Posted by rebecca
In an earlier post I had mentioned that I started reading Web Design for ROI by Lance Loveday and Sandra Niehaus (check out their website for more information on the book). Today I thought I’d share some tidbits from chapter 3, Managing for ROI.
Chapter 3, Manging for ROI, provides a list of considerations and suggestions on how to manage your website for optimal ROI.
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Popularity: unranked [?]
Posted by randfish
We’re just not getting any visitors from the search engines…
I probably hear that line 30X or more each week - over email, in phone calls, in conversation, on forums, etc. and to tell the truth, it would be really handy to have a resource I could point folks for some self-diagnosis. If only there were some type of medium that I could publish on… one that would be accessible on some sort of computerized system… maybe a net of interconnected pages… one the whole world could access… like a… world… wide… oh, hang on a tick.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Great interview of Ken McGaffin about keywords and market research. Free open source link analysis tool from Patrick at Blogstorm, which shows how many links point at each page of your site. Using it does require setting up a MySQL database, but it is quite easy to set up and use. Brian Clark wrote another Continue Reading »
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: LinksAfter they bid low and lost the C block of wireless spectrum Google has started talking to the media about using unlicensed whitespace. From the WSJ:
Google said that the white space, located between channels 2 and 51 on TV that aren’t hooked up to satellite or cable, offer a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide ubiquitous wireless broadband access to all Americans.” In addition, opening up the spectrum would “enable much-needed competition to the incumbent broadband service providers,” Mr. Whitt wrote.
Google has done its own white-space testing and submitted its results to the FCC in December. Philips also submitted a testing device to the agency last year, which returned satisfactory results.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Nationwide, Google, WirelessPosted by randfish
Let’s try a little excercise…
Common features of spam domains include:
Long domain names .info, .cc, .us and other cheap, easy to grab TLDs Short registration period (1 year, maybe 2) High ratio of ad blocks to content Javascript redirects from initial landing pages Use of common, high-commercial value spam keywords like “mortgage,” “poker,” “texas hold ‘em,” “porn,” “student credit cards,” and related terms Many links to other low quality, spam sites Few links to high quality, trusted sites High keyword frequencies and keyword densities Small amounts of unique content Very few direct visits Very few links sent out in (non-spam) email to the site Registered to people/entities not associated with trusted sites Not frequently registered with services like Yahoo! Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central or Live Webmaster Tools Rarely have short, high value domain names Often contain many keyword-stuffed subdomains More likely to have longer domain names More likely to contain multiple hyphens in the domain name Less likely to have links from trusted sources Less likely to have SSL Security certificates Less likely to be in directories like DMOZ, Yahoo!, Librarian’s Internet Index, etc. Unlikely to have any significant quantity of branded searches Unlikely to be bookmarked in services like My Yahoo!, Del.icio.us, Faves.com, etc. Unilkely to get featured in social voting sites like Digg, Reddit, Yahoo! Buzz, StumbleUpon, etc. Unlikely to have channels on YouTube, communities on Facebook or links from Wikipedia Unlikely to be mentioned on major news sites (either with or without link attribution) Unlikely to register with Google/Yahoo!/MSN Local Services Unlikely to have a legitimate physical address/phone number on the website Likely to have the domain associated with emails on blacklists Often contain a large number of snippets of “duplicate” content found elsewhere on the web Unlikely to contain unique content in the form of PDFs, PPTs, XLSs, DOCs, etc. Frequently feature commercially focused content Many levels of links away from highly trusted websites Rarely contain privacy policy and copyright notice pages Rarely listed in Better Business Bureau’s Online Directory Rarely contains high grade level text content (as measured by metrics like Fleisch-Kincaid Reading Level) Rarely have small snippets of text quoted on other websites and pages Cloaking based on user-agent or IP address is common Rarely contain paid analytics tracking software Rarely have online or offline marketing campaigns Rarely have affilliate link programs pointing to them Less likely to have .com or .org extensions Almost never have .mil, .edu or .gov extensions Rarely have links from domains with .edu or .gov extensions Almost never have links from domains with .mil extensions Rarely receive high quantities of monthly visits Rarely have visits lasting longer than 30 seconds Rarely have visitors bookmarking their domains in the browser Unlikely to buy significant quantities of PPC ad traffic Rarely have banner ad media buys Likely to have links to a significant portion of the sites and pages that link to themExtremely unlikely to be mentioned or linked-to in scientific research papers Unlikely to use expensive web technologies (Microsoft Server & Coding Products that Require a Licensing Fee) Likely to be registered by parties who own a very large number of domains Unlikely to attract significant return trafficMore likely to contain malware, viruses or spyware (or any automated downloads)
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Separating, Quality, Content, MetricsSome tools exist because they are valuable and remove market friction. Others exist because they are perceived as being valuable, even if they are actually value destroying, or only valuable in rare circumstances.
Valuable Tools of the Trade
Outside of paying for a domain name, hosting, site design, and buying a few links you could create (an ad supported) business online virtually free.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Tools, Between, AudienceGoogle Analytics came out with a novel benchmarking feature which compares your site’s performance to other websites in your field. You can see this benchmark data ONLY IF you are willing to aggregate your data into the pool of anonymized data.
The best sites in your industry probably are not using Google Analytics, and those who do are probably not benchmarking against average, so you are essentially benchmarking your site against a random sample of the bottom half of your industry. I guess such a measurement has purpose, unfortunately I fail to see it.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Striving, Below, AverageSometimes people think I am a cynic when I mention things like “avoid Google Analytics,” but you never really understand how Google perceives the web until they chose to try to wipe you out. Jay Weintraub recently posted about how he was permanently banned from AdWords because one of his employees accessed his company account AND their personal account from the same IP address.
Popularity: unranked [?]
Tags: Google, Customers