| LED Digest 2357: SEO Fads & Fruit Festival Content |
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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 .............................................. February 28, 2007 Issue no. 2357 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Disposable Content for Rankings --== Fabricating Content for SEO ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "...generating content for the sake of generating content is not genuine. I call it "fruit festival" content..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Security Seals ==-- ~ John Smart "If anyone has any real-world numbers, I would love to see them." --== Domain Appraisal Services ==-- ~ Gregg Terry "I think that domain names can be divided into two groups..." ~ Chris Nielsen "Perhaps this is not really an interested buyer, but a domain appraisal scam...?" --== Photographer Licensing ==-- ~ David Spahr "A photographed person has few rights regarding photographs taken at public events..." --== URL Canonicalization [was: Supplemental...] ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...Webmasters usually complicate the process by using multiple variations in...links." ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> While reading Dirk's post on creating content for SEO purposes (directly below), I was reminded of a recent article at SEOmoz.com on a similar topic. The article is written by a SEO (Daniel Tynski of http://www.voltier.com) who was hired by a local used car dealer to optimize their site and generate some traffic. The marketing technique Daniel used to drive traffic (no pun intended) to the site was interesting in light of Dirk's post today. Here it is in a nutshell: - He set up a page deep in the client's site for the purposes of leveraging social media sites, making sure it wasn't connected by hyperlinks to the root domain in any way; basically an orphan page. - He then created an article specifically for social media, the kind of "disposable content" that's popular with sharing networks like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon (the title of his link bait was something like, "8 Diseases that Grant Superhuman Powers"). - Once the article was finished (it took him 10 minutes to write) and submitted to the major social hubs, he sat back and waited. So what happened? The traffic poured in after his link bait was placed on the front page of Digg.com and numerous other sites. His client saw a massive spike in traffic. But this is the kind of traffic that's short-lived, and unless another link bait article does well on the link bait circuit soon, it's unlikely to generate any long term traffic boosts. The article was unrelated to his client's site. It was placed deep in the domain and wasn't linked to any other pages on the site. So why did he do it? In a word, backlinks. Before Digg placed his linkbait article on their front page, his client had exactly 207 backlinks. Here are the numbers after the fact: Links: 3 Days After Digg: 1,270 5 Days After Digg: 2,642 7 Days After Digg: 3,545 Technorati: Before The Digg: 0 After: 138 Del.icio.us Before the Digg: 0 After the Digg: 532 And how did the rankings change? They experienced... --------------------- "... a huge increase in our rankings for our targeted keywords. We jumped up anywhere from 20-300 places, with most of our most important keywords ranking in the top ten (many in the top 5). Furthermore, Google has increased its rate of indexing, has increased the number of our pages that appear in the index, and have released over a dozen important pages from the supplemental results." Source: Anatomy of a Super Digg (link below) --------------------- The strategy here is to take basic link bait on *any subject*, as long as it has potential to be popular on social sites, and throw it onto the client's site. Once a story gets spread across the Web and the links start pouring in, a site gets a huge bump in trust and authority from Google because of incoming links. Of course, this technique ignores achieving links for the client's targeted keywords. Is it unethical? Or is it smart? Here's the full article, it's an interesting read: Anatomy of a Super Digg http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anatomy-of-a-super-digg When you're finished, please come back and read Part I of Dirk's post today. It dovetails nicely with the article by Daniel Tynski, but takes a much different viewpoint. I think this discussion could be interesting... Adam -------------------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Great Content and SEO Fads Part I of II Thanks to David Spahr and William Bontrager for their kind words [issue 2354 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1753/55/ ]. I would like to expand on the concept of "great content" and it's relation to SEO fads and theories, using David's site as an example [www.stereoviews.com]. And it's a very good one, at that. David is an expert in the world of stereoviews, and his site conveys massive amounts of information about that subject. His is an "authority" site, in SEO-speak. In addition, he links to and from other sites in that realm of interest, at his discretion. He has built a huge presence within that community, and that presence manifests itself via links to and from his site. Some links are reciprocated, others are not. In SEO-speak, he is a "hub". In marketing speak, he has truly established his brand on the Web. It takes a lot of work to do that. His site is an excellent example of content development AND cooperation within a realm of interest. Sites like David's are held up as shining examples of the best of the Web. That is exactly what Google was attempting to reward with their original concept of links pointing to worthy sites. And they do reward it. What's more, David's sites would be very hard to compete with. No amount of reciprocation, or any other link building method, is going to displace what he has established, over several years. On a more abstract level, David is a subject matter expert, in a realm of interest that lends itself to the kind of authority / hub site that he has created. There are thousands of other sites like David's in other realms of interest. I have run a couple of them, in the hobby industry. I do know how they work. I also know when they won't work. The SEO community uses these authority / hub sites as examples to emulate. But here is where the SEO world fails to face reality. The methods and concepts used on these enthusiast authority / hub sites simply do not translate well to most real world business situations. That is, the business itself does not lend itself readily to being an authority, and there is not enough of a community to become a hub. Sure, you can try to manufacture it. You can imagine that it exists, but in REALITY, it does not exist. You can't push on a string. A very good example is in the real estate realm. There are one million agents in the US. Just what "content" can a typical agent in Kansas City generate that will have the kind of impact that David's site enjoys? Not much, if any. And further, would that content be vital to their business? Or only tangential, and never actually placed there if it were not for search engine purposes? David's content is genuine. An agent in Kansas City that is generating content for the sake of generating content is not genuine. I now call it "fruit festival" content, in that a lot of towns have annual fruit festivals, or other events or unique features that define that town. An SEO consultant comes along and advises that the agent generate a lot of content revolving around this, or some other tangential real estate issues. Then they try to get that manufactured content linked, based on it's "remarkable value" to the rest of the world. The trouble is, in most cases, most of this fabricated, fake content can already be acquired elsewhere, either on other local community sites, or on other real estate sites. The agent is not first to the table with it. Nor is it all that remarkable. Sure, some people will link to it. The SEO will then call these links "authority links" that your competitors don't have, and claim success. So what? What cost and time was put into all of this make-work effort, for a handful or links? Does it work? Does it move search results? Maybe. Maybe not... [Stay tuned for Part II tomorrow] Dirk Johnson, Partner - Operations DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John Smart Subject: Security seals > I have read recently about the effects on customer conversion > rates of Security Seals in a website... Does it matter the name > of the company as long as it has some "security seal"? I don't > want to expend $1,000 if I can get the same result with [$100]. - Alberto Rodriguez, LED Digest 2356 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1755/55/ This is a good question -- we have just started to resell Comodo certs -- they are very competitive -- we gave up on Geo Trust because they have no concept of customer service, and support is not in their vocabulary. Comodo do offer a seal, but what will the shoppers make of the seal? If anyone has any real-world numbers, I would love to see them. John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Gregg Terry Subject: Domain appraisals > One of the domains I have listed has caught the > interest of a buyer who is adamant about not buying > unless he is provided a "legitimate" appraisal... > and expects me to pay for the appraisal. > Are there any real domain name appraisal services > whose accuracy and legitimacy has been proven? - Thom Reece, LED Digest 2355 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1754/55/ Hi Thom, First of all, it strikes me as being extremely weird for a potential buyer to be demanding that you pay for an appraisal. If he or she wants the appraisal that badly, they can pay for it themselves. The fact that they're not willing to pay a relatively modest fee - for something that is supposedly so important to them - suggests to me that they're not serious about buying the domain in the first place. I think that domain names can be divided into two groups. One group are 'non-creative' domain names - one example being Sex.com. These can obviously be extremely valuable but there is nothing 'creative' about them. The other category are names that exhibit *differing levels of creativity*. 99% of all domain names fall into this category. I have some domain names that other people wouldn't think much of - but that I value highly because I have specific ideas about how to develop them - unorthodox ideas that virtually no one else would have. On the other hand, I personally wouldn't have seen much value in the name, Youtube.com, a couple of years ago. :-) (Furthermore, I doubt if very many appraisers would have either). Here's my point - the vast majority of domain names are creative to some degree. Consequently, their true value lies in someone's vision for the domain. It takes exponentially more creativity to have seen the value of the Youtube name - than that of something like Business.com. Here's an analogy for whatever it is worth. Suppose I said to you, "after much painstaking research on my part, I have identified the exact colors that Picasso used to create all of his paintings. His artwork is literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I'll sell this collection of colors to you for a bargain price of a million dollars". Would you be interested? :-) Would you want to consult an 'expert' color appraiser? :-) Isn't the true value of a domain name dependent upon our creative vision for that domain and our ability to bring that to reality? That is going to be widely different for all of us - for different domain names. I think that the whole idea of their being some kind of 'objective' price for domain names is largely an illusion. One thing that you might want to try is communicating your vision for how your domain could be developed. If you get the other person excited enough, he or she just might end up agreeing with you - although my intuition tells me that this particular person won't. Gregg Terry http://supercheapdomainnameregistration.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Domain appraisals I just read a news item posted at Sedo.com that reminded me of this LED post: http://www.sedo.com/links/showhtml... Perhaps this is not really an interested buyer, but a domain appraisal scam...? The scam consists of making the domain owner feel that the domain is valuable, which justifies them getting it appraised, after which any potential buyers vanish. On a related note, I thought the post that described how someone later "gave away" a domain that they were offered $8k for is something that should be kept in mind. Like holding on to stocks too long, sometimes it's better to make a smaller massive profit than wait for a larger obscene profit. Thanks, Chris Nielsen www.domainincubation.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: David Spahr Subject: Photographer Licensing First of all I am not a lawyer, but a former commercial photographer. Laws in other countries can vary I'm sure. > If a photographer pops by a restaurant and takes pics of staff > and musicians and puts it on his website without the staff members > signing a Model Release Form... can the staff members sue?? - Pieter van der Vyver, LED Digest 2356 If your photo is taken without permission it is possible to sue, but if the photograph does not have negative content you may have a very weak case. If the photographs were taken at the behest of the restaurant owner and the workers were informed, there is probably no case. The real bottom line is that putting it on a website is publication and the photographer should have model releases if he / she knows their stuff. > In this case it was a popular musician. I suppose the > photographer took a photo of the musician as a favour > or for him to purchase at a later date. The photographer should have asked permission and/or gotten a release. Playing in a restaurant is not quite like being in public. > The musician then sees his photo on the photographer's website > and takes it to use on his CDs that he sells on an ongoing basis. > Is the musician in breech or illegal? The musician cannot legally do that. Release or not the photograph and copyright are the property of the photographer. The musician could probably block the photographer from using the photo on the website and the photographer can definitely block the musician from using it on the CD. If the photographer published without permission the musician probably could publish without permission. Neither has any firm legal ground. Getting involved with musicians is a rookie mistake BTW. > What happens at a sporting event if a sports photographer > snaps pictures of the crowd and puts a spectator or athlete > on his website? A photographed person has few rights regarding photographs taken at public events especially if they are newsworthy. David Spahr -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: URL Canonicalization > ... we have in the supplemental results the "/index.php" > page, while the normal www link is in the main index... > why does Google see yoursite.com and yoursite.com/index.php > as different sites since it's actually the same page? - Claudiu Spulber, LED Digest 2356 Google has no real way of knowing they are the same page. Through the years, as I have changed hosting services and redesigned my domain, Xenite.Org, my root URL's index page name has been called "index.htm", "index.html", "index.shtm", "index.shtml", and probably a few others that I cannot recall. Every Web server, given a URL that ends with a slash, will go through a list of probable index file names similar to those above in order to find the correct file. Some servers, failing to find such a file, will contruct an HTML index page on the fly. Many other servers will simply issue an error (maybe 403 Forbidden or 404 Not Found). Search engineers know that index file names can change. Nonetheless, they strive to match up the various names, but Webmasters usually complicate the process by using multiple variations of links in both internal and external links. You may code references to your own root URL like this: example.com www.example.com example.com/ example.com/index.php http://www.example.com/ http://www.example.com/index.php www.example.com/ www.example.com/index.php http://example.com/ http://example.com/index.php / /index.php Other Webmasters, in linking to your root URL, many use any one (or all) of the first 10 variations. To a computer, these are all unique strings of characters, so automatically matching them all up is not as easy as most people assume it should be. While it's true that a search engineer can just assume they are all the same URL, it is in fact possible to have more than one "index.???" file in a directory (regardless of whether it's your root URL or a deeper directory). Some people do this for testing purposes. Some people do it for other reasons. Google makes it possible to normalize at least some of your URLs if you verify your site in their Webmaster Central Tools and pick a canonical URL. It is also possible to set up a .htaccess file that fixes some of these problems. And there are other ways to deal with them, too. But no system will be perfect. Also, since Google may crawl a page through one form of the URL with its Main Index Googlebot and another form of the URL with its Supplemental Index Googlebot, even though you've taken steps to normalize your URLs you may still see the two URLs displayed in search results (because these two indexes are maintained independently of each other and Google only combines results from them under certain conditions). Michael Martinez - "Cuando Maria canta, ella canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ http://michael-martinez.blogspot.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. 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