by admitting that it's not working in a truly competitive environment (I'll admit that it can work in a non-competitive situation), they'll be even further behind the 800 pound gorilla in raw link popularity. They may never catch up. Keeping the faith with these odd PR linking theories can be quite costly. Established sites with dominant link popularity, good optimization, and deep content get good SERP results from Google for a very valid reason. They've been around for a while, and are well-entrenched. This appears to represent stability, and they have made an investment in earning that establishment. Each Google revision to their index results seems to further reward this condition. It seems to have little to do with what comes out the other end of a theoretical PageRank calculation. Until people begin to look at real Google SERPs closely, and forget about PR games, they will continue to chase the wrong rabbit in this race. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Owner LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Joe Hussar Subject: Copy Theft > I have discovered that a competitor has stolen > the logo and words from my web sites... Any > suggestions? - Beth Vance, LED 1906 I have been a victim as well, in fact someone "stole" my entire web site (renamed and disguised it of course). And there is a lot you can do about it! It took some work but I had the site shut down in 3 weeks. Had I been familiar with what to do, I could have done it in 3 days. I suggest you look up the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it covers all the steps you need to go thru, it's not complicated and worth the effort. There's quite a bit of information on the web, and some very good "what to do... step by step" summaries. If the offender doesn't immediately pull the copyrighted material (for example, says it "isn't copied"), you can still get the hosting company to shut them down, If you do that, make sure you're right first, because if you're wrong you can be liable. You can do all this even if you don't have a registered copyright for your work; but having a registered copyright gives you more clout, plus the opportunity to get financial damages. Here is a brief summary of some of the things I had to do to (here, at Google... but it needs to be directed to the host of the thief's web site). http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=535 Joe Hussar http://www.candylandcrafts.com/ candywebster, aol.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Happy Holidays to All LEDers! |
