| LED Digest 1495: Goodbye MSN, Hello LED! |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it http://www.led-digest.com ................................................. January 14, 2003 Issue #1495 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Welcome Back! -=Do's and Don'ts for Catalogs?=- ~ Don Baker "...give your catalog customers an incentive to order online by including a number code..." ~ Heather Lloyd-Martin "...the Direct Marketing Association's Catalog Conference covers everything..." -=Search Engines & Frames=- ~ Peter Lapinskas "...a resource file is only downloaded from the site the first time it is called." -=Search Engine Optimization (SEO)=- ~ Steve Knilans "...if you have narrowly defined pages, you will get more traffic." ==== BILLBOARD =================== -=New Google Tool: WebQuotes=- ~ Shari Thurow -=Internet Casino Links?=- ~ Toon Eppink ===== Special Message ================================= <Moderator Comment> Greetings, LEDer! Today marks the first day we're sending this list from our server! It's also the first day we are back officially as the LED. So grab a nice hot cup of your coffee, tea, or chocolate, sit back, and enjoy the list. You'll notice a few changes: 1) NEW POSTING ADDRESS: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Please add this to your address books. This is an important one to remember! (Don't worry, I've already changed it throughout the list template). 2) New email address for me: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it 3) New Subject line format: LED Digest [ issue number ]: Tagline The "tagline" is going to be a short, hopefully concise and ideally slightly witty phrase that captures something vital about the day's issue. Or, maybe it will just come from thin air :-) 4) New home page: http://www.led-digest.com . This is only a temporary page until I have the complete site ready. Thanks for having patience -- and yes, archives are coming. 5) More regular distribution. The bCentral Daily Digest suffered from having to use the MSN Newsletter tool. It created a lot of headaches -- always slow, clogged, picky to work with, etc. I'm very happy to have control of the distribution of the LED, as we have a robust IT infrastructure with 3 Compaq Proliant servers, a T1 connection and very powerful list software. Get ready for reliability! Okay, let's see how this new email address works. Send in those posts! Your moderator, Adam | This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Don Baker Subject: Catalogs > Many customers have requested a catalog... My > question is: Are there any absolute do's and don'ts > for a catalog? As we are strictly online, this is a > different outlet for us... - Yuwanda Black, Daily 1492 Hi Yuwanda, I'm not an expert on catalog production, so I'll defer to those experts. But I'd like to make some comments based on tracking direct-mail industry developments. First, it having your customers ask for a catalog is a great thing, as it shows they want to continue to "experience your brand" while offline. This means you will continue to have a presence with them, for as long as they save your catalog (which many people do for some time -- I'm one of them). Direct marketing news outlets have been reporting on the growing phenomenon of online retailers sending out catalogs for the first time, and multiplying their sales. Some customers order both online and offline, some use the catalog to browse and then order online, and many pass the catalogs on to friends. A few suggestions: 1) make sure your URL is prominent throughout the catalog, to drive orders to the site, where you can process them more easily. 2) if you can on your site, give your catalog customers an incentive to order online by including a number code in the catalog that they enter when ordering online. The code should result in a discount, free shipping, etc. This way you'll be able to track which, & how many, customers are using the catalog to order from, to help you understand how successful the catalog is. You'll also be able to track whether certain products sell better through the catalog (because of bigger photos, longer descriptions, different positioning, etc) than they do online, and perhaps develop different product offerings for catalog and online store. 3) On your Request a Catalog web page, I didn't see the form that you use to ask visitors to use when ordering a catalog -- just an email form. Good luck, and please let us know the results of your mailing! Don Baker NSI Partners www.NSIpartners.com don[AT]nsipartners[DOT]com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Heather Lloyd-Martin Subject: Catalogs Hello, all! FYI - Direct Magazine and Catalog Age has created a great SEO resource site for catalog marketers. You can find it at searchenginesinfo.com Also, for catalogers interested in search marketing, as well as other online and offline techniques, the Direct Marketing Association's Catalog Conference covers everything you need to know. It's from June 1-3, and you can find more info here: www.catalogconference.com I hope this helps! Heather Lloyd-Martin, President and CEO SuccessWorks Search Marketing Solutions, Inc. www.searchenginewriting.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Peter Lapinskas Subject: Frames > A framed site does not have to keep re-loading > the navigation elements over and over... Sure, > you can pre-load images, but why keep loading > the same things over and over? - Christian Nielsen, Daily 1490 I hesitate to disagree with Christian, but my understanding is that (whether a page is framed or not) a resource file (such as an image) is only downloaded from the site the first time it is called. After that it will be pulled out of the computer's local cache with no download penalty. You would only have to keep loading something over and over if each page referred to a different copy of the same file. Pre-loading helps to overcome the initial lag when an image is first used (for instance, as a rollover), but the penalty would be the same, whether the page was framed or not. It's true that there is a download penalty for non-framed pages, in that the HTML for the constant elements (such as navigation and header) has to be downloaded anew for each page, but that would normally be (or can be designed to be) trivial in size. Use of external CSS and Javascript files can help with this, as they again only get downloaded the first time they are used. Peter Lapinskas www.lapinskas.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Steve Knilans Subject: SEO > I really cannot comprehend how even a SEO > expert can "guarantee" a placement in the top > ten for any keyword on any of the search > engines. - James Kalassery, Daily 1492 There WAS a time when the lifetime of your site counted towards its being in the top results. In otherwords, all other things being the same, a site submitted first would appear higher. Maybe it is the same now. Also, if you have narrowly defined pages, you will get more traffic. A page covering one product will almost ALWAYS rank higher for its keywords than a page linking to them. This is often referred to as keyword density. Also, like pages linking to your page will increase popularity. MAN was my stepmother surprised to find that almost 300 sites link to hers! I have another site that has almost 300 sites linking to it. One was even an article calling the mirroring of a tutorial on a site one of the best Java tutorials around. NONE of this was requested! SO, people may have been conspiring behind your back, even without their realizing it, to increase your sites popularity. AGAIN, this takes time. As for being in the top 10 results for a keyword or phrase? Realize that only an average of 100 sites on the PLANET have this honor for a given search engine. ALSO, the search engines are increasing the price to have this honor. It USED to be free in almost every case. Yahoo now makes it $299 /year to even be included. Other sites charge up to several dollars per click. (Even engines offering free placement use some of the prized real estate ONLY for ads and "sponsored links") So don't be upset to find that your site isn't so honored. Then again, things change. BTW, you can accelerate your ranking by determining what people are searching for, removing excess words, asking for links, etc... Steve Knilans wisebooks.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Shari Thurow Subject: New Google Tool Hi all-- First, I am really glad that this list is back to being known as LED. I never changed it in my emailbox. Glad I didn't. I just wanted to tell everyone about this cool new thing Google has for checking out snippets. It's called WebQuotes, and it's a good way to find out the descriptions or snippets from other sites that are linking to your site (or sites that use your keywords). labs.google.com [please cut & paste this link] Click on the links that states Google Webquotes. For those of you who do competitive research, it's a great tool. Kudos to Google for coming up with this tool. Take care, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director For free design and marketing tips, visit us at: www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Toon Eppink Subject: Casino affiliate links Hello everyone, I own a site where I sell kitchen cutlery. I think it's a professional looking site, targeting the internet shopper. Like many of us, I have a links page for increasing traffic and building link popularity. I'm considering putting some affiliate links on there, one of which would be for online casinos. My question is, does this hurt my site's integrety, will it effect customer trust? What's the overall opinion on internet casinos, are they widely accepted or should you stay away from them? Any thoughts on this will be highly appreciated. Toon Eppink hanktheknife.com ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. -- Abraham Lincoln |
