LED Digest 2191: Selling on Amazon

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List Moderator: Published by:

Adam Audette LED Digest

adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com

..............................................

June 27, 2006 Issue no. 2191

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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....

======= NEW =====================

--== Selling on Amazon ==--

~ Nancy Schettler

"Has anyone had any experience selling

products on Amazon.com...?"

==== CONTINUING =================

--== The Case of the Missing Web Site ==--

~ Reg Charie

"I did a detailed Whois and found that the main

webhost is..."

~ Veronica Yuill

"...this episode demonstrates the importance

of keeping backups of your site..."

~ Sarah Hayes

"We are...based...only a few miles from both

Beckenham and Biggin Hill..."

~ Derek Andrews

"I would suggest that you rescue as much as

possible from Google cache."

--== How Important are H1 Header Tags? ==--

~ Valerie Beeby

"It would be nice to know if the search engines

really, really did ignore CSS files."

~ Michael Martinez

"The Hx header tags can help, but they don't

appear to be necessary."

==== BILLBOARD ===================

--== Software to Create 3D Images ==--

~ Paul Dobie

--== Domain Formation & PageRank ==--

~ Dave Mead

========== NEW ===================================

From: Nancy Schettler
Subject: New Post - Selling on Amazon.com

Has anyone out there had any experience selling products on
Amazon.com as opposed to just selling them on their own website?

Mine is just a general merchandise product, not a book or other
media item.

I guess it is a question of whether you think that someone would
begin their online shopping search by going first to Amazon, as
opposed to just doing a general search at Google or Yahoo or MSN. Or
maybe is is an issue of Amazon having brand name recognition & a
good name, versus us unknown little companies on the web?

Nancy Schettler

A Well Dressed Kitchen
www.awelldressedkitchen.com

======== CONTINUING ===============================

From: Reg Charie
Subject: Site disappearance

> My website with 2.5 million unique visitors per
> year has 'disappeared'... the developers seem
> to have gone... can't raise them on landlines,
> cell phones, their premises is closed and I'm
> stuffed basically.
        - Dirk van der Werff, LED 2190

Sorry about your predicament.

The first thing I have to ask is, "Do you have a backup saved on
your local machine?"

It sounds like the business you used for hosting has just closed
their doors and cancelled their hosing services with their supplier.
I did a detailed Whois and found that the main webhost is
ukdnsservers.co.uk that hosts 38,000 domains. They are still in
business.

Your Whois shows the admin at http://www.powerhost.co.uk/ to be the
domain admin, specifically Fibranet Services Limited. The link to
them is a 400 so this seems to be the business that went MIA.

However the Tech admin is done by http://www.freeparking.com/ and
they are still in business so it is these people I would contact.
Free parking and ukdnsservers resolve to the same webpage.

I suspect your hosting company leased their server from this company
and they still may have a backup or can transfer you to a new host.

Hope this helps.

Thank You,

Reg Charie
www.dotcom-productions.com

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Veronica Yuill
Subject: Site disapperance

Very sorry to hear about your disappearing website, Dirk. What a
disaster! But are you saying you have *no* backups of any of the
information on it?

I'm not sure I can offer much help in that case. Are your developers
the same people as your webhost? If not, contact the host ASAP and
ask if they have backups they can provide you with. Just as
important, are you the registrant and/or admin contact for the
domain name? If so, at least you have control of that and can move
to another host if necessary. Otherwise you'll need to contact the
registrar and prove your right to the name (e.g. by writing a letter
on headed notepaper).

As a last resort, you could visit the Wayback Machine
http://www.archive.org and search for pages from your site there.
This won't give you back your database, but at least you could save
static copies of some of your pages:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://plants-magazine.com

There are about 30 pages dating from 2005 there, but none from 2006.

It's not much help to you now Dirk, but this episode demonstrates
the importance of keeping backups of your site, especially if it's a
dynamic one with a database behind it. Reputable developers should
have provided you with a CD containing all the files from your site
on completion of development (that's what we do). Otherwise you
should take the precaution of FTP-ing all of the site to your
computer on completion or after any significant modification, and
saving the files safely somewhere. For database backups, better
webhosts often have a backup facility in the control panel so that
you can download compressed backups on a regular basis. And finally,
never, ever allow a host or developer to register your domain in
their name!

HTH (but I don't think it does, much!)

Veronica Yuill

Archetype IT
http://www.archetype-it.com/english/

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Sarah Hayes
Subject: Site disapperance

Hi Dirk van der Werff,

I'm sorry to hear you've experienced problems.

I quick Whois look up shows that the domain name is registered to
Aquilegia Publishing in Hartlepool and the domain administrator is
Fibranet Services Limited in Beckenham Kent. They also appear to
have offices / addresses in Beckenham and Biggin Hill Kent. The
current registrar of your domain name is MelbourneIT who are a well
established company.

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?whoistoken=4

http://snipurl.com/sc6d [195.66.240.211/cgi-bin/whois.cgi]

We are a web design company based in Bromley Kent which is only a
few miles from both Beckenham and Biggin Hill so if you need any
help trying to make contact with any of these addresses please do
not hesitate to contact me via our website.

Your website should still be on a server somewhere and it may be
possible for you to make contact and gain access to the pages,
databases etc. I can highly recommend a well established local
company to me called Areti Internet (www.areti.net) who have helped
me in the past when I haven't been able to contact the current
hosting company.

Best regards,

Sarah Hayes
www.bromleynet.co.uk

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Derek Andrews
Subject: Site disapperance

I think your first approach should be to contact the web hosts,
unless of course they are the missing developers too. They may have
a backup or be able to shed some light on why the site has gone.

You might also try tracking down the personal details of the
developers. Assuming they are a bona fide business you should be
able to find who owns it.

Failing that, I would suggest that you rescue as much as possible
from Google cache. They looked at your home page 23 Jun 2006
05:08:36 GMT. Google found 437 pages in your domain, so it may be a
big job. This won't help much with the database, but at least you
will have the content, if you don't already have personal copies.

I also see that the domain is about to expire in August.

Good luck

Derek Andrews, woodturner
http://chipshop.blogspot.com - a blog for my customers
http://www.seafoamwoodturning.com/TheToolrest/ - a blog for woodturners

-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Valerie Beeby
Subject: H1 headers

> ... I think using [H1 header tags] to give a well
> structured page that contains content that people
> want to read and have linked to from elsewhere
> will get you higher in any engine...
        - Dave Mead, LED 2190

Surely the H1, H2, H3 headers are even more important than before in
a site that uses CSS.

It would be nice to know if the search engines really, really did
ignore CSS files. However, if they do, they no longer know if the
formatting of the words on the page has turned out to be bold,
normal or sky blue pink. They can therefore no longer attach
importance according to format.

HTML styles to the rescue. In CSS, custom or 'Class' styles can be
applied anywhere, and are called up by any old name. These may well
be ignored by the spiders.

HTML styles, on the other hand, are called up only by the relevant
HTML tag. This of course appears in the code for the web page, and
not in the external CSS file. So even if an H1 header is instructed
in the CSS file to appear as as tiny, insignificant grey type, the
spiders can still give it prime importance. Whether they visit the
CSS file or not.

Valerie Beeby

Making images small - smaller - smallest
http://www.purple-owl.com

-------- new post - same topic --------

From: Michael Martinez
Subject: H1 headers

> Though great as historical references I don't
> think the first two papers [cited by Michael Martinez,
> LED 2188] are that valid anymore....
        - Dave Mead, LED 2190

There is no way to reverse engineer the ranking algorithm with any
degree of accuracy. But I have tested several elements within the
past few months. This kind of testing consists of creating content
for non-competitive expressions that doesn't depend on linkage to
achieve high rankings.

The Hx header tags can help, but they don't appear to be necessary.

BOLD tags definitely work.

Google's Web Authoring Statistics data
(http://code.google.com/webstats/index.html) indicates that
"standards" are are not nearly as widely used as their advocates
want them to be. Google is definitely interested in understanding
how people organize their data, as it would not serve their purpose
to blindly follow standards if few people are aware of and honoring
those standards.

As I mentioned previously, there is no one killer element.
Everything is weighted in some way. Using a combination of elements
in a natural way is the best approach because it doesn't put all
your eggs into one basket.

Michael Martinez

"Cuando Maria canta, canta para mi"
http://www.michael-martinez.com/
http://michael-martinez.blogspot.com/

==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Paul Dobie
Subject: 3D Models on the Web

I have a client who would like to show his sculptures as rotating 3D
images on his web pages. I am aware of the product range Anything3D
for doing this sort of work. Does anyone have any comments about
this software - or any other recommendations for software that might
do the job. Thank you.

Best Regards

Paul Dobie
http://www.dobie.biz
for web design, web hosting and domain name services

-------- new post - new topic --------

From: Dave Mead
Subject: Domain PageRank

> Go to internetdesign.com and our page rank
> is 0 -- go to www.internetdesign.com and we
> score a 5. Does this have deeper meaning?
        - John Smart, LED 2188

Google could look at that those two domains individually.

Have a look at this posting at the Google Sitemaps blog:
http://snipurl.com/sc6s [sitemaps.blogspot.com]

.. it may be some help.

Dave Mead

DMWebsites.com
Website Design | SEO | Consulting
Affordable, quality driven, standards-based

-------------------------------------------------------

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