Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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From: Paul Harris

Subject: eBay Blocking

I run a small website and also market using eBay. My products

normally sell for less on eBay, though the cross marketing is well

worth it .

That was until eBay cancelled my account and listings. It turns out

that I was reported for putting in links to my website. I knew I

shouldn't do it so got what I deserved... yet there are 1000's of

ebayers still doing it - I guess my competition blew the whistle.

What to do now... linking to non-commercial sites is allowed on eBay

as far as I know, so my plan was to set up a separate web site which

is purely informative about related products and sport. There would

be links to my commercial website for interested parties.

Does anybody out there have experience in this field

Paul Harris

www.bivvyman.co.uk

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From: Nancy Cardinali

Subject: PHP & SSI

Hi Adam & LEDers!

I believe this has been tossed around before, but I'm going to ask

again.

Does using PHP or SSI for headers, navigation, side bars, footers

etc effect SE ranking? My question particularly relates to

navigation that is now text.

It has been mentioned 'bots land on home page and use text nav to

spider all other pages. Since SSI puts the code on the page, it

should not interfere, correct?

Thanking in advance.

Nancy Cardinali

nancy52,cwo.com

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From: Jenny Halasz

Subject: SE vs SEO

> Why is there a difference between search engine

> friendly (SEF) and search engine optimization friendly

> (SEOF)? ... understand that search engines and

> search engine optimization experts have a love-hate

> or adversarial relationship.

        - Lee Roberts, LED 2082

I would like to respectfully disagree with this comment. Not all SEO

experts are focused on getting their clients to the top of the

search results at any cost, and the SEO experts that use a more

"wholistic" strategy do not have a love-hate relationship with the

search engines.

Search engines want to provide the most relevant and informational

content available to their users, so they index sites that are easy

to navigate, quick to load, filled with information or products, and

most of all relevant to the search query. A good white-hat SEO

campaign takes all of these factors into account and works with the

site to make it:

1. easier to navigate (with technical and server side changes)

2. easier to index (by eliminating duplication and spider traps)

3. more informative (by adding relevant copy to pages and relevant

ALT text to images)

4. geared toward conversion (whether it's retail sale, fill out a

form for more information, etc)

5. instantly accessible (by avoiding large downloads, splash pages,

flash, etc wherever possible)

What it all boils down to is that you can ask yourself two questions

when creating optimization for a site:

1. Would I be comfortable telling (Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, insert

SE owner here) what I'm doing?

2. Am I doing this for the users, the search engines, or both? If

it's only for the search engines, you shouldn't do it.

A great shopping cart will take all of the above into account, and

offer you as much flexibility as possible with its templates.

Jenny L. Halasz

www.marketsmartinteractive.com

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From: Jennifer Thomas

Subject: Shopping Carts

> We need something that is search engine friendly,

> low-budget, pretty much ready-to-go right out of the box.

        - Susan Johnson, LED 2081

Check out www.seoshoppingcarts.com. It has reviews of shopping carts

that are considered to be search engine friendly. They have a good

review of GoECart.

http://www.seoshoppingcarts.com/shopping-cart-reviews/go-e-cart.htm

Best,

Jennifer Thomas

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From: Rebecca Neilson

Subject: Shopping carts

The key to any shopping cart is if it will work for the customers

product and if it will grow with the customers website. There are a

lot of free shopping carts out there but you are limited by what

they offer.

I am currently using MIVA merchant.  It is not free, but is what my

current ISP had available. I finally got them to upgrade a few years

ago as they needed to. I am looking at buying the software myself so

I can take the program anywhere. The main reason is because of the

upgrades. Initially the program seems pricey $900. But the current

program at that base price allows me to list the wide variety of

products I sell. I have historical clothing and supplies for making

the clothing from buttons, to snaps to leather etc. Items are sold

from a single piece to fractional as in 1/2 foot of leather etc.

Miva merchant can handle that.

You can also set price levels based on volume or if a customer is

retail or wholesale. There are synchronization modules that allow

transfer of data from sale directly into Quickbooks for processing

of orders and updating of bookkeeping. They have a variety of design

modules for changing the look and feel of your website. They allow

you to add as many or as few modules as needed to create custom

websites. They even have different levels of support that you can

purchase or none at all. So far I have done all of my work on my

shopping cart myself using the base modules that come with the base

program. They have written the manuals so that most people can

create a shopping cart with relative ease.

First see if the shopping carts have a demo that you can try and

play with before you commit yourself. I have checked around with a

number of free shopping carts and tried demos that are available and

nothing compares to Miva Merchant so far. Free may sound great but

if it won't grow with your client or customer base, it may cost more

in the long run if you have to redo it later on and try to transfer

all of your work to another shopping cart.

Rebecca Neilson

H. L. Supply

www.hansons.net

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From: Gerald Njuguna

Subject: Shopping carts

Why not have a look at http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/. It has

everything that you might require and more. You get to buy the

shopping cart software and design, choose the template you like,

make the database connection, plug in your products and start

selling. It can create search engine friendly URLs and intergrates

with more than

9 payment processors. Very little programming is required to use it

Hope this helps

Gerald Njuguna

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From: David Spahr

Subject: Multiple sites

> David, if I had ONE search result returned for

> all of your sites and that took me to a page that

> would let me get to any of the sub-sections of

> interest easily, I would be a *much* happier surfer...

        ~ Tom Aman, LED 2079

Tom, this is very easy for you to say considering you are not truly

interested in anything on my site and do not share the mentality of

my customers. Can you tell me what really motivates the majority of

my visitors? Saying "stereoviews" or "they like antiques" is not the

answer. Can you hit the nail exactly on the head? I do not get

"surfers". I get people that know what they want.

As I said, It has increased my sales of merchandise I was having

trouble selling. These new sites do present material that I was not

able to sell well at all before. Stereoviews.com was becoming too

gargantuan. I was getting to the point where I was in danger of

exceeding my storage space and bandwidth for that site and it would

cost me as much or more as spinning off these specialty sites.

Gargantuan sites can be quite annoying and frustrating. I needed a

way to break it down into more focused, easy to navigate sections

and not throw a bunch of stuff in people's faces they do not want or

need to see.

European buyers would rather look at the strictly European site. I

get customer feedback all the time saying exactly that. Most do not

buy American subjects / items at all. Why should they have to bother

with sorting through it? Going to an American site looking for

European items is not an intuitively obvious choice! It is

attempting to be all things to all people which I believe to be a

mistake. I can show you a stereoview site that attempts to do that.

After you shop it a while, you see why it is a bad idea. Just too

darn big. You do not "get the exact thing (you) wanted much faster".

Try GoAntiques or TIAS or eBay (speaking of multiple country sites)

if you think I am wrong. They break it down into subsections and

have search features that bring you to places where 80%+ of what you

find you still do not want. A deluge of junk. It can take hours too!

The way my sites are populated is completely legitimate and

definitely not junky. Each site has completely unique material.

These single word domains (of my exact principle product) became

available to people of all countries just recently. I should not

acquire / use them and allow competitors to have them? Just park on

them? I think not. If you had over 20,000 mostly unique items to

sell you might see why I would do this. My sites get repopulated

with new and completely different items all the time. Nothing stays

the same. Ever.

I suppose I could make my home page so it went to broader

subsections but if you have a page that has always been No. 1 there

could be great danger in jimmying with it too much. I have often

thought of making big changes but always decide not to fix what is

not broken. Why not let Google do the breakdowns? If all a person

wants is European or British material why shouldn't they just see it

right there on the Google list rather than play click roulette?

What about most other stereoview sites? You might find it and you

might not while dealing with the navigational and categorical

idiosyncrasies of each site.  Idiosyncratic they are too!

I am just a one man business and single parent just making an OK

honest living. I am not a corporate entity and do not have big

cabbage for real fancy designs, consultants, studies etc. I do not

do design or SEO for others. I took a business model I was using in

the world before internet and converted it to this purpose (while I

was the stay-at-home parent in the 90's). I deal with all my

customers on a personal level answering all email myself and doing

all the other schlepping to keep things going. No shopping carts,

customer reps., receptionists, nothing. Don't need em. Yes, I have

no flunkies! My customers appreciate the personal contact. I talk to

many of them on the phone and end up meeting many of them in person

at shows and conventions.

As I said before, the effect has been synergistic. My bottom line is

better and I am getting new customers. So far, the search engines

seem to have recognized that I am not a spammer.

I get positive feedback from customers all the time and have not

fielded even one negative response.

David Spahr

stereoviews.com

No trees were destroyed in the sending of this contaminant free

message. However, I do concede that a significant number of

electrons may have been inconvenienced.

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From: Tom Anson

Subject: Hanging Requests for Link Exchanges

Hi fellow LED-ers,

In recent weeks, I've had several supposed requests for link

exchanges.  All I have to do is send in my information.  That might

sound "normal" except that the requestor leaves no clue as to his /

her own website.

The first few times I saw this, I figured it was just some poor soul

overwhelmed with the task of promoting a website without any clear

idea how to proceed.  After that, when more "sites" requested these

link exchanges, I started wondering if this is some new form of scam.

Any ideas out there?

Tom Anson

Anson Aromatic Essentials

www.therapeutic-grade.com

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