| LED Digest 2575: Shilling Social Media Sites |
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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 24, 2007 Issue no. 2575 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Social Media Crash Course ==-- ~ Erik Perkins "I hope this suggestion is only slightly inappropriate." --== Useful Marketing Links ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "Web Digest for Marketers is very different from and a great complement to LED." --== Bounce Rates as Ranking Factors ==-- ~ Trevor Johnson "Are search engines clever enough to determine *motive* for a one page visit?" --== Coolest Catalog Page Ever ==-- ~ Bill Wade "Wish I could code like that." --== 2008 Marketing Predictions ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "...stop thinking about SEO consultants as wizards behind the curtain." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Erik Perkins Subject: Shilling social bookmarks Given the origin of this mailing list, and the recent discussion of social bookmarking and "web 2.0" marketing techniques, I hope this suggestion is only slightly inappropriate. Would anyone be willing and able to manage a "shill" list of subscribers' sites that would be added to and promoted by other members of the list within their social bookmarking accounts? I'm imagining something fairly innocuous and operating on an honor system. We would agree to look at the list of sites periodically and if it was not offensive then we'd click a link and give it the "thumbs up" with our stumbleupon account, tag it with del.icio.us, etc. It seems to me to be similar to the old link exchange techniques, and I'm quite sure many other groups do this already. I'm really just a lurker and an amateur compared to most here so please feel free to explain why this might be unethical or ineffective if you feel it is. Meanwhile, add mine. (winking emoticon) Cheers, Erik Perkins http://www.lgtees.com - Liberty Graphics -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Useful Links > How about you? Send in those useful links! - Adam Audette I've been on the Web since the beginning. I've subscribed to many newsletters, and unsubscribed from most. The two that have stayed are LED and Larry Chase's "Wed Digest for Marketers". It is very different from and a great complement to LED. You can subscribe at http://www.wdfm.com/ . (His home page is not a reflection of the quality of the information you'll receive.) Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com ========= 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: Trevor Johnson Subject: Bounce rates > I didn't really have a particular site in > mind, I just wanted to hear some discussion > about the subject. I would love any advice > on how to reduce the bounce rate on my > site... - Bill Lund, LED 2574 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1989/190/ I've asked myself the same question in recent times. Being a keen amateur fisherman, I've learnt that to be a good fisherman, you must think like a fish. I've been trying now to apply that principle to the online world: Think like a search engine. If I was a search engine, what would I think of a high bounce rate? Frankly, I can only conclude that it can be either a good thing or a bad thing. Obviously, if people arrive at your site and immediately find that it is irrelevant for their needs or are discouraged by unprofessional presentation, then a high bounce rate is clearly a bad thing. On the other hand, if people arrive at your site via a search engine and find exactly the information they are looking for on the very page the search engine suggested, surely a high bounce rate is the sign of satisfied visitors and the efficiency of the search engine to deliver accurate and meaningful results. So what is the correct answer? Are search engines clever enough to determine *motive* for a one page visit? Have search engines been programmed by fishermen who are instructing their engines to "think like a human"? In BestPrac.Org's own case, a close examination of Google's analysis of our internal links showed that our site navigation was not well understood by the search engine. It used a form list box with a cgi script. The search engine did not recognise the links in the form HTML as internal links. It was probably fair to conclude that many human visitors were unfamiliar with such a site navigation system either, thus causing a high bounce rate. We have just launched a redesigned site with a far more conventional CSS Unordered List menu & navigation. I strongly suspect that, when a few months of figures are in, I'll be able to announce a much reduced bounce rate, increased page views per visit and better overall recognition by both humans and search engines. Trevor Johnson http://www.bestprac.org BestPrac.Org : Best Practice in Email Spam Prevention & Eradication -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Bill Wade Subject: Catalog - HEMA > Take a look at HEMA's product page > http://producten.hema.nl/. You can't order > anything and it's in Dutch, but just WAIT a > couple of seconds and watch what happens. - Nancy Cardinali, LED 2574 Nancy, thanks very much for that. What a hoot! Fun, clean, fast...and it sure grabs your attention. Wish I could code like that. Bill Wade (gratuitous link) www.about-air-compressors.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Control . Who . Syndicates . Your . Content Your content. Other websites. Some have permission to syndicate your content. Block those who do not. Syndicate with PHP or with JavaScript. Your choice. http://www.willmaster.com/Gateway ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Predictions Adam, I'm glad to see that I actually agree with two of the most respected names in this business, Lee Odden and Bruce Clay. I hope that they did read my initial post very carefully [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1987/190/ ]. It is certainly not an indictment of EVERY large SEO firm, by any means. I fully realize the counter arguments that both made in their replies, and I fully agree. For Lee, I agree that cutting edge SEO work will always have a place in the market, and that it will probably be pricey for anyone to tap into it, as it requires rare experience and skill. There is place for it. I would just argue that until the mundane basics are addressed for a website, it is kind of pointless to do the bleeding edge stuff. And covering the basics well will often propel a site to the top of the rankings for most small businesses that can focus on their search terms that truly matter. Real estate is almost all local, and ranking well in most local markets is still just a matter of covering the basics well. Once you get to first place in SERPs for both primary and secondary search terms, then where's the return-on-investment for additional and usually much higher-priced SEO work? At that point, the campaign had better be about generating additional direct traffic, with SEO as an incidental side effect. For Bruce, I also understand fully the difference between the operating budget of a full-service firm that markets to F2000 sized companies, and a mom-and-pop operation. I applaud the fact that you can grow such a firm successfully. It can't be easy. Training your consultants must be an ongoing, hands-on job, and a process unto itself. Which brings me back to my initial post. I have had many opportunities to directly see the work product of a large number of the "high profile" SEO firms. The ones with multi-layered staffs, office space, budgets for vendor booths at the large SEO shows, and the like. Bruce, and Lee, that would be a lot of the firms that are trying to capture the same market as your firms, using similar marketing methods. What I have seen has been eye-opening. Case-after-case of thousands of dollars spent for no meaningful competitor analysis, shoddy keyword analysis, optimization work and content development that would make you cringe, and crappy link buys in very limited numbers. The actual account work is shoved down to the untrained, unaware junior associates that really don't have a clue what they are doing, and they just want to do the minimum that will satisfy their bosses. Clients often have a hard time getting any response whatsoever, once their money is spent. I regularly hear about thousands of dollars wasted for what I would call a couple of hundreds bucks worth of delivered work. Yet the principals at many of these types of firms continue to enjoy very high profile reputations in the industry, with speaking gigs at the top conferences, re-publication of their articles in the leading newsletters, citations as "gurus" among their peers, etc. It's a troubling industry from what I see here, especially when a lot of the latest and greatest theories that are touted by these people are just unfounded by real world SERPs. A lot of it is just self-promotion run amok. Advance a complex theory, then sell it as the "only" good solution in today's search environment, and then casually mention that doing anything else will get you banned in Google. This is the kind of modus that should not be sustainable in a recessionary environment. Again, most site owners who do manage to cover the mundane basics thoroughly will find themselves doing quite well in search. Those mundane basics can be readily delivered by a "mom and pop" operator, or even by in-house people who pay attention, and the final cost to the client will likely reflect that. Lately I have been doing cursory, no cost evaluations of the SEO condition of real estate agent sites, as a means to open a dialogue with them. I have done dozens of them in the last couple of months. Many of these agents had previously paid someone for SEO work, either their hosting/webmaster service, or an independent SEO house. The SEO work product that I have seen has been, by and large, deplorable, and the money spent significant. The agents are fed up with this condition. At least in real estate, there is a developing full-blown rebellion against overpriced, under-delivered SEO services. As to being able to do this work in-house, we have one particular client that I feel has thoroughly addressed their local market SEO issues. They rank on the first page for dozens of real estate terms in a very large metro market. This self-trained client simply took control of this process, and is now "averaging over 5 leads a day". For him, there is no recession, and he rejects the whole "SEO guru worship" mentality. Using mundane but thorough SEO efforts have proven to be quite lucrative for him, even in a competitive, recessionary market. Again, guys, please read my posts carefully. I refuse to be a cheerleader for this entire industry. I am trying hard to get site owners to stop thinking about SEO consultants as wizards behind the curtain. Instead, they should be professionals who provide a scope of work that is quite detailed, and their rates should reflect fair work for fair price. A Fortune 2000 company should expect to pay more, since they will likely need a more sophisticated level of service. I also realize that there are certain technical aspects to this work on the server side that warrant real technical experience. But up to now, large swaths of this industry have sold their services based on a "what the unwary client will bear" basis, while they use obfuscation and scare tactics to sell it. The "industry" have winked while a lot of vendors have gotten away with it. Relationships that were established long ago continue to prop up a lot of this, and make it possible for the self-promotion experts to maintain an aura of prominence and importance, and thus, their billing rates. Some of that will continue, but as more site owners become aware of the differences, they will begin to ask the right questions about the actual scope of work and deliverables in this industry. SEO houses that can't stand up to that kind of scrutiny will find it very hard to go forward, as their old clients tire of the endless monthly fees for no apparent reason, while it will be much harder to sell a hollow service package to new clients who are a little bit more educated. It's an industry that could use a LOT of clean up, not only in it's approach to client, but in it's demand for results and facts among it's own participants. There is a market for high-end services, and I applaud any SEO vendor that can deliver it in ways that continue to satisfy their clients and produce a good return on investment for the client. But I am convinced that the forthcoming market will eventually sort all of this out in ways that the over-hyped, scare-driven environment of the last ten years did not. In that way, the commoditization of the more mundane aspects of this work should be a welcome development by everyone who calls themselves a genuine professional in this industry. Then the work performed will seek it's proper level in the pecking order. Best regards, Dirk Johnson DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Time bears away all things, even the mind." - Virgil |
