| LED Digest 2425: Improving Yahoo 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. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. June 7, 2007 Issue no. 2425 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== How to Improve Yahoo Rankings ==-- ~ Bob Sheridan "Now I want to concentrate on improving rankings on Yahoo." --== Images and Google Unified Search ==-- ~ DL Neil "...will they have to appear in the text...to be seen as valid?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Webmaster Rates ==-- ~ Rick Gortatowsky "...there exists a difference between web designers and actual software engineers." --== Can SEO Become Obsolete? ==-- ~ Detlev Johnson "Folks, it's all online advertising..." ~ Shari Thurow "Some black hats are the some of the most intelligent people I've ever met." =========== NEW ================================== From: Bob Sheridan Subject: How to Improve Natural Search Rankings on Yahoo Hello again LED'rs, Over the years (and using many tips from LED) I have managed to get my website restaurantplus.com ranked between #1 & #6 on Google for keywords: restaurant software, restaurant systems, restaurant management software, restaurant management systems, etc. Now I want to concentrate on improving rankings on Yahoo. Years ago, I initially paid Yahoo a special $200 fee (approx.) to get my website reviewed listed. I have never done anything else to try and improve on Yahoo's natural search results. Can anyone offer advice for : How to re-submit TITLE and DESCRIPTION to Yahoo? (What they show is totally out of date) Any tips or tricks to achieve better rankings in the natural search? Thanks in advance, Bob Sheridan www.restaurantplus.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: DL Neil Subject: Image Presentation and Google Unified search Spurred by the coincidence of Google's recent combination of its search / index silos and a discussion here about 'Art' websites, I have been giving some thought to the presentation of a client's photographs / arty productions. We have been concentrating on the index page and its top-level sub-ordinates, as one would. However we have been treating the contents of the photo gallery as bonus-extras for interested viewers. In fact when I first 'inherited' the site, its enthusiast-creator simply launched a .JPG from the thumbnail, so the 'gallery' page is indexed by Google but the images themselves are not. Step one was to 'wrap' the image with some HTML, which also allowed us to add a copyright statement and the all-important contact-us / sales avenue (not that we're talking big-bucks, but every little helps... IMHO any possible rise in income is unlikely to repay an extensive development effort!). I then ran into some 'fun' because analysis revealed that most purchases were made on the basis of 'I like it' rather than the subject matter of the image. This generated a raging debate between the 'arty' types who said that images should stand on their own, it's all in the mind of the beholder... and those who felt that some descriptive text and/or explanation will be added-value. SEs of course have even less artistic appreciation than I, and are only interested in the latter. I managed to achieve some consensus by suggesting that all the text (including the copyright statement which the 'artists' championed) appear 'below the fold'... and so to the meat of the question: If we add some text, eg [1] Carina (Latin: keel) is a southern constellation which forms part of the old constellation of Argo Navis. It contains Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky, and the supermassive star I Carinae which is embedded in the giant Eta Carinae Nebula (NGC 3372). ... that is all very nice. We can then select certain words to appear in the META Keywords of the HTML page, eg "Carina". However what about more general terms, eg "astronomy" and "star-gazing" - am I able to add them to the keywords list with confidence or will they have to appear in the text (of each and every 'star photo' page) to be seen as valid? Any comments or advice about balancing sensible / brief visible text in a graphic environment and search-indexing policy, please? [1] shamelessly ripped off the Wikipedia site to simulate what might appear / pretend I know enough about the subject matter, and to demonstrate that we're not into easy / pop topics! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carina_%28constellation%29 Regards, DL Neil Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Rick Gortatowsky Subject: Webmaster rates > I just hired someone to design a site... I was shocked > to learn that instead of using [Joomla or Drupal], he'd > coded each page by hand and there were no templates > for me to use. - Eva Rosenberg, LED Digest 2424 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1828/55/ Hi! It's been some time since I posted to LED. I still take the time to read most LED's but this one caught my eye. In the past I have said MANY times in LED that there exists a DIFFERENCE between "Web Designers" and actual "Software Engineers". A web designer may make nice looking sites and may even have some or decent knowledge of CMS (content management systems) such as Joomla, Mambo, Drupal etc. They may have a working knowledge of Portal software such as the popular PHP Nuke or DotNetNuke. The problem comes in when any REAL engineering need take place. Most Designers would MUCH rather use a web editor such as say Dreamweaver than a CMS or Portal application. CMS and Portals require that one either learn or attempt to fool the client in varied ways. See, with say Joomla the site creator needs to know PHP (a computer language), the index page IS the template for the site and calls/conditionals "plug in" the modules. In say DotNetNuke which runs under Microsoft's .NET technologies its best to know Visual Basic and the .NET technologies as templates/containers are effectively program code (even though DNN does have a keyword module injection ability). With both a good knowledge of Cascading Style Sheets is a good idea. A good site creation firm has both engineering ability as well as people who can create pleasing graphics. For example, a person on our staff is great with graphics, flash creations, site design but knows little about engineering. So when it comes to engineering I generally become that side of things, I have over 30 years of programming expertise. Generally speaking you either get what you pay for or less when it comes to good site design and support. Some places realize they can make alot of dough on maintaining things for people who know zero. A good firm would rather have the site owner(s) learn. So if we build a site using say Joomla your going to need to learn how to administrate things. We are here to help. We can direct the client to places to READ and LEARN and BE THERE FOR THEM to HELP explain what they are reading for areas they DO NOT GET. Some posters to this thread state things like $25 an hour is fair etc. Well that really depends. When someone charges you $25 or $50 for say adding "polls" to your Joomla or DotNetNuke site your getting ripped. It takes all of 3 minutes to slap it in. How can the average Joe/sephine know how long it takes Mr.WebFirm to actually do the work? Again, I have said ir before and I'll say it again. There IS NO SUBSTITUTE for a client LEARNING. If a client is not wanting to learn a thing I completely understand that. These tend be the same clients who's sites stand the best chance at failure. Its like saying, "I want make a successful restuarant business" yet I know zero about such a business and I dont want to learn. Knowledge is power. As to hosting firms... Most of the brand name operations are quite good, beware of privateers. Most privateers are simple using reseller accounts at larger firms. So I can buy a web reseller account at say Valueweb call my operation BestWebsEver. You buy space from me and that space is in fact simply me using a reseller account with Affinity Valueweb. Bad bad. Your MUCH better off getting space direct from a good enterprise hosting firm. Its also a good idea once say "we do your work" to change your admin login password(s). Why?. Since you ask, I'll tell you. We had a few clients who used a "popular" web designer "diva". Said "designer" since they sold virtual web space from a large webfarm had client login's. They'd go in occassionally, mess things up a bit so the client needed support. That's money. We on the other hand prefer you buy your webspace, we can give you good names of places. We do not want resell hosting, its not fair to the client and quite frankly a responsibility we see no need for us to have. So we'll say go to Valueweb, go to SiteGround or DiscountASP.Net etc. It gives the client another level of human beings as well. So when someone wants charge you $300 to add web blogs to your PHP Nuke based site you can ask SiteGround, "is that too much?". After the Siteground admin cleans the new coffee stains off his shirt he'll tell you, "ridiculous". Lastly... When your hiring someone to do a job for you then its important to know what you want. If you do not know what you want then it needs to be discussed with your web designer or engineer etc. When its all pounded out of whats wanted work can begin. You know the price upfront etc. and again a good firm will want you empowered, not at their will. Rick Gortatowsky Sail On Software / First Strike Software / Software Society Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== GetWebContent.com has a few words just for you. Relevant words, search-engine optimized words. Words that will impress both your customers and visiting search engine bots. Exclusive words custom written to meet your specs. Many other writing services recycle web content, at http://GetWebContent.com/LED we create it. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Detlev Johnson Subject: Re: SEO idiots > Though I have to admit that I am dying to get > rid of these idiot SEOs who do nothing but degrade > the search usability experience and only chase rankings. - Shari Thurow, LED Digest 2423 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1827/55/ It seems members of your list, especially Shari, have drawn lines between things in a way that few others identify with. Shari may be hinting at her method in a way when she describes an approach to SEO from a 'search usability' perspective. That's not a terrible approach to the job. It might be a little limiting in scope when one thinks it all boils down to just that. It's more complex. Search usability has nothing to do with Branding and search generally does. Search has many faces, including information retrieval in its most basic sense. That's why search engines use information retrieval science and data mining techniques to facilitate search for the large Web audience. It's a killer application supported by... advertising! Search and advertising together are a match that is apparently made in utopia for both advertisers and search engines. Therefore 'SEO' has become a hot vertical online marketing discipline, plain and simple. Where search usability comes into play is that 'search usability' is a descriptive phrase that implies paying attention to usability factors for search users. Great. That is one aspect of a complex formula that ultimately has the goal in mind of getting search users what you think they want. Just remember, you can appeal to some people sometimes, but you can't appeal to all the people all the time. That is what limits 'search usability' in scope. No question. It's all categorized as online advertising. Search is one discipline of online advertising that includes email, display media advertising and even affiliate. Folks, it's all online advertising, a relatively small but growing pain in the traditional advertising practitioner's neck. Advertising is as old as can be and SEO is here to stay as long as there is a Web. We are those that made it successful. The only real threat is not having Network Neutrality. Even then, it's our job to deal with it. Web users will look for stuff through some information retrieval mechanism that will, in all likelihood, be supported by advertisers (until users pay for search themselves). Keep an eye out for awesome new search platforms since it can change our methods, that's all. To say SEO is on its way out is like saying fish ride bicycles. Maybe they will one day after several evolutionary steps. I never lose sleep over it though. Have fun! Best regards, Detlev Johnson SearchReturn Admin http://www.searchreturn.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: SEO idiots Hi all- This is a rather reluctant response to Nathan Holley's post in LED#2424. You see, I try very hard to not give people whose opinions I do not respect publicity, though it is not always 100% possible. But I'll take the bait this time. To make my point (hopefully) more clear to other LEDers, search usability does not mean query usability exclusively. Querying is only one type of search behavior. Actual search behavior encompasses a wide variety of behaviors. Marcia Bates wrote about it back in 1989; it's called berrypicking. Just Google her name and the term. The article is available online. In the information sciences field, it is considered a landmark study. So the second part is usability, another commonly misunderstood term. Usability is not only meeting user goals exclusively. Because sometimes, users are wrong. One good example is frogs. On this pet Web site I did a few years ago, some usability test participants mistakenly categorized frogs as reptiles. Frogs are amphibians -- a different category and factually accurate. The Web site owner is not going to place frogs in the reptiles category because factually, that would have been inaccurate. He did, however, accommodate that inaccurate categorization within the Web site. My definition (and other noted usability professionals' definition) of usability is striking a balance between business goals and user expectations. Easier said than done, but it's great when you can find that balance. Also, usability does not only apply to Web sites. So search usability is a term I use that successfully addresses all or most search behaviors, balancing business goals and user expectations. This is a digest, not a dissertation. I minimized it the best I could in a limited amount of space. > People that can rank sites in competitive areas > using legitimate techniques are not degrading the > search usability experience; that means nothing. Ranking is not the ultimate goal in SEO. I do not consider people who optimize using "legitimate" techniques to be idiots. Nathan, do not put words in my mouth or thoughts in my head that I do not have. You are not a mindreader. > You are setting arbitrary standards by projecting > your own insecurities and idealogies onto the industry > at large. Your post is doing the list no favors, and it's > not winning you any friends. I set my own standards, as does everyone else. None of them are going to match 100%. I'm not insecure about my standards. If my posts are of no interest or value to you, then when you see my name, don't read my posts. I do not think it is your place to speak for other LEDers or me. Please see previous reference to mindreading. > Appeal to authority all you want, your > entire post is fallacious. I'd love to be a fly on the wall and see you (or any black-hat SEO) try to successfully defend your positions to the "authorities" in my field. My opinion is that you and many others just do not understand usability and search behaviors. You just did not like my post. There is a difference between not liking something and disagreeing based on logical arguments. We both feel we are logical, I believe. At one time, I was ignorant about usability and search behaviors. I admitted that I needed to know more about the topics and got myself educated by some of the best in their fields. And I continue to evolve my knowledge. It is not always easy to communicate in a short space, and many things get taken out of context with limited time and space. Yes, I think most black hats are SEO idiots. However, I never once said that they are not intelligent. Some black hats are the some of the most intelligent people I've ever met. Nonetheless, like you, Nathan, I do not believe they really comprehend search behavior and usability and incorporate that knowledge into their sites. Long post, my apologies. I do not want to give this petty spat any more space than it deserves. I encourage everyone to learn more about search behaviors and usability. You won't learn those things from SEO idiots. That is the gist of the initial post. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, SEO Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. Comment? ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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