| LED Digest 1518: Spam Solutions |
|
|
|
================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest ................................................. February 14, 2003 Issue #1518 ................................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Competing with SEO Spammers ==-- ~ Lorelle Smith "...search engines don't look at Meta tags these days..." ~ Suzanne Thomas "To track your statistics...try sitemeter.com..." --== Techniques for Publishing Contact Info ==-- ~ Charles Oertel "A very neat solution...is to use a CGI script." ===== GEEK TIPS ================== --== Spam with Forged Headers ==-- ~ Martyn Gay ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Domain Registration Encore ==-- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Lorelle Smith Subject: SE spammers Some of the statements in Joann Chokrach's post in #1516 were misleading or inaccurate. Sorry, Joann, but I think it's important to correct them for the other readers. > Most of your pages do not use META > tags for description or keywords. > Some of the keyword tags have line > breaks in them, which will prevent > the SE from reading beyond that point. The search engines don't look at Meta tags these days (except for Inktomi), so don't worry about this too much. > Your copyright notice should read > "(C) 2002-2003. The current notice > "(C) 2002" makes it look like you > haven't done anything with the site > in over a year. The copyright date should be changed only when you revise or add to the text. Yes, many visitors do assume the date shown is when the site was last updated, so if you're going to update the date, update the page too. > On Your Home Page, I'd change the > title to read "Handicomp, Inc - > Golf Information Systems" Actually, your most important keywords should go first. Put the company name last or not at all. You're always going to rank highly for your company name automatically. I also tack the URL on the end of my title tags to aid those who print out websites and then don't remember the URL. Mick Force (whose site was the subject of Joann's post) should look at his site the way the search engines see it: http://www.delorie.com/web/ses.html. Mick, your site is a visual masterpiece, but where are your keywords that would let the SEs know what it's all about? The single word "golf" is only mentioned 4 or 5 times - certainly not enough to qualify the site as a site about golf. (Never try to optimize for a single word anyway, unless it's highly unique.) If you include the right keywords you will improve your site's SE visibility dramatically. For instance, a search on Wordtracker for search queries shows that "golf handicap," "golf handicap calculator," and "golf handicap software" are some of the words you should be targeting. These are the keywords that actual searchers have recently used. Yet "golf handicap" isn't anywhere on your first page. (Yes, it's in the tagline in an image but that doesn't get seen by the SEs and its position makes it hard for humans to see it too.) Ironically, Mick's original post asked how to report competitors who spam the search engines to get listed. Instead of worrying what your competitors might be doing to get into the search engines, Mick, you should be researching and implementing the keywords that apply to your site. But for everybody else out there who was wondering how to report spammers to Google, the address is This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it For more information about how to write with keywords, I highly recommend Jill Whalen's "Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" report just released on Wed., Feb. 11. Read more about it here: http://www.keywordsmith.com/nitty-gritty.htm. Lorelle Smith http://www.Keywordsmith.com Free SEO consultation by phone - operators are standing by! <g> (actually, it's just me!) ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Suzanne Thomas Subject: SE spammers Dear Mick, I had problems getting my site good listings as well. I did a lot of reading and a lot of research. I now use Web Position Gold software to submit to the primary search engines every day. The software has a built in page critic to analyze and optimize your pages for each search engine. To see how your site is ranked in each search engine for your choosen keywords, use the reporter function. My site gets great rank at Yahoo!, Google and Alta Vista. Before using Web Position Gold I couldn't even find my site on most engines. The software has too many great functions to list, you will find good explanations at their site http://www.webposition.com/ . They have a free trial download that I think is good for about a month. If you like the software you pay a fee for an unlock key. Even if you don't try the software, their newsletters provide invaluable free information and I highly recommend reading them. To track your statistics, number of visitors, keywords used to find your site, which search engine they used, how long they stayed, how many pages they viewed, view search engine by rank, keyword by rank etc etc... for about $60.00 a year try http://www.sitemeter.com You will gain invaluable information from this service. This one can also be used for free minus some of the statistics. It is WELL worth the annual subscription fee. I hope this information helps you in some way. Suzanne Thomas http://www.decaljunky.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Charles Oertel Subject: Contact info Hi all I am amazed at the elaborate suggestions offered to avoid having email addresses harvested by spam-bots. The ASCII encoding trick no longer works, and running some elaborate javascript to encrypt the email address just slows down the page and invites browser compatibility issues (some of my customers have Javascript turned off anyway, and others use a text-based browser like Lynx or less). A very neat solution, that allows customers using a different PC to the one their email program is on, and allows them to send email from their browser without firing up their email program, is to use a CGI script. Many people have (now unfounded) concerns about using formmail. I suspect formmail wouldn't stop spam-bots, because your email address is put in the HTML page as a hidden form field. However, if you have even the slightest bit of common sense, you can edit the formmail script to have your email address hard-coded in the cgi-script itself. The script I now use will email the contents of a 'contact us' form to me and to the customer (so they now have a record of our email address), and does not expose our email address. The advantage is that it is very quick to use, convenient and professional. Our spam rates have dropped. The disadvantage is that occasionally a customer mis-types their email address. Of course, some spam agents take your domain name and then prepend generic terms like ' This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ' and ' This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it '. regards Charles Oertel FineBushPeople.net ===== GEEK TIPS =================================== From: Martyn Gay Subject: Forged spam > Today I have received spam emails that show two > of my own addresses as the sender, whereas I have > nothing to do with them. - Dudley Dix, LED 1517 Dudley, Firstly, don't worry about being blacklisted. The various spam lists are much more sophisticated than that... they know spammers use fake addresses. This is why should should never reply to a spam to complain as the address will either be non existent or belong to an innocent person. Chances are the spammer has only used your address to write to you and no one else. Spammers try and avoid various filters by using your own address on the basis mail from your domain may be allowed through any filtering. Secondly you may want to learn how to report spam to the parties responsible. This includes where the spam was sent from and where the spam promoted site is hosted. Most if not all big ISPs will not permit sites they host to be promoted in this way, with a few exceptions (for example Verio and Worldcom - though their terms and conditions don't admit this!). The best way to defend yourself against spam is to use blocklists. After suffering crippling levels of spam we implemented the following block lists on our mail server (if you aren't on a network with your own mailserver, ask your ISP about implementing these at their end). Your mail server can be configured to reject mail from numeric IP addresses that are on one or more blocklists provided by third parties. This is much more reliable that filtering by content. www.SPEWS.org (may result in some innocent mail being blocked but well worth it, it is highly effective) www.SpamHaus.org (runs the SBL blocklist, effective though not as draconian as SPEWS and tends to go a bit soft on some rogue ISPs) www.Spamcop.net (Spamcop blocklist - works by analysing spam reported by users, extremely reliable) In addition we use various lists at www.blackholes.us to filter our ALL traffic from spam-friendly ISPs like Verio, as well as entire countries like China and Korea. We've only had one legitimate user blocked in the past several months. He is happy to use either a hotmail address or our webform to avoid the blocks. Most mailservers provide the opportunity to "whitelist" someone, ie to accept their mail despite the blocks. Implementing these blocklists has saved me and my employees hundreds of man hours, not to mention reducing the clogging effect of spam on our systems. Spam is increasing at an alarming rate, if you don't take these actions you may soon have difficulty finding real mails in all that spam. Martyn Gay ASP Shopping Cart Software www.cactushop.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Ivan J. Jimenez Subject: Domain Registration > Godaddy.com does not accept Singapore's credit > card... Godaddy needs to review its policy and not > show itself to be ignorant. - Vincent Tan, LED 1517 Hi Vincent, Let me begin by saying I neither have any affiliation with GoDaddy (we use http://imcdomains.com) nor do I know specifically why Singapore or any other country is excluded from GoDaddy's merchant program. Now that we got that out of the way, let me try to shed some light on your http://godaddy.com issue. Prior to doing business development, I was a hospital administrator overseeing the financial aspects of international affairs. I've seen many wealthy families (including two listed in Forbes richest people in the world!) come from "third world" countries in South America and Central America with bank drafts in US currency who've had their checks returned simply because our bank, who actively promotes their international brand, would not accept the foreign country's laws regarding financial issues. They wouldn't even verify if there were sufficient funds -- bank policies prohibited it! In plain English, many banks don't trust that at the end of the day, a foreign bank will honor their debt to the US bank in the event of a financial disaster. Why? Many countries have laws protecting their financial institutions from going under and any savvy corporate lawyer can find a loophole to avoid paying out debts, if needed. The truth is that this will probably never happen but if it does, the US bank could stand to loose millions in a heartbeat. For consistency's sake, most bank's policies deny all drafts across the board for certain countries. Going back to GoDaddy, they probably don't have any problems with Singapore or any other country. They're in business to make money and could care less where it originates from. Their bank however, has different views and it may not be so simple for GoDaddy to change it's merchant program OR GoDaddy may see this post and look for another friendlier provider! Happy to help, Ivan J. Jimenez, Business Development CosmicBreath.com Marketing Group ------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1995-2003 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Happy Valentines Day, Sally Anne" |
