Sales from the EDGE
Back Issue #021
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Sales from the EDGE Issue #021
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Sales from the EDGE
Breaking Through the "White Noise" Of Selling on the Net
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>From time to time, the EDGE publishes important updates
that you need to SELL on the Net. Most "latest and greatest"
Net marketing & sales developments simply waste our time.
Today's "hot new technology" is tomorrow's "whatever
happened to??
Occasionally, though, something comes along that STICKS. It
might NOT even be NEW... but we need to be reminded. When
that happens, the EDGE cuts through all the "white noise" of
Web marketing. It explains the issue and outlines clearly
how YOU can best take advantage of it.
SALES FROM THE EDGE is sent ONLY to SiteSell product owners.
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Dec. 7, 2001
Issue #021
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
o SITESELL NEWS
1) SiteSell And Parent Company, SureFire,
Launch First Joint Venture Effort
2) A SiteSell Holiday Smile!
Buy 1, Get 1 Free...
o Articles
1) Building Online Income, the Major Leagues...
Earn up to US$10,000 for a Single Referral
to SureFire Premium Processing through
SiteSell's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program
2) Dealing With The New Trends In Search Engine Marketing
3) Automatic Submitters ... Effective??
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>>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SITESELL NEWS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>-News-
---1---
>-News-
SiteSell And Parent Company, SureFire,
Launch First Joint Venture Effort!
Last week, with great pleasure, I announced the release
of the first SiteSell/SureFire Commerce collaborative
effort to SiteSell's 5 Pillar Affiliates...
SureFire Premium Processing.
SureFire Premium Processing (SPP) is a high-end,
personalized processing service aimed at merchants doing a
large volume of business on the Net. It specifically
targets those merchants doing *in excess* of $1 million of
business online (per year).
However, we will look carefully at "special situation"
merchants, such as...
o medium-to-large offline company, moving to online sales
o those presently processing $100,000 or more per year,
but are growing rapidly
o well-funded startups (we'll even provide the merchant
account for a bargain discount rate -- we buy in bulk and
pass the savings on).
For SiteSell, this is a substantial departure in many
ways...
1) Our first joint venture -- the technology involved is far
beyond what we could achieve on our own. Luckily (!), it's
what SureFire Commerce, our parent company, "does for a
living."
-----SIDEBAR-----
SureFire Commerce's business is online
transaction processing. They are one of the
GIANTS of the industry, processing in excess
of $1.5 billion last year.
Current partners include AOL Canada, CIBC
(Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce), Intuit
Canada (the makers of the QuickBooks and
Quicken Software), The National Bank of
Canada, Points.com and American Airlines, as
well as many others.
SureFire started out in the online gaming
industry and still "owns" that category. Let
me tell you, this industry is the
ultimate high-risk credit card transaction...
rife with fraud.
So SureFire had to develop a rock solid data
center and incredibly robust AND smart
technology, complete with state-of-the-art
fraud protection. The quality of its service
is beyond reproach, and it's all backed up by
an in-house 24x7 Customer Care Department.
In short, SureFire Commerce has *no equal* in
the transaction processing field. Its
commitment to delivering quality products and
superlative customer service meant that
Surefire was a "natural" match for
SiteSell.com!
We've worked with SureFire to bring its
technology to the more conventional online
business world -- first of all, with this
product, SureFire Premium Processing. And
so...
With the launch of this first joint venture,
both SureFire and SiteSell.com are headed in
totally new and exciting directions.
-----SIDEBAR-----
2) Pay-per-lead commission -- this is a first for the
SiteSell world-leading 5 Pillar Affiliate Program!
3) Commission BONUSES -- an affiliate member can earn up to
USD$10,000 for a single valid merchant referral.
4) Target market -- SPP targets higher-end businesses, such
as...
o highly successful small companies
o mid-sized and large companies
o special opportunities (see site for more details)
SureFire Premium Processing is promoted primarily by our
20,000+ strong affiliate force. It provides unprecedented
earning opportunities for our 5 Pillar Team.
For information about becoming a member of "the best
affiliate program on the Net", visit...
http://www.sitesell.com/affiliateprogram.html
If you're a merchant who needs world class, state-of-the-
art transaction processing, see...
http://surefire.sitesell.com/
All in all, this is one of our MOST exciting new releases in
a long time!
>-News-
---2---
>-News-
A SiteSell Holiday Smile!
Buy 1, Get 1 Free...
Well, it's that wonderful time of year again... that special
holiday season where we all slow down, eat too much, and get
back in touch with friends and family... a season of warmth
(not in the sense of our Canadian winters!) and giving.
Speaking of which...
From now until December 24 at midnight, you get to play
Santa, with a little help from us here at SiteSell.
For each order of a SiteSell product, you can give a friend,
or yourself, a gift of another SiteSell product (of equal or
lesser value than your purchase -- it can even be the same
product, Site Build It! included!).
After you order, you'll see instructions (on the
confirmation page) for how to claim your gift. We'll have
that gift on its way immediately... or sooner!
Best of the season to you and yours...
From all of us here at Sitesell.com :-)
http://www.sitesell.com/
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>> THIS ISSUE'S ARTICLES
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---1---
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Building Online Income, the Major Leagues...
Earn up to US$10,000 for a Single Referral
to SureFire Premium Processing through
SiteSell's 5 Pillar Affiliate Program
SureFire Premium Processing represents a significant step
for us. We are entering an exciting new stage of our
development...
And we're looking for people who wish to join us on this
major new journey.
If you're NOT a member of our 5 Pillar Affiliate Program,
NOW is the time to join...
http://www.sitesell.com/affiliatejoin.html
With SureFire Premium Processing, we've implemented a new
pay-per-LEAD commission structure that offers unprecedented
earning potential for our affiliates. Each valid lead
generated for the SureFire Premium Processing service pays
out CAD$15.
Leads are contacted personally by a SureFire business
development director, and given a "hands-on" presentation of
this "beyond-the-state-of-the-Net" transaction processing
service. Once a merchant has signed on, we track the amount
of dollars they process, and pay bonus commissions on
that... up to a total of US$10,000 in commissions.
That could mean $10,000 extra dollars in your pocket.
So...
Do you know anyone who qualifies? Want to use your
marketing skills to reach our target market of successful
merchants? If so, join now...
http://www.sitesell.com/affiliatejoin.html
We are even offering affiliates a free Site Build It! site
in the form of a 2-for-1 deal, to build traffic-generating
sites with a theme related to transaction processing.
I don't know of any other product with a $10,000 bounty for
a single successful referral. Join the program and check
out the Launch issue of the 5 Pillar Affiliate Report,
Issue #077, in the Back Issues of the 5 Pillar Club. It's
jammed with great ideas and strategies for landing serious
companies... and collecting that $10K.
AND REMEMBER...
If you yourself process a significant dollar volume and
would like more information about a product ahead of all the
others...
http://surefire.sitesell.com/
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---2---
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Dealing With The New Trends In Search Engine Marketing
With all the changes that are occurring in the Search Engine
(SE) industry on an almost daily basis, two of the most
commonly posed questions by netrepreneurs are...
"Is it still worthwhile to implement a SE strategy into my
Net-marketing efforts? Do Search Engines still deliver the
goods?"
The simple answer to both is a resounding "yes" -- if you
work WITH the engines in a manner that adds value to both
their indices AND their visitors. In fact, Search Engines
still provide excellent value for driving tons of targeted
low-cost visitors to sites that use them properly.
Here is how to implement an effective SE strategy...
--
o Forget About Playing Dirty
Believe it or not, there are still people who waste valuable
time trying to "trick" the SEs into providing them with a
top 10 ranking.
Trickery could include any number of devious strategies...
Paragraphs of tiny text containing multiple keyword
repetitions... invisible keywords (written in the same color
as the background)... invisible 1X1 pixel gifs... <META> Tag
spamming... multiple <H1> tags and so on.
Once in a while, I still come across pages that contain some
of the tricks above. These pages are maintaining a top 10
ranking. Why is that?
Several possibilities...
Perhaps that page has not been re-indexed for some time.
Maybe the Webmaster is implementing some sort of page
cloaking -- where the spider is delivered to a different
page than what a human visitor sees. Or it could be the
"bait 'n switch" tactic, where the Webmaster waits until a
page has been crawled and listed, and then replaces that
page with a different page.
Whatever the reason, don't expect these types of sites to
stick around much longer. Just recently, Google added spam
reporting features which allows Webmasters to report low
quality or off-target sites. Inktomi, the provider of the
search technology for powerhouses like MSN and AOL, recently
implemented its own spam-reporting feature.
-----SIDEBAR-----
To report spam to Google you may...
i) send an e-mail to...
spamreport@google.com
ii) Use the online form -- look for the
"Unsatisfied with your results? Help us
improve" link at the very bottom of Google's
results pages.
iii) Use the beta version of the new Google
toolbar...
http://toolbar.google.com/
It has happy and sad face buttons on it.
Click the happy face for a site you like, and
the sad face for a site you dislike. Pushing
the button numerous times will be detected by
Google, and they'll ignore your
recommendations.
To report spam to Inktomi...
Send an e-mail to...
spamcrusader@inktomi.com
AltaVista has had spam reporting for over a
year on its general feedback form, and
Fast/AllTheWeb is said to be considering such
an option for its visitors as well.
-----SIDEBAR-----
An important point...
Google says they have implemented safeguards that prevent
Webmasters from using reporting tools unethically (i.e., to
penalize their competitors). Reports are reviewed by real
humans and they will be acted upon, if the concerns are
valid.
Use these feedback options wisely... and fairly. The Web
benefits, and so do you -- the classic WIN-WIN situation.
On the other hand, should you decide to use unquestionable
tactics in an attempt to trick the engines, you can expect
to see disgruntled visitors reporting YOU.
Bottom line?
It's becoming less and less likely that any site using
unethical tactics will achieve anything other than a
complete ban from the SEs.
-----SIDEBAR-----
Of course, if you're using Site Build It! to
build traffic, you don't have to worry about
this. You build REAL content that humans
like... and SEs LOVE.
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
-----SIDEBAR-----
o Work WITH The Engines
First of all, you must recognize that YOU need the engines
much more than THEY need you. All that means is... if you
want the SEs to help you, you have to help them back.
Make your site WORTH listing. Ensure that it adds value to
the SE's index, and its visitors. Whatever niche you
target, try to OWN that category. Build and add content on
a regular basis. Make your site as extensive as possible
(SEs like Google prefer large, content-rich sites for their
indices).
It's another example of the classic "GIVE" then "TAKE"
scenario. GIVE, in the form of high quality content, and
TAKE, in the form of free, targeted visitors. Even if you
opt for paying your way into an index (more on this below)
the only way you'll receive visitors is if your site meets
certain ranking criteria. More and more often, this means
CONTENT.
Second, respect Search Engines. When submitting, don't spam
them with pages -- one page per domain per day is an
effective strategy. Some owners of automated submission
services and optimization software (like WebPosition Gold)
can tax SEs' resources to the point where they threaten a
site's chances of successful listings. (More about this
in the next article.)
Fortunately, not all tools are detrimental. For example...
Site Build It! has been designed to work WITH the SEs.
SBI!'s stringent regard to the integrity and protocols of
these all-important resources eliminates the possibility of
any possible violations.
SBI! won't let people bypass protocols and ruin things for
the rest of us.
For more on Site Build It!, visit the site...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
---
o Implement A Search Engine Friendly Strategy
The best way to ensure your site will perform well at the
various SEs is to build all pages according to the 80-20
rule of optimization.
What does that mean?
Build pages with proper attention to <Title>, <H1>, and
<META> tags as usual. Sprinkle your keywords throughout the
text in a manner consistent with a "regular, spam-free" page
(in other words, keep your keyword densities low enough so
that they "feel" right, and don't arouse the suspicions of
SEs). Run a good analyzer program on them to make sure that
they fall within the bounds of a well-optimized page.
Then...
Forget all about them.
Seriously, don't waste your time tweaking this, or tweaking
that. It's simply not an efficient use of your time.
Instead, focus on building MORE optimized pages.
Why? Several reasons...
a) It increases the chances that you'll get the algorithm
"just right" for a greater number of pages.
b) You'll build a site with more substance, which counts,
especially with Google.
c) The SEs are notoriously finicky, and change their ranking
criteria often. So a page that didn't score one day may
suddenly end up in top spot tomorrow. And a page that
scores well on AltaVista, may one day disappear and
re-appear at the top of the heap at Google the next.
Build 10 optimized pages, and you could have 3 Top 5
rankings, 2 Top 20 rankings, 2 Top 50 rankings, and 3 that
don't rank at all.
If you build only a couple of pages and focus entirely on
them, you're putting all your eggs into one basket. In pro
baseball, a ".300" average is considered excellent. What
most people forget is that a .300 average means the hitter
is unsuccessful 70% of the time. Such is the case with the
"Search Engine Optimization Game".
The more optimized pages you have on your site, the more
chances you have of getting a "hit". The fewer pages you
have, the less chance you have of hitting the SE jackpot.
Since SEs make the rules, they are always one step ahead of
the game. Should you try to play the page-tweaking game,
you'll always be one step behind them.
So build, optimize, and move on. Then build more.
That's the BEST strategy.
-----SIDEBAR-----
Site Build It! makes this a snap, too. No
need to know html, nor do you have to ftp
anything. Pages are submitted on schedule
and tracked "ad nauseum" from there, all
automatically. You just focus on building
content and SBI! takes care of the rest...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
-----SIDEBAR-----
o Consider The Changing Face Of The Search Engine
Environment
In the last few years, an upheaval has been occurring in the
Search Engine world. Littering the battle field are the
sorry remains of Go/Infoseek (now displaying Overture
results) NBCi.com, and most recently, Excite (which will be
discontinuing its own crawler listings, and replacing them
with those of the meta crawler, Dogpile -- Excite will be
getting the boot from our own tracking system shortly.)
On the other hand, Google's star continues to ascend, and
MSN continues to rise in popularity. Engines like Lycos and
Fast have made positive changes to increase search relevancy
and to improve the overall search experience.
So, who rules the SE roost?
Here's how my handy-dandy indispensible tool, Alexa, sees
things (you need an old alpha version of Alexa for Mac to
get some of these stats -- don't worry about what the
absolute visitor counts mean -- it's the relative counts
among the various engines that are important)...
Google -- 22,334,752 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Google is on record as preferring large,
content-rich sites with some link popularity for its index.
So be sure you have both these issues addressed before you
submit. Best of all, it's still free to list at Google.
http://www.google.com/addurl.html
--
MSN Search (search.msn.com) -- 8,938,991 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Buy your way in -- MSN search is powered
by LookSmart (for Directory Listings), and Inktomi (for
crawler listings). It's still possible to submit to Inktomi
for free through HotBot (see below), but it's a roll of the
dice as to whether or not your site ever makes it into the
index -- odds are it won't happen.
http://listings.looksmart.com/submit/
http://www.positiontech.com/
--
AltaVista -- 3,814,320 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Although behind in its crawling, it's
still recommended you submit to the index through the free
option. The paid listing option is expensive and does not
deliver adequate results. If it is to stay alive, AV MUST
crawl sites regularly... so hang there for a free listing.
They've added an annoying graphic to make sure that you're
there when you submit, but that's good news -- it means
they take the free submissions more seriously.
http://addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl
(By the way, Site Build It! even enables you to submit to
AltaVista directly from within SBI!... no other submitter on
the Net has figured a way around AV's graphic!).
--
Excite -- 2,000,038 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Due to financial problems, Excite will no
longer provide crawler-based results on its Web site.
Instead, it will carry results from DogPile. To get your
site into DogPile, buy keywords at Overture.com.
--
FAST/AlltheWeb -- 555,800 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: List for free at alltheweb.com. For the
sake of caution, never submit more than one page per domain
to ANY engine in any 24 hour period.
http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
--
AOL Search (search.aol.com) -- 395,529 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Directory results are supplied by The
Open Directory. You may list there for free...
http://www.dmoz.org
To get into the Web page listings, you must buy your way
into the Inktomi index via...
http://www.positiontech.com/
--
Northern Light -- 279,145 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: List for free at northernlight.com. For
the sake of caution, never submit more than one page per
domain to ANY engine in any 24 hour period.
http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html
--
Lycos -- 274,679 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: List for free at lycos.com. For the sake
of caution, never submit more than one page per domain to
ANY engine in any 24 hour period. Additional results are
supplied by FAST.
http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html
--
Direct Hit -- 122,748 Alexa Visits
Listing Strategy: Submit your home page only (free). Since
their popularity technology is used by many other search
services, it's a good idea even though their Alexa count is
not very high...
http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html
--
HotBot -- 3,533 Alexa Visits
Phew! How the mighty have fallen.
Listing Strategy: Directory results are supplied by The
Open Directory. You may list here for free (don't hold your
breath!). To get into the Web page listings, you must buy
your way into the Inktomi index (see positiontech above).
http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp
--
The moral here is obvious... to get the most from a SE
campaign, your site must be listed in Google, the SE leader
by a "country mile". MSN Search, Google's only competitor,
comes in at a distant second and still overpowers its
closest competitor, AltaVista.
These 3 "Big Ones" will provide the bulk of your traffic, if
you do everything successfully.
-----SIDEBAR-----
Site Build It! submits to all these engines,
in an automated fashion that simulates a
submission as if it was done by you
personally, right on the site. Then it
tracks their spider visits and lets you know
when you've been listed, and finally even
gives rankings for all your pages... all
without you lifting a finger -- actually, we
don't want you to lift a finger.
Overusing/abusing engines can get you into
tons of trouble (as we'll see in the article
below).
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
-----SIDEBAR-----
What about Yahoo!, LookSmart, and Open Directory? These are
not search engines (which compile zillions of pages in an
automated fashion via robots called spiders). They are
human-evaluated groupings of sites -- think of directories
as the world's biggest collections of bookmarks. We'll get
to them in a second.
---
o Consider Pay-Per-Inclusion When It Makes Sense
Although it would be nice to have all the traffic in the
world for free, that's no longer a reality. Search Engines
have bottom lines, creditors, and shareholders too. So it's
not surprising most have implemented pay-per-inclusion
programs.
-----SIDEBAR-----
A word of caution about these programs...
They don't GUARANTEE you a shred of traffic.
They only guarantee your site will be listed
in an index, and recrawled periodically.
To receive traffic, your pages must still be
optimized properly. So, before you spend
money, make sure you've optimized by running
a good analyzer -- some analyzers alone can
cost more than a full year of hosting your
Site Build It! site, not to mention all the
tools integrated throughout the entire system.
-----SIDEBAR-----
As with anything else, some are better than others. Stephen
Mahaney's (of se-news.com) research on AltaVista's paid
program confirms what we ourselves discovered...
The AltaVista program is over-priced, and delivers
under-whelming results.
Inktomi's program (perhaps because of their alliance with
the massive MSN), on the other hand, seems to be a real
winner. In our own testing with SBI! pages, the Inktomi
paid service delivered visitors at less cost than what the
PPCs (Pay-Per-Clicks) could... less than a penny per visitor
(averaged over the one year subscription period, with pages
optimized using SBI!'s "Analyze It!" feature).
Definitely, a worthwhile venture. And Site Build It!'s
regular e-zines and Search Engine Headquarters tell you
exactly HOW to milk the most value for your dollar with some
truly original strategies.
-----SIDEBAR-----
Inktomi's paid inclusion program is provided
by Positiontech...
http://www.positiontech.com/
-----SIDEBAR-----
Expensive directory inclusion fees are harder to justify
because it's more difficult to control where your site is
listed, and what for keywords it will be found. Nonetheless,
directory listings are important because they provide
critical link popularity.
My recommendation?
Pay for ONE directory listing at either LookSmart or Yahoo!.
(LookSmart has a $149 option.) Naturally, take advantage of
the free submission at Open Directory. This will give you a
couple of links to your site from solid directories,
something important to engines that use "link-to" measures
as part of their algorithms. (Full details available in
Site Build It's Directory HQ.)
Buy your way into the Inktomi index through PositionTech,
getting the maximum return by following SBI! strategies...
http://www.positiontech.com/
And work with the free engines in a GIVE, then TAKE manner
to obtain hordes of targeted traffic to your site.
--
o SEs In The New Millennium... The Wrap Up
Traffic costs money... in dollars, and in the time it takes
to build an SE-friendly site. That being said, the SEs are
STILL the best for driving cheap traffic to your Web Site.
The sticking point is that now you need to make a financial
investment to get into most of the SEs. In lieu of that, it
would make sense to purchase submission software,
optimization software, click-tracking software, etc. to
ensure that you get the most out of your advertising
dollars.
A major expenditure.
But you could take a different, more cost-effective route...
With all the changes in the Search Engine industry,
SiteSell's Site Build It! has become an even more powerful
tool. It meets, exceeds even, the needs of these new
developments. It plays by the rules. SBI! works WITH the
engines.
And because SBI! is THE all-tools-in-one-place solution, it
drastically increases your ability to work efficiently and
succeed at drawing targeted low-cost traffic from the
engines. Consider...
i) With the "Analyze It" module, your pages are highly
optimized at the click of a button. Over 25 criteria are
carefully analyzed and reported upon.
ii) Upon completion of a new page, it is automatically
submitted to our list of Search Engines, unless you've
already built a page on that day. In that case, it is added
to a queue, to be submitted at the next available
opportunity (we won't ever "over-submit" to the engines).
iii) Upon successful submission of a new page, SBI! tracks
spider visits with a state-of-the-Net bot base. If a
crawler doesn't visit within 14 days, we resubmit that page.
If a crawler does visit, we then begin to check for indexing
on a periodic basis.
iv) Once we've found your page is listed, we begin to check
for ranking. As soon as people are finding your site
through the engines, you'll be able to use the "Keyword
Searches Report" to find what pages ARE used (by visitors)
to locate your site.
v) Of course, SBI! Site Central contains two SE information
resources -- the Paid SE HQ, and the Directory HQ. So all
important news and updates are always right there at your
fingertips.
vi) SBI! tracks all Click IN, and Click THROUGH data to
ensure you focus your efforts only those things that bear
significant financial fruit.
The list goes on. I could talk about the SBI! Manager which
allows you to isolate and positively identify keyword niches
within your site's theme -- no more guessing at which
keywords to target! I could talk about how the Manager
allows you to build massive pay-per-click campaigns with
none of the headaches associated with a traditional
campaign. But let's just leave it at this... from
brainstorming to hosting, from thousand-word pay-per-click
campaigns to free engine optimizing, Site Build It! is the
most unique, and complete, Web hosting solution in the world...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
If you have a sales site (whether you sell hard goods,
e-goods, or your services) that needs warm, targeted
traffic, or if you want to start a thriving affiliate
business, there is nothing even close to this total
solution.
-------
---3---
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Automatic Submitters ... Effective??
We've received a few e-mails from folks with questions
regarding a recent article in a well-known e-commerce
newsletter about automatic submitters...
----------------------------------------
I recently read an article by Bob Massa that
questions the effectiveness of automated
search engine submissions, once the search
engines notice how many submissions are being
made to them by these automated tools. So
that makes me wonder whether there is any
value to SBI!'s submitting/tracking tools.
----------------------------------------
Bob Massa was not taking umbrage with Site Build It! in
particular, but SBI! (and WebPosition Gold) were mentioned
as examples of "automatic submitters." It's always a good
sign to be mentioned as THE example of anything, and the
article was quite good.
I guess the only part of the article that bothered me was
using SBI! as an example of an auto-submitter. Naturally,
SBI! does much, much more than WPG or any other tool out
there -- auto-submitting is perhaps 2% of the whole SBI!
package, but that's another story. Let's focus on the
submitting issue...
Mr. Massa did have issues with automatic submitters. He's
right, in general... and he's wrong, too, since those same
conclusions don't apply regarding SBI!. That's not his
fault, of course... he does not know how we control SBI!.
So, just to clear up his central points, which were...
----------------------------------------
Keeping that in mind, those auto submit
programs and auto ranking checkers, use up
resources. Server resources and labor
resources.
<SNIP>
Now, without knowing for sure, my guess as to
why your site is not getting listed is
because they have started rejecting
submissions from certain programs and SBI!
could be one of them.
----------------------------------------
Yes, we've been very careful about this observation. There
is, of course, no reason for Mr. Massa to know that we have
designed the entire SBI! program with the goal of working
WITH, and not abusing, the engines. We take the HUMAN
operator OUT of the process for this reason -- there is no
room for them to abuse their tools (nor would there be any
advantage to users to allow them to do so)...
AUTO-submitting is so easy that folks can do it every day
(heck, every minute!) and really abuse the system. Not with
SBI!, however. Everything is scheduled in an optimized
fashion.
If we parse a successful submission message from an engine,
you won't be able to submit again... unless one of their
spiders does NOT visit within a certain amount of time
(varies). We track spider visits, and re-submit *only* when
needed. We track if/when each page gets listed, too -- and
resubmit on this basis, too... ONLY WHEN NEEDED. So when an
SBI! owner MANUALLY submits (which we advise not to) on
his/her own, DIRECTLY ON THE SE'S SITE, s/he does not help
his/her situation.
The SBI! algorithms that simulate hand submission are pretty
sophisticated and we track spider visits as a percentage of
all pages, across all engines and for each engine. We use
this to see if any engine has identified OUR process (the %
of spider visits vs. total page submissions would start
dropping for that engine) -- if this happens, it's a simple
matter to alter patterns to fall back under the radar. And
there's no way to track SBI! by IP since we use so, so many
IPs (due to the thousands of sites involved).
That's the great part about a server-based system -- it's
totally controllable and trackable... and easily adjustable.
All in all, I agree with Bob Massa's point -- but our goal
with our entire system is NOT to abuse the engines, and
their resources -- it's to work WITH them, never AGAINST
them.
I did not perceive the article to be a slight against SBI!
in particular. Overall, his general points about submitters
were valid. Choosing SBI! as an example of a submitter was
unfortunate for two reasons....
1) SBI! is much, much, much more than that -- heck, it's Web
hosting with tons of integrated functionality basically
"grafted on for free" as one SBIer put it.
2) Mr. Massa simply did not know how SBI! specifically
works. His points really were invalid for SBI!.
For more information about SBI! and how it can build a site
that will drive targeted, warm traffic to your sales site,
or to merchants that you affiliate for, please see...
http://buildit.sitesell.com/
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http://www.sitesell.com/discount-directory.html
Please bookmark this page -- it's the only page that you
will EVER need to buy SiteSell products at an owners-only
discount. For owners of SiteSell products ONLY, it provides
discounts on all products, except for the Electronic Version
of MYSS! -- if I reduced the price on it, I'd have to pay
*you* to buy it! ;-)
SiteSell Discount Directory
http://www.sitesell.com/discount-directory.html
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Written by Ken Evoy, M.D.,
President, SiteSell.com
(c) copyright 2001 SiteSell.com
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