| LED Digest 2595: Bad Economy, More Opportunity? |
|
|
|
==================================================
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: Jeremy Weiss LED Digest post, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 21, 2008 Issue no. 2595 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ New Guy --== SEO Celebrity ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson "...how well-known or how 'big' an SEO consultant might be has virtually NOTHING to do with..." <Moderator Comment> "...if you start feeling lonely, take a look over at the Wicked Fire forums." --== Looking for Bloggers ==-- ~ Lennart Svanberg "...as a long time fan of LED I can't think of a better place to get help." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Economy ==-- ~ R. Neilson "I have heard conflicting reports from both online and offline business..." ~ Jake Flanagin "The knee jerk reaction for many managers is to batten down the hatches..." ~ John Audette "You play your A team against their B or C team." --== SEO Relevance Factors ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...Google has now made (internal, not Toolbar PR) PageRank a factor in determining relevance." ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Running late so not much in the way of an intro today. But I did weasel in a quote at the end. Hope you enjoy. Jeremy Weiss -------------------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: SEO Celebrity > A while back, I had a search marketing job > candidate answer the, "Where would you like > to be in 2-3 years?" question with, "I want > to be a famous SEO". "Why?" I would ask. > "Because that's my goal". Fair enough, but > it'll be tough to pay the bills with a > wallet full of famous. - Lee Odden, TopRank Blog http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/02/the-fallacy-of-seo-celebrity Maybe some of the LED readership has noticed that I have been pounding away relentlessly at the concept of "SEO Celebrity" for several years, right here in LED Digest, on a fairly regular basis. I thought was the lone voice in calling it out. From what I have seen for the last ten years, how well-known or how "big" an SEO consultant might be has virtually NOTHING to do with their genuine understanding of SEO issues, or their ability to deliver good service at a fair price. Yet there are some well-known SEO consultants that do know what they are doing, and their respected status is fully justified. But attaining raw celebrity status in the SEO world has little bearing on merit. That is the huge disconnect in this industry, with no end in sight. Best regards, Dirk Johnson DomainDrivers LLC <Moderator Comment> Dirk, if you start feeling lonely, take a look over at the Wicked Fire forums. Quite a few of the members there agree with you on the whole Celebrity SEO issue. In fact, Jon Fisher recently received a cease and desist letter for calling out Shoemoney. http://tinyurl.com/2zqrf3 [wickedfire.com] (not for the faint of heart). -Jeremy Weiss -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Lennart Svanberg Subject: Looking for Bloggers Hi, I'm looking for one or maybe two bloggers who are willing to write stories on a weekly basis. We're producing events so the stories shall be centered around things that are happening before, during and after the events. We've got events planned roughly every three months in North America and Europe and there are constantly things happening; new speakers confirmed, new locations, new sponsors, call-for papers etc. Me and my partners have been doing this for most of the time but we feel that it's time for someone professional to start writing these "blogs" or "news-items". I estimate that it takes 1-2 hours per week to do this job - are you interested or do you have any tips on anyone that are - please post here or send it directly to me :-). Maybe not the traditional post but as a long time fan of Led I can't think of a better place to get help. Lennart Svanberg Producer http://InternetMarketingConference.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: R. Neilson Subject: Economy > Every day I'm hearing more and more about > how bad the US economy is. And I'm > wondering, when times are rough will > spending on online marketing increase or > decrease? > > Is this a time when we should all save our > advertising dollars for later, or is now > the time to commit wholeheartedly to the > online marketing effort? > > For those of you who manage the online > marketing activites of your clients, what > are you seeing thus far? - Jeremy Weiss, LED 2594 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2009/190/ I think the topic on how bad the economy is doing depends on your trade and the area of the country you are in. My brick and motor store was off 40% last year but my online sales and ebay sales were steady thru out the year and about in line with the previous years. I also have a part time job as a bookkeeper/office manager for a small glass shop. Last years sales were up 300% from 2006. And with the new year 2008 looking to double last year figures. We will be close to last years total sales by early to mid April based on the new contracts we have received already this year. We mainly market to Northern California residential and business customers. We do have a website for informational purposes and in the process of totally updating it to look more professional. I have heard conflicting reports from both online and offline business and it just depends on what you are selling and where. I personally think that with rising fuel costs more customers are opting to buy online to save time and money. But only time will tell. R. Neilson H. L. Supply Co. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Jake Flanagin Subject: Economy Jeremy - you raise an important issue that all managers and executives must face during an economic downturn. Even if we are not currently in or approaching a recession, we usually don't know for sure until after the fact... all of the financial headlines and magazine articles have certainly ramped up fears that we are. The knee jerk reaction for many managers is to batten down the hatches, cut spending wherever possible, ride out the storm and live to fight another day. However several studies (traditional media) have shown that companies that maintain ad spend levels, or better yet actually increase advertising investments consistently outperform companies that reduce ad spending during a recession or economic downturn. It makes good sense if you think about it - if most organizations reduce ad spending, those who maintain or increase spending have a greater piece of the advertising pie, which equates to a greater influence of ones target customers behavior. How this equates to online marketing: my guess is that it will correlate quite closely to the data found for traditional media expenditures. Online marketing is, after all, still marketing. Beings that online advertising has such a high degree of accountability and track-ability I would expect online advertising expenditures to keep on rising. My advise: don't be afraid to spend money if you can show that it is bringing in a positive return. As for us, it's full steam ahead! Jacob Flanagin Marketing Guru The Rainmaker Group -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Audette Subject: Economy Jeremy asked: > Is this a time when we should all save our > advertising dollars for later, or is now > the time to commit wholeheartedly to the > online marketing effort? I have been on both the supply and demand side of marketing over the years and have experienced a number of economic downturns (that's one advantage of being an old dog). Admittedly my tendency is to play offense, but my observation and experience is that an economic downturn *is* a good time to hit marketing harder - i.e. spend more on marketing or increase marketing expense as percentage of budget. During tough times many competitors decrease their spending which gives you a great opportunity to increase market share. You play your A team against their B or C team. John Audette AudetteMedia ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= WebSite's Secret Members Area You pay one fee and have unlimited access for 6 months to a collection of Will Bontrager's handy web tools. (Since this is a new service, the fee is still low.) The latest addition - Spam Resistant PHP Form: The form, the form handling script, and instructions are included in the download file. http://www.willmaster.com/SecretArea ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: Relevance factors > The Question was. "with regards to SEO, > what weight do the keywords in the ITEM > DESCRIPTION get?" > > My reply was.... > > "This is the order that 'search terms' are > indexed/used/supplied. > > "URL, Page Title, Keywords, Page Content > (This includes the description)." - Jon Langley, LED 2592 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2007/190/ There is no identifiable order or weighting. A lot of people think that links count more than anything else but that conclusion is faulty because most people rely on links more than anything else. Most people also don't stop to consider how self-limiting their ideas can be. For example, Nathan Holley wrote "keywords in the domain tend to do well at google" but the truth is that KEYWORDS IN URLS work well. Google doesn't care if you use them in the domain name or not. Other search engines also look at keywords in URL. In August 2006 Google employee Matt Cutts wrote an interesting post offering SEO advice http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-writing-useful-articles... in which he pointed out that he used keywords in a URL (not a domain name). His advice predates the Google 3.0 (Searchology) update of May 2007 but keywords in URL still appear to have an impact. Google claims to use over 100 factors to determine relevance. It looks at frequency of use of words in the on-page text, bolding, italics, underscoring, quoting, font size (and/or color) as used for emphasis, page titles, rareness of words, and more. However, Google also divides the Web into two groups: those pages with enough internal (not Toolbar PR) PageRank to be included in the Main Web Index and all other pages, which are relegated to the Supplemental Results Index. Pages in the Main Web Index are fully dissected, with every word catalogued in their database. Pages in the Supplemental Results Index are NOT fully catalogued and these pages are often overlooked for unique expressions that should only be found on them. Furthermore, Google shows Main Web Index content BEFORE it will show Supplemental Results Index content, even if the Supplemental Pages are more relevant than the Main Web Pages, so unfortunately Google has now made (internal, not Toolbar PR) PageRank a factor in determining relevance. That was not always the case. Although most people rely on links more than any other factor for their Google rankings, it is apparent that most links don't pass anchor text in Google's search results. The best estimate I can make is that maybe 20-30% of all Web content Google shows us is in the Main Web Index, and that many (but not all) of those pages have the ability to pass anchor text. Many people ask if the KEYWORDS meta tag is useful. It is still useful for Yahoo! and Ask but not for Live or Google. The DESCRIPTION meta tag is not used by any of the search engines for relevance scoring but it is certainly important for making a listing in search results more compelling and informative. Ultimately, trying to figure out which elements work best for optimization is a futile exercise. It's better to create unique, useful, interesting content and to promote it through as many means as possible. If a Web site does not limit its traffic sources to search engines it doesn't have to have search traffic. The less dependent upon search engines you are for your traffic, the better. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "In the business world an executive knows something about everything, a technician knows everything about something and the switchboard operator knows everything." - Harold Coffin |
