| LED Digest 2597: Browser Issues with Doctype |
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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: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 27, 2008 Issue no. 2597 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ SMX Highlights --== Writer Looking for AdWords Experiences ==-- ~ Cade Metz --== Browser Issues with Doctype ==-- ~ Tom Aman ==== CONTINUING ================= --== SEO Relevance Factors ==-- ~ Shari Thurow ~ Steve Pronger ~ Michael Martinez --== Asian Company Selling Keywords ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen --== Project Management Tools ==-- ~ Veronica Yuill ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> SMX is going very well, aside from the constant pull of client obligations :) I sat in on two great sessions today: one with Andrew Goodman (my fellow moderator at SEM 2.0 http://groups.google.com/group/SEM2/topics) on quality score with paid search marketing campaigns. Lisa and Susan have blog coverage of it here (or will soon): http://www.bruceclay.com/blog. They also cover the second session I sat in on today: Marketing with Personas. Pretty interesting stuff, check out the Bruce Clay blog for the full skinny. During the quality score session, Andrew noted the following checklist to improve your Google score out of the gate with new campaigns: 5 things to improve QS - start w/ narrowest, most relevant keywords in possession - totally handbuilt ads, no keyword insertion - tailored landing pages for conversion - geo-specific helps! - segmenting and microtargeting Don't start the campaign until the landing pages are ready. It's okay to sketch out the campaign, but don't switch it on. The biggest takeaway was something I also talked about recently at a local marketing presentation: build your ad groups and keywords tightly, with focused and careful keyword selection, and marry them to carefully crafted ad creatives (using dynamic keyword insertion sparingly or not at all - it's a shortcut after all), and link these with user-friendly and relevant landing pages. Basically, build a quality user experience. Simple stuff, right? :) More on Friday I hope, meantime I'm off to the third session of the day... Have a great week, Adam -------------------- From: Cade Metz Subject: Interviews with AdWord users Hello: My name is Cade Metz, and I'm a reporter in San Francisco with The Register (www.theregister.co.uk), one of the world's largest science and technology news sites. I'm putting together a long feature story on Google AdWords and am interested in speaking to advertisers who use the service. Most interested in discussing the difficulties users have encountered. I can be contacted at http://flow-to.com/email/LED.1204066979lrwu5n.mth or 415-874-3130. Thanks, Cade Metz The Register, in San Francisco 415-874-3130 -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Interesting info on DTDs (DOCTYPE) A short while ago, I posted some comments re validating pages to standards. It didn't generate much comment or discussion (as I had hoped it would). Do LEDers not care about standards? In doing some more exploring on standards and stuff, I ran across an interesting article at http://www.alistapart.com/stories/doctype where the use and importance of the <!DOCTYPE... tag is discussed. (And, by inference, if DOCTYPE is used, then the standards it references should also be followed). The article opens with the statement "You’ve done all the right stuff, but your site doesn’t look or work as it should in the latest browsers.". (Anyone out there encountered that problem?) Later on it states: "Using an incomplete or outdated DOCTYPE—or no DOCTYPE at all—throws these same browsers into “Quirks” mode, where the browser assumes you’ve written old-fashioned, invalid markup and code per the depressing industry norms of the late 1990s." ("same browsers" refers to browsers mentioned earlier in the article - Mozilla, IE5/Mac, and IE6/Win - presumably it would now apply to FireFox and the latest versions of IE as well). (Info on the lastest valid DOCTYPES can be found at http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/Web-Quality and at http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html) Tom Aman Aman Software ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Shari Thurow Subject: Term highlighting Hi all- This is in response to Leon Simmons' post in LED #2596 [ http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2011/190/ ], in which he stated: > Google absolutely takes note of the > description meta tag and it most certainly > does affect the position of a page in the > search results. I have many hundreds of > examples on a number of my websites... Leon, Michael Martinez is right and your observations are inaccurate cause-and-effect conclusions. What you seem to be describing is term highlighting, which is a process that search engines utilize to improve the searcher experience and increase user confidence. I build search results pages all of the time as a Web developer. If I want to highlight the word "the" in search results, I can do this whether or not a person typed in the word "the" in the search box or not. Here's a link to the full article: http://searchengineland.com/070222-133032.php Meta-tag descriptions and keywords on text pages do not make or break rankings in Google. They never have. Expert SEOs test (and I do mean test, with control groups and everything) this all of the time and have done so for years. We also speak at and attend search engine conferences worldwide and actually meet with Google software engineers. When they say they do not use meta-tag content to determine relevancy, and multiple, independent SEO experts confirm it with solid testing, then I think it is reasonable to trust their conclusions. Sorry if this seems so harsh. Question all you want, challenge people. But honestly? I wouldn't make such statements without thorough research and testing. Inaccurate cause-and-effect conclusions do not help the industry. People utilize AdWords all of the time. And then they might see their site'= s Web pages appear in the "natural" search results and assume they showed up because they purchased Google Ads...another inaccurate cause-and-effect conclusion. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Founder and SEO Director Omni Marketing Interactive -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: SEO relevance > Basically, it says that a lot of the things > that are thought necessary for good > rankings are actually myths. - Tom Aman, LED 2596 Interesting. Write an article on what someone else has to say about SEO, have it published on SitePro News, and instantly all myths are dispelled. If there's one consistency in SEO (apart from the fact that SEOs will never agree on everything) it's this need to dispel "myths". Nothing is a myth if it works for you. Is it a myth that "heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)" ? You could go to great lengths to prove your argument one way or the other, but really, what would be the point? How long does it take to add keyword-focussed H# tags? Or meta description tags? Or even the lowly meta keywords tag? Stick 'em in, and move on. Trying to analyse just how effective these factors are is just wasting time. Do what works for YOU. Your site. Your keywords. Your content. Your links. Your competitors. Spend time on what works for your set of unique circumstances, less on what doesn't. Don't be concerned about what is myth and what isn't. At the end of the day your customers don't give a rat's about the mythical status of your SEO efforts. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com/solutions/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: SEO relevance This list is not really a good medium for the kind of back and forth discussion this and similar disagreements invite. However, people tend to draw conclusions about what affects search engine results way too quickly (even if based on "many hundreds of examples") because there are four key types of influences on search results: 1) What you do with your Web sites 2) What other people do with their Web sites 3) What the search engines do with their data 4) What people search for On top of that, major search engines update their various algorithms throughout the year. Very often anecdotal evidence of a specific behavior becomes outdated because search engineers make adjustments. That said, no one has ever shown conclusively that meta description data is used for relevance scoring and a number of search engine representatives have -- through the years (keep in mind there have been many algorithm changes) -- told the SEO community that the meta description is only used to modify how your listing appears in search results, not how it ranks. There is no definitive answer on this issue, but it's good for people to know there are different points of view. I don't believe there is any risk or harm in experimenting with your meta description and I encourage people to do so -- but do so knowing that searchers will inevitably see your meta description if you set it up right. Make sure it's both relevant to your page and compelling. Some people speak of "pre-selling" with meta descriptions. Their value in search engine optimization cannot be understated, regardless of whether they are used in determining relevance. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Inexpensive Content Rotator Rotate any part of a page. Or even the whole page. ~ Image ~ Headline ~ Leading paragraph ~ Special pricing Content Carousel - http://www.willmaster.com/carousel ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Asian keywords > They claim to have a holding company > (Doxter Holdings Limited) willing to pay > $1400 for the keyword "goclean" and over > $500 for 5 or 6 "goclean" Asian domain > names. - Mary Findley, LED 2596 It's a scam. There is no company that is looking to register your trademark or company terms. They tried to pull the same thing with me. Not once, but twice because I own over 600 domains and my chances of getting hit for this scam is higher than average. If you do a search in Google for their company name or their web site you should bring up a number of messages and blog posts about this scam. Try "China Net Technology Limited scam" without the quotes. While it appears to be from China, I think someone had determined that the scam in being run out of India. I don't know if a Chinese company has hire Indians to run this of in those in India are getting a commission. There are several places you can report this spam and scam including APNIC. By the way if anyone is interested in registering their trademark / domains, you would not want to use this company. They charge outrageous fees for the domains they offer. Thank you, Chris Nielsen TrafficIdeology.org -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Veronica Yuill Subject: Project Management > I'm on the hunt for a project management > tool. There's one catch: it can't be > Basecamp. I've used Basecamp a lot... too > much probably... and would like to try > something else. I like the minimal mindset > Basecamp uses, but need more functionality. > One tool I'm experimenting with is > FogBugz.com, which is actually a tool for > software teams, but I think it can be > creatively adapted for search marketing > teams. - Adam Audette Hi Adam Welcome back! I use Basecamp too. But someone recently pointed me to Unfuddle: http://www.unfuddle.com/ Disclaimer: I haven't tried it, but it looks great. I especially like it because it includes a built-in ticket system, a wiki, and even Subversion integration, but it might be less interesting to you if your projects aren't software-related. Still, I thought it worth passing on, and I'd be interested in feedback from anyone who does use it. Regards Veronica Yuill www.archetype-it.com/english/ (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- I've got nothing today. |
