| LED Digest 1926: Get Your Google On |
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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 ............................................... February 1, 2005 Issue #1926 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Google Rankings Thread ==-- ~ James Miller ~ Joe Halbrook ~ Lorelle Smith --== Site Submission Software - News? ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen --== Dream Affiliate Programs ==-- ~ Phil Tanny ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Stats Terminology ==-- ~ Martha Retallick ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: James Miller Subject: Google I wonder whether there are problems with certain sites on Google. I have written a demonstration site for my company, which is at www.celiamiller.com. It's just a simple web site for the wife with quite a few images and a few words. The subsidiary image pages seem impossible to find, despite the fact that the site appears to be searched by Google fairly regularly. This site also refuses to go up the list, but where I reference it in sites of mine, like www.daisy2000.com it is much higher. Also if you look at the front page, you would think that the image would be in Google Images. But it is not. But the picture of both or us on my web site is the first picture. I've also put up several other sites at the same time and they are racing up Google. I just wonder whether there is a mistake in one of the pages and Google gives up. Or does Google have a mind of it's own? James Miller Daisy Analysis: www.daisy.co.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Joe Halbrook Subject: Google > I am ending any attempt to get > any position in Google. - Tracy Coyle, LED 1925 > I've stopped using Google when my search requires any kind of > commercial interest. As a matter of fact, I think Yahoo has a more > superior search product since there upgrade a few months ago - Paul Corsi, LED 1925 Paul and Tracy have followed the path of many others. I myself am puzzled why I have yet to see ANY ranking in Google for a new web site I put up 6 weeks ago, despite my usual practices that have proven successful in the past to obtain good ranking in Google. However, let me share an experience with you concerning my rankings in Yahoo! for that same site. I did this: - Optimized my HTML code using the standard structure and template elements I've always used in building web sites. - I created an RSS feed (an XML file) and placed it in the root web directory on that site's server. - I took the option of adding my new RSS feed using the My Yahoo! provision, where I tell Yahoo! want content I want to see on my custom Yahoo! page. Within 2 weeks, and without spending a single cent with Yahoo! for consideration in their engine, I have #1 position to #10 position for all my keywords I was shooting for. Also, Yahoo!'s robot now crawls my site up to four times a day looking for new content. Thus, it's apparent to me that an RSS feed will go a long way when it comes to search engine rankings. I recommend that anyone who is interested in SE ranking, create an RSS feed and submit it through their My Yahoo! account. I would be more than happy to send a sample RSS XML template to anyone who might be interested. Please follow my URL below. Joe Halbrook Permission Technologies http://www.ez-feeds.com ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Lorelle Smith Subject: Google > I am sure those associated with SEO will suggest > I am hurting our results, but there is no rational > explanation for us not being in the first 700 listings. - Tracy Coyle, LED 1925 Tracy, I think I see what your problem is. One of the phrases you'd like cazelaw.com to rank well in Google for -- "bankruptcy help, attorney, madison, wi" appears nowhere on the site. The phrase "bankruptcy help" appears only once on the home page, and not in the Title tag, so the page can't be considered optimized for that phrase. The word "bankruptcy" does appear 6 times in the text, but it's VERY rarely wise to optimize for a single keyword. Also, the home page is a hub for your office's various practices, so don't expect it to rank well for any one keyword phrase -- it lacks focus. That's fine, as it's the natural order of things. You've done the right thing in linking each area of practice to a single page. Those interior pages are what you need to concentrate on optimizing. Have you done any keyword research? According to Wordtracker, no one has made any searches containing the words "bankruptcy" together with "Madison" in the past 60 days. However, 27 searches have been conducted for "wisconsin bankruptcy lawyer attorney" - 16 for "wisconsin bankruptcy law" - and 15 for "wisconsin bankruptcy." On your home page as well as the bankruptcy page, the word "Wisconsin" appears only twice, and not in relation to "bankruptcy." Therefore, your site was not probably not found by those 58 searchers, 27 of whom want exactly what you have to offer. The phrase "bankruptcy help" doesn't even appear on the bankruptcy page. Those counts aren't high, but Wordtracker predicts that roughly the same number of searches are done per day across all engines, including Google. At least the first one would bring well-targeted traffic. And of course, you don't need thousands of hits from the search engines since you're geographically limited to serving only a small number. Of those 27 searchers per day, if only one converted into a customer, wouldn't you be happy? That's one new law client per day. Also consider that "bankruptcy" is an extremely hard word for most people to spell. In the past 60 days, 502 people have searched for "bankrupcy" - 161 for "bankruptsy" - and 106 for "bankrupsy." Now, I wouldn't suggest you purposely misspell the word to gain that traffic, because 1) it looks unprofessional and 2) Google does prompt the searcher with the correct spelling. However, you might have reached those 769 bad spellers if you had taken out an ad in Google AdWords. Using geotargeting, you could even get just people in Wisconsin searching for help with declaring bankruptcy. When you see a seemingly irrelevant page ranking well for a search term, it's often due to their backlinks. Here's a good example: When you search on "miserable failure" in Google, the first page that comes up is President Bush's bio page. This is due to a technique bloggers and other sites use called "Google-bombing." That is, you won't find the term "miserable failure" anywhere on GW's bio page -- it's only ranked #1 because so many anti-Bush sites used it in their anchor text linking to the page. Whenever you're not ranking well in Google, you have to consider whether the keyword phrases you're targeting are just too competitive. I'm in the camp that believes that Google is no longer listing many companies because it wants anyone with a commercial interest to PAY to play. Why should they send you free traffic? However, Tracy, to be quite honest, your site may not be ready for AdWords to start sending you paid clicks. It looks like anything *but* a professional attorney's site. I don't know if the designer was purposely going for a "homey" look, but personally, I would be nervous about doing business with an attorney whose site looks so homemade. Even a template would be better if the business can't afford a professional designer. You've got a content-rich site, so all it needs is a redesign and some optimization -- AFTER you know what keyword phrases people are actually using for each area of law your office practices. > From 2000 (just after building our site) > until about 18 months ago we ranked #1 on > Yahoo. For the months that Google used Yahoo's > directory, we continued our high ranking. When > Google stopped using the directory for search > results, we disappeared from Google. Since this was the opening statement on your original post in #1922, and no one has mentioned it in subsequent LEDs, I'd like to point out that this is completely erroneous thinking. Perhaps you're thinking of the fall of 2003, when Google had the "Florida" shakeup that resulted in hundreds of thousands of commercial sites losing their longtime taken-for-granted high rankings. (I believe this was Google's way of saying, "OK, guys - it's time to put your money where your mouth is!") Or maybe you're referring to when Yahoo stopped displaying *Google's* results and started using their own search engine. Or maybe you paid the $299 ransom to Yahoo to get into their directory (which is still separate from their search engine), and you believe that's why you were ranking well in Google? To sum it all up, optimizing for keyword phrases is like the lottery: you can't win if you don't play! Meaning that if you want to rank well for a certain phrase, you *must* not only USE that phrase on your page, but focus on it (without overdoing it). Sorry for the long post, but I hope this helps, Lorelle Smith Search Engine Marketing & Keyword Phraseology Consultant http://www.keywordsmith.com email: led, keywordsmith.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Submission software > Submission software, as well as submitting by hand, is > a waste of time for spidering search engines. All of them > find pages on their own as long as there are links to them > from other pages in their index. - Jill Whalen, LED 1925 Submitting to search engines that spider has not been shown to cause any problems, and may decrease the time needed to find your site. The only one that I would not submit to is Google, since it seems to find sites before they are even launched, and the popular thought is that they prefer to find sites on their own. And I feel I must clarify one thing, and that is not ALL search engines that spider find sites on their own. Many of them only spider the sites that are submitted to them. SplatSearch.com is a good example of this, and one of the sites I have seen that actually does a good job of sending traffic to our client's sites. Thank you, Chris Nielsen www.best-free-search-engine-list.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Phil Tanny Subject: Dream Affiliate A quick word to add to the Dream Affiliate debate. For what it's worth... If merchants claim to be the sole owner of all the facts, and state that inputs from sales people are mere theory and philosophy tit for tat that could go on forever, I find my ability to visit such merchant's sites in a positive, open-to-buy mindset is impaired because I assume that I may well encounter a "the customer is always wrong" atmosphere at that store. If that first impression is reinforced during my visits to that store, a brand is created that is hard to shake. You could call me a nastyboy, and some days you'd be right, but that's just how I see it. Phil Tanny http://links-for-you.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Martha Retallick Subject: Stats Philip Scriver's recent post was a request for translation of such website stats as: Total sessions served : 11093 Total hits made on server : 191848 Total page view hits : 17408 His post points out the biggest problem with many website statistics programs. They do a great job of describing the behavior of the server -- and use impeccable computerese to do so -- but they don't help us understand the behavior of our visitors. And it's the visitors that keep us in business. The solution? Well, I've tried a variety of web stats programs, and have found that most use the same sort of computerese shown above. However, I think that ClickTracks comes the closest to the goal of describing visitor behavior. And it does so without using computerese. URL: http://www.clicktracks.com Hope this helps! Martha Retallick "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com
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