| LED Digest 2604: Paid Links & Google |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing Shop: Organic, Paid, Social 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 .............................................. March 10, 2008 Issue no. 2604 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Web 2.0 Marketing Ideas ==-- ~ G Berrington ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Paid Links ==-- ~ Steven Birk --== Questions for SEO Panel ==-- ~ Jeremy Brown --== What to Charge? ==-- ~ Brad Waller --== Success with Facebook Groups? ==-- ~ Lennart Svanberg --== Lurkers ==-- ~ Alicia Lane ~ Mark Bishop ========= NEW ===================================== From: G Berrington Subject: Lurker About Web 2.0 Marketing Hi I have been lurking awhile and think you may have posted some of my very early attempts at posts some years back, but down to business. I read a thread recently about marketing web 2.0 and it has interested me I followed up on some of the links and found some almost interesting stuff, I say almost and that's the reason for this post. I read a very interesting ebook that I'm sure you all know (I don't want to mention) but I found the problem was it was probably written by a marketer and so full of jargon, meaningless chatter and this confused the general flow, never the less I set out and joined Technorati and various other sites it mentioned but to this day I'm still not sure how I can use sites like Technorati to my benefit. I remember looking at the Feedburner site many years a go and thinking what's this all about and there wasn't really any clues on their site but I found a great article on the web and found that Feedburner was infact a killa app that I could and still do use. So how about some kind of help along these lines: this is Feedburner it's got some great features you can use it to produce stats for you blog, an RSS feed, but there's also the headline animator which you can add to all you outgoing email as a signature file, add forum posts and myspace posts and it continually updates with your last 5 blog headlines. I'm sure there's loads of new features but is there that much time in the day to keep on top of everything? G Berrington www.theurbanshop.co.uk ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Steve Birk Subject: Paid Links [was: Ad rates] > I'd be a bit careful of paid text links. > Anecdotally, it's my understanding that > they may lead to a site's downgrading on > Google. - Bill Wade, LED 2603 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2018/190/ My first thought would be: how could that be? If 'Joe Blow Widgets' wants to pay me $100/month to put a link to their site on my site, how would Google, or anyone else for that matter know that I was paid to put that link on my site. Maybe I'm personal friends with 'Joe Blow Widgets' and I am just putting a text link on my site to his site for free? I can't believe putting a link to someone else's site on your own, and getting paid by that person to do so, would cause Google to downgrade your site. And I ask once again, how would they know I am getting paid for that text link placement? A bit off subject... I will tell you one thing for sure that will get you tossed completely from Google, as it recently happened to me. I own a portfolio of medical and health related type of domain names that I plan on eventually developing each domain. I just have one page "coming soon" type of pages for each domain until I can get to working on them. These one page type of sites were all included in Google's index and some even placed quite high considering how little content there actually was. I decided to maybe try and make a little money off of these domains while they were awaiting my attention to be developed, and 'parked' these domains with a parking company, and a large one at that. Within days, the domain names that I decided to 'park' have completely disappeared from Google. The ones I did not touch still appear in Google. I know Google is like the weather here in Michigan that can change by the hour, but I definitely think that they were dropped because of the nameserver being changed to the parking company's nameserver. Oh well... live and learn. Sorry to get a bit off subject, but I would still like to know if it is true that Google will downgrade a site for having a paid text link to another site? After all, Google does not put those 'Sponsored Links' ads on thier site for nothing... Although Google can afford to downgrade Google because who would ever search for Google using Google :-) Regards, Steven Birk http://MedicalNewsCenter.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Jeremy Brown Subject: SEO questions > It looks like I'll be moderating a panel at > OMMA Global next week called "SEO is Not > Rocket Science, but that Doesn't Mean It's > Easy" and I'm sure the folks here might > have some interesting questions I can have > in my back pocket to ask... So, what are > the top questions people have? - Brad Waller, LED 2603 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2018/190/ Brad, Here is an SEO question for the panel: What are the top 5 components of a good link-building strategy? Jeremy Brown SmartBrief.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Ad rates > ... a gift basket company wants to place a > text ad on the home page and one interior > page. And I have no idea what to charge... > Is there some kind of equation with which I > can calculate the price of the ad? - Nick Usborne, LED 2602 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2017/190/ Nick writes asking how to price an ad on his site. There is no hard and fast rule where you can look at a page and determine the rates. But the bottom line for you as the site owner is that you need to answer the question: "is it worth it?" Is it worth your time to upadate the site and add the link in, and then remove it later? It is worth it to you to have your visitors see the ad and perhaps leave your site? For some people, they would be happy to earn $20 a month and pay for all their Web hosting. Others would look at this and say that they would never bother to make an update for less than $100. Once you know this, you can come up with a minimum, which you can use to make sure that you are not too low. You may be too high, but then your advertiser needs to satisfy you, not them. For example, if you decide that $100 a month is fine for you, you could offer them $500 for six months to make it even more worth your while. Since you have AdSense on your page, you can make sure that you will be earning at least what you are already getting for an ad unit you have there. AdSense tells you the effective earnings on impression, click, and time. You can use that to give a simple fixed price to the advertiser that should be worth your while. You might want to double your AdSense earning rate as your baseline. This is pretty much what I have in the FAQ I wrote for AdJungle, where the minimum possible buy we allow is about $15 a month (50 cents per day) for a fixed price ad. Our CPM minimum is $1, but that only makes sense for sites that will get more than 5,000 impressions per day. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Lennart Svanberg Subject: Facebook > Has anyone here had success using Facebook > groups to build traffic? If so, what > strategy do you think worked to build the > group? For those that have groups, do you > favor open or moderated groups? If open, > have you had any trouble for people posting > spam or obscenities? - Anthony Kirlew, LED 2601 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2016/190/ Hi Led'ers, On the issue of Facebook-groups; it works! Last year we started a Facebook-group & after Google (well, way after), it's the place we've get the most traffic from. There's been no issues of spam, obscenities etc. that Anthony has been worried about. We've promoted the Facebook group partly by inviting our contacts to join & partly by setting up a link from our homepage. So without any hesitations - I definitely recommend people to start Facebook-groups in order to build traffic. Best regards, Lennart Svanberg Producing since 1999: http://InternetMarketingConference.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Alicia Lane Subject: The Accidental Lurker I am an accidental lurker. Apparently, something's not quite right with our mail server, and our messages periodically get rejected by an handful of receiving servers. The mail server for LED Digest is one of that handful, and our IT guy has no clue, sigh. I'm hoping that the Internet gods will smile on this message and it will somehow get delivered. Someone suggested the idea of removing all personal information from posts. Though I understand the intent of taking self-promotion out of the mix, this would also have the unfortunate side effect of removing personal accountability. One of the things I like about the LED Digest is that, for the most part, real people are posting. As opposed to the 1,000,000,000 forums and blogs out there spewing anonymous opinions and inciting flame wars. Let's keep it real. Alicia Lane http://www.alloutsuccess.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Bishop Subject: Lurker I'm mostly a lurker. I've posted a few times but they are far and few in between. My situation is this, I'm the defacto webmaster / SEO expert / web designer for my wife's business. We have been working to raise her rankings for her site and have implemented improved navigation, blog, more content, links... I keep reading and keep trying. We've had some success and some lack of success. As a small business, we don't feel that we have the budget to hire a big SEO company, so we just keep plugging along doing the best we can. This website is www.workforcelanguageservices.com. All in all, LED has been an invaluable resource for us. My real job is the deputy director at a non-profit organization - where one of my responsibilities is to oversee our IT/website. Again, we've invested much money and man hours into developing our web communications. While we don't explicitly have a goal of improved rankings, we do work to improve our communications in hopes of building online community and ultimately a base of individual supporters. We are in the middle of a redesign and will be working to implement a social media strategy along with it. And any intern that walks in the door, one of the first questions that we ask is "do you know social media?" I find that to be a huge generational divide. Again, LED has been a great resource for us. The website for my organization is www.healthyschoolscampaign.org. We work on programs and to promote healthy environments and nutrition in schools. I keep on reading, keep on learning, and hopefully keep on improving. Thanks for everyone's input over the years. Mark Bishop Deputy Director Healthy Schools Campaign (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Fools take to themselves the respect that is given to their office." - Aesop |
