| LED Digest 2415: Licensing Content & Search 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 .............................................. May 22, 2007 Issue no. 2415 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Will Licensing Content Hurt Rankings? ==-- ~ Jaffer Ali "Will this hurt our traffic to our archives?" --== Sitemap Generators ==-- ~ Tom Anson "...I can't find a sitemap generator that I don't have to download." --== Sitemaps for Small Sites? ==-- ~ John Smart "I have a client with a two page web site..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO and Content ==-- ~ Joel Lesser "Nothing we do conflicts in any way with other legitimate SEO initiatives." ~ Shel Horowitz "You can also pay $10K or even $25K for a single sales letter." --== Hotel Reservation Software ==-- ~ Reg Charie "I should have said that it is a system for a website..." ========== NEW =================================== From: Jaffer Ali Subject: Will Licensing Content Hurt Search Engine Rankings? Friends: We have a division that creates e-zine content like "Daily Recipes", "Bizarre News", "Weekly Quotations" and 50 different other daily and weekly topics. We started archiving these online ( http://archives.GopherCentral.com ) about 4 years ago and have 30,000 pages of content. We add about 300 new pages of content every week. Mochilla wants to represent our content and license our content to third parties. Will this hurt our traffic to our archives? And while I am at it, we average only 5000 page views per day which seems like a very low amount of traffic given the enormous archive and we update 5 days a week with new content. Any ideas? This is not my main focus as it seems like a rounding error unless we could get to 50,000 page views a day. Thanks, Jaffer Ali, CEO www.gophercentral.com www.evtv1.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Google Sitemap Generator Hi fellow LEDers, I've decided that the time has come to do a Google sitemap for my websites. I've been told some conflicting things about whether or not this will be of much benefit to my websites, but my thought is that it couldn't do much harm. The problem is, I can't find a sitemap generator that I don't have to download. I saw one some months ago, but can't find the site again. Any ideas or recommendations? Thanks much. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com Comment? -------- new post - related topic --------- From: John Smart Subject: Google Site Maps I have a client with a two page web site (gotta love those big clients!) They want more traffic, and are wondering if a Google site map would help. I think it would because it will tell Google about their site, but I think it won't, because you don't need a map for a cul-de-sac! Do any of you have any experiences that may help me give my clients the best advice? Thank you, John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Joel Lesser Subject: Content Warning: If you get nauseous, depressed or enraged reading commercial posts, close your eyes tight and hit PgDn a few times. If, on the other hand, you're broadminded about such things, you might not mind us butting in on the ongoing discussions about SEO, web content, and professional vs. amateur web copywriting. Probably you've seen our ads for GetWebContent here in the LED Digest. Since one of the latest topics here has been related to content development, I wanted to take a brief moment and formally introduce ourselves. Perhaps, you've even wondered -- just a bit -- what we're about. Simply put, we believe professionally written, unique content can help improve a site's search-engine positioning and sales-conversion ratio. That said, there are five things we'd like to make clear about our service. 1. Nothing we do conflicts in any way with other legitimate SEO initiatives. Our writers work with some of the web's best known SEO experts to turn their clients' keywords and concepts into brilliant copy and they can work with you and/or your SEO consultant as well. 2. We're staffed by full-time, professional writers and most of our competitors are not. Is this important? Only if you care whether or not your web content is written in American English and crafted to appeal to both search-engine bots and human customers. 3. We strictly adhere to all known Google guidelines and WWW best practices. We do not cut-and-paste text from other websites or copy information from print publications into our deliverables. Everything we write is unique, relevant and customized to the individual client's specifications and never resold or recycled. 4. We are honestly dedicated to making the web a better place for all of us who live on it. If you visit our http://www.getwebcontent.com/blog you'll find posts about issues like word usage, search-engine visibility, and the proper way to write a blog that will, we hope, give you useful information whether you're writing your website copy and articles yourself, having us to do it, or buying it from another source. 5. Unlike some content providers, we never put words in our customers' mouths. We respect the fact that when it comes to their businesses and their websites, they're the experts and we're the amateurs. Since we're the professionals in the web copywriting arena, we take the words out of our clients mouths and rephrase, expand, and polish those words to make them more powerful, more effective and, most importantly, more profit generating. Words are the most important pieces of content on most websites. They are the primary element considered by search engine ranking programs and the most potent force for converting surfers into buyers. Websites, unless they're purely numerical like stock-quote or sports-score sites, rest on a foundation of words. For a site to get and stay ahead of the pack, its text has to be truly superior regardless of whether it's written by the site owner, a service like GetWebContent, or an SEO guru. Thank you for allowing me to take a moment of your time and introduce ourselves. We look forward to sponsoring the LED Digest and taking part in discussions related to content development in the future. Kindest Regards, Joel Lesser, President/CEO http://getwebcontent.com/LED Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Content > I honestly don't understand how content is a function > of SEO. Isn't content just part of having a Web site than > people enjoy using? - Rae Deisler, LED Digest 2411 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1815/55/ Yes, of course. The best Web copywriting serves both to get found by robots and to pull visitors in once they get there. Not an easy tightrope to walk, but not impossible. But if you have to choose one or the other, right for the human audience. SEs, after all, are not the only way to pull traffic, and the *last* thing you want is to spend all that energy binging in a visitor and then presenting gibberish. > 1) Do you write your own copy or > hire a copywriter? I *am* a copywriter. So i write my own, but I hire out other aspects, like design. And sometimes I think i could benefit from an outside eye because I get too close to copy for my own projects -- more often, though, I notice a few months later and fix it.<g> 2) When writing copy for the web, what's more > important: usability or SEO? Usability, hands-down. but it should be possible to do both. i don't consider myself an SEO copywriter, but when I'm writing for the web, I *always* think about how SEs will spider my page. and I know some of the basic tricks about page titles, graphic links, etc. > 3) Should copywriting be outsourced > overseas? OK, so I have a bias. But what you save in dollars you might pay out in the added frustration -- especially if working with people for whom English is not the native language, or whose flavor of English is so different from your audience's idiom as to be useless. > 4) What's a fair price to pay for copywriting > services? Many factors go into a copywriter's rates. You can find people who will work for $20 an hour -- but how many hours might it take for them to do a job that a $150 per hour copywriter might have done better in a single hour. You can also pay $10K or even $25K for a single sales letter. Do the fabulous results justify the much higher price? That's an individual call. if you're selling $10K OEM systems and you sell an extra 20 as a result of the letter, it's probably worth it. But if you sell an extra 20 copies of a $20 book, you were foolish. My own scale is $145/hour for "informational" projects, e.g., press releases, brochures, and such, and $175/hour for direct-mail sales letters and display ads. But it only takes me an hour or two to write a press release or a shortish sales letter. Obviously, the eight-pager I wrote for one client (my best sales letter, I think) took longer. Shel Horowitz http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org Comment? ============ 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: Reg Charie Subject: Reservation software > I am looking for a reservation system for a > small hotel, preferably open source... - Reg Charie, LED Digest 2414 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1818/55/ Thanks to those that emailed me. I should have said that it is a system for a website that I am looking for, and not a package for internal use. Thanks again, Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Happy birthday, Dad! |
