| LED Digest 2234: Small Business Sites |
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Some bold statements are made in today's issue concerning the "do it
yourselfer" and Web sites, which raise an important issue: how important are professionally designed sites in light of business success?
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======== CONTINUING ===============================The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration 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 ............................................. August 28, 2006 Issue no. 2234 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== HTML Editor Recommendations ==-- ~ Tom Aman "Load times are not academic for non-broadband users." ~ Kathy Wilson "...the issue with extraneous code [is] how it affects the search engine placement." ~ Mark Whitman "Building [your] own website is as ridiculous as building [your] own brick / mortar store..." --== The Click Fraud Problem ==-- ~ John Barendrecht "...most of us don't monitor our PPC that closely." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Dropped from Google ==-- ~ Judith Baar --== .htaccess and Rewrite ==-- ~ John Smart From: Tom Aman Subject: HTML editors > I think the stated worries about load times > and extraneous code are a bit academic > now that broadband is here with a vengeance. - Phil Chave, LED 2233 Load times are not academic for non-broadband users. As of March 2006, broadband usage in the US was just over 69%, in Canada it was 76%, the UK is slightly less than the US (Another site ranked broadband penetration placing Canada 8th, the US 12th and the UK 13th). While this is a really high percentage, it is still not 100% and page load times can be a problem for non-broadband users. It should be remembered that for many of these users broadband is just not available or not available at any reasonable price. The percentage may look small, but 25 or 30 percent of 1,000,000 surfers is still a lot of people. Tom Aman http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Kathy Wilson Subject: HTML editors To my knowledge, the issue with extraneous code isn't about the additional time it takes to load a page, but how it affects the search engine placement. If the garbage code is at the top of the page, which it typically is, then it pushes all the important keyword-rich text down the page. This indicates to the search engines that the garbage code is more important than the keywords in the text. Love, Kathy Wilson http://www.under-one-roof.net -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: HTML editors > Does hand-coding and W3C make a difference for > search engines, load times, etc.? I'm not sure but I > personally derive a sense of satisfaction when > my code "passes." - Bruce Garrett LED 2232 To use a wide array of SEO techniques hand coding (tagging) with HTML and CSS is essential. If you want to get stealthy then programming is also essential. Strict W3C compliance makes no difference at all (assuming you're using valid HTML). Pages I create probably never get through W3C validation checkers because I refuse to waste time quoting single word tag attributes (quotes are mandatory however for multiple word attributes). Pages I SEO end up in top 10 very often, they display properly in IE, FireFox, Navigator and in hand helds. I have yet to have a problem, that I'm aware of, as a result. Regarding load time, HTML editors add a bunch of useless slop which surely doesn't help load time and if you have a large HTML file that slowdown can be substantial. > Web designers tend to forget that what's important > to them isn't necessarily important to small business > owners. You might think that stripping out code" is > a priority. Small business owners are more concerned > with generating a profit. - Steve Pronger, LED 2232 A small business owner (without professional level website development skills) doesn't have the slightest chance of creating a website that will incorporate effective operational strategies, one that will convert to the max, one that will place well in search engines for effective keywords that searchers actually use, one that incorporates useful tools, or one that is anything but pathetic on all important levels. Website development is not just a matter of putting some text and images on a webpage. Website development is a science and an art, it's not intuitive and it's not something that any software could possibly automate. A small business owner who wants to create a website, and especially one that can't master DreamWeaver, should have the sense to know he's out of his league and needs the help of a professional if he wants the job done properly. Do-it-yourselfers never and I mean NEVER create professional level websites in terms of getting the best results possible from the site. Building their own website is as ridiculous as building their own brick / mortar store with no construction experience. Small business owners would be well advised to do what they do best, run their business, and if they want a website they should search out someone who can create the most effective website possible for them (that's a challenge in itself). Picking up a copy of DreamWeaver, or whatever, is nothing more than shooting themselves in the foot. The biggest challenge for the business owner who wants a website should be where to find a truly talented developer who can create the most effective, visible website possible. If the business owner doesn't have the common sense to understand that and have a few thousand dollars to spend to have the job done well, my question would be - "so... what are you going to do when you're bankrupt?" :) Then of course we have the affiliate marketers out there. They're a different breed, often bottom feeders with useless sites that pollute the internet, search engine indexes, PPC channels, and many spam (not necessarily via email) in any way they can. All they need is a webpage so they can make a few cents if someone clicks an AdSense or affiliate link. HTML editors are fine for them but hopefully someday they'll be targeted like spammers, they're often (not always) just web pollution instead of email pollution. One of the few things I like about Google is that Google has taken steps to help make that happen. Mark Whitman -------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Click fraud I think David Yancey is right on the money [issue 2232] when he says click fraud is a big deal. Although a previous poster suggested we could vote with our money and disable non-profitable terms, most of us don't monitor our PPC that closely. Also we don't have the resources to monitor as thoroughly as David. It is only when the useless clicks become very obvious that we take action. I wonder if useless clicks are like icebergs, we only see the top 10%? I advertise PPC with several vendors, so my comments are not necessarily to Google. I used to advertise "Flea" (Red Hot Chili Peppers) and got a few targeted clicks per month. Lately, I am getting hundreds of clicks per month for "fleas". You can clearly see how the plural is not same as singular. Our title and description is about music, not pests. So why are we getting all these clicks? Humans or bots? I have no choice but to remove this keyword. Unfortunately, this also removes the legitimate PPC traffic. This costs both the PPC search engine and me in lost sales. Also we had keywords where 99% of the browser type was Microsoft URL Control or Win32, how many surfers use these development controls as browsers? Today, I got a spam where the link was an automatic click through for Google Adsense. I wonder how many would click the link to complain to destination site? Meanwhile, the advertising site makes money and the clicks come from all over. Lately, I am getting the impression (from news articles) that Google thinks the fox should guard the hen house. I am not sure I agree. I am losing confidence in all forms of paid advertising. Best regards, John Barendrecht http://www.centralhome.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Judith Baar Subject: Google > But once the offending files are removed, do any of > you have any idea of how I can get Google back again? - Peter D'Aprix, LED 2225 I think I have a related problem. Google used to pick up my web pages a lot more than now. Maybe the following is one reason. In using various searches I found that portions of my web pages are being used by aggressive marketing and p0rn sites. They extract some words and the various search engines pick up those sites before mine. I contacted a governing body to ask about it, as it is an intellectual property issue. There doesn't seem to be any easy answer so when time permits I need to get emails out and if they don't respond go further. So far I've contacted a couple of seach engines asking for their help but haven't heard back. I've put off contacting directly to avoid being spammed. Always seems like there are some bad guys messing things up. Any advice out there? Judith Baar JBsImages.us -------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: htaccess > ... how do you (a) analyze the productiveness of a > site that utilizes this engineering and (b) how do > you receive top rank indexing without getting sited > as a spam site? Aren't you after all, spoofing the bot? - Cheryl Berry, LED 2233 Rating the effectiveness shouldn't be too hard. You could log what version they are seeing - suppose this is an ecommerce site, just add a line to the receipt that has a code in it (hs = high speed, etc) then you will see which ones give you the most conversions. Otherwise, you could use the rewrite display tool to redirect to a separate folder for each variant - so if some one is coming in fairly quickly they will see what is shown in your log file as domain.com/highspeed/index.php whereas Mr & Mrs 56k would see domain.com/standard/index.html As for 'spoofing' bots, that is always a fear, and one I cannot answer. I have a cleaner version of some pages to help the bots read it, no flash, no java etc. I figured if I got caught, they would see I was just trying to help and not penalize me. But I have no evidence to add to this whatsoever other than the site I am trying it on is still in google (and doing just as badly as it was before I started down this path!) htaccess can be disabled, some ISP's (especially on shared servers) will not let you tinker with .htaccess files, because you have the power to wreak havoc with them - .htaccess could almost be compared to the windows registry file, and if you tinker with it you can stop services that you need. That said, many virtual servers do let you htaccess (normally giving you just enough rope to hang yourselves) We let clients play with .htaccess, because the results can often be very interesting! One .htaccess trick you should all know and have: Inside your .htaccess file: ErrorDocument 404 /404.html This will show a custom 404 page if someone gets a page not found rather than seeing a dull error page, they can get a menu helping them to find what they are looking for. I hope that helps, John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World
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