| LED Digest 2438: Walk-In Traffic |
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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 26, 2007 Issue no. 2438 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== MODERATOR COMMENT ======== --== Hammers & Nails ==-- ~ John Audette "...once they come in, with their feet or their mouse, things are just getting started...." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Hammers & Nails ==-- ~ Eva Rosenberg "One of the big major ways you left out of your list is affiliate marketing." ~ Brad Waller "We make sure we don't do stupid things to annoy or screw up the spiders or their masters." --== Rankings Drop ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "It seems that over the past couple of weeks something did change at Google." ~ Lorelle Smith "...it's a mistake to target overly broad search terms, especially single words." --== Domain Naming ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "Hyphens should be used in file and image names." ========== MODERATOR COMMENT ===================== From: John Audette Subject: Hammers & Nails Fellow LEDer... In her post in this issue, Eva Rosenberg adds a number of potentially effective online marketing techniques that I neglected to include in my list a couple of issues ago. - Affiliate Marketing (how could I omit that?! - I must be dusty & rusty) - Up-Selling - Published Articles Remember, I am most definitely *not* criticizing SEO as a marketing technique. One of the very first things we did at MMG was to learn as much as we could about it early on. In 1997 I paid Danny Sullivan to come to Bend, Oregon from England to teach us his techniques. To me, effective SEO is analogous to location in a physical business. For example, if you're willing to pay the rent on Rodeo Drive in L.A., you can be pretty sure that you will benefit from a lot of foot traffic and that they will be the kind of customers that you are seeking. Likewise, if you are willing to spend resources on effective SEO (money and/or time), you will also benefit from traffic from the kind of customers that you are seeking. But, once they walk in with their feet or their mouse, things are just getting started.... Your Striving Moderator, John Comment? ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Eva Rosenberg Subject: Hammer > 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. - John Audette, LED Digest 2436 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1841/190/ Yaaay John! "Whatever happened to other interactive techniques..?" Yes, there are other ways to get traffic and to sell. And there are entire groups of people out there who have learned to actively market to other vertical audiences. One of the big major ways you left out of your list is affiliate marketing. True, it's not as easy as it looks, but if focus, you can build your entire customer base through affiliate marketing. Spelled Ken Evoy and... Amazon.com and GoDaddy.com and... The good affiliate marketers also understand about the upsell concept - when they've been to your site, if they've bought some loss leader or accepted some freebie, offer them something else they're going to like. Someone I was speaking with yesterday was just saying that he'd been to a popular site (Sorry, I can't remember which one) and was offered, not one, but four distinct offers before he left the site. Have you ever tried to leave GoDaddy.com after you've purchased a domain? At Amazon last night, after I made my purchase selections, they offered me some other choices before finalizing my purchase. And of course, you would mention press releases, after all you built the first online press release service. They're a fabulous idea! Write a good release that can be used as an article - and not only will you get that article published, you may get an interview out of it. Someone sent me a release about his client that included information relevant to MY audience - business licenses in California. I was so interested in their business model, that I've convinced my MarketWatch.com editor to let me build my entire column totally around his business today. You also forgot to mention articles. Real ones, not simply stuff to spread around for links to link sites no one really reads. Everytime one of my articles appears on MarketWatch.com I get a new flurry of visitors. Become a resource for others. Last week, I got an urgent e-mail from a writer filling in as vacation editor (sound familiar?) and she needed a 1500 word article immediately, that could be recorded for their weekly. You have no idea how busy I was or what an imposition that was! Keep a store of good material on your site. I cut a deal with her to give her on older article I liked that badly needed updating. She could update and use it - in exchange for doing the updating so TaxMama.com would be current, too. Her broadcast - http://snipr.com/1nfv3 [accountingweb.com] My article - http://taxmama.com/Articles-Pro/pro-10.html And, of course, when they published it, it hit Google News and brought more people to my site. And so on. Do real business things. People will come. And again, much too long. Sorry. But, I want everyone to do well, without struggling. Once upon a time, your Humble Guide, Eva Rosenberg, EA www.taxmama.com www.taxquips.com Comment? -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Hammers and nails Al Toman was nice enough to share some data on his incoming sources, so I figured I would add in some more for the entire EPage.com site. The referring sites numbers are about the same, but the distribution of direct and SE is much different: Referring sites .. 40% Direct traffic ... 14% Search engines ... 46% AdJungle has similar numbers: Referring sites .. 39% Direct traffic ... 12% Search engines ... 49% But if I look at only the EPage home page, I see much different numbers: Referring sites .. 45% Direct traffic ... 36% Search engines ... 19% This tells you that a significant portion of our results in the engines are for deep links to interior pages, which is what we want and expect. That said, we do not design the site *for* the search engines. We design them for our users and make sure we don't do stupid things to annoy or screw up the spiders or their masters. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com Comment? ============ Sponsor Message =========== Search-engine optimized content is not for everyone. People whose goal is to be a raging web failure don't need it. Everybody else does. To read how and why http://GetWebContent.com/LED does SEO copywriting better than anyone else, click http://GetWebContent.com/why-and-how-we-seo-your-copy.php. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Rankings drop > I'm still wondering if it's a Google algorithm change. > Anybody? It seems in order to get proper keyword density, > we sometimes sacrifice human eye readability. - Scotty West, LED Digest 2435 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1840/190/ It seems that over the past couple of weeks something did change at Google, and it would make sense because I'm seeing a change about every three months and June is the beginning of the 6th month. The way we optimize we never seen huge changes so I generally don't pay any attention until I hear someone writing about it. My suggestion is that you turn to your web traffic reports and see what has changed. You mention your rankings have changed, but not if your TRAFFIC has changed. Changes in rankings can be upsetting, but its the changes in traffic numbers that we consider a call to action. And what is proper keyword density? Some say 12.51%, some say 8.37%, etc. We have a simple formula that I think you will find effective and easy to use: Use as many keywords and keyword phrases as possible everywhere on your site. Just make sure that you are also following good English usage. This allows you some freedom to use more keywords than you normally would for normal copywriting or speaking, and yet still be within generally accepted limits of readability. Most people just skim the text on web sites anyway. The most common thing that we do is remove words such as "it", "they", "the", "product", "service", "function", and other generic words and replace them with keywords for the thing being referred to. We also "expand" single word usage such as the word "list" for the more descriptive and targeted "mail list". Of course you can overdo it, but that's where the concept of good English usage comes in and should regulate the injection of keywords into your site copy. Thank you, Chris Nielsen http://www.security-guard.org P.S. The keyword density numbers are made up. I don't have a clue what others think they should be... Comment? -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Lorelle Smith Subject: Rankings drop I just want to point out a problem I see a lot of: targeting the wrong keywords. Like Sonia, many site owners have a blind spot where keywords are concerned. In my opinion it's a mistake to target overly broad search terms. Especially single words. Searchers typing the single word "mosaics" as a query are looking for... what? A mosaic artist? No. A tiny fraction may be interested in Sonia's workshops and services, but I would guess the vast majority are looking for samples and pictures of mosaics. Why attract looky-loos who aren't your target market and will only waste your bandwidth? Single-word queries don't end there. The search engines can't possibly serve up accurate results for overly broad queries -- they're not mind-readers. So nearly every searcher refines an initially broad query by tacking on additional words (sometimes several times). Site owners need to do some keyword research to learn what the most common refined queries in their niche are in order to attract more qualified traffic. For instance, Sonia's site could also be targeting those searching for "custom mosaics." So I would disagree with Sonia's estimation of what her site's problem is. In fact, she's ranked #3 in Google and #5 in Yahoo for "mosaic artist." Now, *that's* an appropriate phrase for her to target! It gets an estimated 51 searches daily, according to Wordtracker, but the plural form gets more than twice as much so she would do well to target both. She should be thrilled to be ranked so highly, considering the phrase "mosaic artist" appears only once in her home page copy. That could be improved (as long as she doesn't overdo it), but I don't think she needs to change her title tag as LED reader Bruce A. Flinn suggested. Yes, word order in the title tag is important, but Sonia's site is already ranked highly for an excellent keyphrase, plus serving her branding needs. If Sonia really wants to attract such loosely targeted traffic as those who search for just "mosaics," she could be using "mosaic art" to describe her gallery instead of "art mosaics." She could be attracting an estimated 426 per day instead of seven. (But Sonia, on those internal pages, your title tags should start with the keyphrase that's relevant for the page. Put your branding info at the end.) All site owners need to know, not guess, the appropriate keywords to target. Don't skip the keyword research. Anyone who really thinks they *should* target overly broad keywords in their niche, and is lucky enough to be ranked highly or rich enough to bid in pay-per-click ad campaigns for those keywords, be sure to track what those broad-query visitors do once they hit your site. That's what should ultimately drive people's keyword decision-making: homework, not guesswork. PS to John: I'm disappointed that I didn't get to meet you on our road trip to Oregon, but it was very cool to meet Adam! Lorelle Smith, The Keywordsmith Professional Keyword Research & Analysis Consultant http://www.Keywordsmith.com Comment? -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Domain Naming > ... is a hyphen prefered to separate words making > up a domain name or just run them together...? - Terry Smith, LED Digest 2437 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1842/190/ Hyphens should be used in file and image names. The URL doesn't matter enough to make that worth doing. You don't need to think in terms of "the search engine figuring it out". Enormously more important is that the URL is easy to remember and easy to pass on to others. (All those explanation of, "Its marketing hyphen alchemy." Sheesh!) If keywords are a consideration - one client is currently #1 out of 450,000,000 with no keywords in the URL. So don't use a complex URL requiring hyphens for the sake of keywords. If the name is unmemorable, it may be worth considering another. For example, let's say I want to recommend a realtor... "Oh yes, you should use my realtor. Their URL is victoriarealestate.com --- or was it realestatevictoria.com. Ummm, maybe it was victoriarealty.com. Anyway, something like that." People expect the words in a URL to be run together, so as far as I can judge (without knowing the name involved) that is probably better. Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com Comment? <Moderator Comment> I agree with Michael about URL words running together. I have worked a realtor in Hawaii for a number of years and I originally thought he had one of the worse URLs that I had ever seen: www.dantherealestateman.com But I have remembered it for years. - JA ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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