| LED Digest 2363: Reasons to Avoid Miva Merchant? |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. March 8, 2007 Issue no. 2363 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Reasons NOT to Use Miva? ==-- ~ Gail Kearney "...we want to be sure this is the best solution for our business before jumping in." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Shared vs Dedicated IP Addresses ==-- ~ John Smart "As for benefits - I have seen no advantage to Google ranking..." ~ Robert Joy "Is the support really good [at AMK Hosting]?" ~ Adam Audette "Just some more reading from around the Web on this issue..." --== Copied Website ==-- ~ Ron Coble "Make some screen captures of the offender's web site so you have them on file." ~ Phil Chave "Most of the time nowadays, I just let it go..." --== Managing Lists ==-- ~ Richard Graham "...most internet users just aren't that web savvy." --== Fabricating Content for SEO ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...most people practicing SEO rely mostly or solely on links." =========== NEW ================================== From: Gail Kearney Subject: Reasons NOT to Use Miva? I work for a furniture retailer and we are working to add ecommerce capabilites to our web presence. One way to go would be to use a pre-packaged shopping cart solution, such as Miva Merchant 5. I am wondering if there are any reasons we may not want to go this route; ie. are there limitations that are not made obvious by the software company? Miva Merchant 5 is termed a "Small Business Solution". What quantifies small business? We are not Crate & Barrel, but we have 10 retail locations in addition to our upcoming online store. We have been told there are modules for everything, but want to be sure this is the best solution for our business before jumping in. All thoughts and comments appreciated. Gail Kearney doorstorefurniture.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: John Smart Subject: Shared IPs > As a small web hosting company, I purchase my server space > and it is currently shared IP address... What are the pros's and > con's of Shared vs. Dedicated [hosting]? - Ed Clark, LED Digest 2361 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1762/55/ There is a lot of noise on this subject. We offer hosting with both shared and dedicated IP's. OF course, any one wanting an SSL has to have a dedicated IP -- well, technically not, it can be shared, but only one SSL per IP. As for benefits -- I have seen no advantage to Google ranking (and have tested for that by giving a site a dedicated IP and tracking its ranking -- which did not change) I do enjoy the "nerdiness" of being able to access my site through an IP as well as a domain, but most people have lives, and would not get the pleasure from that which I am able to. Then there is "spillage". If another domain on your IP does something bad, will the others be penalized? Well, for spamming, yes they may well be if the IP is blacklisted as a spam address, but good management of your clients should prevent that. But what if another domain on the IP spammed Google? Would Google lump all domains on one IP as one entity, or are they smart enough to see that it is a shared IP? I suspect the latter, but have nothing to back that up. I hope that helps some. John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Robert Joy Subject: Shared IPs > ... I wholeheartedly recommend AMK Hosting. As > a reseller I love how simple it is for me to be able > to assign ip addresses to clients, and the support is great. - Jeremy Weiss, LED Digest 2362 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1763/55/ Jeremy, How long have you been with AMKH? Do you have any clients with them that have secure websites and shopping carts? Is the support really good, I mean really good? Robert Joy www.alegriawebdesign.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: More references on shared vs unique IPs Just some more reading from around the Web on this issue... That proliferant blogger over at BruceClay.com, Lisa Barone, has some interesting points worth publishing here: ------------------------- "We recommend that any site serious about their rankings spend the money (it's only a few extra bucks a month) to be on a dedicated IP. "It's important for a few reasons. First, we're pretty sure it plays at least a small part in the search engine's algorithms. The engines will use reverse lookup to determine what kind of IP you're on. If you think they don't care, consider this: It's been said that about 3 percent of all Web sites have dedicated IPs, with the other 97 percent resting on shared IPs. Research was then conducted analyzing the top 50 results for certain queries in the various search engines. The research found that 90 percent of the top-50 results were using dedicated IP numbers. "Three percent of Web sites use them, and 90 percent of Web sites in the top 50 results have them. Counterintuitive, don't you think? "We thought so. In fact, we've found it so odd we repeated the tests several times, and each time we got the same results. We've even seen cases where switching from a virtual IP to a dedicated IP number alone has caused an increase in rankings." Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2007/03/which_is_better.html ------------------------- Another LEDer sent me a link to this discussion at SearchEngineWatch on shared vs dedicated IP hosting (thanks Amy!): http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=4170 Enjoy! Adam Audette http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/40/79/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Ron Coble Subject: Copied site > ... what would you do if someone copied your > sites pages exactly? And your traffic went down? - Frank A. Fulton, LED Digest 2361 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1762/55/ Hello, I had the exact same situation happen to me a little over 2 years ago. I would not have known about it, had it not been for some good samaritan who notified me and provided some suggestions that I will pass along here. This reply may be a little long due to the posting of the "exact" message I used (except I have removed the offending domain names which are both no longer active) but otherwise it is word for word. I know Godaddy.com received some bad press recently for allowing someone's domain to be sold but to their credit in my situation, they took these people offline within days of receiving my message as follows: ------------------------- To: abuse, godaddy.com Subject: Copyright Abuse by GoDaddy Registrant To whom it may concern: We are a customer of yours with over 50 domains currently registered. The following domain(s) also registered with you is in Copyright violation of our web site Importexporthelp.com - they have actually copied one of our main web pages and order form (which they are using as a contact form) - You may verify these pages were copied from our web site by looking at the top of their source code. Offender's Name Business Information offenders-domain.com I was also informed that the parties who own this web site also have offenders-domain2.com which is also registered with GoDaddy and which is Linked to the Offenders Business Name. Please understand that after receiving this message, you have been notified of individual(s) conducting illegal activities using domain names registered through your service. If action is not taken to shut this site down we will notify the appropriate ICANN legal authority regarding this matter. Thank you for your prompt attention to this request. Regards, etc... ------------------------- Some final suggestions that you might wish to do: 1. Make some screen captures of the offender's web site so you have them on file. 2. Get the links to http://www.archive.org for your domain that show you had pages posted in years 96, 97, 98, etc. and include the links in your email to their hosting service (which appears to be godaddy but check it out for yourself at http://www.domaintools.com ) 3. One thing I failed to do in my message above was to set a deadline which is something I normally do when I have a complaint I want resolved. The deadline date should have gone into the ICANN paragraph. I generally give something 3-5 days as that is enough time for them to take action if they are going to do anything about a situation. Be sure to follow through as the only way you will get anything done is if you follow through yourself and see that it is done. Please report back to LED what happens. Regards, Ron Coble Coble International http://www.importexporthelp.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Phil Chave Subject: Copied site Hi Everyone You wouldn't believe the cheek of some people would you? Actually yes! I've find whole pages of my content, block copied on other peoples sites, regularly. One was an official council website in the north of England who copied my drugs article. When I did image searches for the content keywords, I discovered that they had stolen all the images they'd used from other peoples sites as well. I wrote to them with the usual cease and desist notice and don't you think with your resources you could WRITE YOUR OWN $%#*& MATERIAL. Oh and by the way, I've also informed all the other sites that you stole content from about your activities. I expect you will be hearing from them in due course. This didn't go to the webmaster, by the way. They were probably too busy being patted on the back by their superiors for their fantastic website. It went to ALL the superiors, whose email addresses were conveniently supplied by the webmaster who was about to get his knuckles wrapped. :-) Needless to say, the content disappeared fairly smartish. The other thing that bugs me is finding my images on Ebay, used to sell other peoples dodgy goods. The downside, of course, is giving this energy by worrying about it. Most of the time nowadays, I just let it go, and sleep much better for it. Best regards Phil Chave www.distanthealer.co.uk ============ Sponsor Message =========== Have you sat down and read your website lately? What your site says is crucial in converting surfers into customers and meeting search engine mandates for fresh, unique copy. Our all-pro writers have Fortune 500 experience. For top-quality, customized, cost-effective copy, visit GetWebContent.com today: http://GetWebContent.com/LED ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Richard Graham Subject: Managing lists Hello, With managing lists we always need to keep in mind how most internet users just aren't that web savvy. Whilst unsubscribe features may seem obvious to LED readers, for many users they may not know the convention. They may be seeing the unneeded list simply as spam, and how many of those do we read till the end? Almost everyday I deal with school teachers not understanding the difference between upper case and lower case letters for passwords, not knowing what a "link" is on a website and even occasionally teachers who are fearful because on their training courses they haven't learnt how to use a mouse yet! Oh yes. And this is in the supposed super-tech country of Japan! As usual "Keep it super simple and even more obvious" is the rule. Be genki, Richard Graham www.genkijapan.net -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Generating content > This article is typical of the kind of sloppy testing and > analysis that permeates the SEO community. The data > presented in the article do not support the conclusions... - Michael Martinez, LED Digest 2358 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1757/55/ > A fair point, but who needs testing and > analysis when the proof is in the pudding? - Nathan Holley, LED Digest 2360 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1761/55/ With respect to the SEOmoz article Adam posted about, there was no pudding. The author failed to disclose the fact that other linkbait articles had been attempted, that he was pushing up his DIGG rankings, and that the pages were no longer available for examination. That's just not the kind of analysis that people should be trusting. Every time I look at one of these "here is an in-depth case study" articles, I go digging for information that hasn't been disclosed. I often find it. So our fellow researchers are either very sloppy about collecting all the data or else they are holding out on us. Either way, why should we trust their conclusions? > Unfortunately most of SEO is > about links... It would be more accurate to say that most people practicing SEO rely mostly or solely on links. That doesn't mean that most of search engine optimization is about links. Far from it. There are other factors that the search engines look at. As I have often pointed out, just because people decide to work only with links for their Web site promotion doesn't mean the search engines are only lookin at links. > ... a link from a high quality, trusted source can raise > the rankings of many pages on a domain because the > search engines aren't just counting the link as a vote > for the singular page, but as a vote for the entire domain. - Quoted from Rand Fishkin - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/two-clarifications... And he is demonstrably wrong, as I pointed out on his blog. Google engineer Matt Cutts' blog now has many pages in the Supplemental Index (a fact that Matt himself has raised on his blog). Those pages are there in spite of the thousands of "tide lifting" links that SEOs and news media have pointed at the blog. If it were as simple as pointing links at the root URL of a domain, the vast majority of the Web would still be showing up in the Main Index. Rand is very good at MARKETING, and I respect him immensely for that. But his technical grasp of search engine algorithms is pretty weak. Google's Internal PageRank calculations do allow it to become diffused among many pages, where it starts out from a strong page. Good internal linkage can thus help diffuse that PageRank throughout a large content domain. That in no way constitutes passing value to the entire domain. If links pass value to domains, then there should be an even distribution of value across the entire domain, not just to a few pages on the domain. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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