| LED Digest 2115: Passion |
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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 13, 2006 Issue #2115 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Passion ==-- ~ John "Zeke" Brumage "...the means by which [Google] ranks content will evolve to measure passion and creativity..." --== URL Naming ==-- ~ Chris Oberst "How important is it to have the product name or description in the URL?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Reputable SEO/M Services? ==-- ~ Anthony Kirlew "...don't minimize the value of internal linking..." ~ Michael Martinez "Reciprocal linking has been abused..." --== Cell Phone Visitors ==-- ~ Rose Lacy "I was pleasantly surprised to find WML easy to switch to from HTML." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Alex Hughart ~ Peter D'Aprix =========== NEW ================================== From: John "Zeke" Brumage Subject: Passion As the silicon lifeform we call Google and see in our logs as googlebot grows and learns, the means by which it judges, er, RANKS content will evolve to measure the passion and creativity of web pages... The new ability of small websites to be monetized strictly by traffic has created a totally new business model / financial model for creative individuals. My BikiniBreak.com brand started out because the only spare hard drive space was on the server. The potential of the site came to my attention when the server (in those days a $3000 P-90) started freezing. An examination of the logs showed the problem to be traffic. In the years since, the site never monetized in any reliable way. Nobody wanted a BikiniBreak.com coffe mug or T-shirt for $20. Only a few hundred clicked the DONATE button and put in a penny or a dollar. Then, last summer, a friend said, try Google AdSense. The results were instant. Every visitor to my site is like a pull on a slot machine. Some are near misses... some are a cherry and a few pennies comes out. Sometimes it's the jackpot, there are rumors of $78 clicks. Just like in a casino, over the long haul, the return per visitor is not only predictable, but should track inflation. I trust Google for my retirement more than I trust Social Security. I feel that owners of small commercial sites as well as artistic sites can benefit by putting their passion into their websites. Google will know. As SEOs, helping the site owner find their passion will help build a foundation for better search ranking in the future. As site owners, if you don't have a passion, why are you spending your life on it? John "zeke" Brumage disco legend zeke <----just google it -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Chris Oberst Subject: URL Naming We have a site that sells products. It's convenient internally to have the URL consist of the product item number. In regards to search engine optimization, what do folks think about this... How important is it to have the product name or description in the URL? Is it important, borderline, or not important? For example: www.mydomain.com/1001.html Compared to: www.mydomain.com/football-shirt.html If search engines do place a high value on URL naming, is it possible this leaves open abuse problems, where folks utilize naming just for traffic and not for relevancy, thus the benefit of changing to product name URL's might be short lived? Chris Oberst ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Anthony Kirlew Subject: SEO services I will start by saying, Claudia, I hope you are enjoying all of this back and forth (and free analysis) based on your sites. :-) I am not sure why anyone would say "You should not need an ongoing link-building campaign," especially to a site owner with a site (www.recipesforbaby.com) that has no Google PageRank, nor does it show any inbound links on Google. I know Google has had "mixed" results lately, but I did a manual check for the site based on the primary keyword "baby food recipe", taken from the title, and I could not find it on the first 6 pages of Google for that term (or at Yahoo). This is strongly evident of a site that needs links, if it wants to rank well (in Google particularly). Here it is from the horses mouth (Google's Webmaster section): ---------------- "Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link." ---------------- Claudia, you could start by adding this site's URL to your bio on your other site that "does" have page rank. That would only be a start, however, and I do strongly developing links to your site. Ideally you should do a directory campaign, to make sure you have inbound links from solid directories. Feel free to contact me if you specific questions about implementing this. Also from Google's Webmaster section: ---------------- "Have other relevant sites link to yours." ---------------- I believe every site can accomplish inbound linking, and often without having a "links" hyperlink on the page. It takes time, but developing solid relationships with site owners and marketers that understand this will pay off big in the end. Also, don't minimize the value of internal linking which can be done without contacting any other sites. Best regards, Anthony Kirlew Web Traffic Team www.webtrafficteam.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Martinez Subject: SEO services > Once again, Michael, you've advised someone to not > undertake link building (reciprocation implied, I suspect). > This is not the first time you've said similar things > here... It's one of your ongoing tenets - Dirk Johnson, LED 2114 Actually, Dirk, one of my ongoing tenets is that people should not put words into other people's mouths, which once again you've done for me. Thank you. I gave specific advice to an author. I have a lot of experience in helping authors promote their Web sites. Link building campaigns are a waste of time for them. > But other LED readers should be made aware of > what you are overlooking and what Claudia needs > to know before she takes your advice to heart. Reciprocal linking has been abused to the point where even Matt Cutts obliquely indicates that it can pretty much be worthless. And I am one of the people who first helped popularize the concept. I've advised several link management sites on how to improve their programs. I'll put my experience in reciprocal linking up against anyone's. It's not the panacea you and other link managers make it out to be. What makes authors distinct from typical small business people is that they operate on the slimmest of margin lines. Most authors never make a profit from their books. Authors who successfully promote their books online do so by promoting themselves. Claudia and others like her need to work closely with good publicists, not link managers. She needs to get media attention, not good search engine rankings for expressions no one is searching on. An author has to get the most bang from her promotional buck. One radio interview will bring in more traffic (and correspondingly more links) than any link request. When it comes to promoting books, you have one shot at creating a buzz and then after that you have to depend on residual interest. Authors need to plan their promotional campaigns months before their books are published. After the books are published, they can still get some interest when timely events related to their topics occur. Michael Martinez "Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi" http://www.michael-martinez.com/ http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/ -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Rose Lacy Subject: Cell phones > I checked in my Dreamweaver 8 and found a document type XHTML > Mobile 1.0. Would that be for cell phone-compatible pages? - Tom Anson, LED 2113 A while ago I became interested in developing for the mobile web (well okay I got a cool new phone and wanted to see myself on it). But dang, I'm tired of paying Macromedia $400 every year for an upgrade, so I downloaded Nokia's free mobile web development kit. I also read the extensive documentation at WC3 on style sheets for hand held devices. I was pleasantly surprised to find WML easy to switch to from HTML. The only hold up in getting my WML site to display was in setting the proper ReWriteCond in my .htaccess to selectively display either my WML page or HTML page based on the incoming browser. This worked for me: RewriteCond %{HTTP_ACCEPT} application/vnd.wap.multipart.mixed RewriteRule index.htm$ index.wml [L] Some phones will still display the HTML page, so I took all graphics off my page. The resulting page, optimized for hand held devices, has the added benefit of being accessible to text readers for the blind. Rose Lacy http://webrosedesign.com/ ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Alex Hughart Subject: Outsourcing > ... when spending money [make] absolutely certain > that at least 15% of that money is spent on US > made goods and US owned companies. - Rick Gortatowsky, LED 2114 Oh, boy... If I only knew how to differentiate '100% US-owned companies' from '30% US-owned' companies... It's not enough I agonize every single day in a grocery store over 'organic', 'fat-free' and 'all-natural' products. There is no way in hell I can ever know for sure what I'm getting in that can of soup - unless, I have a mini lab at home complete with a chemist on board. Same goes for any other product. Pardon my cluelessness but, are there any other ways to solve this global issue? Maybe, like, you know, globally? Alex Hughart -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Outsourcing Response to Rick Gortatowsky 2114 I have every sympathy with what Rick is saying. His heart obviously bleeds for his country. I am afraid that his solutions are closing the stable door after the herd of horses, cows, pigs and chickens are far gone. We are living in a Global economy. That cannot be changed by either sticking our heads in the sand and pretending we can just carry on the way we have been for decades nor can it be changed by pulling in our activities and buying from our neighborhood manufacturers. That will increase the spiral. What America cannot compete on is the playing field of cheap, highly trained people resources or cheap working labor. Where we can compete, and where our strengths have always been is having creative highly trained people who are inventive problem solvers. While this is not confined to mathematical fields by any means, it is engineers, programmers and the ilk that are at the forefront today. As The World is Flat author repeats from an interview with an Intel executive "Our product is made of sand and brains; and we have plenty of sand." We in America have not been able to meet from within our shores the needed talent in the brains department. For decades we have been luring students to our Universities from other countries as well as luring them directly to jobs in the US to supply our need for expertise that we ourselves are not providing. Look at how the average age of NASA scientists has been growing upwards. As I understand it, our government in Washington is not only not increasing the funding for American students to get this education, but are actually cutting it in real terms. Apparently it takes 16 years to take a kid in grade school and produce an effective engineer. So if we want to stay in the forefront of the world economy, (and I agree we are slipping badly and the future does not look good as we become obese sitting in front of our big screen TVs (made where?) eating fat and sugar ladened goodies, indulging ourselves in every gadget and goody put in front of us) the hungry, motivated and very bright students in India, China, Russia and many other countries who can work on projects all linked by the global internet and are trim, slim, energetic and work like crazy to educate themselves (and they appear to be succeeding) will take our place. In many cases, this education is their governmental strategy to push their country ahead. What we need to do as a country with leadership from Washington, is to invest in our future - education! An investment today still will not pay off for a decade or two, but the speed at which the world is changing, if we don't do it now at grade school level and above, we will be the world's door mat in not very many years to come. And then discussions about such politically charged smoke screen buttons as gay marriage and abortion will seem petty in contrast. Meanwhile the billionaires' club is growing, the gap between rich and the middle classes not to mention the poor is growing exponentially, funds that could be used to dynamically super charge this education we so badly need are being borrowed from the Chinese to give taxes back to the top 2% of our citizens, the interest on which the other 98% have to pay. Is this really smart? Is it going to solve our country's global competitive problems in this and the next decade? As a country we need to wake up. I agree totally with Rick on that. Just differ a bit on the solution. But this education has to be targeted to the fields where it is really needed. We really don't need more potters or photographers like myself. The very global network of optical cables and the technology to allow us to send huge quantities of information back and forth that has given us in this LED Digest our jobs, has also provided the competition from around the world for our jobs. We have to figure out what we can do better than someone who is just as capable of building a web site in Bejing or Bangalor. That's tough if all we know how to do is program a site. We have to figure out what the "Added Value" is that we provide. Unlike a plumber or carpenter whose work cannot be outsourced to China, our jobs can and are being done anywhere in the world, for better or worse. So, like a plumber or carpenter, what do we know how to do that can only be done here in our community? Any ideas anyone? I have a feeling it is in the"intellectual property" field such as branding, marketing, face to face sessions with clients to work out not a web site but how a web site can answer business based problems, cut down on errors, save waste, give customers to the site their own added value, etc. What a web site should be before graphics are created and before the site is ever built. In an era when everyone's nephew or grandchild can actually produce a web site, what makes ours different from theirs? I'd like to hear from other LEDers their thoughts on that. For example, this changes the discussion a bit about cell phone friendly sites - how to? - to "should my client be making his site cell phone / PDA friendly?" in the first place. What is the ROI in doing so? Is it premature? Who is the audience? Are people actually going to make buying decisions on a million dollar lath by looking at a site on their cell phone? If they do view the site on their cell phone is the site viewed this way actually making the sale or just locking it in? Can it be used to tip the balance over into a sale for example by showing the product to their committee members that can lock in a sale? Provide that little extra push. Might they very well buy movie tickets on their cell phone on the way to picking up their date? Then the questions becomes OK, now how do I do it and how much is it going to cost? Is the return worth the investment? Perhaps this is where we can be of Added Value to our clients. But this takes additional education ourselves to provide. Perhaps we need to form small groups with members who can bring a greater breadth of expertise to the our clients to convince them to keep their web business here instead of off shoring it. (Can we say "off shoring"?) I think all comes down to education, initial and continuing, if we, as a country, want to stay competitive in this millennium. We just cannot turn the clock back. Instead we have to move forward faster, better; provide more value in ways we Americans, British, Europeans can do. I say this because although my perspective is particularly American, in this arena we are really talking about all the industrial countries that have been at the forefront since the industrial revolution, not just Americans. We are in a different revolution today, but one just as profound. As rich countries, we have had the where-with-all to provide a social safety net to our citizens, some more than others. But that safety net costs money that makes our products more expensive. If we want to be competitive in the coming years, we have to examine many things that contribute to making us uncompetitive in this global economy as well as things that make us more competitive. Peter D'Aprix ------------------------------------------------------- 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. "Many journeys end here, but the secret's told the same. Life is just the candle, and a dream must give it flame." - The Fountain of Lamneth, Rush |
