| LED Digest 2131: Steal These Images |
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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 .............................................. April 4, 2006 Issue #2131 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Structure Validation ==-- ~ Michael Motherwell "If you are like me and have the desire for a life...then let absolute compliance go." ~ Adam Bostock "[Quotes are] good if you want to be compliant with the new XML languages..." ~ Jim King "Reasons to validate..." --== Good Tracking Software ==-- ~ Brad Waller "...check to see if your Web host provides this." ~ Peter D'Aprix "For those who need a quick view of activity which is surprisingly deep..." --== Protecting Images ==-- ~ Robert Bass "Here is a page from my site, try to copy or download these images." --== To Bounce or Not To Bounce ==-- ~ Abu Haider "...a spider may act as if it 'only sees' what is displayed to a visitor." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== WebAwards ==-- ~ William Rice --== Good Books for Web Developers ==-- ~ Steve Pronger --== PPC and High Ranking Sites ==-- ~ Kathryn Martyn Smith ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Michael Motherwell Subject: HTML validation > Can anyone share a *good* reason why I should care whether an HTML > validator likes my use of quotes around multi-word attributes only? - Mark Whitman, LED 2130 There are some questions, Mark, that get far more airplay than they deserve. This is one such question. Does it matter? If you are the sort that thinks small passages in the Bible are valid justification for {INSERT WHATEVER HERE}, then the validation religious debate might be just the online cause for you. Either that or big endian little endianism. If, however, you are like me and have the desire for a life, have laundry that needs doing, loved ones to call and generally a life, then let absolute compliance go, as it is a goal that takes far more effort than it offers rewards. Now, before the full force and rage of this issue is directed towards yours truly, full compliance is a worthy goal and a good idea in theory for a whole stack of reasons, like cross device accessibility and future proofing. But really, if you do most things right, and the validator nit picks like an angry maths teacher, just accept that 100% is a good goal, but not always the best use of one's time or life's energy, especially when there is important work to be done, like watching yet another Simpsons rerun (WYASR for short). Michael Motherwell -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Adam Bostock Subject: HTML validation Hi Mark Adding quotes as shown in your example: <.input type="text" name="item" value="a big box of cool stuff"> .. is good if you want to be compliant with the new XML languages, including the XML version of HTML, which is XHTML. Kind regards Adam Bostock, Innovation Consultant Acro Logic www.acrologic.co.uk -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Jim King Subject: HTML validation Reasons to validate: 1. I update pages a lot, and if I start with valid HTML, it's pretty easy to run the validator and quickly find any typos I may have inadvertently introduced. 2. I find that having valid HTML is a better starting point to get a page to render properly in a variety of browsers. Valid HTML doesn't mean you don't have to work on proper rendering, but having an undiagnosed HTML error is a sure way to frustrate yourself trying to render the page properly. 3. To my knowledge, no search engine representative has ever stated that clean HTML is in the ranking algorithm, but it's possible that some links can be hidden from a robot because of an HTML error. When valid HTML is a criteria, I'm ready. 4. Telling the browser what the doc type is and then faithfully staying with the standard has got to speed up the page rendering. Anytime you ask the browser to parse extra things on the fly, you slow it down. Jim King http://www.borderline-productions.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Tracking software > I am having a hard time choosing a tracking > software package. There seems to be two methods. > One uses the access logs and the other methods > requires pasting HTML on the confirmation page. - Dean Wright, LED 2129 Dean is right that you can choose between analytics programs that are post processed on server logs and those that require HTML (usually JavaScript) to be placed on each and every page on your site. What you want depends on what you need from the data and how popular your site is. Also, check to see if your Web host provides this. I have Webalizer on even the low end hosting packages I have used. Check out this page to see how it works: http://tuviapreschool.org/webalizer/ When you install the software, you need to install it and possibly set up scripts to have it read your log files and update it's database. You can have quite a bit more control, and the cost is fixed. You can run reports from your server or PC. Some of these are fast and some take a really long time. I used WebTrends years ago and it took all weekend to process a month's set of log files (but they were quite large). We switched to Urchin Dedicated (no longer available?) and it was much faster because it ran nightly on the server and had a Web interface to check out the data. NetTracker might be my top choice for a dedicated product today. When you use a service that is "live" and called from every page you have to edit your site to make sure that the script is placed there. This also adds overhead to your site, and it can impact your page load times somewhat. Finally, if it is not a free service, the costs can skyrocket if you have a popular site. Some services can cost from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars a month. I have used (the free) Google Analytics, and I find that it has some really cool features, but does not go into as much detail as I'd like. Urchin let me look at the top 200 pages / terms / paths / etc., but Google only gives me the top 5 or 10. You can buy software such as: NetTracker (http://sane.com/) or WebTrends Analytics 8 http://snipurl.com/on1w [webtrends.com] or use free software such as: Webalizer (http://mrunix.net/webalizer/) or Analog (http://analog.cx/) or AWStats (http://awstats.sourceforge.net/) You can use a hosted service such as: Google Analytics (http://google.com/analytics/) free WebTrends Analytics 8 http://snipurl.com/on1w [webtrends.com] IndexTools (http://indextools.com/) DMOZ Log Analysis Sites http://tinyurl.com/q4e44 [dmoz.org] Yahoo! Directory: http://tinyurl.com/n4vdd [dir.yahoo.com] Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Tracking software As others have already mentioned, the choice depends on what you want from your tracking software. For those who need a quick view of activity which is surprisingly deep for its price (free), www.addfreestats.com, which I found through a recommendation on this same newsletter, does a pretty good job. Yes, you do have to paste the code onto each page and log into the account panel to view the activity, but that is easy enough to do for smaller sites and the price is right. You can pay $75 a year for the version that does not show a thumbnail adlink. The information is presented in a very understandable way, a good, clear user interface. Not a bad program certainly for those with small sites or who are starting up and have never used one before. Peter D'Aprix - Visual Communications http://peterdaprix.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Robert Bass Subject: Image Theft As a pro photographer, the thought of anyone stealing my images turns my stomach. Here is a page from my site, try to copy or download these images. http://www.jewelex.com/bobspix.html Then write to me and I will give you two ways to do what I did. One is free, the other is pay for software. The one you pay for is the best, of course and it is a one time fee. Robert Bass president, jewelex.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Abu Haider Subject: Bouncing > ... I was told the spiders would not be able to > 'read' this email address, as they only 'see' what > is actually on the page, not the code. - Nancy Cardinali, LED 2129 Depending on how it is programmed, a spider may act as if it 'only sees' what is displayed to a visitor. But they always look at the code. For example, a search engine spider like googlebot, would only index what is displayed on your website. If you have hidden text on a page, it will ignore that. But it will look at the HTML code to find that out. But when a spider is designed for the purpose of grabbing email addresses, it will always look at the HTML for something of the format of an email address, regardless of where it is placed, and whether it is displayed or not. When a spider accesses a webpage, it gets the raw HTML code of the page. From a programming standpoint, it is much easier to grab the email addresses from the HTML than to find out what is displayed on the screen. Hope it helps. Abu Haider www.dojolocator.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: William Rice Subject: WebAward Call for Entries Here is a great marketing opportunity to promote your Web sites. The Web Marketing Association has announced the call for entries for its 10th annual international WebAward competition. The WebAwards is the standards-defining competition that sets industry benchmarks based on the seven criteria of a successful Web site. It recognizes the individual and team achievements of Web professionals who create and maintain outstanding Web sites. The deadline for entry is May 31, 2006. A complete list of past winners and this year's entry form can be found at www.Enter-WebAwards.org. Web sites are judged on seven criteria, including design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copy writing and ease of use and receive a numeric score. Each WebAward entry is judged against other entries in its industry category and then against an overall standard of excellence. Entrants also benefit from receiving valuable feedback from the WebAwards professional judging panel on their Web site development efforts. Winning a WebAwards is a great way to create buzz for your Web site and can be used as the hook in advertising and PR campaigns. William Rice -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Good books > Of course my websites are still so ugly that the contextual > ads are for design schools, www.anyhoo.com for example. - John Brumage, LED 2130 John, I have to admit I have no idea what that page is about. But this line at the bottom cracked me up: "Only 370,080 people have had the misfortune of seeing this page." It's good to see something all too rare in these discussions - a sense of humour. Ugly schmugly. You get my vote. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Kathryn Martyn Subject: High Ranking and PPC > ... I have a feeling that I'm competing > with myself and paying for it. - Alex Hughart, LED 2125 It depends whether you consider the value of the "other" sites displaying those ads, outside Google search. You already rank high in Google, so there's no need to pay for ads on that page. I don't think it's true that people don't see beyond the sponsored links at the top of the page. Most people I know don't even "see" them since they are sponsered. It's the text that gets into Google that's important. Using Google I find your site No. 6 for the phrase, "french soap" with the text reading: Over 500 bath soaps from around the world: French soap, scented soap, natural soap. Gift boxes, travel size soap, free samples. On that same page, your PPC ad says, "French Soap at Bon Savon A wide selection of French soaps. 600 luxury bars from 15 countries. Not much difference so which would people click? The thing is, the list on the right costs you money, while the list on the left does not, and people will often click the links on the right because the text is more compelling. You could always drop a search term for a few weeks then measure the difference. That's the only way you'll know for sure. Personally, if I already rank high, I wouldn't pay for those keywords or phrases. I list 44 at Google for the phrase "weight loss program" which currently has over 73 million competing sites and No. 1 (usually) for the phrase "eft weight loss" so there's just no point paying for those terms, IMO. At the same time another site using the same phrasing (eft weight loss) was listed in the top 10 yet also had a PPC ad, and I often wondered what was the point? Since she continued the practice for a long time, I had to assume it was making economic sense so the proof is in those stats. Kathryn Martyn Smith, M.NLP Ending Emotional Eating, One Bite at a Time http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.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. "Be gentle to all and stern with yourself." - Teresa of Avila |
