| LED Digest 2113: Promoting Website Visibility |
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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 .............................................. March 9, 2006 Issue #2113 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ===================== --== Google Analyst Day ==-- ~ John Smart "Google posted goals and plans. They then retracted it, updated it, and reposted it." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Reputable SEO/M Services? ==-- ~ Michael Martinez "SEO is not about selling books. It's about creating Web site visibility." ~ Mike Banks Valentine "Subscribe to top SEO newsletters, forums and blogs." ~ Martha Retallick "...permit me to share the following story..." --== Cell Phone Visitors ==-- ~ Tom Anson "...when I hear stuff about building for cell phones...my head spins." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Fighting Spam: Unsubscribing ==-- ~ Tom Aman ========== NEW =================================== From: John Smart Subject: Google Analyst Day Google has been growing a lot. I am amazed at how much I use them now. Google Earth is a part of every trip I take, and was a huge aide in my recent relocation. How Google works is something that interests all of us here. Alas, I have nothing to report on that. But I did find this... Apparently, in the Google Investor site, Google posted goals and plans. They then retracted it, updated it, and reposted it. For more information on the retracted parts visit: http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-world-with-infinite-storage.html And for the updated full version visit: http://investor.google.com/pdf/20060302_analyst_day.pdf John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Michael Martinez Subject: SEO services > My websites sell only one book each... The profit > does not cover the monthly fees most SEO service > companies are charging... ie, $50 to $100 per month. > Are there any reasonably priced [SEO/M] > companies you can suggest? - Claudia Lynn, LED 2111 Authors really cannot benefit from SEO because it is so expensive. Assuming you make a profit of $3 from each book sale, you would have to sell 34 books just to pay for a $100 monthly fee. Since most SEO firms charge more than that, you would have to sell more books. Search engine optimization is not about selling books. It's about creating Web site visibility. A good SEO can get the traffic to your site if there is traffic to be had, but no one can guarantee sales. I think what you need to do is work on some keyword research, see what people are looking for that is related to your books. I recommend you use Digital Point's Keyword Suggestion Tool: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ There are other good tools out there, but this one gives you a reasonable indication of what people are actually typing into query boxes because they draw from two major query reporting tools. Once you know what people are searching for, you can design a set of targeted expressions and budget your SEO expenses. You should not need an ongoing link-building campaign. I've advised a lot of authors on how to promote their books on the Internet, and I promote my own books online. It doesn't take a lot of SEO. What you need to focus on, however, is creating and maintaining visibility for yourself. Michael Martinez "Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: SEO services Dirk Johnson recommended to Claudia Lynn that she "Self Educate" on SEO. I have a suggestion for those in Claudia's position who have similarly restricted budgets and are unable to pay those fees charged by a top flight SEO firms to optimize their web site. Subscribe to top SEO newsletters, forums and blogs. I won't list all them here as there are too many, but what follows is a sampling of some of the best. http://www.axandra.com/news/index.htm#subscribe http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml http://www.pandia.com/post/index.html http://www.clickz.com/experts/search/results/ http://www.searchengineguide.com/subscribe.html http://www.highrankings.com/subscribe.htm http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/ Then there are dozens of webmaster forums and blogs where SEO is regularly discussed - most prominently the SearchengineWatch Blog at: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/ But I *can't stand* trolling forums and just forget to return to blogs as often as I should, so I rely on a single site to send me filtered and important news of ALL the SEO forums in a single daily email in which well known SEO Barry Schwartz culls the best daily info from all the relevant SEO forums and posts concise recaps and links to those forum threads of highest interest. Just input your email address in the "subscribe" form at the top of the home page at: http://www.seroundtable.com/ How about hearing SEO news from the head Google Software engineer? Try Matt Cutts blog where he posts regular SEO tips and commentary. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/type/googleseo/ The information is out there (and easily accessible) to allow anyone to become their own in-house SEO. Happy reading! ;-) Mike Banks Valentine http://realityseo.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: SEO services This part of Claudia Lynn's post on SEO services jumped right out at me: > I have signed up with more than one company that > took my credit card and gave me absolutely no results. About that "absolutely no results" part, permit me to share the following story... Last summer, I redesigned a website for a client, who, shall we say, was a bit difficult to work with. As part of the redesign package, I offered SEO services, which I subcontracted. The man I subcontracted to was the same one who got one of my own websites ranked #1 in Google, and kept it there for several years. This particular fellow was known as a real straight-shooter in the SEO business, and that business isn't known for such behavior. He guaranteed that his clients would achieve top rankings, and the only variable would be how long this process took. And I told the client this. Anyway, he began SEO work on my client's redesigned site last October. And, as part of this process, he sent e-mails to both me and the client stating that the process of achieving high rankings could take as long as 26 weeks. Well, in early November, I got an e-mail from the client, who was most unhappy about the fact that his site, which previously had no rankings of any sort, had not rocketed up to the top 10 in Google. We told him, as we'd already told him in the aforementioned e-mail, that achieving rankings takes time, and, in the meantime, had he done any sort of marketing to promote his new site? He insisted that he had. However, I know from many years' experience that clients who say such things aren't putting in anywhere near the effort that they need to. I got a similar e-mail in December, and once again, I told the client that achieving rankings takes time, and my SEO guy was indeed working on it. The SEO guy also sent an e-mail that included the following info: ----------------------- "Since the SE's found the way to monetize search (pay-per-click ads) they are not only not feeling any pressure to speed up the indexing and re-indexing process, but well... the longer it takes to get ranked, the more people will decide, 'darn, we need some action, now! Let's invest some money in pay-per-click ads and get some visitors today!' "The SE's have no problem w/ that decision. "I am NOT suggesting that the SE's are not legit. I am NOT uncovering any machinations. I am just pointing out that their main interest is to sell pay-per-click ads. Exactly how often they re-index is a secondary concern, logically. "IF SOMEHOW you interpreted something Martha or I may have written to indicate that you can look for rankings in Google et al., real quick, then we apologize for any complicity in this misunderstanding, but we never would say anything like that b/c we have been hip to this fact of life in the Search Engine World since 2001. "It is NOT FAST. No Quick Fixes. No Magic Bullets. And, as Martha points out, anything and everything you can do to promote your site is all to the good." ----------------------- I should also mention that between October and December, the SEO guy had sent a couple of progress reports to show how he was coming along with the registration process. These went to both me and the client. In one e-mail exchange with the client, I asked him if he had read those reports, but he never answered the question. (I can't help thinking that the answer was "No.") In January, this story took a tragic turn. In the middle of the month, I received word that the SEO guy had died suddenly. And, since he was a sole proprietor, when he died, his business died with him. In February, I got another e-mail from the client, in which he demanded a refund because he'd paid me for SEO, and hadn't achieved any results yet. (Mind you, we were still inside that 26-week timeframe, but since the SEO guy was no longer alive, there was no way he could honor the "No matter how long it takes!" guarantee.) I gave the guy his refund, and I also told him to take his design business elsewhere. As I mentioned before, I found him difficult to work with, and if I knew last summer what I know now, I wouldn't have taken him on as a client. I've also learned other lessons from this experience: 1. Watch out for guarantees. Especially when they apply to something that is as dependent on the actions (or inactions) of third parties like the search engine companies. 2. Be careful what you subcontract. As a result of the above experience, I no longer subcontract SEO work. I will refer interested clients to reputable companies that do SEO work. However, they all charge a good bit more than my late, great SEO guy. 3. When I began to work with this problem client last summer, it became very clear to me that although his company had been around for a couple of decades, it had almost no name recognition. And a quick Google search or two revealed something about his high-ranking competitors. Not only had they been in business for a while, they had also worked hard to promote themselves. You could see that from what they said on their websites. In short, if you're an unknown, getting into the search engines isn't going to suddenly make you into a somebody. As mentioned above, the engines are going to take their own sweet time about letting you in. And, in the meantime, if you aren't going flat-out with your marketing, you'll still be an unknown. Martha Retallick Western Sky Communications Web/Graphic Design & Consulting http://www.WesternSkyCommunications.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Cell phones > Does anyone bother to make an ecommerce > site friendly to cell phones? Other than sites > selling ring tones, etc. Is this worthwhile? - John Barendrecht, LED 2109 Although I have designed and built my own websites, I'm in no way a professional designer. I'm struggling hard just to get a basic XHTML, static paged website built. So when I hear stuff about building for cell phones -- especially when it gets into the .NET arena -- my head spins. I don't even know what the topic is about, really. I checked in my Dreamweaver 8 and found a document type XHTML Mobile 1.0. Would that be for cell phone-compatible pages? As for making pages for cell phones, is that a CSS issue, or are we talking about something altogether different -- like a separate website, or a website within a website. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Aman Subject: Fighting spam > When I clicked unsubscribe at the bottom of the page > it took me to the website where it tried to sell me > something... After two more clicks it did give me the > unsubscribe message ... - Vicki Lambert, LED 2110 It is not unusual for an unsubscribe link to try to sell you something first, before you actually get to unsubscribe. If the SPAM does not contain an unsubscribe, there are other options. One thing you can do is go to the link contained in the SPAM to see if the site provides an unsubscribe link. Another choice it to use a site like http://www.dnsstuff.com/ to do a WHOIS lookup to see if there might be an email address to which you can report abuse. Or, just go to http://www.ftc.gov/spam/ and report the SPAM. Of course any of these options are a bit time consuming so I would only suggest doing them occasionally when you feel you can spare the extra time. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.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. "I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death." - George Carlin |
