| LED Digest 2377: Diagnosing Poor Rankings |
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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 28, 2007 Issue no. 2377 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> --== Diagnosing Poor Rankings ==-- ~ Scott W. Merker "A project was dropped into my lap that has me scratching my head..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Dwindling Visitors, Decreasing Market? ==-- ~ Sandi Dettman "...people seem to be using more specific search terms..." --== Best Practices for Personalized Emails ==-- ~ Phil Scimone "...a prospect must hear a message as many as 7 times before they are ready to purchase." ~ Al Toman "...if you appreciate me being your customer, give me 10% off on my next purchase." --== When Clients Don't Pay ==-- ~ Adam Boettiger "...send them a certified letter to the CEO telling them they have 14 days to pay the balance..." --== HTML Standards and Search Rankings ==-- ~ Bob Gladstein "...there is no evidence that search engines give any special treatment to valid code." ~ Michael Martinez "The indexing of information has to occur *regardless* of what format that information is stored in." =========== NEW ================================== <Moderator Comment> Thanks for the logo feedback! Wow, what a response. Here's the current tally: Logo 1: 31 votes Logo 2: 54 votes other: 11 votes There have been some really useful comments, too, that will help during the redesign. Yup, time to go back to the drawing board. Even though logo number 2 won there were many concerns about the designs (and even a few generous logo examples). I think we can do much better. (By the way, a number of LEDer's remarked that logo 1 was reminiscent of a clown's jumpsuit. Not exactly the connection I was going for!) I'll keep you posted. Hope business is good, Adam ------------------- From: Scott W. Merker Subject: Traffic / SE Question Hi LED, A project was dropped into my lap that has me scratching my head. The site is a little thin on content (being addressed), and needs a few code tweeks but overall is in good condition. It does not appear anywhere in the first 500 results for Google / Yahoo / MSN, despite being included and several years old. It shows a pagerank of 1, so is not blacklisted. There have been a series of SEO's involved to no avail, so I cannot say what may have been done before. Is it possible that a pop-up or banner campaign could have resulted in low rankings? He has a couple of pages of Affiliate links. Is he being penalised for too many affiliations? He's not currently in DMOZ (now submitted). That used to be huge, but my understanding is that it is less important since some of the SE realignmnets. TIA for any suggestions, Scott W. Merker S.W. Merker Computer Repair and Web Development Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Sandi Dettman Subject: Disappearing market > The niche is still there. The phrases are still valid and > my listings are up in the #1 or #2 spots. Did everyone > in the virtual world just decide to stop using these terms? - Reg Charie, LED Digest 2376 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1779/55/ Hi Reg, One way to check is using a keyword search tool like Word Tracker. They have a free trail offer by just submitting your name & email address. Here's the link: http://www.wordtracker.com/free-trial.html In our niche business we found that people use different search terms based on both Age and Geographic location. Someone, say in New York, may not use the same phrases or wording to search for one of our products as someone in California or Texas. Also, we have noticed a large number of people 55+ visiting our site or ordering from us in just the last year or so and they seem to use different terms than our younger customers. We try to get this information when ever anyone calls in to order or emails us about one of our products. Another evolution of the internet is that people seem to be using more specific search terms and maybe yours are too broad. I know Google and MSN both now seem to offer more specific results when using a broad search term to aid their users. Maybe your target market has switched to a different age group or geographical market or maybe people have just become better internet users and are more specific in their searches. Sandi Dettman www.artistgifts.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Phil Scimone Subject: Personalized email > I would like to start doing a personalized follow-up > [email] to those who purchased from me... how many > should we send to a customer (maybe 3). How far > apart (3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months). What should > I say in each email... - Janet Pickard, LED Digest 2376 I believe there has been research in this area suggesting that a prospect must hear a message as many as 7 times before they are ready to purchase. I don't really know if this is true or not, but my personal experience tells me there is probably some formula involved like that. I'm rarely ready to drop what I'm doing to go buy a product that I'm not specifically looking for in the moment. However, after the third or fourth offer, if I'm interested, I'll follow up. I signup sometimes to be notified about specials and related products but nothing will make me click that "unsubscribe" link more than a merchant sending me too many follow up messages. For me, "too many" means more than 1 per week (even 1 per week seems too many for me). I'll read the message if the merchant is not being too pushy. Ideally, I like touching base with a merchant maybe once a month, or once every two or three weeks. Phil Scimone http://www.orangetreeweb.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Personalized email Janet, I just recently spent a thousand bucks with newegg and they already sent me an email stating that 1 of the items I purchased is "nominated for Newegg's Customer Choice Awards". Further stating, "Winning products will receive special distinction on Newegg.com, so please share [your] input with your colleagues and help us make this the most helpful site on the Net!" Firstly, to help make newegg the mostest site on the Net, my rates start at $1600 per hour. Secondly, who cares that this item will receive a special distinction? What do I receive for spending MEGA bucks at newegg? I guess my point being, as a consumer, is, is if you appreciate me being your customer, give me 10% off on my next purchase. What OLDEGG doesn't know is, is that I'm about to spend another thousand bucks for more electronic goodies. Do you think that these EGGHEADS will get this money because of their email? That 10% off just may have done the trick too... "make their site the mostest", yesh? DOI! If your email ain't gonna be worth anything to me, don't send me your email. Al Toman studio9 web design Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== At GetWebContent.com, the price of quality is always right. Not always the same, but always reasonable without ups or extras. Just ask for a free, no-obligation proposal and we'll quote an exact price for precisely what you want. Don't be fooled by bogus fixed-price offers for drag-and- dump generic copy. Visit http://www.GetWebContent.com/LED where our copy, and our prices, are custom-tailored for you. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Adam Boettiger Subject: Bamboozled - When Clients Don't Pay > This company has received the promised deliveries from > [their designer] and he's getting stonewalled. No answers > to voicemails or emails. Nothing. He hasn't been paid. > Has this ever happened to you? - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2371 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1773/55/ Hi Adam, I was stiffed by a large NY ad agency one time for an ad purchase of $15,000. You didn't mention the size of the project, but here are some things that I did that helped me in that and other dealings. And yes, I did ultimately get paid. :) 1. Before you do business line up a good collection agency. I had a national agency based in Colorado that I enlisted that for a very inexpensive fee would allow me to run credit checks and payment history trends on all companies I did business with. They had a one page form template. I just filled it out and faxed it in and a few hours later had what I needed to determine whether I should extend Net-30 to the client or require prepayment. The nice thing is it cost only around $25 to get it and after I had it in my hands I then had ammunition to use against the client in explaining why they needed to prepay. 2. If something is needed urgently enough, a legitimate client will prepay at least 50% of the project. It is unwise as a client to prepay the entire project until it is completed, but it is not unreasonable especially given a late-pay credit history or poor credit, to ask a client to do 50/50 terms (50% up front, 50% on delivery) or 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3. If you run their payment history and they balk at paying a portion of it up front, walk away from the gig. Income is not income until it is in your hands. 3. Have a detailed statement of work (SOW) that outlines the fees, deliverables and your own collections procedures and have them sign it before starting work. Chances are, if your friend had run a tradeline or credit history check on the company there would have been red flags. 4. All this said, what I would do if they are not returning his calls is send them a certified letter to the CEO telling them they have 14 days to pay the balance or it is going to collections. Always have a paper trail, not phone calls. Snail mail. No need to spend time over the next few months with them. If they are being uncommunicative, that's their choice. 14 days and then just fax the contract to your collections agency and have them deal with the phone calls and follow ups. Move on. Collection will cost around 30% but you can write that off. 5. Remember what it felt like to get burned and put groundwork in place so the next client cannot do it. Adam Boettiger http://www.marketingseeker.com/ Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Bob Gladstein Subject: Standards In response to Al Toman [LED 2376 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1779/55/ ] I don't think anyone is claiming that there's no point to standards, but Michael Martinez is correct when he notes that there is no evidence that search engines give any special treatment to valid code. That's not their job. They index content, determine relevance, and point searchers to it. They're quite capable of indexing content from pages that aren't coded properly. In fact, they can index content from pages that aren't coded at all. Try sticking a text file up on a web server with a .html extension. It will get indexed as long as you link to it. If W3C-compliant code were a factor, the vast majority of pages would vanish from the SERPs. I make every effort to write valid code, but not because I expect the search engines to smile upon me. Valid code helps with cross-browser compliance and accessibility, and it makes it easier to spot errors. That's reason enough to do it, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm not going to tell my clients that their rankings are going to improve because I've cleaned up their code. Bob Gladstein RaiseMyRank.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Standards > It's interesting that you would suggest United States as a > country that demands closer attention to accessibility. Actually, > the United States has ruled in court more times than I can count > that accessibility does not apply to the Internet for business Web > sites. Canada's law is much like that of the United States.... - Lee Roberts, LED Digest 22376 That was actually my point, but I can see how what I wrote seems otherwise. > Neither you nor I can claim that because Internet > Explorer supports archaic methods of writing HTML > Web pages makes the standards arbitrary.... Oh, but indeed we can. The majority of Web content designers, being totally unaware of the W3C and totally self-excluded from the process that creates those arbitrary standards, can only work within the natural framework available to them. They have neither the need nor the incentive to ask Microsoft or any other browser provider to enforce standards that would ultimately hurt their own visibility. This isn't about what is morally or ethically right, nor even about what is technically better for everyone on the Web. The real issue here is that W3C compliance advocates have created an SEO myth, that complying with W3C standards will somehow help improve your search engine positioning. I see this kind of bad advice in Google's official discussion groups, I see it on several SEO forums, and I see it on a growing number of other marketing and promotional industry lists. The indexing of information has to occur REGARDLESS of what format that information is stored in. That means that compliance with any person or body's standards is irrelevant to search indexing priorities. Hence, while W3C compliance advocates may feel they have the larger community's best interests at heart, they cannot change the fact that the W3C standards are arbitrary. New technologies, new data formats, new ideas will continue to shape the information made available on the Internet and the search engines will strive to make that information available. They won't be able to wait for the W3C to catch up and persuade the rest of the world to do things the W3C way. Michael Martinez - "Cuando Maria canta, ella canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. Free no-obligation proposal: http://GetWebContent.com/LED 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The world is so fast that there are days when the person who says it can't be done is interrupted by the person who is doing it." - Anon. |
