JimWorld Gazette Issue #34 12/26/1997

Gazette - Issue #34 - December 26, 1997

-- Stuff
-- Stories For The New Year
-- Tips From The Hitman - Part XIX
-- Search Engine Spam
-- Another Award Reviewer Reveals All
-- Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g34

STUFF

We're headed into a new year and all of you seem to think it is time to advance the Helpware concept a few more notches. At least that represents a serious number of emails I get. I completely agree with you.

In order to advance it, the first step is to come up with a world class graphic. I think it should say 'This is a Helpware Site' but I'm open to suggestions. It should also be small enough that everyone will be willing to give up some home page space and bandwidth to display it. It will link to a page that explains the concept of Helpware and allows people to 'Take The Pledge'.

OK. I've done my part. I've defined the problem. Now it's your turn.

Develop an icon for Helpware and a page design for the explanation and pledge page. I'll supply the copy for the pledge page. You supply the graphics and the page design.

The winning design gets 15,000 banner impressions on JimWorld. That's a $375 value. Not great, but better than nothing, right? Plus an ad in the Gazette. Worth another $250. So the payday is $625. That's better.

Each of the 4 other finalists will get 5,000 banner impressions.

I'll do the screening and select the 5 finalists. You do the voting and pick the one you like best.

Everyone who enters will have their submission on display on the contest page with a link to their site, so if nothing else you could pick up some traffic.

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Newsletters are great. We started a newsletter 2 months ago. So far, it's going like gangbusters. It's an opt-in newsletter only. We currently have 1,150 people signed up. This number is growing by 100 per week.

To get this going, we just submitted the info at a couple locations, linked up with a couple key sites and voila:

Title: 0utstanding Free Weekly Wine Ezine - Sponsored by Passport Wine Club http://www.topwine.com/ezine.htm

STORIES FOR THE NEW YEAR

"Thanks for responding to my email. Here is some information about me: I am originally from Russia. I used to live in the Ukraine and Russia, and 3 years ago I moved to the United States of America. I am 16 years old and I live in Virginia and go to 10th grade in high school here.

I have been on the Internet from 1996, but I started making web pages only this past summer. Now I run my site, and the site of the Computer club in my school (You can see it @ http://members.tripod.com/~webdesign4/club.html ), the club page is still under construction, but it will be finished in a few weeks.

But most of the time I work on my web site. I try to keep it up to date as much as possible. When I have a new link I add it. When I think that text is too small - I change it, and so on. Most of my free time I am on the Internet, searching for new stuff, new pages, new information. I also promote my site about once a month. Just yesterday, thanks to your WebSuite personal server I found ROBOsubmit.

I am also president of the Computer club in my school and I participate in the school orchestra. I know 3 languages-Russian, Ukrainian, and English. Last one I use the most now.

Once again thanks for taking time and reading my email and visiting my web site. Because my English is still not great, I want to apologies for the way my e-mail is put together. I need more practice, and I will get there.

It would be great if you could place a little story about me and my site in one of the upcoming issues of Gazette. I will really appreciate it. When I get back from vacation I will place a link to VirtualPROMOTE on my link page.

Thanks again,

Nick Rudnev http://fast.to/nick
mailto:nrud@juno.com

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"Hello,
Wow! You mentioned our domain in your last Gazette. I didn't know what was happening. I started getting all these responses from your readers. It was wonderful because they've given me some of the most honest criticism we've received to date. Very helpful. I missed several typos in our newsletter and I learned that my link color is too dark for some people. These are the kinds of things you miss when you become over concerned with the overall image of your site and forget the details are what a "visitor" sees.

When you mentioned our domain you seemed interested in having items written for the Gazette. Since you charge no fee other than helping your fellow surfer I thought perhaps we could devise a plan to pay my (Helpware) subscription up for a while.

How about I send you something on Proper Directory Structure. Look for it in your mail box sometime in the next few weeks. Save it and toss it in some time as filler when you're going on vacation, or when the Gazette seems a little thin.

Thanks Again for the Boost in Traffic-----!"

Jay Chuck Mailen
Home of "The Family" http://www.familycreations.com

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These are the types of emails that keep me at my computer every night. I sure hope they keep coming. I've gotten accustomed to get them.

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XIX

I hope everyone has been enjoying the Holidays in whichever way you personally celebrate. My family had a wonderful Christmas and I even took the day off myself. OK. I did check email, I could not resist.

The input received from the Northern Light piece last week was very positive so it looks like I will be doing a separate review of each of the Search Engines down the road. I apologize about not putting the URL for Northern Light in the article it is http://www.nlsearch.com Sorry about that.

Now on with the show! As you recall I was covering the meta tags in the last regular installment. I promised I would let you know what does and does not work, and what never to do. Let me warn you now, I am going to blow holes in much of what you have read and maybe even some other information that has appeared in the Gazette. (Sorry, Jim)

Meta tags were developed to assist in the proper indexing of web pages, and a year ago, they were used to do just that. Unfortunately times have changed. I am not going to spout rumors, quote other sources or tell you what you have already read before. What I have to say comes from repeated observation of what gets a site on the first page of returns at the search engines, and this information is my opinion, as a result of careful observations on an weekly basis as I attempt to earn a living putting pages in high position at these Search Engines.

First off, one of the Search Engines does not use the meta tags at all! Excite does not use them in any way, and they are of no significance to listings at Lycos and of little significance at Northern Light. The remaining Search Engines do take meta tags into account, but, now days they are more likely to get you penalized than help you get a good listing!

Unfortunately the climate at the Search Engines has gotten very chilly in the attempts to stop spamming (or forcing of sites to high positions.) This has gone so far that sites built with no real intentional spamming will get clobbered for repeating keywords too often. What is too much? I will not tell you three is too many or seven is OK. We have all read this tripe too often recently. How about some facts?

I spent the time to take meta tag specific notes in the last week while researching keywords for several customers. I made the following rather startling observations after checking the top five positions on a single and double keyword type search on all the top engines. I more or less knew this to be the case, but went for detail for this article.

Here is what I found to be the case for repetition of keywords at all the top seven Lycos, Infoseek, Hot Bot, Alta Vista, Excite, Web Crawler and Northern Light. When I say appeared once, It means once in description tag or once in the keyword tag, and in some cases once in each.

At Lycos, meta tags were used on two of the top 5 sites for both the single and double keyword search and in both cases the keyword was not repeated more than once. It did appear in the title tag half the time and was not repeated.

At Infoseek, meta tags were not used at all in 4 of the 5 top returns for both the single and double keyword, and on the two pages that did use meta tags, the keyword was repeated twice only. In each case the keyword was in the title tag once.

The situation at Hot Bot was as follows: of the 2 searches, there were meta tags used in 7 of the ten returns checked, in every case with meta tags, the keyword in question was used only one time. The keyword appeared in the title of 8 of the 10 sites checked.

At Alta Vista, meta tags were not used on any of the top 5 for the single keyword, and only one of the double keyword pages had meta tags. The keyword was in the tags on time with no repeats. All results have keyword or double keyword in the title.

Excite does not use meta tags, but they appeared in one of the 10 results checked for the single and double word search. The word was not repeated, it appeared once. On half the results the keyword was in the title.

Web Crawler uses meta tags and all the results had keywords in both the meta description and meta keyword tags. In most cases the relevant keyword from the search appeared only once although one repeat was found in two of the ten, and one instance of three which was lower case, First Letter Capitalized and ALL UPPER CASE. All ten sites had the keyword(s) in the title.

Finally we get to Northern Light Search. This is the exception to the rule as was covered in detail last week. Here anything seems to go, I saw pages with no tags, pages with keywords appearing from one time to as many as ten times in the meta tags making it into the top 10 positions. In all ten results the title did not have the keyword appearing. All the sites none the less were relevant to the search keywords. Go figure!

Well, I hope this sheds some light on the subject. In closing I suggest that if you do use meta tags, you may want to be very careful about repeating words. Regardless of what the press is on the subject, the facts seem to lean in the direction of not repeating keywords in the meta tags. Take it a face value.

One final note, when taking the results as a whole, about 35% of the sites were using "tricks" of various types that work on some of the engines, the rest were put in position by careful observation of what is working on each of the engines. Perhaps one in 10 got there by what appears to be luck (or maybe extreme skill) as they did not follow the pattern of the others. So, my suggestion is to observe and learn, that is how I do it. Tricks do work, but they are the target of next weeks penalty. Be observant not "tricky" and you will do better in the long run.

Next week we will talk about the body of the web page, comment tags, image alt tags and keyword density. Then I will try to tie the whole mess together to give you a fighting chance.

Hayden Mitchell
Web Themes
http://www.webthemes.com

SEARCH ENGINE SPAM

"I have a question for you about text the same color as the background. I have several sites that I have a background color of 000000 and text color 000001. Will the search engines pick this up as a spam? The reason that I have done this is that the opening page is not very indicative of what the site is all about. The first text on the screen is "you are visitor ####" and then the next text is talking about a romantic evening. What we are selling is lingerie."

This basic question comes up a lot so let's talk about it.

Invisible word spamming is the technique of putting lots of words on your page that can't be seen because they are the same color as the background. Usually they are made in the smallest font size possible. Most times we see them at the bottom of the page. You can spot it pretty easily. Lots of blank space at the end of a page, but when you use the mouse to drag over it it is selected as text.

I have seen cases where keywords were repeated thousands of times. It used to work OK to get you to the top of the search engines, but the search engines have put a lot of effort into eliminating this technique.

I have my doubts that the search engine software can actually spot this very often, especially if the background is a graphic instead of a color. So does that mean it is OK to do?

No. It is very risky. There are three ways you can get busted.

One: The search engine spam software will bust you.

Two: An employee of the search engine will bust you. Some of the search engines have started hiring Spam Patrol employees to help clean up the data base.

Three: And most likely, someone will report you. Someone that wants that same spot in the search engine results. You would be surprised how many people will do this. Of course, not me. No. Never.

If you get busted doing this you could wind up with a penalty ranging from a reduction in relevance that puts you at the end of the list to complete blacklisting of your entire site.

Is it worth the risk?

There are other ways to accomplish what you are after: better descriptions and ratings in the search engines. I'm not going to repeat all of them as that is all available on VirtualPROMOTE.

First, get rid of the hit counter, or at least move it to the bottom of the page. Nobody believes them anyway.

Develop good META tags for the engines that use them.

Redesign the page to have the first information after the body tag as a good description of the site. This is not just for the search engines. It is also good marketing design. That space at the top of the page is the best selling space on your entire site. Use it carefully. Make it count. Grab the visitor right away when they show up.

ANOTHER AWARD REVIEWER REVEALS ALL

As purveyor of well-designed sites it's my job to pick the selective few web sites that gets to be reviewed. I pick apart the cliched-driven, bevel graphic collections from the very best the web offers the surfer. This judging process is primarily a two step affair. The second part of the High Five exam is easy. All you have to do, among other web issues, is keep your content fresh, navigation solid and graphics compressed. But, that's the second test. You have to pass the first test, which is dubbed the Lightning Round. For that part, all you simply have to do is grab my attention on the very first (or second) click of the mouse. As a web designer, you have to stray away from the norms of current common web design. Here is a list of items to avoid and be concerned about while constructing your site. I can't promise your site will get a High Five Award if you follow these rules of thumb. Your sites will just look better not only to me, but also to your audience.

KITCHEN SINK MULTIMEDIA
Do not employ "kitchen sink" multimedia. Sites that throw QuickTime movies, embedded sound files and, of course, the Blink tag on the very first page need not apply for the High Five. Unless you happen to know the users will be coming to your site with a solid ISDN connection and all current plug-ins installed, these attempts to use the latest in savvy technologies will do nothing to sway your audience. Don't throw the proverbial 'works' at the user. Your site's message and audience's machines will suffer.

POUR the RIGHT JAVA
Personally, I think Java programming language has a bright future. However, Java Applets, like every element in your site design, should be chosen carefully. If that Java Applet doesn't add anything to your message, strike it from the page. Stay away from eye candy applets when the patented JavaScript rollover technique or straight text-based navigation will do the trick with less wear on your audience's machine.

LEAVE the BEVELS
A personal pet peeve of everyone and mine at the office is the excessive use of bevels and drop shadows on the web. For some odd reason, bevels and drop shadows are the drugs of beginning web designers. Get control of your bevels before you find yourself with a web site where bevels catch the eye better than content.

IN 30k or LESS
Keep your web page file sizes low. Add up your HTML and image file sizes. Do they exceed 30 to 40k? If so, check each element's use in the layout of the page. Think how the same effect could be achieved with straight HTML or other workarounds. To zip web pages to a user, you want to keep those file sizes small and compressed as much as possible without losing quality. Until bandwidth increases, t he maximum file size you should consider having is 50k - and that limit should be reached sparingly on pages with necessary content.

OVERALL
Remember: if you couple your message with a strong image (i.e. design), you can pull your customers in and keep them clicking around to absorb your message. For your homework, I want you to surf. Surf the sites you find interesting. But the catch for this assignment is, right down why you think those sites are "cool" or "killer". Once you've found that awesome site, you can e-mail at mailto:chris@christopher.org with what you find. I'm always looking for great sites.

Christopher

http://www.highfive.com/
mailto:chris@christopher.org
e x c e l l e n c e i n s i t e d e s i g n

SNIPPETS

Alan E. Hersh - The Hersh Web Site Observer http://CyberJournalist.com/ found this one for you:

ZenSearch - An Alternative way to Search the Web http://www.zenation.com/zensearch

"Zen Search is a totally new way to look at a search engine. Instead of getting 10 out of 100,000 results for your search on AltaVista, we only provide links to sites that add some value to the web, Quality sites if you will. Of course this adds the editorial decision of just what makes a Quality Site ? We have three basic criteria :

--Content (what are you offering on your site)
--Look (layout, graphics, HTML, ect.)
--Feel (ease of use, speed it loads, ect.)

If your site has all three, you're in. If you have two of three of the criteria you'll probably get listed, and if you have only one you still have a shot, but the one must be truly compelling. For an example if you have a site that's all text, on the default gray background but the info you present covers an entire subject well, we'll list you. The bottom line is, it has to enrich the web surfer."

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Thanks to Ken Patenaude http://www.geocities.com/~punchinanose/sites.html for letting me use his outstanding midi file for Christmas day on the VirtualPROMOTE site. I enjoyed it a lot and from the mail I got, so did many of you.

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Epubs: A community exclusively for book lovers & Authors. Writing opportunities. Free E-zine. Author Pages ... dedicated to bringing quality material to readers while fulfilling the marketing needs of published and aspiring authors...

If you are an author or offer something on your site that writers would be interested in, go to Epubs and submit. There are a number of ways to participate, so look around. This is a fantastic site with both content and eye-appeal. Absolutely worth the visit. http://www.epubs.com

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True to mission mission of "Keeping you up to speed with the Internet," they provide you with all the tools you need to stay current with the break-neck speed of development on the web. You can run a search by category to find the newest websites featuring content in areas that interest you. You can submit your site for listing in the original directory of the latest and greatest. And, exclusive to What's New, you can subscribe to receive weekly bulletins by e -mail of the new websites in your interest areas. All free, all from What's New!

The advantage to the website submitter is that not only is the listing posted on their site, it is also emailed out to the subscribers! It's also a good tool to keep an eye out for new competition.

http://www.whatsnu.com

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"I saw the list of search engines on your web site and thought you might want to know about a new search engine that is quite unique and useful. It's called WebSitez http://www.websitez.com We announced it last week, so few people know about it.

WebSitez helps users find domain names. Maybe they know the company name or part of a domain name or they are looking for a domain name for their own needs or all the domains related to a specific topic. A quick visit to Websitez will show the user all domains matching their request - quick and easy!

And if you haven't seen our Filez software search site, check that out too at: http://www.filez.com - it's the fastest and largest software search site of its kind!"

--Now a lot of people know about it. Hope you're ready. The Gazeteers are coming.--

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The Spicy Site has released an exclusive interview with Robbin Zeff. The interview is about her relatively new book "Advertising on the Internet". The interview is just one part of a section in their bookstore covering this book. The section also includes a table of contents, an excerpt from the book and much more. I'm looking forward to reading the book myself. Looks good. http://www.thespicysite.com/bookstore/webadvertising/aoti/

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You can now add keywords to your listings in the eZines Database and make sure their 1,000,000+ monthly visitors can find YOUR PUBLICATION easier.... To add keywords visit -- URL: http://www.dominis.com/Zines/modify.shtml You have listed your ezine or newsletter there, haven't you?

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"I don't know whether your list would like to know this, but from my experience it's amazing how many of the submissions I get don't do themselves any favors. The classic example is people who put a "last updated" date on their pages (presumably to show how fresh the material is) - and then forget to update it! I was just looking through a site submission for my award. I hit the index page - it's site updated tag was for early this year, but when I ploughed on into the site ( I was tempted not to: thinking that the site's material might be redundant) there was all sorts of content, eg a page on the death of Princess Di's death that quite obviously was added after the update date given! I suppose the message for webmasters is to constantly check their site, and that everything squares."

Danny
The Investigative Journalism Resource
http://www.controversy.net

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Banner Ads, Not Special Sites, Said to Be Marketing Key.

Internet advertising should focus on popular existing Web sites rather than creating special sites to promote individual brands, company and media executives argue.

"A complete naivety among marketers is that what you should do is build a Web site. No, you should put your money onto banner advertising on established Web sites," Simon Darling, interactive marketing and electronic commerce manager for Unilever Plc told the http://www.jup.com Jupiter Communications online conference in London."

Read the whole story at http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/1997/10/2702-banner.html then come back and order some banners from JimWorld!

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This one is a must visit site. Free stuff. That's my favorite number.

"I know there are a bunch of freebie pages out there, but I think my site stands out a bit from the crowd. I must be doing something right: the page averages 1, 700 hits a day. The page has won a number of awards (LinkMonster's best, CyberSmith Hot Site, Cool Site of the Nite, Cosmic Site of the Night, etc.) as you can see from our awards page. And, of course the kudo I'm most proud of to date: a coveted listing on The HotSheet (which, along with Dr. Webster's Web Site of the Day, is one of two HotSheet listings I've earned). (I see VirtualPROMOTE is listed, as well. Congrats!)

I work hard to make The Amazing Free Stuff the best site of its type. Rather than just listing URLs, I provide a detailed description of each free resource. I work hard to keep the links current and to focus on the Web's most essential freebies. Anyway, enough hype. I'll let you decide for yourself. Keep in touch."

Cheers,
Marc McDonald
Dr. Webster's Web Site of the Day
http://www.drwebster.com
The Amazing Free Stuff Page
http://www.123go.com/drw/webs/freestuff.htm

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Want to create some very nice graphics and animations for your site? Want to do it without buying any software? Want to do it using just your browser?

Head over to http://www.zyris.com/ and check out as cool a tool as you are likely to find. If this one doesn't impress you, I give up!

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Want to add a search feature to your site that lets visitors find contests and sweepstakes? Contestworld is making it's contest and sweepstakes database available to anyone who has a web site absolutely free.

Go to http://www.contestworld.com/search_engine.html and cut and paste the code into your site. The 'portable' search engine is about the size of a 400 x 40 banner but is fully functional.

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Got a site about pregnancy? Submit it to The Labor of Love - Your Pregnancy and Parenting Resource http://www.thelaboroflove.com It is a very well done vertical directory and should generate lots of traffic - if your site fits the description.

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"I would like to welcome everyone to visit our web page, and sign-up for the Web Design & Promotion Giveaway. Our company is giving away access to 3 of our new automated services, and there will be over 30 winners selected.

WebSite Design Analysis -(10)
Automated WebSite Submission Service -(10)
Placement Tag Generator -(10)

Just visit the page listed below, scroll down to the bottom of the page and fill out the simple form. All winners will be drawn on February 1st, 1998. You don't have to buy anything from us to win.

Web Design & Promotion Giveaway - http://turnpike.net/~hotspot/giveaway.html