| LED Digest 2582: New Guest Moderator |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: Nathan Holley LED Digest nate, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 4, 2008 Issue no. 2582 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Guest Moderator> ~ I'm steering this ship now! --== Clients Providing Crap Content ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "...we must always weigh our moral obligations against our obligations as business owners." ~ Maty Matyszak "It's their website, and I'm being paid to give them what they want." ~ Michael Linehan "...the client is not always right." --== Are Content Management Systems Worth It? ==-- ~ Sandra Combs "Drupal has more features for SEO..." ~ Brett Atkin "How do you price that [Jeremy Weiss]?" --== 2008 Marketing Predictions ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "My goal here is get business owners to take control of their own SEO efforts." ======== CONTINUING =============================== <Guest Moderator> Alright LEDers, I'm steering this ship now! That's right, so sit back and get ready for a ride. Time for a bit of change around here - sorry Adam you're a good bloke but take a rest! :) In all honesty, I'm thrilled to moderate this list for a bit. Adam gets his break (he must be half-crazy after 10 odd years of this lot), and I get to self-promote! LOL kidding again, as LEDers are probably aware I don't do any sort thing - much more satisfied in being behind the scenes. So any words of advice for me? Any warnings? Send whatever you've got - here's a proper email addy for ya: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Things will work the same - send in posts and I'll post 'em. Let's have some fun. Nathan Holley -------------------- From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Professionalism In business, we must always weigh our moral and legal obligations as 'professionals' against our obligations as business owners. Sometimes, the two are in direct conflict. (The company I was working for was once asked by a certain 'Willie C.' to take on the off-shore software development job of creating a 'clone' of a certain Custom Toolbar product - strangely, the inquiry vanished when he found out he was actually asking us to clone our own product!) As a professional, we have the obligation to tell our clients when they wish to do something that is not right. (Morally, legally, business-wise or otherwise.) But as business owners, we should always recognize that while the customer is NOT always right, they are still the customer and always (hopefully) pays the bills, which helps us meet our obligations to our business, partners, shareholders and families. We can, and certainly should advise the customer when their actions are morally or legally wrong - and can leave it at that - but in should we put a big pout on, turn away work and take our name off any association with a site just because the customer insists on the 'pumpkin' color scheme? In some cases the customer may indeed be right - perhaps the target market actually prefers an orange background with purple text? Who knows?! Sometimes it is best to make lemonade out of the lemons by making your opinion known, helping the customer do what they want to do (if you're morally comfortable with it) and then use it as an opportunity. Say to the client after some time, hey, let's try an experiment and see if a different color scheme improves the statistics. In most cases, the client will be curious enough to try - and, assuming you did your design right (CSS?), such changes can be done quickly and easily and the results will most likely be in your favor. Marty R. Milette http://hotel-club.net ========= 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 - same topic -------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: Professionalism > Sometimes I find myself thinking, "Are you > serious?". Most of the time I speak up > (successfully and unsuccessfully), but > sometimes it just isn't worth the effort. - Brett Atkin We don't do a lot of design work, and often move projects on to wherever we feel designer and client are better suited to each other. We also make it clear before we start what we are doing - website building or consultancy. If it's website building, and a client has a clear vision what he wants for the site, then its our job to make that vision reality. (I say he, but some of those with the most rigid views have been women.) I might think that the idea and the taste shown on the site are both appalling, but that's not my decision. For all I know, the site might be cunningly designed to appeal to people with bad taste. And someone designing a home page for Google in the 1990s might have protested bitterly that the design was all wrong for a portal, when the fact that it was radically at odds with accepted convention was partly what made Google such a success. In short, something might be bloody idiocy (probably) or a stroke of genius (who knows?) but unless I'm being well paid to comment, I won't. It's their website, and I'm being paid to give them what they want. About seven years ago someone came to us wanting his site 'improved'. We offered what we considered a tasteful, user-friendly design and he rejected it with horror. Another designer came up with what he wanted - a monster filled with cheesy clip art, frenetic anigifs and even a bit of flashing text. I've just checked it in Alexa, and its still got the same schlock and doing pretty well. The man evidently knew his market better than we did. Moral of the story - don't second-guess the client unless he wants you to and is paying for it. Maty Matyszak -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Client is always right > But The client is always right. Sometimes > annoying, shortsighted, ill-informed, badly > worded, aesthetically endowed like a dead > slug, talentless in marketing and design, > but always right :) - John Smart, LED 2581 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1996/190/ > ... the customer is always right. No matter > how bad we think their grammar, business > model or heaven forbid, Microsoft Word Art > & clipart happen to be, they came to us > with what they want on THEIR website. - Lori Smart, LED 2581 I understand what you are both saying, but, with all respect, I'd like to suggest that the client is not always right. I think there comes a time when we have to say, "Sorry, I'm not willing to take your money, because: - no-one is looking for what you offer - your design is incredibly awful and, from my professional experience, I think it will make you little or no money - your copy is meaningless and couldn't sell water to someone dying of thirst - that is simply not enough money for me to do enough work to gain you any web presence worth speaking of - your business sector is extremely competitive and you are going to need to invest a lot more thought, time and money if you want to make any headway against the established players - and so on. Personally, I won't take money from someone, if I think that what they want will not serve them. And if I don't think they are right, I will tell them so. Mind you, a difference is that I am one of those Internet business consultants. Still, people will sometimes approach us just to build a site. If I think they are making a mistake, my framework obliges me to say so --- whether or not they came asking for advice. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Latest addition => Spam Resistant PHP Form WebSite's Secret Members area access to a collection of Will Bontrager's handy web tools. http://www.willmaster.com/AreaSecret ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Sandra Combs Subject: CMS Systems, Boon or Bane? > Drupal is very similar, and many of the > same features are available on both Drupal > and Joomla. From my use, Drupal seems to be > the programmers version, and Joomla is > easier for the less technical. Drupal seems > to be more SEO friendly. - Brad Waller, LED 2850 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1995/190/ I have used both Drupal and Joomla (on Unix systems, not IIS) and have a lot of experience doing things from "scratch". I would agree that Drupal is more of a programmer's system and that Joomla is easier (not simple) for non-programmers to use to add content to their site. Clients who want to maintain their own site without knowing HTML and CSS find Joomla easier to learn, but I must provide that training. Any time they want a new feature added, I do that work. But clients like the control of being able to put up new links, articles, photos without having to contact (and pay) me. That is fine with me because I can spend my time on doing more challenging work and getting new clients. Drupal, in my opinion, has more features for SEO and accessibility, and just more control for the developer in general. It is more complicated than Joomla, but I have found it to be more modifiable and configurable. I have changed source code in both systems to get exactly what I want, but again, I find more to work with in Drupal. All the modules both systems offer make it possible to add various features quickly without having to program them myself, and that makes clients happy. Because both have active user groups, most bugs get found and solved. In general, I prefer Drupal if I am going to do most of the work on the site. I'd probably choose Joomla for a client that wants to do the maintenance. Sandra Combs http://www.webspertise.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Brett Atkin Subject: CMS Jeremy [Weiss], You said the following... > I can roll out a fully configured Drupal > install in a few hours; which can be a very > large savings compared to having to roll my > own system. How do you price that? The client is getting 5,10,15 thousand dollars worth of features/functionality and it took you 5 hours to install. You have to account for documentation, education and any customization you add (additional time I imagine), but the cost will still be significantly less than the "value" you just gave the client. Thanks. Brett Atkin -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Predictions > This is not rocket science but neither is > it something that the average business > operator has time to do over the long haul > IF they are in a competitive vertical. - Michael Martinez, LED 2579 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1994/190/ I actually agree with many of the main points in your blog post [ http://tinyurl.com/2smfjl {seo-theory.com}], even if some of it is unflattering toward me. The only objection I have is that you think I am doing all of this to self-promote. If I were, I'd certainly take a very different tack. In my last post here, as well as several other ones recently, I did not even mention reciprocation or our own services. I, too, have no doubt that a genuine, experienced SEO consultant can guide a client to better rankings. Michael, you said: "That's where an SEO who does the research and watches the results makes a difference." You're right. They can. They should. My goal here is get business owners to TAKE CONTROL of their own SEO efforts. Stop treating these SEO people as if they are wizards behind the curtain. That's what many of them WANT us to buy into. Then they can charge more if they have you convinced that only they have some kind of secret sauce. I want business owners to realize that average people can grasp the basic concepts (and even many of the finer points) of search optimization in a very short amount of time, if they apply themselves to it. With that foundation, they can enlist the services of a REAL SEO pro, and they'll have the knowledge to differentiate between that and the pervasive flim flam. Again, Michael, I have recently reviewed dozens of real world examples where real estate agents (and business owners in a few other industries) had hired an SEO consultant at substantial cost and came away with little to show for it. This is not just one or two isolated cases here or there. I am seeing DOZENS of cases. The client certainly DID NOT hire a consultant that "does the research and watches the results". They didn't even get thorough keyword analysis and proper page optimization in the first place. Then they were ignored. From what I have seen, this appears to be a pervasive problem in the SEO industry. In one particularly egregious case, the client paid for "SEO services" from their webmaster/hosting service, and got NOTHING at all. NOTHING. When the client called them out, they said "you are the first one that has complained!". I guess the other clients simply assumed that the SEO work was being done. The hosting service pocketed every dime that their client's had spent on SEO services, and did nothing. That service has thousands of clients, but I don't know how many bought the "SEO package". Then there are the consultants in this industry that seem to try to tell clients that they need a Ferrari to get groceries, or else their ice cream might melt before they get home. All because the profit margin on a selling a Ferrari is much better than on a mini-van. They use the argument that the search engines have changed substantially and continue to change constantly, so only a complicated, expensive strategy will prevent people from passing your mini van on the information super highway. Michael, even you refer to these people in your article, when you mentioned "the ridiculous mob compulsion to applaud every lengthy blog post that claims some sudden break-through in knowledge with accolades and praise." You are right, the sky seems to be falling every day in some corners of the SEO world. Many of us have learned to ignore it. Michael, again, as I have said over and over in every post I have made here, there are good SEO consultants in this world, and their advice is worth having. We provide services to several of them. There are others that I do respect that post here to the LED Digest. In my opinion, they are the ones that guide the client in a very structured way. They cover the basics thoroughly, before they embark on some kind of expensive "bleeding edge" program. They do what works for the least cost first, and then add to that, if necessary or warranted. To me, that is what defines professional behavior in this industry. They are the ones who will get referrals going forward, based on past results, at a fair price. They'll likely even grow their business into this economy. The predators have had their time in the sun. They thrived during a time when clients were naive about all of this. But that is changing, very quickly. Not due to "industry standards" but due to the fact that clients are becoming better educated, burned from experience, and they are far less willing to just buy any old "SEO package" and then sit back and see what happens. But the big party in SEO is coming to a crashing end. Firms that relied on their ability to sell more sizzle than steak might just find a very limited market for sizzle, going forward. Their constant clucking that "the sky is falling" is starting to ring hollow to a lot of buyers. The ONLY way that a business owner can assure that they are getting the right kind of SEO service is to self-educate. Understand the basics, then, if necessary, hire someone who will execute properly. By and large, doing that alone works wonders. A real pro should be able to do it better than the business owner. If the need for more refined services arises, the business owner can hire an advisor who will guide them. There is a place for that, and it warrants professional rates. Michael, you seemed to want to take me to task for some reason, but we actually seem to agree on nearly every point. Best regards, Dirk Johnson DomainDrivers LLC www.domaindrivers.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- No quotes while Nathan's in charge, sorry. |
