| LED Digest 2420: Marketing Artwork Online |
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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 31, 2007 Issue no. 2420 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== New Email Client Sought ==-- ~ GJ Berg "...Eudora is an orphan. The company is no longer making updates..." --== Marketing Artwork Online ==-- ~ Stan Bowman "Is marketing art any different from marketing any other product?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Blocking Bots ==-- ~ Will Bontrager "One thing that might be done is to put incorrect HREF URLs into links." --== Losing Rankings to Scraper Sites ==-- ~ Donald Nelson "This happens to all sites from time to time..." ~ James Miller "Integrate the blog fully with the web site." ~ Richard Stubbings "...it is worth putting in general complaints to Google..." ~ Michael Linehan "There is a great deal that you can do to increase your rank." --== Traffic Expectations ==-- ~ Rod Aries "...I once found my stats online, open to the public - what an eye opener..." ========== NEW =================================== From: GJ Berg Subject: New Email Handling Option Sought My favorite email program I've been using for about a dozen years, Qualcomm's Eudora, is an orphan. The company is no longer making updates (and I haven't the interest to get the open source and maintain it for myself). I'd stay with what I know, but my current ISP is making changes to email (specifically port limitations for SMTP/POP) that this program does not support, so that I may not be able to send / receive email down the road when they close up all their loopholes. So, I'm looking for suggestions for an email program. REQUIREMENTS: -------------- - Mac OS 10+ - Multiple email addresses / hosts / personalities / identities - Filtering (into folders) - SPAM identification / handling NICE TO HAVE: -------------- - Easy migration from Eudora (transfer existing email, address book, filters, etc.) - Signatures (on a per / identity basis) - Stationery (boilerplate email) - Good "shortcut" command keys (i.e., queue email message, delete message, etc.) - Variable automatic checking of email by identity (i.e., set one identity to check every 15 minutes; another every 60) ALREADY EXCLUDED: -------------- MS Outlook -- don't even get me started. I hated it when I had to use it previously and I can't think it's improved that much in half a decade. Mac Mail -- doesn't support (easily) multiple email addresses GJ Berg Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Stanley J. Bowman Subject: Marketing Artwork Online I have a business that may be unique to this forum. I am an artist and am looking for ways of marketing my art works outside of the traditional gallery / museum route. I know of other artists who are having success with using the internet as a sales venue. But I am wondering if there is anything I should do with my web site that would be different from any other small business? Is marketing art any different from marketing any other product? What are the best SEO practices to use in marketing art? Any advice? Stan Bowman Business: www.perfectartprints.com Artist: www.stanbowman.com Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Will Bontrager Subject: Blocking bots > What's the easiest way to erect a barrier [to robots], > without inconveniencing my real visitors. Is there a > way that doesn't make visitors fill in some text? - Shaun Johnston, LED Digest 2419 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1823/55/ People do things robots don't. They move a mouse. They click its buttons. There is normally a measurable period of time between a page load and the action of following a link. The absence of such are a good indication the visitor is a robot. One thing that might be done is to put incorrect HREF URLs into links. The incorrect URL can lead to a real page (not a 404) so the rogue robot's handlers are less likely to be flagged that something is wrong. That page can have whatever information you want to feed to the robot. If the information is false, it should not be displayed in the browser window; style="display:none" DIVs can work for that. A visible message for people straying to the page might inform that JavaScript is required to use the links. When a link is actually clicked, the HREF URL is changed to the correct one before the browser is sent to the destination. Alternatively, the HREF URLs can be corrected upon detection of a mouse move, in anticipation of the click. When you do this, you also have an effect on SE spiders. It would be a good idea to publish a NOFOLLOW meta tag or use rel="nofollow" attributes so legitimate indexers are not deceived. Not having seen the pages in question, Shaun, I'm not certain the above is the best solution for you. If you'll send me a private email with the URL the pages, I'll have a look and create a solution specifically for you. Will Bontrager 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: Donald Nelson Subject: Lost rankings Dear All, In LED 2148 Peggy Deras told of her problems with falling rankings [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1822/55/ ]. This happens to all sites from time to time, as Google tweaks its ranking algorithm. I was curious and made a check and did a search for kitchen designer, and her site is ranked at number 19 (I didn't see the scraper site that she complained about) so things are not so bleak: a decent rank in Google for anything approaching your target keywords shows that the site is basically trusted by Google and that with a bit of on-site optimization the ranking can be improved. In this regard, I think it would be best to take a look at the pages and see if the keywords and key phrases are really given the importance that they deserve. For example the Title tag begins with Award Winning Residential Kitchen Design: no one searches for "award winning kitchen design", but they do search for Kitchen design and kitchen designer. If it were my site I would take the Award Winning out of the title tag and put my most important keywords words first (I would display the awards elsewhere, they are important for building trust but they should be put in the right place). So, look at your pages and see if you can do a better job of optimization and your previous rankings and accompanied inquries may return. Best Wishes, Donald Nelson www.a1-optimization.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: James Miller Subject: Lost rankings In Peggy's case there is one quick thing that she should do. Integrate the blog fully with the web site. See my wife's at www.freedomfarm.com, which has been designed this way. (It's not finished yet, so don't point this out.) Having looked at both, what Peggy needs to do is move the blog to a sub-directory of her www.kitchenartworks.com domain and then cross link the two so that Google and the others can get the drift. It may not be the total solution, but hopefully it will jack it up a bit. Remember now that Google updates the main search with what it finds in blogs, soon after they are posted, so a blog is a good place for special offers. James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Richard Stubbings Subject: Lost rankings > I am watching the formerly pretty good ranking of my > web site dwindle... when I look at sites that rank higher > than mine, they are "placeholder sites" and link farm > sites, and sites with "scraped" content... - Peggy Deras, LED Digest 2418 Clearly such sites are a worry. They fill search results with poor sites. It is in neither your interest NOR googles to have these sites. Google will want to find a way to adjust their algorithm such that sites with real content like yours come up in their results and sites with scrapped content get dumped. So it is worth putting in general complaints to google on major key phrases which you used to get good positions and have now been overtaken by the rubbish. Explain it the way you have here as you do not want to give them the wrong impression. You just want a level playing field and fair placement with similar REAL sites. Google should sympathise as if their search results pull up useless sites the searcher will move on to use a different search engine. For the short term consider using google ad words to get your site placed at the top. Richard Stubbings Kulture Shock http://www.kultureshock.co.uk http://www.doctorwhoonline.co.uk Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Lost rankings Hello Peggy, I would certainly complain to Google anyway. It won't take long, and it adds a voice to the pressure for them to do something about such sites - which they are. But that is secondary. There is a great deal that you can do to increase your rank. To start with, you can solicit more links from quality sites. I didn't do an exhaustive survey - I just clicked randomly on four inbound links and every one was from a very low- quality site - ones I'm sure you did not ask for a link. So solicit links from sites that are as high quality as possible. At the same time, write more thematically-related content. This is one of the "Big Three" ranking factors. You only have a couple of dozen pages. That won't do it in a competitive sector. Don't think of content addition as "How many pages do I need to write?" Think of it as an ongoing project - for as long as you care about search engine rank. I often use the metaphor of exercise. It's not a matter of how much is enough. It's a matter of how far you want to go. This content also gives more interesting material that provides a reason to link to you. And it provides many more phrases that you can be found for (contained just within the copy, without any special effort on your part). The previous are two non-technical, enormously powerful ways to increase your rank. The third is more technical. An incredibly important optimization location is the title of your home page. The most powerful position in the title - the first words - is occupied by "award-winning" - words that are, from the search engine point of view, empty fluff. Your primary keyphrase should be there. This point plus the absence of critical heading elements, plus the use of "more" in links rather than keywords, plus many other factors indicates to me that the there is room for huge improvement in the optimization of your site. There is much more than a tweak or two that I could point out here. I would recommend the hand of a specialist for this. Some people may recommend you do the optimization yourself. There have been threads in LED such as "SEO is not rocket science" and "All the information you need is on the Web". And, indeed, there is a great deal you can do. But consider how much time you have to invest to study all that information and figure out what is valid and what is not. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Rod Aries Subject: Traffic expectations > ... is there any way to know how much traffic > our competitors are getting? - Sandra Combs, LED Digest 2418 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1822/55/ 1. Use Alexa http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=www.led-digest.com 2. Use StatBrain http://www.statbrain.com/ They say, -------------------- "How accurate is Statbrain? "Statbrain estimates the number of visits that a website has based on offsite factors like backlinks, Alexa Rank etc. Statbrain does not have access to log files or any counter information. The number of visits that Statbrain estimates gives you an idea of the number of visits that a website has, but not the exact visitor number." -------------------- I tested it against some of our sites and I would say it is in the ballpark. I ran www.led-digest.com on the site and got: "Estimated number of visits for www.led-digest.com 6,058 visits per day..." 3. Try online linking research resources like: http://malektips.com/msn_search_0007.html or http://www.wholinks2me.com/ Use google and search link:www.led-digest.com Use yahoo site explorer (you may to log in to yahoo acct) http://snipurl.com/1mr9d [siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com] which shows: "Pages (10,997) | Inlinks (4,037)" I am surely going to catch a lot of GRIEF about the next few items - but, the reason I share these with you, because I once found my stats online, open to the public - what an eye opener 4. Try "social engineering searches" ie "domainname.com" +logs "domainname.com" +stats "domainname.com" +"number of visitors" "domainname.com "+visitors ... not all these work, but you get the idea. 5. Try "social engineering look-ups" and try and guess the admin page for stat program domainname.com/logs.htm domainname.com/logs.html domainname.com/stats.html domainname.com/stats/ domainname.com/admin/ domainname.com/logs/ 6. Try peeking Do a view source and see if you can see a reference to a stat counter. For instance, Led-Digest uses google's urchin ' script xsrc="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript" ' Some times domains use free stats counters I just randomly searched and found http://touchngo.com/stats/camyesterday.htm you can see their stats. And I found http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/stats_2005.htm since 2005 is so, well, 2005, I then guessed that they should have a 2006 page and 2007 page... http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/stats_2006.htm neither worked - but you get the idea... and with just a little more searching on this site I found www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/2007_webstats.htm 7. See if they have a visible stat counter - visit every day for a week and see how the counter changes 8. Order something small and see what the invoice number is, go back and order a week later and see how that invoice number changed Rod Aries 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall." - John Dickinson |
