October 13,
2004
In
This Issue:
1. Better Web Site Menus
2. In the News - MSN Search Preview, Yahoo News
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - When will my site get in Google?
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Are You Behind the Wall?
There are few things I find more annoying than trying to read
content on the web and being told that I can't unless I tell the
web site who I am, where I live, how to contact me, and how much
I earn. Newspaper web sites are the worst offenders, and the prime
reason why a web site like BugMeNot.com exists.
John Battelle, whose SearchBlog is
one of my regular reads, recently
wrote about this issue in
relation to The Economist and The Wall Street Journal, two sites
which require
paid subscriptions to read online: "I find, increasingly,
that sites which wall themselves off are becoming irrelevant.
Not because the writing or analysis is necessarily flawed, but
rather
because their business model is. In today's ecosystem of news,
the greatest sin is to cut oneself off from the conversation.
Both the Economist and the Journal have done that."
The issue isn't just for news outlets. We have several clients
who offer content on their web site, but only to people who
are willing to fill out a form. I understand the reason for doing
it -- we all want to know who visits our web site, who's interested
in our products and services, etc. But I also remind our clients
that fewer people will be interested in their products and
services
if they have to submit a form in the first place. And not only
is this not user-friendly, but it's also not search engine
friendly. Putting good content behind a contact form prevents that
content
from being indexed by search engines. Think about it. When
GoogleBot visits your site, it can't complete that form, so it
never reaches
the good content behind it.
I'm not suggesting there's never a good reason for putting
content behind a wall, or asking people to complete a form
as part of
accessing your web site. But I am suggesting that web site
owners carefully
consider the pros and cons, and the number of people like
me, and probably you, who aren't willing to climb when we hit
a wall.
I usually just walk to the next site.
_________________
In The News
Google on your cellphone
Google has recently launched a text-messaging service that allows
cellphone users to query Google via cellphone. It's called Google
SMS, and you can use it to get answers and information to certain
types of queries -- such as product prices (from Froogle), local
business / phone book listings, and more. So if you're about to
spend $2000 on that new plasma TV at Best Buy, you can send a text
message to Google and get back the prices from other stores (at
least the ones listed in Froogle) on your cellphone.
Google SMS
Yahoo and big web pages
Tara Calashain at ResearchBuzz recently shared a discovery that
Yahoo can handle big web pages a bit better than Google does.
Google indexes the first 101k of HTML on a web page, and
then it stops.
Now, that's a HUGE web page -- you'd have to be writing a
ton of content or code to hit 101k of HTML. Yahoo, Tara reports,
has a
150k HTML limit, and a 500k limit when indexing PDF files.
Not a huge difference, but if you find yourself searching
for
information
that might be on a long web page (research documents, white
papers, etc.), you might try Yahoo first.
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Connecting with customers through search market research
October 12, 2004 - Search Engine Watch
Get Flash sites ranked in search engines
October 11, 2004 - ClickZ.com
Majority of US consumers research online, buy offline
October 07, 2004 - ClickZ.com
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
We've been trying to get more web sites to link from their site
to ours, but it's a slow process and we haven't been very successful
when offering to trade links with other sites. Do you have any
recommendations for a better way to get other sites to link to
us? Thanks in advance.
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer --
Your experience is pretty common. Seeking link trades (also known
as "reciprocal links") with other sites can be incredibly
tedious work with a pretty low success rate. Many webmasters delete
emails asking for a link trade because they're becoming almost
as prevalent as spam.
My recommendation would be to first make sure you're giving
other sites a GREAT reason to link to you. The fact that you
have a
web site isn't good enough! What does your web site offer that's
so
valuable that other sites will want to tell THEIR visitors
about it? Well, if you sell widgets, you may want to offer
special
discounts to anyone who clicks a link from the other web site.
That's a benefit
which will encourage the other site to link to you. Whether
you sell widgets or not, do you have any great articles on
your site
that other sites will want to link to? If not, start writing!
Great content is generally the best way, and easiest way to
encourage other sites to link to you. Once you have that in
place, and
you start contacting other sites, do this: rather than email
them with
a canned "Let's trade links" approach, make it a personal
email that emphasizes an "interesting article your visitors
may like". That approach may be more well-received, and may
lead to more one-way links where the other site links to you without
asking for you to link back to them. These kinds of links are much
more valuable for helping your site's search engine rankings.
(Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
If you've ever tried to find something on Google and failed (yes,
it happens), there's a new site where you can announce what you
were looking for and seek help from others in finding it. Interesting
idea for a site, though it looks like some folks are abusing the "don't
post jokes" rule.
Can't Find On Google
Lastly, there won't be a newsletter next week. I'll be out of
the office two days. So, see you in two weeks.
Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
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