| LED Digest 2674: Google Affiliate Network |
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Send your posts to: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it '; document.write( '' ); document.write( addy_text93881 ); document.write( '<\/a>' ); //-->\n This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher The Internet Marketing Boutique: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. July 2, 2008 Issue no. 2674 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Google and Performics ==-- ~ Marty R. Milette "I'm now receiving messages from the 'Google Affiliate Network'..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Internet Marketing ==-- ~ Mark Medlicott "...you probably really want to hear is a fix for the horizontal rule." ~ John Reisig "I'm sure a dozen other people have already spotted the problem..." --== Measuring SEO Results ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "...there are other ways to build traffic for sites than search engine optimization." ~ Beth Earle "...we probably don't do a true 'competitive analysis'..." ========= NEW ===================================== From: Marty R. Milette Subject: I must have missed something... I'm now receiving messages from the "Google Affiliate Network" about the launch of the new "ReputationDefender" program. I must have been sleeping and missed the acquisition, but what is more disturbing is that they are now flogging "MyPrivacy" which "allows consumers to quickly and easily scour and request removal from many of the largest people search databases on the Internet!" (Ostensibly, "for your privacy and convenience", no doubt.) Is Google not the company who, themselves, absolutely REFUSE to acknowledge any reasonable standards for privacy and data retention and whose requests for removal of information from THEIR database (even when it breaks trademark, privacy and copyright laws) is almost impossible? Am I the only person who has issues with this??? Marty R. Milette http://www.hotel-club.net ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Mark Medlicott Subject: Internet marketing Good to see you asking some 'simple' but not always obvious questions Tom. Regarding the fact that you talk about 'doing the SEO' thing later after building your websites, I would suggest that you can do some basic things that would help before designing your websites. Before making up the various categories or pages on your website, make sure you name them with ideally some keywords. For instance on your Frankincense page the links on the left go to pages which are held in a folder called 'info' . In at least one case this would be better named as 'Healthcare'. If people are searching for products the word info is not very specific, and yet it is part of your page address now, while healthcare would make it slightly more specific. In the same scenario the page with the incorrect code is in a folder called 'singles'. This makes perfect sense to you, but I imagine you don't want people looking for 'singles' or a dating partner on your website, whereas if it was in a folder called 'oils' it would be more descriptive and probably help find more targeted searches. This is just a simple thing that can easily be done at the building stage and there will be (hopefully) lots of experts on here who can give more 'how tos' regarding SEO in layman's terms.. Ok, what you probably really want to hear is a fix for the horizontal rule. A quick glance would suggest that you need a break <br> after the image link and before the <hr>, because the reason it is sitting out to the right is because the image does not take up all the width of the div. ------------- <td colspan="2" align="center"> <img xsrc="" alt="" height="" width="" border=""> <br /><hr /> </td> ------------- Regards Mark Medlicott Medlicott Design http://www.medlicottdesign.orconhosting.net.nz/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John D. Reisig Subject: Internet marketing Tom, I'm sure a dozen other people have already spotted the problem, but just in case I'm the only one: On the page where you are having the format issue, you have the image element floated to the left (based on a rule for the 'feature' CSS class). In essence, you're telling the browser to allow other page elements to be put next to the image - this is what is happening to your horizontal rule. I don't know the reason for the rule, so I can't tell you exactly how to fix it. In the worst case, you can set the float to 'none' for just the problem image. Hope this helped, John Reisig MindPick Software LLC http://service.mindpick.com/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: SEO results > Bottom line: Is this SEO's approach the > commonly advised one or have we wasted our > money? - Sandra Combs, LED 2672 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2087/190/ Since you haven't told us the name of the Web site or the keywords you and your client have been pursuing, or what keywords the SEO consultant has recommended, no one on this list can give you an intelligent, informed reply. You may be served another round of SEO bashing by some. That said, I only personally know a couple SEO consultants who have any extensive experience working with non-profits. Tom Schmitz is based in Seattle, works for Portent Interactive, and he has an extensive background with non-profits as well as having done SEO for some. Ed Schipul is based in Houston and he has several years' experience in doing SEO for non-profits. I have not worked with either Tom or Ed but having met both on several occasions and discussed SEO with them I feel comfortable saying they are well-grounded in the basics and they both know the challenges of working with non-profits better than me. I am sure there are other people in the industry who have non-profit experience. I believe Tom is subscribed to this list and he may be able to provide some thoughts. Based on my personal experience with promoting non-commercial Web sites I can tell you that there are other ways to build traffic for sites than search engine optimization. It would not be my first choice, although I would make sure to include an SEO plan in the overall marketing strategy. In my opinion, every partnership that your client enters into should be leveraged to help promote its Web site through advertising, literature, registrations, sales, whatever the partners do. As for links, I think any limited budget Web site would benefit tremendously from developing influential linking relationships. Forget the search engines. If you can get contextually relevant links on high-traffic sites that support the client's cause, do so. Don't wait for some consultant to decide that's a good idea. If you held a gun to my head and absolutely demanded I make a choice based on what little you would disclose, the only damning evidence I can find in your description of the SEO transaction is that the consultant told you not to worry about links. Unless you were thinking about BUYING links (which some reputable SEO consultants would NOT necessarily recommend as a starting point), I can't see why anyone would tell you not to start with them. Most SEOs talk about acquiring links for the wrong reason. They mistakenly believe you need links to build good search engine rankings. If you forget the search engines for a moment and consider that non-search Web sites are perfectly capable of driving a lot of traffic, links make a whole lot of sense and I as an SEO would never advise a client up front not to pursue traffic-driving links. But where you and your client may be out-of-step with the process is in your expectations. For example, you say that your own keyword research suggests there are only so many people searching for your client's content. You cannot get 6-digit traffic from 4-digit keywords. That will never happen. Also, you used the expression "authoritative links", which implies to me you've been reading too many SEO blogs and tutorials. I hate the whole idea of "authority links". It's a vague, ambiguous, completely bogus load of horse crap. That kind of jargon damages more SEO campaigns than you can imagine. You want viable links from Web sites that have traffic for your client. That's really all that matters as far as the links go. Michael Martinez http://www.michael-martinez.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Beth Earle Subject: SEO results > Actually, I'd be interested in knowing if > and how competitive analysis is used in SEO > projects. - Barrett J. Rossie, LED 2673 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2088/190/ At Pilot Fish, we probably don't do a true "competitive analysis," but we do always ask who our clients feel are their main competitors, and we take a look at their websites. More often than not, their business competitors aren't doing much on their websites to focus on SEO ... they don't seem to use terms that people are actually looking for ... they don't have title tags, or the tags aren't really effective ... they have few, if any worthwhile incoming links. So we also end up looking at our clients' on-line competitors: websites that don't provide the same products or services as our clients, but that most definitely *do* compete for rankings on search terms that are important to our clients ("important" in this case meaning "actually searched for by people" and "relevant to the client's business). Even if the site doesn't compete for real business, we still find it useful to try to figure out what sorts of strategies the site owner uses. It's sometimes hard for our clients to understand why we'd look at a hobby website (or some other unrelated site), but it almost always pays off in terms of deciding the best way to help our clients place as well as possible in the search engines, which, as pointed out in other posts in Tuesday's LED, is really all about driving more qualified traffic to the site. > Changing colours is not SEO, certainly, and > the teaser content is not what I'd probably > advise, but then, without actual details, I > can't really comment, because there may > have been SEO reasons for those changes. - Michael Motherwell A lot of clients come to Pilot Fish for SEO help, but, really, we're an Internet marketing company, so when they come to us for SEO work, we usually throw in some suggestions (if needed) on ways to improve the site once a visitor actually gets there. More often than not, it seems to make more sense to recommend a whole redesign, because there's no way to fix everything with Band-Aids. Of course, not every client agrees. So we do the SEO work, and, more often than not after that, in a few years, they come back around for the redesign, when they feel ready for that step. So, while I agree with Michael, I also can imagine an "SEO" suggesting color changes and content changes (especially if the non-profit had reams and reams of text on the home page), because in the end, it really should *not* be about rankings. It should be about getting qualified traffic to the site and motivating those visitors to contact the site owner (or to complete whatever the particular "call to action" is). With the warmest LED'ly regards to all, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Work was impossible. The geeks had broken my spirit." - Hunter S. Thompson |
