Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

Home arrow Full Issues arrow 2006 archives arrow LED Digest 2306: The Google Compliance Industry
LED Digest 2306: The Google Compliance Industry Print E-mail
==================================================
                 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
..............................................
December 12, 2006                   Issue no. 2306
..............................................


            .....IN THIS DIGEST.....


==== CONTINUING =================

        --== Web Site Accessibility ==--

                ~ Rose Lacy
"I've done a website for the JAWS screen
reader for the blind..."

        --== Questioning SEOs ==--

                ~ Cayley Vos
"In this industry, experience counts and it
is worth paying a premium for."

        --== Kanoodle Experience ==--

                ~ Karl L. Baldwin
"...another alternative I've been using
aggressively is pay for inclusion."

                <Moderator Comment>

        --== The Email Crisis ==--

                ~ John Barendrecht
"Everyone is talking about Web 2.0, when
what we really need Email 2.0."

                ~ Noah Masterson
"Here's another email form script in PHP..."

                ~ Rob Forker
"Ran across this [software] a few days ago..."

                ~ Al Toman
"...it is also very easy to convert ASCII to text,
especially for spam bots."

        --== Google Compliance Industry [was: Sitemaps...] ==--

                ~ Dirk Johnson
"Just to follow up on my post about the burgeoning
Google compliance industry..."


======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: Rose Lacy
Subject: Accessibility

I've done a website for the JAWS screen reader for the blind... In
creating a site for the mobile web, I came across a lot of the same
rules for them as for accessibility. I have since cut a lot of chaff
from http://baads.org/ to make it JAWS screen reader compatible.

I highly recommend downloading JAWS and trying it on a site to test
accessibility. It's "eye" opening! <sorry - bad pun I know>
http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp

There is also a lot of cross over with CSS standards compliance and
accessibility. W3C offers a free CSS test online for your site.
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Dreamweaver has a plug-in you can get for testing accessibility to
the W3C standards. But please test with JAWS before releasing the
site.

Rose Lacy
http://webrosedesign.com/


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Cayley Vos
Subject: Questioning SEOs

> Gimme one word (if possible) to ask a business owner who wants
> to sell me SEO services on his website that I can use to ask him
> the pertinent questions about [his methods for improving rankings].
        - Pieter van der Vyver, LED Digest 2301
        - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1389/55/

SEO's are not omniscient oracles, and we are not computer
scientists. Some of us have PhD's or advanced degrees, but the best
SEO's are those who have been in the industry for 5+ years and have
witnessed the search landscape change firsthand.

Given this, ask the SEO specific technical questions, and use this
as an honesty meter:

- Do you have a special relationship with a major search engine?
(search engines do not give preferential treatment to any website,
not even god.com)

- How long will it take to achieve good rankings? (6-12+ months
depending on the quality of your website)

- How will you be getting links to my website? (If the SEO mentions
a proprietary network of websites, outsourced link builders, or
automated blog comments its a bad sign)

- Finally, ask who exactly will be doing the work. A large SEO firm
may have been founded by a top notch SEO, but they will then farm
your website out to an employee with 6 months of experience. You
want the founder to work on your site, not an intern.

In this industry, experience counts and it is worth paying a premium
for.

Cayley Vos


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Karl Baldwin
Subject: Click fraud

> I looked through the messages that Karl posted and
> it reminded me why we stopped using Kanoodle...
> One solution is... bidding for flat-rate advertising.
        - Chris Nielsen, LED Digest 2305
        - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1395/55/

Thanks for the verification, Chris. I agree with your suggestion to
find flat-rate advertising, but another alternative I've been using
aggressively is pay for inclusion. For the last 6 months or so I
have been submitting to many more free and pay-for-inclusion search
engines and directories as I could find. Most of which I found by
using Axandra IBP software.

The most bang for the buck for starters is ExactSeek.com as you gain
a presence in 245 different search engines and directories who are
members of ISEDN.org. While these are secondary or tertiary
directories, they still deliver traffic, even though it's pretty
small.

But this is now a numbers game and I've changed my strategy to pay
for inclusion even to unknowns as long as they have any Page Rank at
all, something I refused to do in the past.  I am also transitioning
my client's funds towards this strategy.

From my many experiences with un-credible PPC sites I have lost all
confidence in the integrity of the whole PPC concept. The only two
in who I have any degree of trust is Overture and Google (based on
empirical data), but I have decreased my ad budgets by over 75% with
them.

BTW, my traffic is clearly increasing with the increase in the
number of these PFI sites to which I continue to subscribe.

Best Regards,

Karl L. Baldwin

Web Design, Hosting & SEM
websites-online.com

<Moderator Comment>

Here's a related article on click fraud by Google's Shuman
Ghosemajumder and Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal:

"Google's Click Fraud Rate is Less than 2%"
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2006...two-percent.html 

-Adam


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: John Barendrecht
Subject: Email

> Whatever objections you have to contact forms, I think the
> available solutions are a whole lot better than mailto links.
        - Mari Bontrager, LED Digest 2305
        - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1395/55/

Forms versus "mailto."

We have both a contact form and mailto tags. What we find
frustrating on forms is that people don't know their own email
address. About 15 to 20% fill it in wrong. If you ask them on the
form to confirm email address, you get it wrong twice.

If a customer asks for more information on a form, and you can't
reply, they assume you didn't reply and you've lost a potential
customer. This rarely happens with email (wrong address).

Al Toman and similar scripts for opening your email client don't
work if you only have web email like Yahoo or G-Mail. I know a lot
of businessmen who travel, who only use web email because they have
all their email, all the time. They don't want to sync at home, work
and remote location.

Other than sending a test email, there is no 100% fool-proof method
for confirming an email address before they leave the form.

Personally, I don't like forms. Most won't CC sender and others cut
you off at 600 characters when you really need 632 characters to get
your message across.

Everyone is talking about Web 2.0, when what we really need Email
2.0.

Best regards,

John Barendrecht
http://www.centralhome.com


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Noah Masterson
Subject: Email

Here's another email form script in PHP that I've been using for
many years. You need to have a .php extension on the page where the
script appears, and your web host may or may not support this. But
the nice thing is, your e-mail address appears nowhere in the code
once it's uploaded.

---------------------------
<?
/* this part can either be in the same file as the form or it can be
in a different file. If you want this in a different file, make the
"action" of the form go to that file */

if(sizeof($_POST)) {
$body = "";
while(list($key, $val) = each($HTTP_POST_VARS)) {
$body .= "$key: $val \n";
}

mail(" This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ", // to
"Subject Line",
$body);

echo "Thanks for your submission. The results were mailed.";
}

// end form processing
?>
---------------------------

<form
method=post
action=<? echo $PHP_SELF; ?>>
<input type=text name=whatever>
<input type=radio name=this value=radioval>
<select name=another>
<option value=sel1>Select 1
<option value=sel2>Select 2
</select>
<input type=submit name=submit>
</form>

Noah Masterson
dc-baby.com


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Rob Forker
Subject: Email

Peter,

Ran across this [software] a few days ago while 'Stumbling' around
the net. Haven't implemented it, but did do a test page to see if it
works, and it does. It's a free, stand-alone program (doesn't
install) that converts your e-mail address into code which you copy
and paste onto the appropriate pages.

Get it here:  http://www.alexnolan.net/software/email_link_encoder.htm

Rob Forker

<Moderator Comment>

Neat piece of software, Rob. This tool also creates an image out of
a text email. You can then upload the image for people to view and
enter in their email client of choice.

Of course this has some accessibility shortcomings - those with
images turned off or poor eyesight may not see the image at all.

-Adam


-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Al Toman
Subject: Email

> Here is a solution we just started using with success.
        - Joel Lesser, LED Digest 2305

> Jim King offered a suggestion to encode the path of your form CGI
> script in ASCII which caused his contact form spam to disappear.
        - Steven Birk, LED Digest 2305

I used to use a variation of the script provided by Mr. Joel Lesser
about four, five years ago. I no longer use it and I wrote a
discussion why I no longer use this script here:
http://studio9.ws/scripts/test_script.html

I also re-suggested the best javascript encryption scripts as
recognized by the folks at Windows Secrets and A List Apart as well
as many others.  As well, I re-suggested the php, server-side
script, if javascript is an issue.  The links are found on the web
page shown above.

Note: I noticed that the script provided by Mr. Lesser is different
on http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1395/55/ then it is in the
email version of LED Digest.  This explains why it blows up if you
attempted to cut-n-paste it from the web site and not the LED email.

ASCII Obfuscation:

As Mr. Steven Birk illustrates, it is very easy to convert text to
ASCII.  However, it is also very easy to convert ASCII to text,
especially for spam bots.

I am not sure how Mr. Birk objectively ascertained that his email
address is no longer subject to spam.  The only way to measure this,
is to 1) delete the old email address and 2) use an obscure email
address specific to this web page application.

First, if your email address has been exposed and harvested, it's
already on Mr. Spam's list as so noted by the FTC and the Windows
Secret Report about which I previously informed you.

This type of obfuscation makes harvesting by spammers a breeze and
gives false protection.  The FTC has so noted that there are
sophisticated spammers and there are wanna-be spammers.  The idea is
to study the more sophisticated and build your defenses from them.

I'm sure that Ms. Mari Bontrager will confirm the high exposure and
false protection of obfuscation, as well.

If you're using a Perl CGI script for your contact form, be sure to
check its source and date.  Perl CGI offerred by many web hosts can
be (has been) compromised if they did not update, patch, their
script.

Happy Spam-Jammin',

Al Toman
studio9.ws

[thanks for the heads-up, Al. I fixed the code in the archives.
-adam]


-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Dirk Johnson
Subject: Google Compliance Industry [was: Sitemaps]

> This basically comes down to the "Google compliance" issue
> Dirk Johnson hinted at recently (see issue 2297 for Dirk's post:
> http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1381/55/ ).
        - Moderator Comment, LED Digest 2303

Adam,

Just to follow up on my post about the burgeoning Google compliance
industry and their endless claims that the sky is always falling
unless you hire them to run your site and it's links through a gamut
of ever-expanding, arcane criteria. Now comes this very informative
video interview with an actual Google spokesperson.

http://videos.webpronews.com/2006...google-sitemaps 

Rand Fishkin interviewed Vanessa Fox, who is the Product Manager of
Google Webmaster Central. While the entire video contains excellent
information, is it noteworthy where they discuss PageRank (about
halfway through), and specifically, if a site should apply PR
criteria to their linking decisions.

Vanessa says:

"I think that people get really hung up on Toolbar Page Rank."

"People probably spend a little more energy on it than they need to"

"Some people fixate on this Toolbar number and it might blind them a
little."

Rank asked (I'm paraphrasing) if it is appropriate for sites to
establish a PR threshold for incoming links, such as a PR 4. Vanessa
responds:

"I would tell them to get links from pages that are relevant, that
they are going to get the traffic from... and ignore what PR might
be in the Toolbar, they will be a lot better off, and they will
probably get a lot more visitors..It's not just about the Google
indexing, ultimately what you want is the traffic to your site."

That just about sums up the issue, no?

Best regards,

Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations

DomainDrivers LLC
www.domaindrivers.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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

"The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and
cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with
us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the
earth for us an inhabited garden." - Johann von Goethe
 
[ Back ]