| LED Digest 2337: Negotiating for Domains |
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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 31, 2007 Issue no. 2337 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Google's Daily Data Refresh ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "Don't try to rank on linkage. It's much more difficult to do now than it was a few months ago." --== European Sales ==-- ~ David Spahr "...I have a European and a British site. This is where PayPal is very helpful." --== Domain Name Hoarding ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "This is a much more common tale than most may realize." --== Presenting a Trustworthy Image ==-- ~ Ed Clark "BBB is a joke in my mind and a waste of money." ~ GJ Berg "My eBay feedback and PayPal transaction counts mean more to those I do business with online." ~ Tom Anson "I keep the tone personal, without getting sentimental." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Michael Martinez Subject: Google's Daily Data refresh > ... we appear to be still going down the > Google abyss! It could be other factors > but it appears directly related to the times > of change. - Kevin Condon, LED Digest 2336 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1730/55/ As I check Google today, it shows a cache date of January 21 for your root URL, so Google is not grabbing your page on a daily basis. Just because they are recrawling large portions of the Web each day doesn't mean they are recaching your pages (or mine) each day. In fact, Google visits my root URL more often than it caches that page, and I change that page more often than it gets cached. Since I don't lose my rankings every time I change my pages, and since other large content sites I watch (such as CNN, etc.) don't lose their rankings every time they change their main index content, I am confident that simply changing your content is not a bad thing with respect to Google. Here are some things to consider: LACK OF TRUSTED LINKS In checking your backlinks on Google (no, I did NOT use the "link:" operator) I see that you have almost 200 inbound links using anchor text of "alphabet songs". Most of those links come from pages in the Supplemental Index. I believe the majority of your inbound links are not helping you because they are not trusted. Some of them are probably moving into and out of the Main Index because of their own weak linkage. As they bounce in and out, they occasionally help you -- maybe. LACK OF CONTENT FOCUS Your root URL page is bloated with promotional content and is thus unfocused. I see that "alphabet songs" occurs several times in your copy but you don't really give it any special significance. That is, your page not very relevant to the expression. The lack of on-page optimization for "alphabet songs" and the apparent dependence upon linkage to assert relevance for the expression are most likely the causes of your woes. Optimizing your pages does NOT mean you cannot change the content. It just means you have to firmly tell everyone (your visitors and hence the search engines) what each page is most important for. You're trying to accomplish too much with one page. SUGGESTIONS Don't try to rank on linkage. It's much more difficult to do now than it was a few months ago. Redesign your site so that the front page doesn't have to carry the promotional / conversion burden. Every page on your site can and should be acting like an entry page. If you don't know how to optimize a Web page, there are SEOs out there who still know how to do this. They don't just stuff your titles and meta tags with keywords. They help you design concise, compelling copy that emphasizes the most important keywords. You can do this yourself if you can discipline yourself to focus on the most important keywords. Your title is too busy. You need to decide which of "alphabet songs", "phonics", and "printable coloring pages" is the most important expression for that page. They are not equally important. You should be using an H1 header to echo your title. You should be using more bold and italics for the keywords you choose. You could also use H2 headers to divide your page into logical sub-sections (and that would help you optimize for additional keywords). You should break off some of that copy for a secondary page. You CAN get more than one page on your site to rank for a keyword expression. You should strive to make each page as productive as possible so as to capture more relevant query expressions. Michael Martinez http://seo-theory.blogspot.com/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: David Spahr Subject: International Orders > We run a clothing business here in the UK, but > cannot obtain confirmation of address or card > verification number for most non-UK customers, > including those in Europe! - Emma Mackintosh, LED Digest 2335 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1729/55/ As a seller, I have a European and a British site. This is where PayPal is very helpful. No hassles with currency exchange. When the money hits my account, the merch goes out. I haven't had a problem yet. In fact all has been very smooth and it was a good move for me to create dedicated sites rather than making Brits and Europeans fish around in my too gargantuan American oriented site. David Spahr Stereoviews.de Stereoviews.co.uk -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Domain hoarding > Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can > get this guy to [sell me a domain]? I've even asked > him to tell me a purchase price and got no response. - Marsha Kopan, LED Digest 2336 This is a much more common tale than most may realize. Organizations get hit with it all the time, and sometimes companies as well. Often one well-meaning web-savvy person will register a domain name for an organization, but in their own name. If something happens to that person the organization often cannot make any legal claim to the domain and cannot transfer, change, or renew it. People that purchase expired domains generally do so because of the resale value of the domain, or the fact that they can "park" domains that have links and traffic, and make money from them. Since their investment is only about $12 a year on average, they only need to make about $.03 a day for the domain to pay for itself. Since you know how much the person paid for the domain, you can offer them money to sell it to you, but the factors you have to consider are these: 1) How rich does your organization seem to be? 2) How valuable is the domain both in income and any potential sale to someone else. (Check http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm to see what some domain sales can command these days...!) 3) How greedy is the person that owns the domain. You can try the direct approach and offer then something larger than you already mentioned. I would first confirm that your message did reach them. If it did and you didn't hear back I suspect it was much too low. Or if you can wait, you can try the disinterested buyer approach. This is where you have someone like myself who is an Internet consultant contact the person and ask about the domain. The story being that the domain would be suitable for a client that has a new web site and needs a domain. The idea is to get a conversation going and be persistent about getting them to be more reasonable about letting the domain go. Contacting them with ever-increasing offers may cause them to give in at some point. And it wouldn't hurt to see what other kind of domains they are interested in that could be offered as an incentive. For example, this kind of person might be very interested in the domain abuae.com which is a common misspelling of "abuse" or a business domain like buynetics.com, which could come with the other 5 main top level domains as a package. The purchase price for these domains may be much less than the cash price the seller is looking for. If you really cannot deal with the person, the other thing you can use as an incentive is to let them know that your staff will be contacting search engines, directories, link partners, etc. to get as many of the existing links to your site changed to the new domain. This would be a big pain, but it will remove much of the value of the domain and can be done over a period of time. Issuing a press release could help this process as well, as well as other marketing options. Many local news stations like running these kinds of stories as well. I have a few suggested rules for others to help avoid this problem: 1) Register the domain in the organization's name. 2) For the administrative contact, enter the name of the head of the organization or someone in a high position that should be around for a while, OR create a "role account", such as "Executive Director" and a role email address like This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and this can be easily forwarded to the current ED. [ The use of an email forward insures that should you lose all of the contacts listed, you can just change the email forward to get any confirmation and notification emails from the domain registrar. ] 2) For the billing contact, use the above example and use a role for This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it and forward it to the person that pays the bills. This email needs to be different and forward to a different email address than the first one. 3) The technical contact should be the webmaster (1st choice) or hosting company support address. 4) It is recommended that you do not register your domain with the same company that hosts your web site and email. The reason is that if there is a conflict and your host is a jerk, they can shut down everything and hold it "hostage". By using another registrar you can easily set up a new hosting account and continue on. Of course, you will already have a backup of your web site, and list of all the email accounts to make this as easy as possible....! Thank you, Chris Nielsen www.domainincubation.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Ed Clark Subject: Trust > I always check for a BBB seal before I would even consider doing > business with an organization... No seal... no business from me. - Phil Scimone, LED Digest 2336 I got a good laugh at Phil Scimone's comment on the BBB seal. I've been in business continually for over 40 years. Can you imagine how many times I have been hit up to join BBB? I get fax and email messages from them telling me they have been asked for information regarding business names that I have not used for several years... where do they even get these names? BBB is a joke in my mind and a waste of money. I look at all the things Phil has missed out on because people are smarter than to waste their money with BBB seals. Ed Clark -------- new post - same topic -------- From: GJ Berg Subject: Trust More than a year ago, I paid to become a member of the BBB. I never used any of the logos, referrals, etc., on my website. My membership has lapsed, months ago. I'm still in their database, still getting USnailed newsletters and other invitations. Unless you're dealing with internet purchasing newbies, it's worthless IMHO. My eBay feedback and PayPal transaction counts mean more to those I do business with online. GJ Berg -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Trust I appreciate this discussion of my question, as well as those who have contacted me off-list with their comments. I'd like to make a comment about Phil Scimone's post (LED Digest 2336), that he always looks for the BBB seal before doing business with a company. "No seal... no business from me." I had the BBB seal on every page of my website almost from the beginning. (I had to wait a year, since the BBB would not allow membership until I had a bit of a track record. That first year, I used something called ePublic Eye, which -- at that time -- offered a lot of other services besides the trust factor.) The seal (with link to my listing at the BBB Online) was built into my page template. Over the years, I've only had maybe half a dozen hits on that link per year -- at least half of them were ME, checking the link or what is seen on that page. However, about a year ago, I changed the design of my site substantially. In the process, I removed the BBB seal from most of my pages, including it only on the About Us page, the Order Information page and the Privacy page. Since making the changes, I've had a substantial increase in business. This is NOT due to improved rankings in the search engines, because I had pretty good rankings before, and no significant improvement for most of my pages afterward (which really puzzles me, when I look at much of what is ranked above me in Google). The pages that have the BBB seal get very little traffic. So, when I think about this, it would seem that, for my website (and Phil excepted -- sorry Phil), the BBB seal is of no particular benefit, and may have been a detriment. I'm sure there are some, like Phil, who would choose to shop somewhere else; but, in general, having the BBB seal seems to be -- at best -- a neutral issue. Then again, I have the Young Living Essential Oils logo on every page (a link to my replicating site with them), which might also serve up some of that trust element. As R. Neilson suggested as the quickest way to build trust (LED Digest 2336), I have all of my contact information listed on my site (where it can be found easily), as well as quite a lot about me and my business. I keep the tone personal, without getting sentimental. I also include full contact info in my signature to emails. For anyone who wants to look, they can find out about me, my business, where I'm located, when the best time is to contact me by phone, how long I've been in business and why I'm in business. It's not quite like having them in for coffee (actually, I drink tea ... ), but the visitor can see that I've been around for awhile and intend to stay. Thanks again for your comments. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own." - Ben Sweetland |
