| LED Digest 2436: Everything Looks Like a Nail |
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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 ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: John Audette LED Digest john, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. June 22, 2007 Issue no. 2436 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== MODERATOR COMMENT ======== --== Hammers & Nails ==-- ~ John Audette "Has Internet marketing been reduced to optimizing for Google searches?" ====== FEATURED POST =========== --== Lost Rankings ==-- ~ Brad Waller "If you build your site for humans...then the search engines will understand and reward you." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Rankings Drop ==-- ~ Maty Matyszak "...this looks suicidal to me, Scotty..." ~ Carrie "I find it hard to update the site a lot when I get busy, but apparently it's necessary." ~ Tom Anson "...a problem with your links would be the explanation for your drop in Google." --== Drop in Rankings at Google ==-- ~ Jaffer Ali "Google traffic dropped 90% in one day." ======== MODERATOR COMMENT ===================== From: John Audette Subject: Hammers & Nails Fellow LEDer... I don't know if you read the quote at the bottom of the last issue of the LED -- here it is just in case you missed it: "When your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." (Papa Grogan - Master of Cliches) Papa Grogan was my revered and much loved grandfather. He immigrated to the United States from Ireland just in time to be drafted into the Army for WW I. That was a nasty war and he got beat up pretty badly which was probably one of the reasons that he enjoyed beer so much -- a trait that has evidently been passed along to me, given my fondness for Guinness. Papa Grogan was a kind and gentle man, and he had volumes of what I guess would be called folk wisdom, or common sense. Why am I telling you this? Because I was heavily influenced by Papa Grogan. He may added the right amount of common sense to my wild idealism and general out-of-itness. So, as past I-Salers know, I tend to quote the good Papa frequently. OK, back to business. What has gotten me thinking about hammers and nails is the current discussion about reaching potential employers with SEO techniques. To quote Jeremy Weiss from yesterdays issue http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1840/190/ > it appears that the reason the SEO guys are telling > you they can't reach the employers is because the > employers aren't searching. If they don't go to the > search engines and search for something, all the > SEO work in world isn't going to help... it seems > that you'll need to find another way to market > to this group of people other than just SEO. As I mentioned previously, I have been reading the LED regularly. An observation that I made to Adam prior to taking on this guest stint as moderator is that it looks kind of like another discussion list that we used to publish called I-Search. There seems to be a tremendous focus here on using SEO as opposed to other interactive marketing tools. I realize that I've been away from things for a time, so bear with me while I ask an innocent question: Whatever happened to other interactive techniques, such as: o Press releases Journalists are lazy -- they love to get digital stuff that they can cut and paste. Online PR is a pretty active industry for experienced marketers, but seems to be neglected a lot by the majority. You can even SEO your press release - http://www.toprankblog.com/2005/10/lowdown... o Viral campaigns Humor, YouTube o Banner advertising I know, I know, don't laugh. My friend who started and built Classmates.com did it almost exclusively with well thought-out banner advertising. o Community development Email discussion lists, for one example. o Information marketing I imagine that content is still king -- and not just for Google eyes, but also for human eyes. o Selling as a component of marketing They found you, now how do you build the relationship and sell 'em stuff? o Social Media I'll leave it up to you to discuss this one as I have a lot to learn. Has Internet marketing been reduced to optimizing for Google searches? I realize that SEO is a powerful hammer -- but is everything a nail? If it is, it is. Let's talk about it. Your Striving Moderator, John Comment? P.S. We have the following three threads running right now: - Rankings Drop - Lost Rankings - Drop In Rankings At Google which seems a bit redundant. I'm going to go ahead and consolidate the three threads into a single one called "Rankings Drop". ========== FEATURED POST ========================= From: Brad Waller Subject: Rankings drop Scotty, I'm not a professional SEO, but I have been running businesses online since 1994 and attending and covering conferences for about as long as they have been around. I have never seen any professional advise you to do anything "for the spiders" unless they ask for it (e.g. site maps). If you build your site for humans and do it in the best way for them to understand what your site is about and what they should be doing there, then the search engines will understand and reward you. If you build the site for the engines, then they will figure this out (they are smarter than you) and penalize you for this. There have been updates at Google, and I would assume that this is why your rankings have dropped. Redo your site for your users and I bet you will see improved rankings. Brad Waller Internet Classifieds since 1994 http://epage.com Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Maty Matyszak Subject: Rankings Drop Ow! > My thought was to create graphic text at the > top of the page containing my best sales pitch > ... just for humans to read. The HTML text further > down the page is more for the spiders. This way > I don't dilute my keyword position and density. - Scotty West, LED Digest 2435 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1840/190/ I'm no rankings expert, Scotty, but this looks suicidal to me. As I have been given to understand it Google is passionate about its spiders seeing what humans see, and they get all bitter and vindictive about any attempts to misdirect them. It does not help that you have chosen a classic spammer's technique. Think of all those emails you get where the text is usually computer-generated gibberish, and the spam payload is in a picture where the words don't get spotted by a filter. Naturally your 'keyword-rich' text is not gibberish, (though it don't sound too human-friendly either), but the spiders don't see that. They don't know what you are saying in the picture text, but the pic prolly gets enough of a quick OCR to recognize picture text, and this, together with the spider-fodder on the page means they suspect you of evil intentions. Remember Google is not a court of law. Innocence is no excuse. You not have only to be a white-hat, you gotta play like one, too. No doubt others will give you chapter and verse on this one (with footnotes) but to me, that's the issue in a nutshell. I'd get that off your page ASAP, and hope G. picks up on the change. Good luck! Maty Matyszak http://www.knowyourcat.info Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Carolynne MacKenzie Subject: Rankings Drop > I mentally adjusted, kept reading LED, kept trying > just to make the best site possible, only adding > pertinent and informative links, etc. But now it's a huge drop. - Sonia King, LED Digest 2433 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1838/190/ I also do my own website.. and when this happened to me a long time ago.. one of the LEDers suggested that I should add some pages to my website, and change some words, and upload it again. I did.. and bounced right back in the ratings. It just happened again to me this last month.. I added some more pages, and uploaded it again, and my email box is now hopping again. I find it hard to update the site a lot when I get busy, but apparently it's necessary, and helps show that it's a current site, not a forgotten one. I'm a few days behind on reading the LED.. so apologize in advance if this has already been covered. Carrie MacKenzie http://www.candybarwrapper.ca (forgive the simplicity of the design.. I only have so much time to devote to it.) Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Rankings Drop Hi Scotty, I think I'd agree with Ron that a problem with your links would be the explanation for your drop in Google. The links may have been working fine for you at the time you checked, but that doesn't mean that they did when Google did. A (temporary) server problem could have made the links inaccessible at some point. (If I'm wrong on this, I'd like to hear about it.) As for keyword density, I think the latest thought on that is that it's not that big of a deal. It's much better to have the text that your visitors are interested in being indexed by the search engines. That way, ALL of your relevant text is indexed for searchers to find. When I look at your site, I suffer from visual overload. It is really busy. My eyes need a lot more white space. I'm actually something of your target audience; yet, if I came across your site while googling, I'd be inclined to click away. (I should state here that I'm more conservative than many others and that, with Fibromyalgia, I don't see things quite like "normal" people.) It seems to me that breaking up the text into pages devoted more to the specific topic at hand would allow you to put all of that text into indexable form and allow searchers to find it, without destroying keyword density. It would also make the whole site more accessible to someone like me. Now excuse me while I dig through this site and see if I'd like to order the DVD set. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com/products/singles/thyme.html Comment? -------- new post - related topic -------- From: Jaffer Ali Subject: Google Traffic down 90% in one day... Folks: While I have been online for a very long time, until recently, almost all of our business revolved around email. We never spent much energy on web-centric SEO or other issues web publishers dealt with. We preferred to push traffic through e-zines / newsletters and be masters of our own traffic fate. But that started to change when we hopped on the video bandwagon and licensed National Geographic, HBO, MGM, and other studio and home video clips. We discovered that we could get a lot of traffic from search engines and combined, these search engines send about 75,000 visitors a day to our video portal at EVTV1.com. Something drastic happened. I look at the referral logs every morning when I get in for the past day. Google traffic dropped 90% in one day. I sent a note to our tech guy to see if our site map had somehow been disabled. From Tuesday to Wednesday, a 90% drop? It is still down for today... Any possible explanation would be appreciated. The other search engines did not decline 90% (although there was a slight decline). I appreciate any place to look. Thanks, Jaffer Ali, CEO www.evtv1.com www.NextEraMedia.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 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "First, do no harm" ( Hippocrates ) |
