| LED Digest 2570: Yahoo Ranking Issues |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite 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 .............................................. January 16, 2007 Issue no. 2570 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Want to Moderate? --== Yahoo! Ranking Issues ==-- ~ Beth Ann Earle "Has anyone else experienced a similar drop on Yahoo?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Pricing Consultancy Services ==-- ~ Barry S Mills "Charging for the 'thinking time' is something we always found to be challenging..." ~ Laurie Bredenfoerder "...the good clients don't mind paying you a fair rate..." ~ Big Bill "In reality SEO is more like gem cutting..." --== The Paid Links Scam ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "[We] owe Google absolutely nothing with respect to supporting their position on paid links." ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Are you interested in moderating the LED? If so, I'd like to hear from you. Please send an email to me here (it won't be posted). Please, don't hesitate to get in touch if you're interested! It's not a huge time commitment (all the editing and preparation, as well as sending, will take place from our end), but demands someone who's familiar with Internet marketing and online culture in general. Perks include increased visibility and the fact that you'll be giving back to the marketing community through your involvement (good karma!). Thanks, Adam ---------------- From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Yahoo Ranking Issues Hi, guys. We've noticed that a number of our client sites have lost rankings on Yahoo. http://www.elkayplastics.com is a good example. As recently as August, about 20 of their pages (the home page plus around 19 sub-pages or PDFs) ranked in Yahoo's top 20 on searches for the terms most important to Elkay. Now, only their home page is showing up, even on a linkdomain search on Yahoo. Here are my questions: 1. Has anyone else experienced a similar drop on Yahoo? 2. Were you able to ascertain the reasons for the drop? 3. Did you try to remediate the situation? 4. If so, how? And how successful do you feel your efforts were? 5. Do you even care about Yahoo? The above paragraphs are my post in a nutshell, but below is some optional background on the site, in case it's useful in illuminating parallels between Elkay's situation and any of your own experiences. Elkay does not have a listing in the Yahoo directory right now; it does have a DMOZ listing and two links from .edu sites, although no links from .gov sites. It does not have a .xml site map, although it does have optimized title and meta tags, along with optimized content on each page. Elkay is a long-time advertising client of ours -- they pay for banner ads and listings on our two industry-specific industry portals (http://www.polysort.com and http://www.packagingbusiness.com ). As part of their package, we host the www.elkayplastics.com website and provide 24/7 reports on their traffic, along with quarterly reports on their search engine performance. We also provide regular advice and insight into what they should do to keep the site current, fresh, performing well in the SEs and appealing to site visitors. At this time, we do not offer/require any sort of long-term site maintenance/SEO program, where certain work is automatically performed each month. We make recommendations, and if the client accepts, then we perform the work at a reasonable price. There hasn't been any major work done on the site in nearly a year, although it still ranks well on MSN and Google. With the age of the site and regardless of the Yahoo rankings, ideally we'd like to do a full keyword research project and then re-optimize the whole site, but they don't really seem ready to consider that option. It would be great, too, to migrate their PDF-based catalog pages to .html, but that hasn't been an investment they're prepared to make. My gut instinct is to sit tight and see if things improve on Yahoo in the next couple of months. But with Yahoo being the No. 2 search engine, every month we wait means an appreciable loss of traffic for our clients. Looking forward to your feedback and comments! Wishing LED'ers everywhere the very best for the New Year, Beth Ann Earle www.pilotfishseo.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Barry Mills Subject: Pricing Consultancy > We could broaden this topic to include > other consultancy services - how do you > charge for your work? And as buyers of > these services, how do you expect to PAY > for this kind of work? - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2569 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1984/190/ Hi Adam, Ok, let's broaden it out. Charging for the "thinking time" is something we always found to be challenging, especially when our work was predominantly for SMEs, which isn't really the case nowadays. A typical scenario - client approaches us (or visa versa) about developing a web site. Initial exploration reveals that client has little or no idea what they need, and often no marketing strategy behind it either. So we need to work on a strategy, and then a detailed specification, before we know what's going in the web site and what other (marketing/support) work will be required. But the client wants to know how much EVERYTHING costs before committing to anything. We propose a strategy project for a modest cost, and as often as not get the reaction "what!!!, you want to charge me for a quote??". Obviously, clients come in different shapes & sizes. Some don't want anyone else to do the thinking for them, they just want something built to their specification, which is fine. Not really for us, but fine. Many do need the thinking doing. Many of those don't recognise the issue, and many of those that do still think it should be free. Web consultants continue to perpetuate this problem by doing an awful lot more than they should, imho, for nothing. And this probably leads to a lot of corners being cut, and a lot of projects commencing that haven't really been thought through properly - so it's a lose-lose situation. One solution some agencies have adopted is to ring-fence consultancy as a separate division from design and build (or let's call it implementation, because I'm sure this problem doesn't just apply to web design), then presumably insist on a sensible brief before taking clients directly into implementation. This is something we've toyed with but never done - I'd be interested to know if anyone has any experience of doing this, or any other ideas that would help match fees up better with value generation. Barry S Mills Chairman Netstep http://www.netstep.co.uk ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Grab your Visitor's Attention In Two Seconds Flat Attention Ticker makes them notice! Scrolling text banner is perfect for Special offers...News feeds...Syndication to other sites ... $49 one-time purchase--and use it forever http://bontragercgi.com/programs/AttentionTicker/ ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Laurie Bredenfoerder Subject: Pricing SEO and Consultancy Services You pose an excellent question about how to price consulting services. I am not involved in SEO - my husband is the family techie - but I've been an independent qualitative market research consultant for more than 10 years and I'm happy to contribute my perspectives. First, it's vitally important that any consultant be totally, solidly committed to whatever rate structure he or she devises. Discussions with a potential client nearly always include a discussion of rates; any hesitancy in a discussion about rates could be interpreted by the client as a lack of confidence in the value of the "product." Second, do your homework. Find out what other consultants charge to do the kind of work you do, and how the rates are typically structured - e.g. by the hour, by the day, by the activity or function, or by the project. If you're already established in the business, some of your colleagues will share this information willingly; they are probably just as curious as you are. If you're still looking to establish yourself, approach the subject creatively. For instance, I started out in market research as an analyst doing limited project work for people who were doing then, what I do now. Since I was a lowly subcontractor - hardly a competitive threat - I was able to pretty much find out everything I needed to know just by asking a lot of the right questions. Or contact a professional organization related to that line of work. I belong to a professional organization, QRCA, made up of independents such as myself. Occasionally we share information about rates or rate structures during our local or national meetings. And, of course, there are also the semi-honest methods like telling a colleague that you are responding to an RFP for a project that "might" need a second consultant - and tell them you want to include their rates in your quote. Underhanded as this one may be, it happens all the time. No matter what you charge, you're likely to run into clients who claim that your rates are "too high." Assuming you've done your due diligence and know where you stack out in the market, you can decide whether or not you want to play that game. Frankly, I've found that the good clients don't mind paying you a fair rate and those who question your rates are going to pester you about so many other things, that eventually you'll regret taking them on. As somebody once said, "You’re known by the company you keep." Be picky when you're doing business development - choose your clients wisely! Laurie Bredenfoerder BValley Communications and Market Research -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Big Bill Subject: Pricing SEO The problem is that a lot of people still think in industrial terms, if they're paying you then they want to visualise you at some kind of virtual coal-face for a time they feel is appropriate. In reality SEO is more like gem cutting, where decades of experience may be employed in making decisions about where to make a cut, while making the cut itself is the work of a moment. BB ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= One Way Links to your Site, by the Hundreds? Yes! Get Traffic and Link Popularity to Your Site from Legitimate, General Interest Web Directories. DomainDrivers Makes It Hassle-Free. Details Here: http://www.domaindrivers.com/directory-submissions.html ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Paid links > I usually agree with a lot of Michael's > [Martinez] arguments, but I think you're > off beam with comments on whether a link is > any form of endorsement - or at least chose > a very poor reference... - Greg Robbins, LED Digest 2568 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1983/190/ The U.S. Government Web sites and their link disclaimers are sufficient rebuttal to Google's nonsense about links constituting "votes" or "endorsements". However, as a Web directory operator and editor who has spent thousands of hours evaluating Web sites for conclusion, I have looked at many bogus link lists that were created by Web site operators solely for the purpose of putting something on their pages. Links in are connection points, not opinions, and anyone who has ever read a forum discussion or blog post where someone links to an article or site with abusive comments has seen clearly how links do not constitute "votes" or "endorsements" despite the lack of explicit disclaimers from the people placing the links. In "search engine terms", as you aptly described it, links are treated as endorsements for an entirely artificial purpose. People who should have had more sense decided for no good reason whatsoever that natural links could be treated as indications of quality. That idea is absolute nonsense, always has been absolute nonsense, and always shall be absolute nonsense. The U.S. Courts have not been asked to decide whether links constitute endorsements, but should anyone ever have to address the issue before a judge, I hope they make the effort to search for "link disclaimer" so they can show a court that a reasonable person need not be expected to interpret any link as an endorsement. Google's point of contention with paid links is that they distort Google's "links as votes" model. In truth, the model itself was always a complete fabrication and distortion of how the Web actually works and we as Webmasters and search optimizers owe Google absolutely nothing with respect to supporting their position on paid links. They made the problem by making it necessary for pages to accumulate sufficient PageRank to be included in the Main Web Index. If Google would just treat pages in the Supplemental Results Index the same way that Main Web Index pages are treated (fully indexed and found for queries, links pass anchor text) and if they placed the most relevant content first in the search results regardless of which index it's in then their "paid links" problem would go away. Their problem MIGHT go away if they just strip ALL links of the ability to confer anchor text. I have suggested to them openly more than once that they should stop allowing SOME links to pass anchor text. That is really why most people bought Google-manipulating links prior to their shift to a PageRank-centric algorithm in 2006. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "It is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants, but bad masters." - Aesop |
