| LED Digest 2102: Chicanery, Gamesmanship & DIPs |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 22, 2006 Issue #2102 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Directory Pages for High Rankings? ==-- ~ Joel Lesser "Stay away from chicanery and gamesmanship such as DIPs." ~ Mike Banks Valentine "Forget the DIPs." --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Beth Earle "Here's a different take on outsourcing..." ~ Kurt Francis "In a sense, all of us are involved in outsourcing on the buying end." --== Shopping Cart Abandonment ==-- ~ Kimberly Morgan "We’re looking into having a feature to show a running total on every page..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== US Website Maintenance Rates? ==-- ~ Gurdip Singh ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Joel Lesser Subject: Directory pages > I was advised that if I create multiple D.I.P.s (Directory > Information Pages) and submit them twice per month > I could be assured of top 20 listings in most of the top > 15 search engines... This seems a little too good to > be true to me... - Chuck Hiatt, LED 2101 First let's define for those of you who may be new to the LED what Directory Information Pages (DIP) are. The term "Directory Information Page" was coined by a few unscrupulous SEOs. You can find all sorts of references to DIPs by Googling "directory information pages" with the quotes. DIP's can be defined by a web page that is created for the sole purpose of achieving high organic listings in the search engines. This page is usually a list of links to the client's site which would include keywords and keyphrases in an attempt to generate synthetic link popularity. DIP's typically offer no usefulness or value to end users and is considered to be spam. DIP's are most often only published for search engines and not always visible to the end user. DIP's are sometimes referred to as gateway, attraction, envelope, or hallway pages. Chuck, there are no guarantees in life with the exception of death and taxes. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Do not confuse DIP's with relevant linking for the end user. Right on Google's published webmaster guidelines (http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html), Google states "Have other relevant sites link to yours". If you read Google's patent ( http://snipurl.com/fmer [uspto.gov] ), you will see the Google engineers who wrote this patent refer to "obtaining links without editorial discretion as an attempt to spam...". Chuck and fellow LED'ers, you never want to do anything that will give the search engines a reason to downgrade your rankings. Ask yourself this simple question: "Would I take part in X activity if the search engines didn't exist? Does this benefit my end user?". If the answer is no, don't participate in schemes such as DIPs and similar methods to try to cheat the search engines. You might get a short term bump in your rankings by taking part in gamesmanship such as DIPs, but it's only a matter of time before the search engines spot the activity, and then your site runs the risk of being downgraded or "sandboxed". Reversing downgraded rankings is not easy. It's not worth the risk to participate in unethical practices such as DIPs. Google says "have other relevant sites link to yours" and so there is nothing wrong with publishing a useful directory of relevant links that benefits your end user. It looks good to publish relevant links that do not necessarily have to be reciprocal links. But make sure links that you publish and links that you seek from other sites are relevant and benefit your end user. That means a loan consolidation site should not request a link to a site that sells automotive accessories.. a site that publishes tips on home improvement should not link to a gambling site, and so on. If you keep your linking relevant, over time, your rankings will slowly (naturally) climb as junk sites get downgraded. Sometimes, your search engines rankings might appear to be going up when they are actually simply being affected by other sites that have been downgraded. Stay away from chicanery and gamesmanship such as DIPs. When you link to and request links from other sites that benefit your end user, combined with keeping your content fresh and useful for the end user, you should enjoy long term success. Best Regards, Joel Lesser LinksManager.com http://linksmanager.com ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: Directory pages > I was advised that if I create multiple DIPs > and submit them twice per month to all search > engines that I could be assured of top 20 listings... - Chuck Hiatt, LED 2101 Your first clue to bad information here is that you were advised to create D.I.P.s, an acronym probably created by a company that has a large network of D.I.P.s and makes their living promoting them. They think you are a DIP too - don't fall for it. Second, there is no need to submit the pages to the search engines. Submissions have been entirely unnecessary for at least the past three years as search engine spiders regularly crawl and re-crawl sites. The more often you add new content (on a regular schedule) the more often the site is re-visited by the crawlers. If you do any type of article marketing, online press release distribution, or blogging - your site will be re-crawled on about the same schedule at which you routinely add that content to your site. Your post to LED got you a link from the last issue, now posted in the archive and re-crawled often due to frequent updates and high popularity. Submissions are not necessary unless you've never gotten an external link, never add anything new to your site and never do any marketing or posting to discussion lists. Expect the search engines to revisit your site this week because you posted to LED. http://list.audettemedia.com/archives/led.html > I could be assured of top 20 listings in > most of the top 15 search engines... There are four search engines that send 99 percent of referred visitors to your site. The following numbers are drawn from about a dozen client sites I have access to server traffic statistics for. Google - sending an average of 60 to 70 percent of search engine referred traffic, Yahoo - sending an average of 10 to 15 percent of search engine referred traffic, MSN - sending an average of 5 to 7 percent of search engine referred traffic and Ask - sending an average of less than 1 percent of all search engine referred traffic. > ... and top 10 in the second and > third tier search engines. The above are top tier engines, the rest (on any tier) are irrelevant to referral traffic. Is there any reason you can think of to pay even the slightest bit of attention to search engines that refer less than 1 percent of your traffic? Second and third tier engines could rank you #1 and send dribbles and drips of 2 or 3 visitors, sometimes, on a good day, if you are lucky. > Also that the higher the number of D.I.P.s, > the higher the ranking. Yes, DIP ranking. Forget the DIPs. > This seems a little too > good to be true to me. There you go, you knew all along. Mike Banks Valentine http://www.realityseo.com/ ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Outsourcing Hello, LED'ers. Here's a different take on outsourcing: http://www.newtidegroup.com/info/index.php This company seems to use non-U.S. freelancers but has U.S.-based project managers to deal with their U.S.-based clients. This approach (which is new to me) seems like it would solve at least some of the communication problems that some LED'ers have cited. Regards, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com P.S. We have no association with this company at all, despite the oceanic bent of both our names. Their site popped up while we were doing some research, and their approach seemed worth sharing. ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Kurt Francis Subject: Outsourcing I am especially interested in the current discussion of the oft-controversial topic of outsourcing, interested because a small start-up company my former partner on a website established (in which I invested a considerable amount of money, at least for me). Though the company proper is tiny, it is genuinely international: founded by an American in the British Virgin Islands but focused on the market in Southeast Asia in particular, with American and Japanese investors, some local representatives in Thailand, and a Malaysian sales rep. The company has outsourced two software projects to date, one to a free-lance American based in Southeast Asia, the other to a small firm in India. Though the American is a bit of a prima donna and can be something of a pain, he's darned good at what he does. The folks from the Indian firm have proven excellent, too, and are easier to work with. One came to Bangkok for an extended trip doing consultation regarding just what the company needs. Unlike with some call-up customer service centers, language has not been a barrier. I'm a strong support er of outsourcing in all it's forms -- "in all its forms" meaning including, for example, migrant labor. But especially in the more common meaning of businesses outsourcing both labor and production. In a sense, all of us are involved in outsourcing on the buying end. I've owned exactly one American car that incorporated some foreign-produced parts (I'm American), 3 VW Beetles produced in Mexico, and several Japanese cars I bought in Macau that were produced in China with steel from heaven knows where. Of course, outsourcing gets hairy for politicians when jobs flee offshore, but what are businesses having legal requirements to do the best possible for investors to do? In the case of the company in which I've invested, I'd have a heart attack if my friend running it decided to send his programming jobs to, say, North Americ a or what we used to know as Western Europe, given that he can get the same work done in India for maybe 20-25% the price it would cost in the West. (The "not-with-MY-money" syndrom . . . ;-) Heck, in a way I've even been a beneficiary of a form of outsourcing. The last time I taught in university in America in the late 1980's, half my teaching was with foreign students, almost all Vietnamese or Chinese (the mainland and Taiwan). After that I taught in universities in mainland China, Macau, and Thailand. I reckon in this age of globalization outsourcing is here to stay. Kurt Francis http://bangkokatoz.com Bangkok, Thailand ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Kimberly Morgan Subject: Cart abandonment David Yancey and I have been closely monitoring the thread on shopping cart abandonment, and want to thank all who have posted so far; it is a very difficult problem so all the input we can share is very helpful. For our new consumer-focused site, we are first focusing on shortening the "navigation path" between landing page and the point where the shopper decides to place an item in the cart. We decided this was our most important first step, because we're concerned as much with "site abandonment" by these new visitors as with the more narrowly defined cases where the shopper gives up after having put at least one choice in the cart. We have studied our logs in detail to learn the proportion of "tire kickers" to those who make at least one choice. We think Job One is to try and move many more of the browsing folks into the "made at least one choice" column. Then we'd have a larger base for conversion, so even if we are slow to solve the actual cart abandonment problems, we at least have a chance for more sales. In the upcoming "Version 2" of the site, we'll have the ability to create precision-targeted landing pages that encourage the new visitor to make at least one selection right away, with zero navigation through the rest of the site. The challenge is to make a landing page that first, engages the visitor with information that follows through on the targeted ad or link that brought her to us. But then, our goal is to (we hope!) resolve the important buyer's concerns mentioned in previous posts right up front, including shipping costs, returns policies, quality worries, store contact and customer service reassurance, as well as clearly show our "buy 2, get one free" offer, and how our unique "smile guarantee" works. Jay Everson (LED 2095) makes a good point about the total cost being a shock when the shopper actually sees the cart. We're looking into having a feature to show a running total on every page, provided the shopper is "logged in" to the site. But this doesn't help with first-time visitors of course. One idea that I discovered while researching our design plan may be of interest to other shop operators. At www.roxio.com, I was messing around with the process, trying several things. I work on many pages and apps at once, like most people online do, so after a minute or two I got involved in some other task. After about five minutes, the Roxio cart page flashed a pop-up with the following message: "Get an instant 10% off on your order if you buy now! [Order Now]" I clicked on it and the discount was automatically added to my shopping cart and the total was recalculated. Wow! Here was a way to get my attention again, and encourage me to go complete the process. I think if this was a feature of carts, it might be a useful partial answer to abandonment, at least for those shops that can afford this extra discount. Kimberly Morgan http://www.tootoographic.com "Styles with Smiles" ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Gurdip Singh Subject: Basic Website Maintenance Rates Can anyone tell me what sort of per-hour rates are the norm in the US for website maintenance work such as content amendments, addition / deletion of web pages, images, Flash animations, etc? I'm not referring to hard programming here (such as the development of scripts, etc). Thanks in advance. Gurdip Singh ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains © Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "Grown men can learn from very little children, for the hearts of little children are pure. 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