| LED Digest 2605: Time to Succeed Online |
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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: SEO, SEM, Social Media 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 12, 2008 Issue no. 2605 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ SearchFest --== Link Building Ideas ==-- ~ Naomi Havard "If you had $1200 to spend on directories, which directories would you choose?" --== Time to Build a Successful Site? ==-- ~ Maty Matyszak "...building a successful website on the net takes years. And it's getting harder." --== Javascript Library for Web Apps ==-- ~ Ian Smith "I wanted to pass on a JavaScript library I've just released..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Paid Links ==-- ~ Marsha Kopan "Just make sure you have a rock solid contract in case you need to bail." ~ Chris Nielsen "...there is NO WAY for Google to tell you are being paid for the links on your site." --== Questions for SEO Panel ==-- ~ Brad Waller "I'm now moderating a panel on large marketers and locally targeted search." --== Lurkers ==-- ~ Jim Gatton "...the lack of identification of the poster would minimize personal accountability..." ~ Al Toman "You cut out the PERSON in the LED Digest and you may as well lay down and die." ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, I just returned home from SearchFest, and it was a great conference. Todd Mintz and the gang at http://www.semPDX.org put on a great show, with lots of content packed into the entire day. My presentation was on link building fundamentals (I'll provide the Powerpoint deck later in the week when I've got time), and I sat on a panel with Dustin Woodard of http://www.wetpaint.com and Rebecca Kelley of http://www.seomoz.org/team/rebecca. Dustin covered specific tactics and had lots of great advice, and Rebecca covered social media with solid tips and some good laughs. It was great to meet some new folks and see familiar faces. Shouts to David Mihm http://www.davidmihm.com who's always fun to hang out with, Andre Jensen my homie who made the road trip with me from Bend (get a website dude), Mark, Wendy and Mike of http://www.smartz.com, Rob Hegemann of http://www.HydraBrush.com, John Andrews of http://www.johnon.com, Matt McGee of http://www.smallbusinesssem.com and a bunch of other great folks I'm forgetting right now. More soon! Gotta sleep. -Adam --------------------- From: Naomi Havard Subject: pulled from the shadows On the subject of lurkers called to task... In the spectrum of give and take, I may take the award for least-to-offer-lurker, as in my current position I am trying to promote an e-commerce fundraising website, with a background in fundraising and zero experience in web marketing. So while I may not have any sage advice to offer on SEO, I do have plenty of questions. I've done the wordtracker thing, written targeted copy, encouraged my boss to write a blog, re-written tags, titles, headings etc. etc. and while I'm not sure which if any of these things will actually help, my next task is LINKS, and my simplistic questions are this.... 1) If you had $1200 annually to spend on directory subscriptions, AdWords (this is next to zero budget for AdWords..worth it at all?) which directories would you choose? Specifically, is Yahoo worth it? 2) Our page is fairly static/functional right now. Any creative ideas for getting oneself featured in other peoples blogs? 3) To broaden that up... any creative ideas at all will be welcome! Cheers, Naomi Havard www.pincgiving.com (not being self-promotional honest, just want to give a point of reference) -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Maty Matyszak Subject: PPC Arbitrage and Profiting from Sites > So on visits I "buy" from Google I make > only 65%. If visitors from Google on > average visit my site more than once I > could call that successful customer > acquisition, but I can't afford to wait for > the return on my investment. - Shaun Johnston, LED 2603 Our experience with non-merchant websites is that it is very hard to make a living by buying links and then getting paid for moving these customers on. In fact if you do the whole thing through Adwords/Adsense, you might fall foul of big G which has been cracking down hard on 'arbitragers' . We have found that while it is useful to run adwords at a loss while getting a site known to the relevant web community, before that site becomes profitable most visitors have to be 'free' arrivals from natural search or other websites. This in turn means that the site must be good enough to rise in the serps on its own merits, and - even better - offers something unique which would tempt other webmasters to link, not because you have asked for a reciprocal, but because that link adds value to their own site. All of which takes time - our experience is that far from being somewhere you can get rich quick, building a successful website on the net takes years. And it's getting harder. Our earlier sites took months to break even, and returned a decent profit after a year or so. These days we count on three years for a fully up and running self-sustaining site that has fully returned the initial investment. I'd be interested to know of others' experience at this. Maty Matyszak -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Ian Smith Subject: Taffy DB Hi LED, Its been a long time since I've sent in a post, but I've been a member since the glory days of the Link Exchange and always enjoyed it. I know there are a lot of web developers on this list so I wanted to pass on a JavaScript library I've just released to help with development of Web 2.0 apps. Taffy DB is a little (under 10K) JavaScript library that replicates database like functionality in the browser. You can insert, update, delete, order, loop, and query. It is fast and simple to use and in use on a couple of medium/high traffic websites. It also works well with virtually any JavaScript library such as YUI and JQuery and adds a much needed data layer to these types of frameworks. The license is BSD (open source, free to use, etc) and I want to get it in front of as many folks as possible to get the project off the ground. I'd be delighted in any feedback anyone has to offer (email or form on the site) as well as any bug reports. http://taffydb.com/ Thanks! Ian Smith ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Marsha Kopan Subject: Paid links > 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/ I have been following this thread and while the website owner needs to determine her rates I would suggest that she also has a contract / agreement in place for this type of request. Make sure there is adequate legaleze about getting paid, the length of the contract and most importantly what will the text link lead to and can you cancel the ad if their is a breach. This scenario is vaguely familiar to banner ads of years gone by. It was another "idea-of-the-month" "get rich quick" kind of mlm strategy. In the beginning I had one on my site but took it down rather quickly when I visited the site for the banner ad and then clicked on their banner ads only to find about 3 deep a bunch of p..n websites. Hardly an appropriate finding after visiting my office services site. Just make sure you have a rock solid contract in case you need to bail. Have it reviewed by an attorney. Yes, I know, he may charge you a few bucks but IMHO its better to spend that small amount in comparison to potential litigation costs. Marsha Kopan, IVAA CVA, CRESS, PL Executive Secretarial Services www.execsecsrv.com Delegate, don't stagnate. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Paid links > 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? - Steven Birk, LED Digest 2604 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2019/190/ Yes, they can, but the chances of that happening to you are very small. That Google would threaten or take any action is pure desperation in my opinion. They seemed to have felt that just creating the fear in people's minds that something could happen would stop everyone from taking money for publishing links. It is the most stupid thing they have done to date, and I'm really a big fan of Google. No, as you suspected there is NO WAY for Google to tell you are being paid for the links on your site. On the reverse side, I have seen some of our sites drop possibly because of what LOOKS LIKE paid links. The links do look like that, but that are just links to our other sites that are there for our visitors. Google has created this system of extra value for text links, later they say that we cannot benefit from what they have created. To me this is wrong and reminds me of companies like Microsoft and others that forget who their customers are. And on the domains that you pointed to a parking service and saw them drop, did you confirm the are not in Google's index? Since the content changed they may just not show up the way you expected. And while I think what your seeing may be true, I have about 600 domains with a parking service and they not only show up, but have been getting PageRank and backlinks as if they were real sites. So you may want to try some different parking services to see how they work. I can tell you from my experience with about 6 of them that they are not all the same. Hanging out at NamePros.com is a great way to learn about domain parking and other aspects of domaining. Thank you, Chris Nielsen hkcondos.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brad Waller 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"... - Brad Waller, LED 2603 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2018/190/ As luck would have it, I'm now moderating a panel on large marketers and locally targeted search. I'll forward your rocket science questions to the new moderator of that panel, and I'll take any you might have for this new one. Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: James Gatton Subject: No personal information in the posts > 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. - Alicia Lane, LED 2604 Please, no. Do not remove information identifying a poster's identity and whatever the current linking policy is, please leave that as is. As Alicia mentioned, the lack of identification of the poster would minimize personal accountability in the Digest. In addition, leaving out the names of posters and background information would render some of the information personally meaningless since it would then be lacking a proper context. Especially when it comes to repeat posters we get to know many individuals and where they are coming from with many issues. For instance, as a rule I may disagree with most of the posts that are made by Joe Blow (sorry, Joe) but if suddenly I read something that makes complete sense to me then suddenly I need to THINK, and perhaps re-evaluate my own position or understanding on a point. "Well, hey, if even Joe feels that way then maybe I..." As to self serving links, whatever the link policy has been for the last few years is fine with me as, once again, it adds context. We're all big boys and girls here at the Digest and we seem to play well together under the current policy. So what if there is a little bit of self promotion going on, especially if it encourages more people to post. It's certainly not a problem for me. If a certain individual takes a strong stance on link building, or SEO, or Adwords, I can evaluate his or her post much better if I know who that person is and what he or she does for a living. This type of context may add weight to one post he makes then detract from another. Without personality and prejudices being revealed many posts would lose value. While almost every living thing continues to evolve, including the Digest, removing poster's names and links, self-serving or otherwise, I think would be a mortal blow for the digest as it would then grow cold and impersonal. Jim Gatton's self-serving link is http://www.dentalinsurancefor.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Al Toman Subject: Lurker Hi all LEDers. This being my first post as a lurker .... NOT! Personal? Personal, did you say? Well, last checked, mee is a person and mee name is Al, hence PEROSN-AL. Yup. You cut out the PERSON in the LED Digest and you may as well lay down and die. Not me Big Fella~! I'm here to pour some vinegar down your pantz so that all y'all can git PERSON-AL. Go ahead! Try n' git me! We'll have a blast~! Post on the LED Digest and keep it poppin'~! Al Toman studio9 web design Getting PERSON-AL over developing your business web site call mee PERSON-AL number at 866-858-6387 (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "All these, and better, Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart..." - Robert Herrick |
