| LED Digest 2512: Unblockable Pop-Ups? |
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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 .............................................. October 12, 2007 Issue no. 2512 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== (Virtually) Unblockable Pop-ups? ==-- ~ Dan Rosenfield "I fully realize I may get a few negative responses to this question, but I'll ask anyhow." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Placing Links on Client Sites ==-- ~ Veronica Yuill "Is traffic from SEs bringing in good business for you?" ~ Shel Horowitz "I am not a web designer, but a copywriter, and the issues are similar." ~ Beth Earle "Over the nearly nine years I've been here, we've only had one client complain..." ~ Al Toman "First, I would like to see someone define 'web designer'." --== Email Privacy ==-- ~ Mark Bishop "I miss my GMail." ~ John Barendrecht "One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is..." =========== NEW ================================== From: Dan Rosenfield Subject: Pop Ups that can't be blocked Hello All: I fully realize I may get a few negative responses to this question, but I'll ask anyhow. Does anyone know where I can buy a program which will produce a (virtually) unblockable pop up? I am confident my visitors will not object to what I have in mind; in fact, I think they'll like it. If I'm wrong, I'll accept the consequences and take it down. The pop up now exists on my site and I've had no complaints. Of course, only a small percentage of my visitors are seeing it. Any suggestions? Thanks, Dan Rosenfield http://www.college-scholarships.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Placing links Hi Adam Like you, I never thought Grant's opinion would stir up so much controversy, but I'm really enjoying the discussion; there have been some great posts (special thanks to Grant and Dirk for their interesting and well-argued contributions). Reading the arguments about pagerank and the importance of links to search engines made me wonder how many web designers on the list actually get valuable prospects (as opposed to tyre-kickers) from SEs? Of course I won't say no to a good listing in Google :-) but I confess I spend no time at all on SEO or link building for our own business site (actually we haven't touched the design in over 5 years, but that's the cobbler's children syndrome at work!). Maybe we are missing a trick, but we get our business almost entirely as a result of reputation and our portfolio. Having been around for a long time helps (we started serious website design in 1997), and we built up our reputation initially by building the first comprehensive site dedicated to our local region and getting our names and faces in the local newspaper regularly. Since then it's been very much word-of-mouth and networking that has brought in good business (by which I mean clients who recognise the value of professional web development and are prepared to pay for it). So what do other designers think? Is traffic from SEs bringing in good business for you? And, for the non-designers, if you are looking for a web designer, do you use search engines to do it? Oh, and only last week we had a serious inquiry from someone who had seen our link on the credits page of a client site :-) Veronica Yuill www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/ -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Shel Horowitz Subject: Placing links Interesting discussion. Here's my take. I am not a web designer, but a copywriter, and the issues are similar. My words are all over the web, on lots of sites. If I am doing work for a client, I don't ask for a credit. If I am doing work to promote myself, I most certainly want my name attached, and clearly. If a splogger takes an article of mine from an article bank (as is happening more and more often), I'm not thrilled with it, but I put it up there for public use -- and frankly I don't have the energy to stamp them out. the few I've written to didn't respond at all. If they include my links and bio, I tolerate it, even though I don't really want links from these icky pages. Now, if a client offers me a credit line, I take it, happily -- but I also ask for a testimonial that I can use on my own site. I probably have over 100 posted, plus numerous more for my books (Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First is alone responsible for 79 testimonials so far, including John Audette and a number of current and former participants in the various Adventive discussions -- two whom I've seen post recently here are Eva rosenberg and Ken Evoy.) I can tell you for a fact that a number of clients and book customers have cited the high number and strong quality of my testimonials as a reason to do business. On my own sites, I'm happy to give credit, but it's generally not asked for. It does feel like using a photographer. Yet only one of my nine sites credits the webmaster -- and that was a site she donated, and it would have been grossly unfair not to link her. Shel Horowitz, award-wining author, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Placing links OK. I've held off a bit to see if there'd be any comments that would sway my opinion, and so far ... there haven't been. Our client base is largely b2b manufacturers. As a rule, they all put their name on their products, whether they make plastic gears, metal clamps, huge pieces of equipment, tires or any of the other various-and-sundry what-nots that help keep the industrialized world grinding forward. Many times, they include their HQ location, too, as in "ABC Corp., Tiny Burg, Big State". Because of my manufacturing background, I've never considered placing our link on a client site to be a copyright issue or "artiste" issue. It's something our company made, so we put our name on it, along with a way to find us (I'm sure if you could Internet-enable a stamped imprint on a widget, most manufacturers would hot-link their names to their websites instead of just adding in their geographic locations). Over the nearly nine years I've been here, we've only had one client complain, and we took the link off his site. Placing the link in text somewhere on the site is a lovely idea and likely practical in a variety of situations, but most of our clients have such tight budgets, they don't have us build the sorts of pages where this sort of info would fit in. Heck, some of them don't even want to pay for "About Us" pages -- they want to get away with the smallest investment possible to achieve their goal. Lastly, placing a link on a client site seems like the responsible thing to do: if it breaks, people know who to blame (and who not to hire). Wishing all the best to LED'ers everywhere, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Placing links > I asked the very same questions about forming a > "web designer guild" ... I think a trade union like this > will be extremely beneficial for everybody involved. - Alex Hughart, LED Digest 2511 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1923/190/ First, I would like to see someone define "web designer". There appears to be a Ms. Conception that web design is graphics and commercial art. Mr. Grant Crowell references it. As well, I know Peter D'Aprix to be a photographer. I've known artists, graduates of art school, wanna be web designers, who quit web design because scripting dampens their creativity. That alone should suggest that web design is something beyond pretty pictures. Often, clients want to see one's portfolio. I love sending them reams of php code or external css files whilst they're expecting to see pretty pictures. As I ask them, "Isn't this beautiful work!?!". Properly completing page titles and H tags is W3C web design work, not necessarily SEO work. It becomes SEO work when the web designer doesn't, well, web design. And the client ALWAYS pays the SEO 3 to 4 times they'd pay the web designer. Second, the HTML guild is a joke. Pay your fee and you're a web designer. Maybe in the 1920's someone would fall for that 'mark' on your web design web page. Hopefully, not today. Third, Alex's mention of the entertainment industry is worse then drawing a sword through my gut. We as a people would rather pay some loser football player, acter, or singer, billions of dollars then spend it on, let's say, cancer research to save Grandma and Mom and Sister from breast cancer, as an example. At the same time we want to freely download and iPOD 5,000 songs a day. Geesh. I don't think I listened to 1,000 songs in a life time. Only to be traced down and sued by the entertainment gurus. We as a people are a sick society in more ways then one. All y'all probably do not remember the Kenny Rogers interview when he said that he cannot believe that for an old man who can't sing to have, at the time, 3 mansions each with 5 bathrooms. Considering then, through self admission, should Mr. Rogers have entitlement to the "entertainment guild"? Without defining "web design", a guild would be superficial. Glitz. Al Toman designed by: studio9 web design ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Search Engines Love Seasonal Content At http://GetWebContent.com/LED, we take the time to learn about your products and services. Then we produce useful topical content related to the current season. Search engines spider your seasonal content and add it to their index. Users enter your site via the seasonal content and convert to sales. For a no obligation quote on seasonal content: http://GetWebContent.com/LED ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark Bishop Subject: Email > Our main reason for moving to Gmail was its fantastic spam > filtering. We've been through half a dozen solutions and > nothing had been reliable and accurate enough for us. - Martyn Gay, LED Digest 2509 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1921/190/ I just want to second this. I actually went the other direction. I was using GMail at my organization and because of growth, we decided to set up a MS Exchange Server with corporate level spam filter software. Now we have moved from on average one spam per week, to 15 per day, and we're getting more false positives. I miss my GMail. Mark Bishop www.workforcelang.com Bridging Language & Culture in the Workplace -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Email > You keep your existing email address so no > one needs to know that you are using Gmail. - Martyn Gay Almost no one. I know one of our users sent an email to his company. He is a freelance contractor. When the message was delayed, he was very surprised that Yahoo (business) sent him a delay message. In your case, if mail ever gets delayed, your customers would get a delay message from Google. Would they notice? Would they care? Although most people probably won't look up your DNS records, you can see it there. If you look at cactushop, we can see the following info. You don't run your own DNS servers or mail servers. And you have this warning - WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is... your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 http://www.dnsstuff.com/pages/rfc821.htm and RFC2821 4.3.1 http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/rfc.ch?detail=2821. Our mail server can be set up to mark messages as spam where the host names and mx records don't match. Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "No star is ever lost we once have seen, We always may be what we might have been." - Adelaide Proctor |
