| LED Digest 2323: Saving Clients from Design Costs |
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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 .............................................. January 11, 2007 Issue no. 2323 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= <Moderator Comment> --== Saving Design Costs ==-- ~ Shari Thurow "What do you do when people insist on too many renditions of design elements...?" --== Image Spam the Future? [was: Predictions...] ==-- ~ Steve Birk "Image spam could bring the internet to a standstill..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== An SEO Guide - is it Possible? ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "[Link reciprocation] is a very affordable strategy in the whole context of link building." ~ John Smart "...I do not see how it can fail..." ---== What is Yahoo! Slurp Doing? ==-- ~ Nathan Holley "I've seen discussions elsewhere about Yahoo ignoring nofollows and such..." --== Linking Requests ==-- ~ Dave Mead "...put a mention and a link within [the blog] on your site." ~ Tom Aman "...you really don't want to get involved in using hidden links." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Couple quickies - the iPhone is officially pre-marketed now: http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html. I want one. More rumblings as Congress revisits the polemical Net Neutrality bill: http://www.redherring.com/Article...InternetAndServices -Adam ---------------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Saving Design Costs Hi LEDers- I have a problem with some design / development clients. All feedback (brutal honesty preferred) will be appreciated. I do not only work on high-end, big-brand client sites. I also work on small to medium size sites as well, mostly medium-range budgets. I understand that most people are visual. They want to see a specific example of a visual element (a navigation scheme, for example) before they "yay" or "nay" it. This is my problem. If I (or any of our developers) have to provide a specific visual element every single time someone needs to see an exact rendition? Two things often result: (1) It takes more time to complete the project because it takes time to design every single rendition of a design element, and (2) all that extra time means that the project goes over budget. I try and try and try and try to communicate this to some of my clients. I want them to stay within the budget, but some of them just insist on unlimited iterations of various design elements. I'll give you an example. I wanted to show some primary, secondary, and 3rd-level calls-to-action to a client. A different client site that did this very well was a manufacturing site. However, this manufacturing site? It is specifically designed for lower end browsers because that is exactly what the target audience uses. My other client was viewing the example site on the latest browser. It doesn't matter that the calls-to-action didn't render the way he wanted it. It mattered that my other client's target audience had those CTAs rendered the way they wanted it. I was trying to point out to my client was that this particular site had excellent placement and organization of primary, secondary, and 3rd-level calls-to-action. All my client would focus on, however, was how much he didn't like how it looked. Even though I told him I could modify this within 60 seconds (it's a style sheet change), he just would not get off that topic. He kept missing the point - his site needed this type of organization and use of screen real estate. I don't know if this example illustrates my point, but I did my best. What do you do when people insist on too many renditions of design elements, making the project launch date later than expected, and going over budget? Just so you know, as a designer / developer, this situation happens all of the time. I don't know how other designers give unlimited logo samples. I've experienced too many people taking advantage of it (and not paying). Again, any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. ~ For free design and marketing tips, visit us at: http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Birk Subject: Image Spam [was: 2007 predictions] I noticed that Edwin Hayward's 2007 predictions [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1688/55/ ] made no mention of the subject of spam. His 2006 predictions did, but unfortunately not with the results he predicted. I ran across this article today in which a security expert makes this claim about spam and the coming year... 'Image spam' could bring the internet to a standstill... It appeared online at thisislondon.co.uk news site. You can read it here. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article...standstill/article.do The article mentions the fact that nearly 10% of the world's 650 million online computers are 'botnet' victims and are being hijacked by hackers to send out spam email, of which 'image spam' is the big thing right now. That's 65 million computers throwing all kinds of 'image spam' around and that does not sound real good... especially if you were a piece of bandwidth! Computer literate people understand what spam is and the ways and methods available to reduce, and not contribute to it (ie.... filters, whitelists, blacklists, updated security software, firewalls, etc...). It's educating the masses of computer users that should be a top priority... but the masses are too busy buying the hot penny stocks they are getting in their emails! 'Image spam' could bring the internet to a standstill... Just imagine if that prediction comes even close to being true. Regards, Steven Birk http://medcenternews.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Dirk Johnson Subject: SEO guide > - the whole reason reciprocal links diminished > in value and effectiveness because the technique > has been abused and is generally associated > with low information quality. - Aaron Wall, LED Digest 2321 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1701/55/ Our clients continue to do well, even the ones with domains that are less than a year old. Our older clients have weathered the various Google updates in remarkable condition, even gaining positions. In addition, the sites we link with have held up well. We follow their success, too, as another means to gauge what is really happening with reciprocation. We have seen virtually nothing in search results that has moved us to alter our approach, which has been the same for years. From our inception, we try to do this work properly, and with relevance to subject as the driving consideration. Maybe that is the difference. In any case, it works. What's more, the vast majority of our clients (old and new) use nothing more than the very basic SEO techniques that we describe in our guide (http://www.domaindrivers.com/seobasics-realestate-main.htm), and they use reciprocal linking as their primary, and in many cases, their only pro-active method of establishing links. Many of the other one-way links pointing to their sites (and they are numerous, especially among the older clients) were acquired later by natural citation, from which reciprocation was the catalyst that earned them the awareness in the first place. Reciprocal links, done right, beget one-way links. From what we have seen, based on observing hundreds of sites and case studies, functional SEO work is not very complicated, or costly. It just takes some basic knowledge of what works, the willingness to do it thoroughly, and some time. To clarify, it is not free, or easy. I don't disagree that hiring real experts to prosecute the minutiae details of SEO, or to pursue links that are not readily available, can be very effective, especially in extremely competitive situations. But the average site owner that we encounter does not have the budget for that kind of higher-end advice. So there is a lot that they can do on their own, or in consultation with a good, grounded advisor, that costs very little, and produces excellent results. A part of that basic approach includes proper reciprocation with other relevant sites, which is a very affordable strategy in the whole context of link building. Website owners on real budgets looking for practical answers need to hear that message, from someone who observes it first hand, every day. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Linking requests > ... I don't think an SEO guide is possible. What I just described > as spam is perfectly acceptable to other SEO firms. Their guide > would contain considerably different content than my guide. - Shari Thurow, LED Digest 2321 Shari's argument that the SEO guide could not work because different people have different ideas about what is good and bad practice makes little sense -- taken to its fullest extent, from her perspective, we should not have the LED, just her (1st and 2nd edition) book. It seems to me that the point of the LED is to share ideas, nuggets of information, theories and more, then through feedback, determine which work best. I see the SEO Guide as almost being a compressed version of the LED archives -- showing what can be done, and what we think about it. I do not like to speak for others, but I think most of us here have "relationships" with the posters -- some will see a post from Ms. X. and instantly know it is good advice, whereas a post from Mr. Y. should be viewed with skepticism. To a lesser extent, that will apply to the guide, and, if there are to be feed-back elements on the site, this two-way communication will continue, allowing even newcomers to establish fairly quickly which posters are trying to share good data, which posters are trying to share, but the data isn't so good, and which (if any) posters are simply pushing for reactions / notoriety / self-promotion. With careful planning, and the right backing, I do not see how it can fail -- depending of course on how one defines success! John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Nathan Holley Subject: Yahoo slurp bot > ... you might be inadvertently linking to these > URLs from a rogue page deep within your website. - Derrick Wheeler, LED Digest 2322 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1703/55/ I was working on a site using Wordpress for a client a few months ago and experienced something like this. I hadn't installed any kind of canonicalization improvements for SEO and duplicate content issues... Wordpress is excellent out of the box but without proper set up can run into problems like most any CMS / blog can. Anyway, the site wasn't even launched - just on a server like /clients/dev/site_name. Silly me I forgot that Yahoo will ignore your robots.txt unless you disallow it using a user agent string, so it went and found the entire site. I had a bunch of content up from the client, ready to get things up within a few weeks, but it was already found by Yahoo. Including a ton of pages duplicated and these admin URLs and dynamic links for commenting / feeds / other plugins. It was messy. I've seen discussions elsewhere about Yahoo ignoring nofollows and such - there's lots of theory about what passes value but in their explorer, links with high likelihood of carrying weight are appearing early (indicating level of trust and factoring). What I'm getting at (clumsily) is that Yahoo Slurp may be scouring the Net looking for links and not have the level of sophistication googlebot has, in terms of dupe content and passing link value. Yahoo slurp makes its own rules I guess - many people also find it will ignore robots.txt entries even with the user agent as slurp. Makes you wonder. My advice is to get your site crawled per Derrick's own recommendation (nice offer btw) and see what you can find out. Man, my head is fuzzy today - this advice is pretty ramshackle. I'll try to do better next time ;) Nathan Holley holleymoney, gmail.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dave Mead Subject: Linking requests > I have recently received a request from a colleague and > it made me very uncomfortable... it made me think he is > working with some less than ethical SEO companies... > How would you suggest that I respond to this individual? - Mark Bishop, LED Digest 2320 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1696/55/ Dear Mark, You could point out that you don't see how it could be "mutually beneficial" if the link is "hidden from the naked eye" and be honest that you think that it sounds a little shady. What you could do, if you run a blog or have used your friends services is put a mention and a link within that mention on your site. That way it's relevant and could include some keywords. It's also above board. Hope this helps. Dave Mead DMWebsites.com - Affordable, quality driven, standards-based web design | SEO | Consulting. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Linking requests Mark, I would suggest a reply that points out that one thing you have learned from LED is that playing games with text and/or links, such as creating things that are intended only for search engines and are hidden from surfers is a dangerous game because if a search engine discovers it, the offending sites may be banned from that search engine - sometimes permanently, therefore you really don't want to get involved in using hidden links. Taking that approach conveys the message without being pedantic or even making it your own judgement call. Then suggest that he join LED for his own benefit. I am sure we LEDers will educate him in short order. While LEDers may not agree on everything, I believe there are some things that we all agree are big no-nos and can get a site in big trouble fast. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains The Archives: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/126/120/ Subscribe: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/52/77/ Unsubscribe, Change Email, or Hold / Resume Delivery: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/4/17/86/ (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln |
