| LED Digest 2427: Clients Insisting on Bad SEO |
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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 11, 2007 Issue no. 2427 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> --== When a Client Insists on Bad SEO ==-- ~ Alicia Lane "...how do you avoid being held accountable when the site fails to bring in targeted traffic?" --== The Interests of Optimizers vs Searchers ==-- ~ Maty Matyszak "...we have to accept that SEO...is basically advertising / marketing..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Images and Google Unified Search ==-- ~ Eva Rosenberg "That's what you want to create - real relationships with related companies and sites." --== Can SEO Become Obsolete? ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "I wholly disagree with the theory that 'things change all the time'..." ~ Tom Anson "It would be nice if we could...discuss things in a way that benefits us all." ~ Anonymous "I have cancelled by cable TV subscription and no longer need to go to movies." --== Blocking Bots ==-- ~ Mike Podanoffsky "To stop bots, you should setup an .htaccess file." --== Support a Fellow LEDer ==-- ~ Kathy Wilson ~ Ron Coble ~ Patricia Skinner ~ D Perry ~ Super Perez ========== NEW =================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, If you only have time to read one post in today's issue, jump down to Eva Rosenberg's and read it right now. It's under the "Google Unified Search" thread but it's about much more than that. Have a great week - and stay tuned. Our mystery guest moderator is starting in a few days! Best wishes, Adam -------------------- From: Alicia Lane Subject: When a Client Insists on Bad SEO Hello LED'ers, What do you do when you discover mid-project that a client who has hired you for SEO is insisting on bad SEO practices, such as keyword stuffing on the home page? Even after numerous attempts to educate and making alternative recommendations? And, how do you avoid being held accountable down the road when the site fails to bring in targeted traffic? Regards, Alicia Lane Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: The Interests of Optimizers vs Searchers While I am in awe of the massive expertise shown by the 'search' experts on this list, it sometimes seems to me that all the talk of 'methodologies' etc sometimes misses the major point, which is that the interests of people optimizing websites for search, and the people doing the searching are basically misaligned. A 'good' SEO will want to optimize a site so that as many users as possible find it when they search for a particular topic. And the SEO will want 'their' site to be visited first. Visitors on the other hand, want the most relevant information. I've never heard a website owner say 'Actually, I reckon my site deserves to be about page ten of the listings, so don't push it any higher'. Until this (unlikely) shift does take place, we have to accept that SEO (on behalf of website owners) is basically advertising / marketing and there's no point pretending otherwise. Maty Matyszak asbestos.flack.jackets.com Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Eva Rosenberg Subject: Unified search Hi Folks, Phil Chave asked [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1830/55/ ], > ... will you sell the artwork to a browser, or will > it go to someone searching for "supermassive > star I Carinae... in the giant Eta Carinae Nebula > (NGC 3372)"? I was looking someone's site up in Alexa earlier this week. And I hate to admit it, but whenever I find myself there, I can't resist checking the rankings of my own sites. What I find interesting, in context of this SEO discussion, is that my sites are lowest on the Alexa radar are the ones generating all the income. In particular, look at www.irsexams.com . It doesn't even register on Google's pagerank (see Google toolbar). And on Alexa, it stands at a whopping 3,709,860! And, the site is nothing more than a set of jury-rigged pages using the blog tool that integrates into the Invision Board. No splash pages. Not even any nice, clean home pages. I just didn't have time to make it pretty or even to figure out how to reset the colors so the background would be white. While taxmama.com with higher ranks and higher visibility gets all the traffic. This site provides a very healthy steady stream of big-ticket income. Enough so that if I stopped doing anything else, I could live on this. All the traffic that comes looking for irsexams.com is specifically looking to buy a review course to help them pass IRS's annual licensing exam for tax professionals. They are ready to spend money. OK, so for certain, vertically-targeted key words, it either ranks on the second page of Google, or is linked to from several results on the first page of the search. And some of my highly ranked competitors (?) link to me because I include their products as part of my teaching materials. And the About.com instructor whose articles about this topic are always on the first page of search engines, is one of my fans - and teaches for me... The point that Phil made so well is, it's not the quantity of traffic that matters - but the quality. And the point I'd like to add is to make key alliances with your competitors or related sites. Not just for linking back, but for actual referrals and articles. When someone calls one of those companies, and the company can't provide a live class, they sell them what software they can - then send them to me. Or just send them to me, knowing I will buy their product for this student anyway. That's what you want to create - real relationships with related companies and sites. Not just linking relationships. You want the people running those sites to know you personally. After all, who do people refer if someone asks? The first person who comes to mind. Shouldn't it be you? Best wishes from your favorite TaxNerd! Eva Rosenberg, EA www.taxmama.com and www.taxnerd.net Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== It's summertime, summertime, sum . sum. summertime. The fields are green, the swimming hole is cool and clear. The robin and the blue bird of happiness are singing. But not your site. It's not only not cooing sweetly, it's barely croaking. Words are the instruments you play to influence customers. Visit http://GetWebContent.com/LED. We'll tune your instruments and make 'em sing. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: SEO This is an interesting thread. Here's two more cents worth.... In our role here as humble and lowly link builders, we get to see the "inside guts" of the SEO industry, since we often come in contact with a lot of it, directly or indirectly. And because we are involved with the highly-controversial subject of reciprocation (and why it is controversial at all, when it is done properly, totally escapes me), we also get to see the convoluted "thought processes" of a lot of the most vocal practitioners in the SEO world. The SEO industry is all over the board. There are people in the industry that truly deserve some respect. They tend to be the less vocal of the bunch, or, when they do go public, they are even-handed. The whole "white hat / black hat" thing is usually just skillful marketing talk. That is, those who claim "white hat" status are doing it to appeal to a certain type of client. That is because, just like everyone else, they are out there doing specific things and taking actions to influence the search engines. There is not an SEO consultant anywhere, at any time, that has ever earned a single link for a client that wasn't forced, in some way. There is nothing "natural" about a link that was pursued, paid, requested, submitted, or cajoled. The only real "natural" links in this world are the ones that had nothing to do with an SEO consultant putting it there. Everything else is work for hire, and it's some shade of gray. The link would not be there if the consultant did not make the effort to place it. That's the way it is. Granted, some methods of link building are more benign than others. Some are quite risky. Choose your weapon, and use it. If you need to convince yourself that it's "white hat", then do that. Just realize that your competitors will likely bend the definition a lot further. Then it's up to the search engines to sort it out. Claims that "we're 100% white hat with our site, so we should rank first" is just not based on real world analysis, and it's often a handicap to competing effectively. At the same time, outright gamesmanship is a rather dark shade of gray, and it carries very high risk. Find a line, and walk it. Most of what I see coming out the "high profile" corners of the work-for-hire SEO industry is nothing but outright confusion and self-promotion. I have seen firsthand what a mess some of these so-called big name gurus do on behalf of their clients. These clients come to us after having been through the wringer with these people, and they have spent large sums of money on shoddy SEO work. Yet, many of the owners of these companies continue to get major speaking gigs, and their words are published and re-published as "gospel" edicts. It's pathetic. Sorry, no names are forthcoming from here. Buyer beware. I wholly disagree with the theory that "things change all the time", from experience. It's not that complicated. Get the basics in order, and then promote your site aggressively within your realm of interest. It really is that simple. Again, white hat / black hat means nothing to me. It's all just comes down to common sense marketing. Find your opportunities and pursue them, be it paid ads, link exchange, article submission, blogs, forum participation, and on and on. Make yourself a part of your realm of interest. That's basic Business 101. Far too much SEO advice comes from people who seem to have very little basic business sense and they are focused on the SEO aspects. They chase tangential, theory-driven nonsense, while leaving more direct, less complicated methods of promotion on the table, as "unsophisticated". Not all is bad within the SEO consulting industry. We also get to see the work-a-day, under-the-radar side of the SEO industry. These are the SEO practitioners who have ordinary clients that need some solid guidance and advice. These SEO consultants are too busy working to schmooze it up with the industry power brokers. Instead, you might find them making SEO presentations at their local Chamber of Commerce, talking about the basics of SEO to other business owners. It is the site owner that gets lost in all this. They are looking for answers, and what they see as advice is all over the place. I don't have an answer for that, except to say this: The more complicated and costly the approach, the less it's grounded in reality. If your SEO advisor is advising that you do things that inherently make sense, from a business branding perspective, then that's good, sound advice. If they don't want to tell you what they plan to do, or how they plan to do it, or they are cooking up some kind of whacky expensive scheme, run. I have no idea about the future of SEO. I see that subject in a lot of discussions these days. What is the purpose of it? Search will evolve, in ways that we can't even yet imagine. Making predictions is a minefield. A lot of the predictions about the future of SEO (and especially linking) that were made several years ago seem to look very silly now. Very little has changed. People who re-configured their strategies based on those hollow predictions have seen it fall flat. I have seen that happen. The only real thing that a site owner or a sensible SEO consultant can do is to look at a lot of actual search results, and determine what works, then pursue it, if that's what they want to do. Everything else is simply speculation that can lead down some dead-end expensive roads. Best regards, Dirk Johnson www.domaindrivers.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Tom Anson Subject: SEO and "family quarrels" on list > Why do you read the LED? Your ramblings have > long shown that you grace us only to show how > well qualified and how much of an expert you are... - John Smart, LED Digest 2426 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1830/55/ Although I don't much like getting involved in "family" quarrels, I'd like to express my agreement with John Smart's comments concerning Shari Thurow's posts. I've read Shari's book Search Engine Visibility and really appreciated it. I've held her in high regard for quite some time. And, I think it's great that she's gone back to school. The things that she is learning could well be a great source of benefit to everyone on the LED list. However, as John said, "Shari is, if nothing else, opinionated." And who knows: She may well be right. I just see two problems about this: 1) I find most of what Shari has been saying totally inaccessible. Admittedly, I can be a little slow; but the way Shari addresses issues on this list makes her comments seem much more like self-promotion than helpful information; and 2) Shari seems to exhibit an almost total lack of grace or humility. If she is right in her opinions, she could go a lot further in demonstrating why that is by addressing us (including Nathan Holley) more tactfully. Why can't she lift us up instead of tearing us down? I get a little tired of reading Shari's posts, and then her explanations of why what she said the first time was not insulting. Having a little consideration for her readers would go a long way toward making her point. It just seems to me that some of us have lost sight of the spirit of this community: It is a place where we give of ourselves to help one another. It would be nice if we could all lay down our private agendas and personal differences and discuss things in a way that benefits us all. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com/products/blends/surrender.html Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Anonymous [email]: withheld Subject: SEO I too, apparently like every LED poster these days, speak bluntly at times, but only when it's warranted. This is one of those times. I have cancelled by cable TV subscription and no longer need to go to movies. I know get my daily comedy, drama, reality TV and soaps from LED-Digest. My favorite shows now are: Survivor - SEO Are You Smarter Than a Black Hat SEOer? As the Webmaster Turns. Web Wars: Episode V - The Web Mistress Strikes Back Could you add a sports channel? Maybe: Battle of the Hats: White vs. Black. I loved to see those black hat geeks using their slide rules to pop open, one-handed, their Coke cans and then flash their toothy, unbrushed smiles while having to hand code HTML against the white hat experts dressed in the ironed white lab coats as they calmly read the WSJ and sip organic green tea picked with fair-wage labor, while trying to make sure their code is not only neat and orderly, but conforms to usability standards. I am betting on the black hats. Give me cola-cafffinated geek being told they can't do something, and they will stay up all night, swearing in Klingon, as they attempt to prove all those people who shunned them in high school. thanks <name withheld> only because i don't want anyone knocking on my front door :0 Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Mike Podanoffsky 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/ I'm not sure I understand why you claim traffic references from your site are worth less than directory traffic, but I would bet that bots aren't the cause. To stop bots, you should setup an .htaccess file. That will route a lot of undesirable web traffic. If you have a lot of problems with form submissions from Bots: use JavaScript to do form submission. I would compute a signature and send it in with the form. Bot submissions will not do this and you can discard their submissions. By the way, this may be a good way to lower comment spam. Mike Podanoffsky Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Kathy Wilson Subject: Al Toman > Some of you may have noticed that Al Toman hasn't > posted for a while... Al has been battling a life-threatening > illness and underwent major surgery. He told me that > he'd written this year off to fighting this illness with "humour." - Steve Pronger, LED Digest 2426 Simple but true: Laughter is the best medicine. Rx: Use as desired. Blessings to you, Al, as you continue to use your humor to regain your best of health. I look forward to reading your posts to LED again very soon. Love, Kathy Wilson, CPC www.AnInnerJourney.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Ron Coble Subject: Al Toman Hey Al, Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Hope to see you posting back here again soon. Ron Coble Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Patricia Skinner Subject: Al Toman Hi Steve, Thanks for caring enough to mention Al's situation. Please pass on my best wishes, and tell him I'm praying for his full recovery. Patricia Skinner http://www.wellwrittenwords.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: D Perry Subject: Al Toman Here's to a speedy recovery! Fight Hard and Hurry Back Al. Regards, D Perry Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Super Perez Subject: Al Toman Hey Al, Hope you get through your illness well. Keep praying! Super Perez http://www.web.ph 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 SEOToolSet.com Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification Join the certified SEO directory: www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Who understands the time and place, The person, manner, and the grace, Which fools neglect; so that we find, If all the requisites are join'd, From whence a perfect joke must spring, A joke's a very serious thing." - Charles Churchill We're all behind you, Al Toman! |
