| LED Digest 2309: SEO Scumbaggery |
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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 .............................................. December 15, 2006 Issue no. 2309 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== SEO Scumbaggery ==-- ~ Moderator Comment> "What good are top rankings if your site is down and being held hostage?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Online Marketing for Classical Musicians ==-- ~ Shel Horowitz "...how can we do for classical music what Dannon did for yogurt...?" ~ David Spahr "...Canon in D by Johann Pachebel is the fourth most viewed YouTube video ever..." --== The Email Crisis ==-- ~ Steven Birk "The worst thing ever invented...was the mailto: link..." ~ Mark Frank "The solution is William Bontrager..." --== Website Accessibility ==-- ~ Tom Aman "I do not really like dropdown menus on Web pages..." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> SEO Scumbaggery I spoke with an LEDer today that needed help with some SEO work. He's in a very defined niche selling a unique retail item. There's not a ton of competition and his site is ranking fairly well. At least it *was* ranking well... He described to me over the phone some of the work he's had done by other SEO companies. The most recent firm did two lame things: they guaranteed him specific top rankings and required him to host his site on their servers. I explained that 1) no one can *guarantee* rankings, and 2) no legitimate SEO wants to host their client's sites (that I know of). In dealing with him - he was a very bright person, friendly and obviously well-meaning - I got the feeling I was talking to a brick wall a little. His site was ranked fairly high - 2nd page in Google and 1st page in Yahoo (didn't check MSN or Ask) for his targeted keyphrases. But once I did some digging I found a few things: - Some strange stuff that appeared to be .org domains hosted on the same server and pointing to his IP. With pages and pages of links / anchor text. - Some obviously paid-for links to unrelated domains. - etc. I didn't want to look any further. When I explained that this kind of aggressive SEO can fail you long term when / if the search engines change their algorithms to compensate for such vulnerabilities, he pretty much said "but I have good rankings." Yup, hard to argue with that - but for how long?? And how much risk? Now he's in a financial dispute with the shady SEO, who has retaliated by *taking his site down and holding it hostage*! They don't have admin control of his domain name, luckily, but they do control the site and he has to either cough up some cash or start from scratch! I'm doing some scratching myself... of my head. What good are top rankings if your site is down and being held hostage? Any other tales of SEO Scumbaggery out there? Have a great weekend, Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Marketing music > People under 35 or so in the mass-consumer market countries > have pretty much written off serious music as being hopelessly > un-cool. Even so-called "cross-over" classical musicians face > tremendous obstacles... Anything "smart" has now been tainted > by pop culture as being of interest only to girls who cannot get > a date, nerds and old people. - David Yancey, LED Digest 2308 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1403/55/ Well, my area may be an anomaly -- but around these parts (western Massachusetts, admittedly a college and culture area), there's a thriving classical music scene for kids. When my daughter played piano as part of a benefit concert for the Golden Mountain Chamber Music Academy, the various acts, ages 12 or so through college except for the faculty, filled a good-sized church. My son was concertmaster (head violinist) of one youth orchestra last year and this year he is principal oboist of another. Maybe it's the circles we travel in, but we know more kids who do classical music than who do sports. Most of them are female, but my son is far from the only boy. And at least the more serious among these kids do listen to classical music on their own time. They also listen to rock, hip-hop, etc. Their peers don't always understand the music, but the do admire skill on any instrument, in any genre. Maybe the real challenge is to prove to the world that classical music is fun. Disney's Fantasia helped create a mass audience for classical in the 30 and 40s. Carl Sagan turned the arcane science of astronomy into pop culture. Dannon made yogurt sexy in the 70s. Like my son, I'm very eclectic in my musical taste. I'll listen with equal fervor to the Who, Joan Baez, and Beethoven. And when I think about the utter joy of spirit I hear listening to our amateur recording of my daughter playing Debussy's "La Catedral" -- at least as sexy as Dannon yogurt, for goodness sake -- or my son reaching the high notes on the Vaughan Williams oboe concerto -- all I can think of is that those who've never exposed themselves to this beautiful music are missing out, deeply. So, marketers of the world -- how can we do for classical music what Dannon did for yogurt, once the nerdiest of nerdy foods? One small step I've taken is to put up over 20 articles in the classical music section of my Global Arts Review on the FrugalFun.com website. Shel Horowitz http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org -------- new post - same topic -------- From: David Spahr Subject: Marketing classical music > As far as the larger market goes... I'm not persuaded that > serious music can compete for eyeballs (or eardrums) in > sites and communities like MySpace, much less Youtube. - David Yancey, LED Digest 2308 This video on youtube of Canon in D by Johann Pachebel is the fourth most viewed youtube video ever with almost 12 million views: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjA5faZF1A8 . Amazing what a young college student can do from his bedroom in Korea. OK, not traditional but still a true virtuoso. If this guy can't give you food for thought... Follow the links around and find lots of classical musicians. David Spahr * Stereoviews.com * Antique-Photography.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Email > Do you have a nice code that us morons could use > to take the place of "mailto:' that is more secure? - Peter D'Aprix, LED Digest 2304 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1394/55/ Regarding Peter's request for some alternatives of using something other than a mailto: link... I posted the below alternatives back in LED 2128 in March of this year [see http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/343/55/ -ed]. These are just a few alternatives that I found that you may find useful: First thing... http://willmaster.com/possibilities/demo/RetrieveEmails.cgi and enter your page URL and see if a Spam-bot has the possibility to find your address. If you have an email address on the page you search (whether you have tried to hide it or not) and this finds it, for sure a Spam-bot will find it. Not saying its 100% accurate, but it's a start... Alternative Number 1: Look at http://www.automaticlabs.com/products/enkoderform This looks like it has quite a robust way of encrypting your email address and its free. It does encrypt it inside of JavaScript so there may be some who don't want to use it for that reason. I tested it on a page and used the willmaster url above as a test and it did not find it. Not saying that's 100% fool proof, but it's something... Alternative Number 2: You can also use: http://www.golivecentral.com/pages/txttut/scramble.shtml This will ASCII encode your email address, but you MUST embed it inside JavaScript to hide it from the spambots. Do not just encode the mailto: link in ASCII and use it as an ordinary HTML link, as the spambots will find this. Alternative Number 3: Another option is at: http://accessfp.net/protect-your-email-address.htm Look about 1/2 way down the page under the "Solution for Stopping Spam-Bots from Obtaining your Email Address from your Website" section. This produces a non-clickable link, but a copy and paste-able email address that your visitor can easily use to paste your email address into their email program, but which is undetectable by a Spam-bot. (NOTE: I also found that you should never put just your email address as text on your web page as a Spam-bot will find that also. Use 'Number 3' above if you want to produce a non-clickable, visible email address on your web page). IMHO, if I had a web site that did not have a contact form and wanted to have my email address visible on my site for people to contact me, I would use Number 3 above. If someone is too lazy to copy and paste my visible email address into their email program, then they probably don't want to contact me that bad... The worst thing ever invented, again IMHO, was the mailto: link... and I'm sure if those who invented this link knew what spam was back then, they would have skipped this feature. I have no affiliation with the above links; I just found them and included the actual links as a possible solution to just having a plain old mailto: link clearly visible in your source code. The only real way to kill these harvesters off is to starve them! Do what ever you can TODAY to protect your email address(s) on your web sites -- try one of the three methods above and never stop looking for more! But... I'm sure there are those hot on the trail to hack into your email address even if you use any of the methods above... It unfortunately is never ending. I hope this may help. Regards, Steven Birk, FF/EMT http://publicsafetyhub.com/emergencycard Free emergency contact card - don't leave home without it! -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Frank Subject: Email Peter, The solution is William Bontrager (http://willmaster.com). He has cgi form handlers that solve the junk mail problem. They come with great installation instructions if you want to install them or he will install them for you at a very reasonable price. He also has a good overview of spam-proofing options at http://www.bontragercgi.com/Spam-Proofing_Your_Web_Site.html. Mark Frank, Author Start Your Own Home Based Website Design Business http://www.websitedesignbiz.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Accessibility > There is absolutely no reason why a text > reader cannot work its way through javascript. - Al Toman, LED Digest 2308 Sorry to disagree, but there is lots of reasons why a text reader would have problems attempting to deal with javascript. While some script is very simple and could be dealt with, a lot of it involves calls to various functions and the resulting output can often vary, sometimes depending on the user choices made on the page. For example, your post mentions javascript dropdown menus. How would a text reader render something like that in a way that would make sense to the surfer??? The problem here is that it would make no sense to voice the dropdown content unless the mouse was pointing at the appropriate menu item and the pointer may well have moved on to the next item before the text reader has finished with the first one. I could see this becoming incredibly confusing to the surfer. And that is just one example. (FYI, I do not really like dropdown menus on Web pages, however they are created, since they tend to make navigation more difficult than necessary and are often confusing.) There are many other situations that would be just as confusing. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. 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