| LED Digest 2240: How Will SEO Evolve? |
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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 ............................................. September 6, 2006 Issue no. 2240 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Search Guru ==-- ~ Eric Ward "I push my clients to become self sufficient." ~ Shari Thurow "I wonder how SEO as a discipline is going to evolve..." ~ Detlev Johnson "...a good guru can save you a tremendous amount of wasted time and energy..." --== Small Business Sites ==-- ~ Mark Whitman "Has anyone else taken a hit due to not buying keywords?" --== Income from Affiliate Marketing? ==-- ~ Steve Pronger "My honest advice is forget HyperVRE and similar 'Adsense site' builders." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Satellite Internet & Bandwidth ==-- ~ Tom Seedhouse ~ Will Bontrager ~ John Smart --== MetroHorse ==-- ~ Jim Berry From: Eric Ward Subject: Search guru Nathan's comments [issue 2239] struck a cord with me. I've always felt SEO "experts" had a tendency to act in their own best interests, even if it cost their clients money. Many of you'all know me from the earliest days of web promotion. I'm the guy Jerry Yang had to create the very first "web promotion" category for at Yahoo when he was still in college. Hard to imagine a time when there wasn't a category for that, eh? At SEO conference presentations I always make a point to say something along these lines... "Anyone can be an SEO 'expert'. There are no secrets. It's all there for you to learn. You must simply be willing to roll up your sleeves, get online, and devote the time to learn it. Age is not a factor, nor education. It's about a willingness to try and most importantly, refusing to get complacent after you have a little success. I spend as much time online now studying it as I did 14 years ago." Here's a true story. In 1997 one of the most famous golf courses in the US decided to launch an ecommerce site to sell clothes, hats, etc. with their logo. They had such brand recognition that they could literally do everything wrong and still succeed. And they did both. After they had launched, they fired their SEO firm and invited me to do a full online marketing review / audit for their site. During the process of analyzing what they had done to date, I asked them how it was that their site was already listed in several search engines and directories. The VP in charge told me that the SEO firm they had hired had previously implemented (their word, not mine) what they called a "Strategic Search Engine and Directory Insertion Service". I asked them what they were charged for that, and she did not know, but thought the details were somewhere in the contract. I asked if I could have a look and she forwarded to me a 50 page document that did in fact detail what was involved. I promise I am not making this up. They were charged $4,500 for the following "Strategic Search Engine and Directory Insertion Service" Submission to Lycos Infoseek Webcrawler AltaVista Yahoo EiNet Galaxy WWW Worm NCSA What's New Page That, my friends, is it. Eight submissions (all free back then, BTW), and charged them $4,500. (and not to be picky, but where's HotBot? HotBot actually mattered once) I didn't have the heart to tell the person in charge just how badly they had been overcharged, but it was at that time I first realized that SEO's weren't all to be trusted. In this case the marketing department at the golf club was so clueless to the emerging online world that they trusted the SEO firm without asking any questions, and the SEO firm likely took advantage of this to the tune of charging $4,500 for what should have cost, well, not even $450 or $45. In those days I could make those 8 submissions in two minutes. I bet many of you on this list could as well. Was this nothing more than a case of buyer beware? Was it that the marketing staff at the club didn't care because they were under pressure to get the ecommerce site live at any cost? I'm not sure what the right answers are, but I do feel that one key reason it happened was that the marketing department "believed the hype" that their SEO firm had the "expertise" to do what they could not do themselves in house. So maybe the question is what is the obligation of the SEO firm when it comes to charging for certain activities when the SEO firm knows the client doesn't know better? Isn't character what you do when you know nobody is looking? I push my clients to become self sufficient. I tell them how easy many tasks are, when to pay and what's a fair price. Many clients just need a few minutes of coaching for the light to come on. If you have never in your life submitted a site to Yahoo it can seem really complex, even for someone with a master's degree. But walk that same person through it one time, and they invariably say "you mean that's all there is to it?" I'm not against making a living, but I am against preying upon ignorance, and the easiest way to do that is to make a task seem complex when it isn't, or likewise let someone believe a task is harder than it really is. Eric Ward http://www.ericward.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Shari Thurow Subject: Search guru Hi all- This is in response to Nathan Holley's post in LED #2239 regarding the "search guru." What a refreshing post. Search gurus existed long before the Internet came into existence. They are more commonly referred to as librarians. Digital librarians also existed long before the Internet came into existence, but the 'net certainly was a catalyst for making digital collections more noticeable in the public eye. As an SEO and a grad student in library / info sciences, I certainly appreciate that Holley did not mean to denigrate SEOs. But I think a large number of SEOs should look in the mirror and really question, "Am I truly a search expert?" I do not believe most of them are. Fine, some of them make a money without having a basic level of search expertise (from technical, research, design, and artistic standpoints), but I do not hold profitability as the main standard of search expertise. That's my bit of snobbery rearing its ugly head. Sorry LEDers. Many SEOs have known about and have implemented the "long tail of search" since the 90s, including myself. Whoop-dee-doo. Someone put a label on it and made it a buzz phrase. Linkage properties is going to be studied for a long time. Search scholars and experts have worked on this in the past and will continue to work on it in the future whether Google is around or not. Information retrieval systems exist outside of the Web arena. Sometimes, non-Web info retrieval principles are applicable to Web applications, and sometimes they are not. It's kind of cool to see what's been done in the past. You want to talk about a group of people who have this really bad attitude toward SEO? Traditional librarians. Believe me, I sometimes sit for the full 2 hours in class with a total look of bewilderment on my face. I have absolutely no idea where these people come up with these crazy ideas about SEOs. They seem to assume that we are all black-hat. Nonetheless, I find it extremely challenging to be an information sciences grad student (who wants to have a librarian's classification skills) when I am surrounded by a group of people whose knowledge of SEO is prejudicial and extremely limited. Likewise, I find that SEOs' knowledge is often limited. I have the humility (if that is the right word) to admit when I don't know something and go about learning what I need to know. I wish many of my colleagues had the same drive to improve their knowledge and skills. That's why I appreciated Holley's post. I wonder how SEO as a discipline is going to evolve. I think it's chaos right now, with black-hat techniques dominating. I have the patience to wait for black-hat techniques to bite people in the behind. In fact, I am an expert witness in a court case right now where a client is suing the black-hat SEO for getting the site banned. Hopefully, it will get publicity. But we'll see. Sorry, not a helpful post. Just my opinion, my 2 cents. Sincerely, Shari Thurow, Webmaster/Marketing Director Grantastic Designs, Inc. http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/tips.html -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Detlev Johnson Subject: Search guru Hello Nathan, > But there are no real secrets in SEO! Everything > you ever wanted to know is available online. - Nathan Holley, LED 2239 Knowledge is power. It takes knowledge and insight to sift through the ramblings of SEO hacks online. That's where a real guru can help. > It's fairly basic, really, and with a little common > sense quite easy to generate quality content that > ranks well by following simple procedures. Yes, but those who use sessions in URLs, (and other impeding characteristics of site architecture), need to incorporate more than simple procedures to accomodate search engines. This is something common that affects the small mom-and-pop and fortune-sized companies alike. The fixes that can be found online vary so widely, that finding your best answer for a particular situation can be likened to finding a needle in a haystack. Whereas a good guru can save you a tremendous amount of wasted time and energy reading through all those hacks. I can also say I've encountered issues and solved problems where I remain confident the solution could not be found online directly. Detlev Johnson, Admin SearchReturn -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Small biz sites > A WYSIWYG editor can do just fine > making pages that rank well. - Rick Gortatowsky, LED 2239 That's a very conditional statement. What if I just want to use graphics only for a web page, or a site created with an older version of Flash, with little or no HTML text. How is a WYSIWYG editor and no knowledge of HTML, CSS or programming going to accomplish that? There's probably always a price to pay in terms of control and capability when using automation. I'm a software engineer as well and as such have seen this many times and I'd be very surprised if you haven't also. Isn't that sort of a programmer's rule of thumb? > ... a software site we had was blasted from Google, MSN, > Lycos and others as the items did too well in search engine > ranking. We were not paid ranks and others were so buh bye. Assuming you didn't *over* optimize this is a very interesting point and one I've been interested in over the years too. Google insists PPC has no impact on a site's natural index placement but I've always been very skeptical of that, never tested it though. Has anyone else taken a hit due to not buying keywords? I'd love to see Google called on this if it's really happening. M.Whitman -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Affiliate marketing > So, if the users never click on Adsense, who is? Are that many > coming from Google searches to amount to $200/month? - Brett Simpson, LED 2239 Brett, Just to clarify and answer a few of the points you raised... That's $200 /year. As I said, it's only drawing local traffic at the moment. No reason it can't get to $200 /month and beyond with the right content and a link building campaign. For example, Keywords Analyzer reports over 27,000 searches / month for "soccer jersey" and a top Adwords exact bid of $8.38. That doesn't mean you'll earn a percentage of that on every click (there are lots of factors which determine earnings), but it's a good indicator of its earning potential. Regarding users clicking on Adsense, I've advised the club committee members that they shouldn't click on the ads at all. But for parents and other interested parties it's ok as long they only click on ads that interest them. I've tried to educate everyone associated with the club in any way that a) every time you click on an ad, the advertiser pays, and that advertiser is paying to drive targeted traffic to their website, not to boost the club's coffers, and b) Google are very good at detecting un-natural clicking patterns, and if that happens, that fundraising channel will be gone for good. So be extremely cautious. That's probably why CTRs thus far haven't been particularly good, and that's also why long term we want to attract visitors to the site who are in no way associated with the club. > I never expected XSitePro to scrape content... I thought > I went to your site earlier, perhaps 5-6 months ago... I gather you're referring to stevepronger.com? This was built with Dreamweaver, not XSitePro. I certainly do optimise images, and there's not many of them on the site. For what it's worth, Alexa report page loading time as "Average (53% of sites are faster), Avg Load Time: 1.9 Seconds". No idea what caused it to load slow on that particular occasion. It is hosted in Australia remember. But, I have found that XSitePro sites are not particularly fast loading. As for layout, all very easy. I just used a standard soccer template supplied with the program. > ... I know all about Ken Evoy (read most of his ebooks)... > in light of what I've said, how would you see building up > my own niche site using HyperVRE compared to XSitePro. If you're familiar with Ken's writings you would agree that he has always advocated building high quality content sites and not going the quick-fix GRQ (get rich quick) route. My honest advice Brett is forget HyperVRE and similar "Adsense site" builders. They're targeting the sort of user that you are not, and the writing's on the wall for them. I mentioned Ken (for LEDers who don't know Ken Evoy he is president of SiteSell.com) in response to Mark Whitman's assertion that small business owners are incapable of building successful sites without employing a professional designer. Site Build It (SiteSell's flagship product) is living proof that is not the case because it empowers SBOs to achieve success by following a proven SYSTEM - an action plan - which will guide them to success. You can get the same results with XSitePro, Dreamweaver or any other editor but you'll have to do the hard yards yourself. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Seedhouse Subject: Satellite Internet > ... I believe that if I get satellite internet service, > if I exceed a certain amount of bandwidth allotted > by the plan I choose, then my connection speeds > go back to those of dialup until the next month? - Sherry Shefaro, LED 2239 Regular reader but not a "poster". Yes, depending upon the plan, there is a fair access policy (FAP) which governs how much you get "down". Satellite is 2 way, slow up and fast down. If you exceed your allotment (daily), then the allotment "fills" at the 'up speed' so it takes some time. Say you download (d/l) a whole bunch of critical updates, you may have taken 1/2 your daily allocation already. I listen to Internet radio and don't think I've ever broken through the allocation. If you want to d/l Vista for example, be prepared for an all day operation as it is well beyond your limit. For my purposes, it's excellent however rain is an enemy as well as snow accumulation. Try to get the dish positioned where you can access it and not 30' up like mine. (I too only have analogue phone lines, no cable and not a candidate for candlelight due to trees.) Regards, Tom Seedhouse -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: Satellite Internet Sherry, I think this page contains information you're looking for: http://www.copperhead.cc/fap.htm We use a DirecWay/Hughes setup for our motorhome's Internet connection. And yes, we've exceeded the usage threshold several times and it can take many hours to get the speed back (but not until the end of the month unless it just happens to coincide). Now, the plan you are considering might have a monthly bandwidth allotment, in which case it might work in exactly the way you fear. Then the above URL might not apply to you. Sherry, note also that uploads through a satellite are much slower than downloads, at least with our setup. We do large uploads in the background while we do other tasks, it can be that slow. Still, uploads are almost always at least several times faster than dialup would be. Will Bontrager http://lightfocus.com/ -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: Satellite Internet I do not know the numbers involved - but you probably won't use all your bandwidth. If you are uploading HTML and some images there should be no problem - if you are uploading large audio / video files, well, even then! How much do you upload? Assuming you are using windows XP, put all your files in one folder, right click on the folder, and select properties. In there you will see size and size on disk. Go with size. How often will you upload? Daily? Multiply this number by 30. What number do you have? If you are up to 2 or 3 gigabytes, then you may have a problem - but if you are on even as much as 100 meg, I am sure that there will be no problem. One problem you may see, some satellite high-speeds can only send data from the satellite, your uploads and requests are sent through your good old trusty 56k modem. If that is the case - it does not matter what your bandwidth limit is, you will see no increase in upload speeds. I hope this helps, John Smart InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Jim Berry Subject: MetroHorse > I am wondering if Jim Berry is connected to [MetroHorse] > in some way and wants LEDer's to provide free feedback. - Bob Sheridan, LED 2239 Bob, My apologies as I didn't properly sign my post. I was only interested in feedback for discussion purposes, but have absolutely no affiliation with this company. We occasionally see these types of "Directories" pop up (they often scrape our content), so we like to hear from others what the viability of this model is. Best regards, Jim Berry, Director of Sales & Marketing http://www.bookkeepinghelp.com jim, bookkeepinghelp.com
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