| LED Digest 2104: The Revenge of Traffic Power |
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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 24, 2006 Issue #2104 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Mark Medlicott "Are we not all outsourcers at the end of the day?" --== Directory Pages for High Rankings? ==-- ~ Lee Roberts "...'Run Forest, Run' when Internet Advancement calls for your money." ~ Tim Mullen "This [article] link ties DIPs to spam penalties..." ~ Shari Thurow "I believe the company is named Traffic Power, who have renamed themselves..." ~ Beth Earle "This is what I love about the LED!" --== Shopping Cart Abandonment ==-- ~ Vicki Lambert "I can surely relate to your experience..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== US Website Maintenance Rates? ==-- <Moderator Comment> --== The LED Archives ==-- ~ Michael Martinez ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Mark Medlicott Subject: Outsourcing I have been reading the outsourcing debate with plenty of interest. Initially I was against outsourcing (especially to India or Russia, the main proponents of outsourcing it seems), and backed the local industry. Then during one of my brighter moments, I realised that as I work in New Zealand and advertise "That I charge according to my living costs, not yours," I was indeed an outsourcer myself, even in this little country of 4 million people. I am trying to get work from my main cities because it is cheaper for me to live in my small town, or even from overseas due to the strength of our dollar. Are we not all outsourcers at the end of the day! Do businesses always employ designers from their home town? No. But they employ the local plumber don't they? Yes. Why? The reason businesses outsource, is the same reason we tout the Internet as the best communication device ever created. Because a business can compete from Alaska to New Zealand for the same job if it is online, then outsourcing will continue to grow and the quality of the outsourced products improve. Most resources needed to create a website can be emailed, phoned in, or VoIP'ed to a designer. Because I don't need to physically meet you or use your skills as I do with a plumber, if you provide the end product I will pay. Over the last few years I have also missed out on contracts which have gone to Indian or Asian designers, but now I have an association with a company that has all its website work designed in India. I meet the new client and go over their requirements, and then the Indian designers put together up to 3 designs for the agency and client to study. I then optimise them for the search engines. This association suits me perfectly, as design is not one of my strongest points (nor a favourite part of the website business), but I am good at pulling other people's apart, which is basically what happens. SEO and usability testing. So far we have had pretty good results, with happy customers all round, and I don't have to chase the money either. Just my twist on being an outsourcer from the land downunder. Regards Mark Medlicott Medlicott Design www.medlicottdesign.orcon.net.nz ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Lee Roberts Subject: Directory pages In LED, 2101, Chuck Hiatt asks about directory information pages. Directory information pages (D.I.P.) is a term used by Internet Advancement in Seattle, WA. While this term may sound enticing, it reminds me of Traffic Power. ALL Traffic Power's clients were banned by Google. Matt Cutts confirms this in his blog: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/confirming-a-penalty/. Traffic Power (now calling themselves "First Place" and located at 1p.com) builds Web pages on their servers and links those Web pages to their client's sites. According to Internet Advancement, only a handful of people within their organization ever sees a D.I.P. page and you will never find these pages within the search engine results. They say that this is possible due to a trick they know for using the robots.txt file to redirect the search engines to their clients' sites. According to instructions on how to setup a robots.txt file, the robots.txt file is for exclusions only. Those exclusions should be formated as: Disallow: /help disallows both /help.html and /help/index.html, whereas Disallow: /help/ would disallow /help/index.html, but allow /help.html. Robots.text files cannot include instructions to and visit other Web sites. While Google supports Allow and wildcards (*.cgi) in the robots.txt file, this does not mean that it is correct by any means. The robots.txt file is for exclusions only. Anyways, I digress here so now it's time to get back to the real topic. On http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html, Google states the following: -------------------- "Choose wisely. "While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://snipurl.com/mvxt [seattletimes.nwsource.com]. While Google doesn't comment on specific companies, we've encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful." -------------------- Clearly, for Google to have that reference, which discusses Internet Advancement, they are implying a statement of "don't deal with this company." So, as one of my favorite movies says, "Run Forest, Run" when Internet Advancement calls for your money. Sincerely, Lee Roberts http://www.applepiecart.com ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Tim Mullen Subject: Directory pages This link ties DIPs to spam penalties: http://snipurl.com/mvxx [clickz.com] Tim Mullen <Moderator Comment> Just FYI, the article Tim mentions above is by Shari Thurow (written in March '04), whose post on this topic is right below... -adam ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Shari Thurow Subject: Directory information pages Hi everyone- This is in response to the thread about Directory Information Pages (DIP). Everyone, my advice is to do business with from this company at your own risk. I believe the company is named Traffic Power, who have renamed themselves First Place or 1P.com. This firm was involved in a class-action lawsuit for shady practices. They have renamed their DIP pages to SEE pages (search engine entry pages). SEOconsultants.com put up a number of pages on their site, and then removed them, about this firm. You can still see some of the pages if you search one Google for them and look at the cache. Here is a link to one of the BBB reports: http://www.vegasbbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=67154 Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html ------- new post - same topic ------ From: Beth Ann Earle Subject: Directory pages This is what I love about the LED! In trying to decide which post to respond to yesterday, I ended up picking the outsourcing issue, because I knew (yes, *knew*) there'd be a ton of great, on-target responses (much better than mine would have been) to the DIP-PY issue. And there were! Don't know if anybody's said it lately, but we're really lucky to have a such a great group of people to share ideas with. I really don't want to contemplate what life would be like without my fellow LED'ers (or without you, Adam). Wishing a wonderful day to every single LED'er for making this such a wonderful resource, Beth Earle www.pilotfishseo.com ------- new post - new topic ------ From: Vicki Lambert Subject: Cart abandonment > I just purchased 14 clothing items from an online only store... > This site really has some problems (www.roamans.com)... - Nancy Cardinali, LED 2103 I can surely relate to your experience. I have been using that site since it first went up. I always shop online but they are one of the few companies that I still use the catalog and phone. I just cannot take their website. Unless I feel like playing solitaire while each page loads. Lane Bryant (sister company) is the same way. The website is just too much hassle, but the product is good so again, catalog and phone when I can. But they do lose a lot of business from me for their websites when I am not in the mood to mark my catalog, call on the phone, etc. IMO if web designers had to actually use their website as a customer, they would design it differently. Vicki Lambert ==== BILLBOARD =================================== <Moderator Comment> This is pretty unusual for me, posting like this, but I was surprised not many have responded to Gurdip's question about site 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 pages, images, etc? - Gurdip Singh, LED 2102 Is this information better kept on the "down low," or are there other reasons (like lack of time, ambivalence, etc) for not giving feedback here? Just curious... -adam -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: LED archives > The signature URLs are hyperlinked, but they > still sit on a page which isn't indexed with the > engines. At least that appears to be the case. > Correct me if I'm wrong. - Steve Pronger, LED 2103 And they are being indexed by the search engines. http://snipurl.com/mvyj [google.com] Whether they bring any value to anyone is another issue, but they are indexed, the signature URLs are converted to hypertext links, and the engines are aware of them. Michael Martinez "Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- 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. "We should not complain about impermanence, because without impermanence, nothing is possible." - Thich Nhat Hanh |
