| LED Digest 2117: Variety is the Spice of SEO Life |
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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 15, 2006 Issue #2117 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== URL Naming ==-- ~ Magnus Brättemark "The advice I have seen...is that the URL has no importance at all." ~ Mike Banks Valentine "Variety is the spice of life." --== AdSense ==-- ~ Brad Waller "...you are putting all your eggs in one basket." --== Reputable SEO/M Services? ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "...I do use link building as part of an overall strategy for my own sites and clients..." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Outsourcing ==-- ~ Will Bontrager ~ Alex Hughart --== Fighting Spam ==-- ~ Joe Black ~ Tom Aman ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Magnus Brattemark Subject: URL naming > In regards to SEO... How important is it to have > the product name or description in the URL? Is > it important, borderline, or not important? - Chris Oberst, LED 2115 Hi Chris, The advice I have seen from various SEO experts is that the URL has no importance at all. My own experience makes me doubt this. I made the architecture for my site long before I learned about SEO. Now I would like to change, but I'm afraid it might be too late since too many incoming links would be obsolete. My site comes in three languages and I named the folders by the name of the language. When Google serves up ads they often display ads about English language schools on pages where the only keyword reference to English is the URL, the same goes for Spanish language schools on the Spanish pages and Swedish language schools on the Swedish pages. If anyone knows how to change the wording in the URL without losing the incoming links, then I would be really happy! Best regards, Magnus Brattemark Alfa Travel Guide - Central America www.alfatravelguide.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mike Banks Valentine Subject: URL naming In regards to putting your keywords in the domain name, filenames and dynamic path (via URL rewrite rules on database calls). I suggest that you simply do some searches for your targeted keyword phrases and look at the top ten or twenty results. The URL is displayed by Google in green text and you can simply review what is working for those top ranked sites. All industries are not the same and what works for a less competitive keyword phrase will rarely work as a single tactic for highly competitive phrases. So don't spend a lot of time applying that single tactic because your keyword searches show all the top ranking sites doing that one thing. While you are at the top sites you have to look at whether they use all the other ingredients to effective SEO. The really critical thing to focus on was how Chris Oberst asked the question: > How important is it to have the product name or description > in the URL? Is it important, borderline, or not important? Chris is obviously aware that there is a range of possibility. Among the choices offered, the answer would have to be "borderline" because the assumption is made by many that there is a single technique that will catapult sites to the top ten. That is simply not true and in most cases, concentrating on single techniques to the exclusion of all others is at best ineffective, and at worst considered sp*m. The word I like to use instead of "borderline", is "incrementally important." Yes it can have a positive effect on ranking to include your keywords in the URL. But if you don't include those same keywords in your title tags, description tags, alt text, headline, body text and text hyperlinks - you are just diddling with ingredients instead of cooking a meal. If you don't have worthwhile *internal links* connecting important related pages, you have forgotten to turn on the oven. If you don't cook each page individually and instead apply the same recipe to every meal (page), you are eating the same dish every meal. If you don't have inbound links from external sites, you'll be eating alone. Variety is the spice of life. Don't get stuck at the fast food joints (single tactic SEO) unless you want to spend all your money on happy meals (Pay-Per-Click). Mike Banks Valentine http://realityseo.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Brad Waller Subject: AdSense [was: Passion] > Then, last summer, a friend said, try Google AdSense. > The results were instant... I trust Google for my retirement > more than I trust Social Security. - John "zeke" Brumage, LED 2115 Zeke, I fully agree that AdSense can really help sites like yours that are having trouble making money. We use it as well as many others. But you are leaving a lot on the table with your site as it is. You should spend some time researching AdSense to see what works best. I think you could change your site layout and integrate the ads better and substantially improve your earnings from AdSense without doing anything against their rules. That said, you are still letting Google set your maximum revenue, and you are putting all your eggs in one basket. You should diversify and see what other ads (contextual, affiliate, and even network) can do for you. It can be a lot of work to test and swap out creatives (unless you have a management service or program), but the rewards can be worth it. Also, you should try to sell the space yourself. Set your rates to be 2x to 5x what you get a day from AdSense and if you make a few sales you are ahead. You really have nothing to lose. Brad Waller Manage your existing ads and Sell your site too http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: SEO services > Now, I'm not trying to say that inbound links are not a good > thing because they are to a certain extent provided they can > be seen, but they are truly not needed for good SE ranking. - Tony Gschwend, LED 2116 Tony, all very interesting, but how can you be sure that the link campaign already conducted is not influencing the results months after you added "relevant keywords, descriptions, and copy, plus adding alt tags to images not part of the template"? I'm not questioning your SEO expertise, but if you're offering this info as evidence that inbound links are "truly not needed" I'd like to see a bit more detail in your argument. For instance: Can you give us the URLs of the sites you are referring to? How was the link campaign conducted? How many inbound links were obtained? Were they from indexed, high PageRank, relevant pages? What keywords were targeted and what anchor text was used? Were these the same keywords you targeted? How much competition is there for these keywords, particularly the ones where a "product and the area that the company services" is combined? How many searches are conducted for these combined terms? It could well be that the person who conducted the link campaign did not do it well, or really didn't know what they were doing. That doesn't mean that inbound links are truly not needed for good SE ranking. I have no doubt that what you did was effective and should have been done in the first place. But it's worth noting that the #1 site for "vinyl siding" is a PageRank 6 and has 645 reported backlinks on Google. Would it be there without those inbound links? Can you move your site from "first five" to page 1 for "vinyl siding" by just tweaking on-page content and no link development? > What some people need to do instead of flying off the > roof and saying "Once again, Michael, you've advised > someone to not buy what I sell"... I don't sell link building services. If anyone approaches me for such services I politely decline. Too much like hard work. I simply do not agree with Michael Martinez's assertion that link building is a waste of time (please don't tell me I'm putting words in his mouth - he has stated this many times in LED). But I do use link building as part of an overall strategy for my own sites and clients I've designed sites for. Why? It works for me. Simple really. > 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. - Michael Martinez, LED 2115 True, good search engine rankings on keywords no one is searching for don't do anyone any good. But at least 4,224 people searched for "baby food recipe" last month. Obviously a high SE ranking on those keywords will bring good volumes of visitors who will be interested in Claudia's book, which presumably is the reason she put up her site in the first place. Links matter. You need them. Let's have a look at the #1 ranked site on Google for "baby food recipe": http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com PageRank 5 Reported Google backlinks: 72 Alexa rank: 153,561 Anchor text analysis (these are the top 6 words contained within the links that point to this site): Food - 76.3% 176 links Baby - 76.3 % 176 links Make - 51.3% - 78 links Homemade - 46.1% 70 links And - 41.4% 63 links Recipes - 39.5 % 60 links Google ranking for "home made baby food" - 3 What do these stats mean? Quite simply, this site receives good volumes of targeted traffic, and the links which point to it play a significant role in that result. Just having a quick look at some of the linking pages I see baby-themed blogs, baby shower sites etc. In other words, they are relevant. But of course links are not the only factor. That site has around 203 original, content-rich pages. So it's a simple formula Claudia: Lots of good content + lots of relevant, keyword-targeted links = high SE rankings on those keywords = targeted visitors = sales. Just a few suggestions for your site Claudia. The home page is mostly made up of graphics. There is very little text for the search engines to read. Search engines can't read pictures, only words. Replace that big graphic with lots of keyword-rich, benefit-laden text. Add some baby food related articles. Submit some articles to article directories such as ezinearticles.com - this will generate interest, traffic and those all important backlinks. Submit to the directories. Find some good quality, relevant linking partners. [Linking] still works if done PROPERLY. Actually, I'd imagine that generating a profit from selling a $7.95 book would be pretty difficult. It would be hard to attract affiliates at that price as well. I'd consider adding the content from your book to your site, and generate profits using AdSense and affiliate programs for related products. Oh, and the image links are broken on the Recipe of the Month page. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Will Bontrager Subject: Outsourcing For Rick Gortatowsky 2114, Peter D'Aprix 2115, Nancy Schettler 2116, and other LEDers interested in this subject. This LED thread has been enlightening. I thrill when I see sane, well thought-out responses to a political problem. As business people, we must operate within the existing political climate or not operate at all. In addition to presenting views here, and encouraging LEDers to have a look at certain possible solutions, let's also write a letter to the President of the United States of America. It might or might not be read. But if it is not sent, it most certainly will not be read. Mari and I built TellThePresident.US a few weeks ago for the purpose of encouraging folks to write. There are no ads and we make no money from it. Some people do give us permission to publish their message, most of which we make available on a separate page, soon to span multiple pages. In essence, the web site takes the input from a form and formats a letter ready to print and mail. Question, for answering here or privately (contact link at the site): We've thought about providing a service of also mailing the letters. The price would be pretty much at cost. Do you think offering such a service would make the site seem like a commercial enterprise? The web site is our way of encouraging communication with the highest political power of the USA. Please take advantage of any opportunity you have to encourage your contacts to write a letter to the office. Whether or not the letters themselves do any good, the feeling of being involved, even in a small way, might help to alleviate the general malaise I'm sensing as we RV around different parts of this country of ours. I know, a letter could be composed and printed with a word processor. But will you? Will Bontrager -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Alex Hughart Subject: Outsourcing > Personally, I find that what troubles me the most > is that growing gap between rich and poor. - Nancy Schettler, LED 2116 Nancy, you are absolutely right. The gap between rich and poor is one of the biggest problems in today's world and on all levels: within as well as between countries. Personal involvement, no matter how small, is a great thing and we've seen throughout history how one person can change the world. The question is what is it that we want to change and how. This particular issue is so complex and it can be viewed from so many angles. After all, we live on a speck of cosmic dust called Earth and it will only behoove us to consider all people on this planet to be our neighbors. I am not saying this as some wide-eyed hippy-dippy nor am I some big corporate CEO who likes to call her greed "globalization". Economic crisis and shifts are happening since the first exchange of goods happened. If you guys have time and will, read about the Great Depression http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression It is fascinating (and humbling) to see how delicate economic and political balance truly is on a global level. Historians and economists are still debating the causes of the Great Depression but they all agree that Smooth-Hawley Tariff Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley_Tariff_Act if not caused it, deeply worsened it by reducing international trade and causing a tariff war to erupt. I believe that a vast majority of people anywhere on the planet will prefer to live peacefully and be able to work and feed their families with what they earn. By eradicating poverty and ignorance anywhere in the world, our collective future will look brighter. If nothing else, we should look beyond our borders for a very selfish reason: more jobs and books, less time and desire to burn flags and plot terrorist attacks. Then, we'll be left to deal with remaining thrill-seekers and sociopaths and there are enough of those to keep any concerned citizen busy. Of course, I might be totally wrong in my opinion but, who cares, it's just an opinion posted on some web forum. Alex Hughart -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Joe Black Subject: Taming a Spammer Hi Adam and Everyone, I am a LED subscriber for years now. I just wanted to share with you a recent episode I had with a spammer on my web site's forums. This might be of interest to others who read this newsletter. My site's forum, which will remain unamed, was spammed by a porn site owner/employee. The culprit developed a script that would post on my forum (YABB) 75-100 messages, all identical, in about 10 minutes. The software would grab an existing set of topic titles and punch out an identical set of titles with his spam message and link to his porn site in the message. This mess took me 2 hours to clean up. After being spammed for the second time in 24 hours, I contacted his ISP, hosting company, domain company and his credit card gateway, all by the "abuse@" email address. Got the typical canned email replies from each. When he spammed me the third time in 24 hours, I picked up the phone. I called the tech support department at his hosting company first, spoke with an tech who took my problem seriously and gave me other numbers to call in his company. Then I called his domain company, same technique, tech support. Afterwards, a call to the tech support at his credit card gateway. While I never received further contact, his web site was taken down for 8 hours and I have had no more spam attacks from this person. Keys I found were: ISP: Logged IP was used via RIPE whois - http://www.ripe.net/perl/whois Hosting Company: used http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jhtml and looked up the name servers, repeated with name servers URL to get techincal support contact and phone. Domain host: found with [the same link as above] and went to their site and found tech support contacts Credit Card Gateway: I went to the offending web site to "become a customer" and observed the URL of the gateway company after clicking the 'buy' or 'signup' button. Then went to credit card gateway's web site and called tech support, got numbers and names to call. Only with the phone calls to tech support and speaking with a concerned person(s), there and elsewhere in the company, did I get help. They dont want their company to be seen as supporting spammers and all have policies about people who spam and have accounts on their system. Maybe this will stop him from doing this to others web sites/forums. I hope this will help someone else who's web site is under spam attacks. Very Truly Yours, Joe Black -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Fighting spam > Unfortunately what many do not realize is that by > clicking an unsubscribe button they may well end > up being subjected to even more spam! There is > no law saying an unsubscribe link must unsubscribe. - Rick Gortatowsky, LED 2116 Rick, I have a simple request: "prove it". You are repeating the "urban myth" that clicking on an unsubscribe link will get you even more SPAM. That is not true. It probably has never been true. The only ones to benefit from a person not unsubscribing are the list sellers and the list users. If you disagree with that, then supply us with detailed numbers and statistics based on real life experience and hard facts instead of repeating the vague, unsupported statement "may well end up". You say that you have "found in my years many sites that do just that". Again, "prove it". Give us the URLs or names of some of those sites. Let us be VERY clear. Based on my ACTUAL experience and the detailed records that I kept, CLICKING ON THE UNSUBSCRIBE BUTTON RESULTS IN LESS SPAM. It does not result in more. Last time I posted on this subject, my SPAM was averaging 38 per day. It is now down to 25. Of those 25, 6 are in English, 1 has an usubscribe link, the rest I cannot read (as the language is Spanish, Russian, etc.). When I initially started my unsubscribe campaign, I was receiving an average of 295 per day. So I have eliminated 91% of my SPAM by unsubscribing. I have discontinued using a spam filter as I no longer need one. Also, regarding "no law", you are wrong. There is a law saying that an unsubscribe link must unsubscribe. It is known as CAN-SPAM. And if the unsubscribe does not work (or none is supplied), the SPAM can be reported to the FTC (see http://www.ftc.gov/, and click on "File a Complaint"). And they seem happy to accept complaints from outside the US since their online form has provision for specifying your country. 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. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." - Helen Keller |
