| LED Digest 2430: What's a Qualified Visitor? |
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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 14, 2007 Issue no. 2430 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ===================== --== Defining Qualified Visitors ==-- ~ Beth Earle "How do other LED'ers define 'qualified visitor'...? --== Image Protection with Transparency? ==-- ~ Pieter van der Vyver "Where can I get information to build a transparent curtain in front of photos..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Importance of Customer Service ==-- ~ Phil Chave "...even your most loyal customers will reach saturation point with your products..." ~ Brad Waller "[Searchers] are using longer phrases to find you." --== Third Party Database Issue ==-- ~ Jeremy Weiss "...what's wrong with bringing the database internal?" --== When a Client Insists on Bad SEO ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "...why not gain something positive from the move?" --== The "inanchor" Search Modifier [was: Losing Rankings...] ==-- ~ Tom Schmitz "My understanding is -inanchor does not remove the inanchor as a factor." ~ Tom Anson "...I see again another example of what I don't know." ========== NEW ==================================== From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Qualified Visitors [was: Blocking Bots...] > I charge lodgings PPC for visits I send them, and > these visits are obviously not driven by interest in > room bookings - they are very poorly qualified. - Shaun Johnston, LED Digest 2428 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1832/55/ Shaun uses a completely different definition of "qualified visitors" than my company does. Our basic feeling is that a visitor is qualified if they meet these very basic requirements: they typed a relevant search term into a major search engine (or found our client's site through an industry-related website), clicked the link to our client's website and then stayed on the site for more than a couple seconds. Most of our clients are b2b manufacturers, and the general pattern in this arena seems to be to lurk around a lot, visit a number of sites, collect information, PRINT pages to share with colleagues (rather than bookmark the page and email the URL to colleagues), and then decide to contact specific companies, sometimes through the Internet or sometimes via phone (many people in our target market still seem quite adverse to filling in and submitting on-line forms). For us, the fact that visitors used a specific term or an industry-related site to get to our client is basically enough to consider them "qualified", whether or not they decide to actually contact our client for more info. How do other LED'ers define "qualified visitor" -- Are we off-base? Or is our target market segment just behind the times in their use of the Internet? With the best regards for all LED'ers everywhere, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Pieter van der Vyver Subject: Transparent Curtain in Front of Photos? Where can I get information to build a transparent curtain in front of photos so that browsers cannot copy and paste it, and neither be able to fetch it in the temporary files. I have seen it in many existing websites and if you "save as", you only get a 1KB photo. Can someone please tell us what it is called and how it is done or does it imply buying a programme. Regards Pieter van der Vyver Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Phil Chave Subject: Customer service > I currently derive over 90% of my sales directly > from the internet. The strange part is that I don't > rank that high in the results page on the search > engines. To be honest, I haven't really even > checked it lately. - Mark Roberts, LED Digest 2429 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1834/55/ Hi Mark Can I offer a couple of suggestions (even though you seem to be doing just fine without any of our help!!)? Lots of counters, including free ones like Sitemeter (www.sitemeter.com), allow you to look at URL referrals. This means you can see exactly the term used by the visitor to find you in whatever search engine they used, or the linking site they came from. You can recreate the search and see your position in relation to that word or phrase. This will give you bags of ideas for improvement, especially if you study the sites that come above you in the searches. One of the questions I ask myself is; what are they doing, did they do, should I do, to improve my position from where I am now? Sometimes, when you find you are consistently no.1 on page 1, of course, there ain't much else you need to do, or should do, especially if the SE is Google (a beautiful moment by the way). Having a relaxed attitude to attracting first time visitors is good for the blood pressure, but even your retained and reffered customers were first time visitors once. I only point this out, because focusing on only one aspect of a business as THE most important, usually means missing opportunities in other areas. > ... whatever happened to using great customer > service, quality merchandise, going the extra mile > to achieve customer loyalty and customer retention? Actually, nothing happened to it, but even great referrers get stale at referring over time, and many avid 'twitchers' this year will have moved on and be saving whales by this time next year. I'm on your side, I've got 8 nesting boxes in my garden here in England, plus bat boxes. That's probably not the norm, most gardens are likely only big enough for 1 or 2. The point being there is a finite number of sales to any one customer, even your most loyal customers will reach saturation point with your products at some stage. No matter how long you keep a customer, any business only survives because they have a constant stream of new customers to replace the drop-offs. Studying your referrals via a counter is one way to tell you which areas to focus on to achieve that need and is as simple as copying and pasting a small snippet of code to the bottom of a page. All the best Phil Chave www.distanthealer.co.uk Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Customer service Mark, I see you already have Google Analytics code on your pages. I suggest you check out your report and look under "Traffic Sources" to see where your visitors are coming from. This should only take a half hour for you to get the top level info. No need to dig deep until you know where to dig! You can see numbers on Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, Search Engines, Keywords and more. You might be surprised to find out that you are getting lots of people from the search engines, and they are using longer phrases to find you. For example, I found you at #2 on Google for (without quotes) "custom bird houses." http://www.google.com/search?q=custom+bird+houses Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Blogging can improve your site's ranking with both search engines and end users. Now, would you like us to tell you something you maybe don't already know? OK. A blog shouldn't be written like other web content. Here's why. http://www.getwebcontent.com/blog/?p=16 http://GetWebContent.com/LED : Blogging are us. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Jeremy Weiss Subject: Database > ... is there anything I can do to link product tags to my > site without carrying an internal dbase? Is there anything > that can be done to salvage this site? (traffically speaking). - Chuck Hiatt, LED Digest 2429 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1834/55/ Chuck, I just took a quick look at your site and can honestly say that there is hope. ;) The first thing I would suggest is that you work on your title tags. You've stuffed the same keywords into the title of nearly every page. That sort of shotgun approach isn't likely to work very well. Focus each page on a small set of keywords and then write the title to reflect _those_ keywords, not all the keywords you're wanting to target site wide. There are a few other on page changes that could help as well but let's move on to off site strategies since you're running off a remote database. The company ranking #1 for "promotional products" in Google shows to have well over ten times as many incoming links as your site. On the plus side, many of the links don't appear to be high quality. If you could start picking up links here and there from other sites (preferably quality sites) this would help you to start moving up in the SERPs. There are several different ways to gather inbound links but we'll skip that in an effort to keep this brief. Again, there are other things that you could do but these two will get you started. One question though, what's wrong with bringing the database internal? It's not a major issue, and it would provide you with more control over the product descriptions thus allowing you to target keywords a little better. Sincerely, Jeremy Weiss Internet Consultant | Blue Phoenix Consulting, LLC Small Business Consulting and Internet Services http://www.BluePhoenixConsulting.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Bad SEO > 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? - Alicia Lane, LED Digest 2427 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1831/55/ You explain, in a polite and positive manner, why not to do that. And finally, if the explanations don't work, you put your foot down. You explain that this is your fully knowledgeable, professional opinion and you will not do what they are asking, because you know what the result will be. > And, how do you avoid being held accountable > down the road when the site fails to bring in > targeted traffic? Why would you want to be in a supposed consultant relationship in which a person with little or no knowledge of the subject is simply using you as a keyboard puncher to do work you know is detrimental? You don't avoid being held accountable down the road, because if what the client is asking for is negative enough and your explanations didn't work, you're not there. I'm pretty sure that no matter how much that client is responsible, they will blame you. Perhaps you say something along the lines of, "With all due respect, it seems you do not trust my opinion on this. Carrying on the working relationship under these circumstances is not going to be good for either of us. I recommend you find a specialist whose advice you can trust." Now here's a possible positive marketing twist in this. Sometimes such a circumstance may simply be a personality thing. Or sometimes - whether we like the fact or not - an older person will have less respect for the opinion of a younger person - or vice versa. Or a man for a woman. And so on. If you are going to let go of the client to a competitor anyway, why not gain something positive from the move? So what you do is genuinely do your best to help them find someone more suited to them. Perhaps someone who is in the same age group, or has the same personality style. And you pass them on. You explain to your competitor what you are doing and why. Hopefully they will get on. Or maybe your competitor will find it easier to handle that particular dynamic. You may very well find yourself gaining a positive reaction from that client and from your competitor. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Tom Schmitz Subject: "inanchor" search > I am not sure I understand the reasoning here. > The query used was: > kitchen designer -inanchor:"kitchen designer" - Alicia Lane, LED Digest 2428 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1832/55/ > Subtracting out the "inanchor" factor shows > you pages that Google ranks without the > benefit of anchor text. - Michael Martinez, LED Digest 2429 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1834/55/ Michael, wouldn't this query remove anyone from its results who is indexed by Google as having anchor text that reads "kitchen designer," whether they are optimizing on-site for the expression "kitchen designer" or not? My understanding is -inanchor does not remove the inanchor as a factor. It excludes the results, any web page / document that is in the SERPs for the inanchor search. Tom Schmitz Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Search queries Hi fellow LEDers, I have a question about doing different kinds of search queries. When I got started in this business, I didn't even know what a search engine was (for sure), and over the years, never developed good skills in searching. Then, in LED Digest 2428, Alicia Lane gave yet another example of how to search for specific information -- kitchen designer -inanchor:"kitchen designer" -- and I see again another example of what I don't know. My question is this: Does anyone have or know of a place where I could find of good (and understandable) list of how to search for different kinds of things: inbound links, indexed pages, inanchor text for links, and dozens of other things that have been discussed in this forum? And, while it's great to know how to search for links to pages that have "kitchen designer" in the anchor text, it would also be nice to have a way to exclude "prehistoric designs" from the results. I think you get my point. Any ideas? Thanks. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials 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. 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