| LED Digest 2387: If Architects Were Web Designers |
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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 .............................................. April 11, 2007 Issue no. 2387 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== A Laugh: If Architects were Web Designers ==-- ~ Peggy Deras "My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed..." --== Google Website Optimizer ==-- ~ John Smart "Google is offering an interesting tool that helps you optimize your site." <Moderator Comment> ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Designing for a Target Audience ==-- ~ Bruce Garrett "Liz might try Xerox's free materials that looks at color and other considerations..." --== Google Ranking Factors ==-- ~ Eric Ward "...no single factor will matter more than any other factor for every site, search, and result." ~ Michael Linehan "...the amount of content is, logically, a central factor for keyword opportunities..." ~ John Brumage "If a website is great for your users, it will be great for Google." --== PPC Management [was: Befuddled by SEO...] ==-- ~ Mark J. Welch "...all advertising activity...should be measured based on goals that are meaningful..." ========== NEW =================================== From: Peggy Deras Subject: A Laugh - Web Design Clients "If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers" http://whatthecrap.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/if-architects... ---------------------- "To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year. "Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make. "Please don't bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue. "Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours." ---------------------- ... and another quote ... ---------------------- "Also: Please also create this house so that my dysfunctional part-time niece (sister to the nephew) can maintain the "content" of the Kitchen, Den and Play Room. But, create a admin shed containing a swiss army tool that will magically clean, press and freshen the rest of the house when you flick its switch. If we do not have time this year for the tool, we'll re-approach the design in phase two with next years budget. "Also: After the house has been completed, I will more than likely want you to tear part of it down and rebuild it a couple of inches to the left... for no additional cost." ---------------------- Peggy Deras Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Googles new tools Well, it had to happen. I have bad news for all you SEO's, and great news for all you SEOers - possibly. http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/ Google is offering an interesting tool that helps you optimize your site. This is very interesting. Assuming that everyone uses it appropriately, this is wonderful, and everyone wins - the searcher, those wanting to be searched, and of course, the facillitator, Google. But what about the Search Engine spamming - all googles tricks and tools have helped curb the amount of innappropriate results, but they are still there, by the bucketload. My site (internetdesign.com) was #1 on google for the search 'internet design' without the quotes. We lost that, and vary from page three to page four. I will play with this and try to recover #1 ranking - I will let you know how I do. John Smart InternetDesign.com Seriously, does your host try this hard to find SEO and coding nuggets, and do they share them with you? <Moderator Comment> Actually it's not that new, John, but it is "new-ish." I remarked on it back in October '06 in issue 2272: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1265/55/ Also, their Website Optimizer service does multivariate testing (see issues 2244-2248: http://www.led-digest.com/content/category/5/28/55/20/20/ ), which is not specifically SEO (but definitely can be thought of as a subset of it). The service is tied into AdWords and works great for landing pages for PPC campaigns. It's actually pretty eye opening to see the results of this kind of testing. Andrew Goodman recently commented on his initial impression of doing a multivariate test using Google's tool to the SEM list ( http://groups.google.com/group/SEM2 ). Here's part of his post: ----------------------- "The most telling variable elements seemed to be the "don'ts" -- and the reasons for them. I've noticed on a number of occasions, page elements that to many users smell "hype," send them running for the hills. Keep in mind I am talking about apparently minor things like font colors, exclamation points, etc. In one case, no subheadline and a dark gray subheadline did equally well, but both did far better than the former (more garishly colored) subheadline... "And to add another conclusion... some of these things really surprised me. Certain elements just seemed to send all users fleeing from offers. User BS meters are set to a high level of sensitivity today, it appears. So one of the real fun parts of testing with less prep time and cost is, you get to have that wide-eyed "I can't believe it" response early & often..." ----------------------- This sort of testing is really cool, I highly recommend doing some if you're doing any kind of PPC spending. Adam Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Bruce Garrett Subject: Targeted design > I'm starting to do research on how to select the proper > web colors, font, size etc., to match specific target audiences... > I'm really having difficulty finding good solid information. - Liz Ross, LED Digest 2386 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1789/55/ Liz might try Xerox's free materials that looks at color and other considerations in developing marketing materials both nationally and internationally: http://www.office.xerox.com/small-business/resource_center/enus.html HP also has Free materials available at: http://www.hp.com/sbso/productivity/office... Bruce W. Garrett, CEO ARCHIVE-CD, LLC www.archive-cd.com Paperless Archiving Solutions 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 www.GetWebContent.com/LED where our copy, and our prices, are custom-tailored for you. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Eric Ward Subject: Ranking factors > The good folks at SEOmoz have put together an interesting > document that culls knowledge from many of the top search > marketers... Dubbed, "Google Ranking Factors..." - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2385 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1788/55/ I was a contributor / participant in the Google Ranking Factors project. I started with link building back before any search engines existed (scary), and have watched the engines all try to include some sort of link analysis in their algos. As I answered the questions on the Ranking Factors, I found myself always wanting to write the same thing "It depends", over and over. No matter what ranking factor you want to examine, if you examine that factor at a macro level, it becomes meaningless. But that would have made all my contributions look like this ------------------- Top 10 Positive Ranking Factors 1) Keyword Use in Title Tag "It depends" 2) Global Link Popularity of Site "It depends" 3) Anchor Text of Inbound Link "It depends" 4) Link Popularity within Internal Link Structure "It depends" 5) Age of Site "It depends" 6) Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site "It depends" 7) Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community "It depends" 8) Keyword Use in Body Text "It depends" 9) Global Link Popularity of Linking Site "It depends" 10) Rate of New Inbound Links to Site "It depends" ------------------- In my gut, and in my link building experience, "It depends" is the best answer. It's just not very helpful :) Some pages can rank well without any external inbound links whatsoever. That means another factor, or several, must have been determined to be more indicative to the engines of quality. Some sites rank well that are old, some rank well that are young. Global link pop means nothing for a business that only does business in Wartburg TN. But Global link pop might be a factor for other sites in other topics. Post Katrina there were brand new hurricane relief sites attracting thousands of new inbounds at lightening speed. That's logical and legitimate. Then again, for another site, new inbounds at that same rate might be suspicious. I think the desire by SEOs to be able to distill things down to a manageable and 100% agreed upon set of "rules" often gets in the way of the truth. It's inconvenient, but my opinion is that many more ranking factors come into play, and no single factor will matter more than any other factor for every site, search, and result. In other words, no matter what the factor, "It depends" Eric Ward http://www.ericward.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Ranking factors > When looking at the top positive factors [in the SEOmoz > article], here's what jumps out to me: 7 of 10 factors are > related to linking, either internal or external; There's no > mention of content, only keyword use; No mention of > site structure (ie architecture); - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2385 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1788/55/ Content is a puzzling omission. How many keywords might the average small business be found for? Now how many of those are going to occur on a one-page site of twenty words? A 100-page site, with a decent amount of text per page, provides enormously greater opportunity for optimizing around several of the most critical keyphrases - and the possibility of being found for a large number of secondary combinations. So the amount of content is, logically, a central factor for keyword opportunities, both in the words-per-page count and in the number of pages. On top of that, we have the rank-boosting effect of increasing the amount of thematically-related content. Content volume is critical. Maybe the writers thought that saying "keywords" implies content volume so you have the opportunities to put the keywords in! But "imply" doesn't do it. It should be said overtly. I'd also add making the non-www url resolve to the www. (Canonicalization.) And then there's the good old favorite: the issue of dynamic v static pages. Yes, the SE's can read some dynamic, but why bother trying to surf the edge how many and which dynamic characters they can handle, when you can rewrite. A url like this is going to do nothing for you with respect to optimization --- amazon.com/o/ASIN/B000MR9D5E/ref=s9_asin_image_2/104. Rewriting this to English gets keywords into a useful location --- the file name. Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Brumage Subject: Ranking factors What a perfect Time for this analysis to appear. I just got my very first search and marketing (S and M ... yeah marketing IS torture) customer, and seeing the top guys in the business giving their take on specific issues was the best reading I have had in a while. I think the results mirror what I have learned in this forum. The variations of opinion and even interpretation of empirical data give a well rounded view of what it takes to build a great website, but my take on the summation is still the same. If a website is great for your users, it will be great for Google. Paid advertising is not spam, it is marketing dollars working for you. Not included was something I have found very important to authority building: contribute to the community, sign your original content with a keyword screen name.. Writing or purchasing original, useful, content makes the site better for your visitors. I used an off the shelf content library that cost me $10, to get a site on the air and aging. My new customer has a budget so we can afford a quantum leap to http://GetWebContent.com/LED and similar high end sources. John Brumage Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark J. Welch Subject: PPC Management [was: SEO Befuddled] Adam Boettiger challenged my suggestion that clients should not hire PPC management companies based on a "percentage-of-spend" basis [see issue 2386: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1789/55/ ]. He noted, quite properly, that very few PPC management companies accept that arrangement (he believes I might be the only one), and then only for a select few clients. Adam is absolutely right -- just as in the traditional advertising industry, nearly all companies charge exclusively on the basis of either "percentage of spend" or monthly fees. As I wrote, * I don't believe in a model where you evaluate or pay someone else based on the amount of your money that they spend.* Instead, I believe all advertising activity (including traditional and online advertising, but most specifically pay-per-click search advertising) should be measured based on goals that are meaningful for your company, such as "gross profits from sales" or "improved gross profit from sales." Adam is right that most online businesses won't be able to "engage a PPC management vendor on a performance comp model based on an increase in the business' profits." That's because because the PPC management vendor recognizes that the returns are quite uncertain, speculative, hard to measure, or simply unlikely. In many cases, there is no "existing data" nor any tracking infrastructure to measure performance, and setting up such tracking is an additional cost. And yes, the few companies who accept clients on that basis do cherry-pick their clients, because their benchmark is solely whether they are confident they can provide a valuable service to the client, not how much the client can afford to pay. The key here is an ethical one: I have a very strong ethic that holds that I should not accept payment if I don't believe that my services are worth the fee I charge. And part of my service, as a consultant, is to advise the client on how to spend their money, and I specifically advise them whether I think a particular expense will result in increased profit. That means that I often give prospective clients "free advice" by telling them that I don't believe they should hire me, because I don't believe my fees will be justified by the returns they should reasonably expect. In other cases, I tell clients that I won't accept the work on a "performance" basis until they've first made other changes, and sometimes I offer my consulting services to be charged on an hourly or project basis to help them get to the point where they can switch to a performance-based fee model. This is similar to the services I provided when I was an attorney: for example, I often advised clients that my fees to pursue a lawsuit weren't justified by the amount in question, and that I wouldn't accept the case on a "contingent fee" basis. (Most aspects of the outcome of a lawsuit fall outside the lawyer's control.) On the other hand, I sometimes represented clients on a "contingent fee" basis, and I frankly told the client that I was doing so because I expected to make more money than my hourly fees would have justified; I would earn more because the outcome was uncertain and because the client couldn't or wouldn't pay my hourly fees up-front. It's not unethical for a PPC management firm to accept work based on a "percentage of spend" or an hourly or monthly fee basis, and I do sometimes accept hourly or "project" work related to PPC management. Many PPC firms firms limit their services to simply managing the campaigns effectively according to the client's instruction, and if the firm doesn't claim to provide advice on how to make a profit, then that's not a fair measure of their services. I definitely agree with Adam that SEO is a different service from PPC management; the SEO work will always be done concurrently with many other strategies which will impact sales and profitability, and thus it's impossible to measure the real benefits from the SEO work. (Indeed, if someone offers to do SEO work based on general sales or profit increases, they would benefit from other work the client is doing concurrently, even if the SEO work is worthless.) PPC management lies on the opposite end of the "measurability" spectrum -- results can be measured and tracked very precisely. Finally: I am aware of several other companies that accept clients on a "performance basis," charging based on specific activity derived from PPC campaigns. There are very few, and certainly they represent a very small fraction, perhaps less than 1% of PPC management companies, and at least one only mentions the service to "select clients." But -- although I do like to be helpful and often give out lots of free advice -- I'm not going to promote my competitors by listing them. Mark J. Welch http://www.markwelch.com/ Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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