| LED Digest 2467: What Free Advice is Worth |
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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 .............................................. August 9, 2007 Issue no. 2467 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Keyword Density ==-- ~ Lorelle Smith "It's really important to choose keyword phrases (never single words) carefully..." ~ Jeff Hinds "I would say that 5-7% would be the perfect keyword-density..." --== Free Consultations ==-- ~ Rod Aries "Yep, free advice is worth just about what you pay for it." ~ Tom Aman "This reminds me of my wife's experience..." --== SEO and Web Standards ==-- ~ Thomas M. Schmitz "...many white hat SEO practices have roots in black hat SEO." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Lorelle Smith Subject: Keyword density > I know it's a never-ending story and there's lots of debate > about it. But what do you think is the perfect keyword-density > of a webpage. And what's the maximum / minimum you'd > like to achieve? - Hein van der Honing, LED Digest 2466 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1877/190/ I couldn't resist answering Hein van der Honing's question: Just enough for the search engines to grasp without being noticeable to humans! The 2 most common mistakes I see people making are 1) using the wrong keywords, 2) using them too repetitively, and 3) using so many that the focus is hard for engines to grasp. It's really important to choose keyword ***phrases*** (never single words) carefully and weave them in so skillfully that your readers never realize the copy has been optimized. Lorelle Smith, The Keywordsmith Professional Keyword Research & Analysis Consultant http://www.Keywordsmith.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Jeff Hinds Subject: Keyword density Hi Hein, I would say that 5-7% would be the perfect keyword-density of a webpage. I would also include variations of the specific keyword you are targeting. You want to build a theme using other related keywords so you're not keyword stuffing which can help you optimize for the long tail. Best, Jeff Hinds http://www.netagency.com ============ 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: Rod Aries Subject: Free consultations > I get a lot of people who want a free consultation > in different forms... Have any LEDers had this type > of situation in your respective fields? How did you > handle it more effectively? - Shari Thurow, LED Digest 2465 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1876/190/ Warning: "free" advice follows... After grad school I worked in health care management for a decade. I learned first hand about the aspects of free. 1) Medicaid - People don't value free things very highly. If it's free, it's not valuable, but as a group, they complained a lot when they did not get enough free stuff. 2) Ambulances - Once a service is provided, and the customer no longer needs it, it is hard to collect, especially when users assume it should be free. With ambulance rides running $300++ per incident, they have one of the highest bad debt rates of any industry. Then, in 1997, when I was tired of highly paid physicians and staff, and expensive equipment, I found my way to the Internet, which was "free" of labor and "free" of capital costs. Wahoo! FREE CONSULTATIONS I did the free stuff for a while. I educated people on the net, how SEO worked and all the hundreds of related items that have to be perfect to get ranked. I guess I needed to do it. I soon learned that not everybody was appreciative of free, but the customers were smarter. FREE - THE SEQUEL Some people comment that the prospective customer asks for even more free stuff after the first report or presentation. They wonder if they should be compelled to continue down this free road. I recall something I read in the book "The Way of The Peaceful Warrior," which kinda' applies here. The story goes like this, two construction workers have lunch every day together. Everyday when Adam stops for lunch, he opens his lunch box and sighs: "Man, peanut butter again? I hate peanut butter." Adam then dolefully eats his lunch. After a couple weeks of this a buddy comments, "If you hate peanut butter so much, why don't you ask your wife to make you something different?" Adam looks up from his peanut butter sandwich, and appears somewhat surprised and then says: "I don't have a wife, I make my own sandwiches." Obviously, the lesson here is if you are giving stuff away for free you can't complain. FREE AT LAST My wife is an attorney, a professor and a seminar facilitator. A prospective client contacted her and wanted a free mini seminar for the administrative staff so that they could determine if they wanted to hire her for a full seminar for their hundreds of employees. What she ended up doing was saying that she would provide a mini seminar for, say, $1000, and that if they went ahead with a full seminar she would not only apply the $1000 they had spent, but provide an additional $3000 credit. In essence, she tried to focus on the other side of free. CONVERTING FREE TO VALUE After about a year I took an entirely different approach, and while it may not work for everybody, it worked for me. Since most people don't value free information because they fail to make a mental commitment to change, I tried to focus on a way to disrupt the customer's personal belief system. Rather, then put together an inclusive report of what I could do, I prepared my presentations without focusing on free and simply went to their web site and only told them what was wrong with web site; not necessarily offering a solution. I would often focus on the beliefs that the customer believe to be true and shatter them first. In a simplified example, if I saw that their domain did not have meta titles, I would show them how their competitors had meta titles, and then say something like, "It is not enough just to have a meta title... and you have to have a CORRECT meta title." I found that if you can mentally challenged company owners and directly contradict something that they hold to be true, that the issue of free becomes irrelevant, because at that point in time you have something more valuable than free, you have knowledge, and they don't. BACK TO THE SOFTWARE ISSUE I think this entire discussion started with the question of giving away free software. I think that the best solution to this dilemma already exists. Many software companies allow a fully functional software program for 15 or 30 days, or they allow their software to run but only with limited capacities, such as only being able to scan 10 rows of data not thousands. After this free trial period, the customer either buys the software or can no longer use it. Yep, free advice is worth just about what you pay for it. :) Rod Aries -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Free consultations This reminds me of my wife's experience - she sold her craft work (jewellery) in a farmer's market and occasionally someone would ask "Is that your best price?". Looking for a way to answer this without giving offence, she spoke to one of the farmers near her who had become a good friend and had sold produce in that market for many, many years. He told her that he was forever getting that question and his answer was either "It is, if you want me to be here next year." or "I can always charge you a little more if you like." He followed either statement with the added comment "My prices are as low as I can make them for my customers and still allow me to make enough to run a decent operation year after year." The "free consultation" is fair (taking a quick look at a site - say 5 minutes to look at a few pages and check the source), but it would then be reasonable to come back with a ballpark quote of some kind (either written or verbal) of what you would charge to improve the site (no details on what you would do). Seems a logical thing to do for someone who wants some idea of what professional services might cost them and whether or not they have the funds to proceed. With regard to RFPs, etc., whether you respond or not depends on what you feel your chances of getting the work might be and whether or not you really want to do the job. Contract software or systems development for large organizations (like government) often involves responding to a lot of RFPs, the company I was with at one time figured that if they won 1 in 10 they were doing well, so they were very selective in those to which they actually responded. A lot of effort was involved and those they won had include sufficient profit to cover the costs of the submissions for those they did not win (all part of the overhead of doing business). Tom Aman http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Thomas M. Schmitz Subject: SEO Risk > Have you informed your clients that you are doing things > which could be penalized in the future, either by closer > scrutiny from search engines or by being reported, and > cause a serious drop in rankings or possible banning? - Chris Nielsen, LED Digest 2464 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1875/190/ You are absolutely correct about disclosure. Clients must receive disclosure and they must know what that disclosure means. Agencies must know what level of risk clients are willing to accept and must keep within the set boundary. At the same time you cannot be paranoid. In 2002 Bret Tabke recomended in his landmark article '26 Steps to 15K a Day,' to engage in reciprocal link exchanges. This was later changed to relevant link exchanges. If I were writing the article today I would encourage folks to get links via viral marketing. This is because between 2002 and 2007 what was considered best practices and what was considered rankings manipulation, with regards to reciprocal links, took a 180. I suggest live responsibly, but live for today. For the record, While I am an aggressive SEO practitioner who seeks every advantage for clients, I do not engage in the black arts nor risk clients' rankings and reputations. Having said that, let me return to the two examples in my last post. Not closing a tag as in using < br> rather than < br/> -- I cannot imaging anyone who would call that gray or black hat. There is nothing deceptive about this. In fact, I just made this up as an example of benign rule breaking. I've never heard of anyone using this to worthwhile effect. Inserting two < title>Title Elements< /title> might be construed as being mildly gray hat if only because it may be Spamamish. Historical note -- this is a technique that some SEOs once actually employed. So to label me a black mage based on these two examples would be rather silly. Tangent Time! Did you know that many white hat SEO practices have roots in black hat SEO? For example, if you have a Flash website it is smart to dynamically serve a faithfully reconstructed HTML version to web spiders and search-bots. That's white hat cloaking. Thomas M. Schmitz Portent Interactive An Internet Marketing Agency http://www.portentinteractive.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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