JimWorld Gazette Issue #36 01/09/1998

Gazette - Issue #36 - January 9, 1998

-- Housekeeping
-- Want A Good Job?
-- Tips From The Hitman - Part XX
-- I Hate When That Happens
-- Snippets
-- Five Ways To Promote Your Ezine
-- MS Frontpage And Meta Tags
-- Submit URL Update

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g36

HOUSEKEEPING

We want to welcome the members of the Submit URL newsletter mailing list to the Gazette. Hayden, our intrepid reporter, also operates the Submit URL service and because of his workload writing for the Gazette, he had not put out a Submit URL newsletter in a LONG TIME. So we have assumed the responsibility of distributing the Submit URL news once a month or so.

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Wow. I think I'm going to start whining. There were so many good guest articles, in addition to the regular 'staff' articles, that there was hardly any room for me this week! This is a wonderful trend, as it brings you information well beyond my sphere of expertise (assuming that I have one, of course). You folks have gotten so famous that it takes very little coaxing to get experts to write stuff for you.

This week I have an Oops to talk about. The sweepstakes has gotten totally away from me. Every time I sit down to work on it, something gets in the way. There's just so much going on around the web that I want to research and write about, plus a new 'feature' about ready to launch on one of the sites, and the Helpware contest that I just haven't had time to do justice to the generous contributions made by many vendors towards the sweepstakes. So I am going to put it off until March and put the time into the Helpware project instead. There have been excellent submissions for that contest and it only has 2 more weeks to run.

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Sometimes it seems like the Net couldn't move any faster. Last year it seemed like just more of the same. About the same pace as the year before. Break-neck pace.

But last year was different. And the stats from Network Solutions bear it out. Network Solutions, currently the primary registrar service for domain names, registered approximately 960,000 new Internet domain names in 1997, up 96 percent from the 1996 total of 489,000 net new registrations. Network Solutions registers domain names ending in .com, .org, .net and .edu. In 1997, .com continued to be the most sought after Internet address, accounting for nearly 90 percent of all registrations.

This doesn't take into consideration the registrations of domain names throughout the rest of the world. In many places, growth has been even more dramatic.

If you've been astute enough to get a membership, you can read the whole story at Web-Vantage <http://www.web-vantage.com/wv/980108n2.cfm> Or try the 30-day free trial at <http://www.web-vantage.com/trial.cfm> and then you can read the story.

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Dear Jim;

I subscribed to the Gazette a couple of months ago, and have used many tips to increase my site traffic. My heartfelt thanks, but in particular, I wanted to thank you on behalf of a friend. Let me explain...

A couple of issues ago, you had a pointer to Zyris <http://www.zyris.com/>, a site which lets users build some incredible personalized graphics via their web page. This alone was impressive, but I immediately thought of a friend of mine who could truly benefit from this site. You see, my friend has a birth defect which causes a palsy, making it virtually impossible for him to create anything more than rudimentary original graphics with a paint program. He has been stuck using various freebie clip-art available to the masses, and often lamented the lack of graphic originality on his site. The Zyris site allowed him to create personal graphics to enhance the great info on the site, and he is just having a ball!

Because of the joy it brought my friend, I consider this the find of the year, and we owe it to you, Jim. Thanks for this pointer, and many other helpful pointers in your informative newsletter. I'm also sending a copy of this letter to Zyris...I believe in giving credit where due.

Happy New Year!
Peggy, Home Cooking <http://homecooking.miningco.com>

---Jim--- Great letter. Thanks. At this time of the year, I think that Peggy's New Year's Resolution Diet page meets all of her Helpware requirements for January. If I give the page a plug, does that exempt me from the diet?

I just want to take a minute to acknowledge the Mining Company Guides that subscribe to the Gazette. I see several new ones sign up every week. If you haven't browsed around the Mining Company, you have missed a lot of good information.---

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Dear Jim,

Thank you!!!!!
Your wonderful newsletter has been instrumental in our ascent from obscurity to the limelight. Our site, Cafe Progressive <http://come.to/cafeprogressive>, now shows up #1 on Alta Vista and Lycos, and #7 on Infoseek when searching using the keywords "progressive" and "education".

This success compels me to put in my two cents on the meta tag debate. Last week's featured article made me wonder if keyword repetition was a faulty strategy. I don't wonder any more. Until I get punished by a search engine, I am going to trust the results I got using meta tags. Specifically. the words " progressive" and "education" appear twice each in my meta description and three times each in my meta keyword list. They also appear once each in both my title and my logo banner alt tags, as well as early in the body text of my page.

I don't really know what it all means but for now I am convinced. A thorough but moderate use of meta tags and other strategies mentioned earlier in your newsletter have proven quite successful for us at Cafe Progressive, at least as far as Lycos, Alta Vista, and Infoseek are concerned. Using the same keywords, Hot Bot places us in the #18 slot which isn't too bad either. We are still waiting for the other majors to add our new site to their indexes. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks again,

J. Chas
CAFE PROGRESSIVE <http://come.to/cafeprogressive>
An INTERACTIVE Progressive Community for Educators & Activists

WANT A GOOD JOB?

Sales/Marketing Manager

ValueClick, the Internet's fastest growing advertising network, is seeking an experienced Internet sales professional to head up our sales department. This is a true ground floor opportunity.

Candidate must have Internet advertising experience. Banner advertising sales a definite plus. Candidate should be a highly motivated, self-starter with strong communication and organizational skills. In addition, due to constant growth and transition, all candidates must be able to perform in a fast-paced and unpredictable environment.

An attractive compensation package will be tailored to the successful candidate including base salary, commissions, 401K, Health care, and bonus opportunities.

Fax resume to (805)564-7151 or email to <mailto:brian@web-ignite.com>

---------------------------------------------------------
Brian Coryat (805) 965-0543
President/CEO <mailto:brian@web-ignite.com>
Web-Ignite Corporation <http://www.web-ignite.com>
ValueClick Banner Net <http://www.valueclick.com>
Client Direct <http://www.clientdirect.com>
AAA Internet Promotions <http://www.websitepromote.com>

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN XX

This week I am going to take a break from the series and focus on another specific search engine in detail. It seems the article on Northern Light was a big success, so I will be interspersing these search engine specific reports.

The goals of the search engines is somewhat in conflict with the goals of a site owner marketing his or her Web page. To the search engine, the goal is to present an accurate index of the Internet, or at least of the sites that have been entered and indexed into that individual search engine. Our goal as budget conscious Webmasters is to manipulate or skew the results in our favor. Believe me, Top 10 placement on the search engines does make a significant difference in the traffic to a Web page. I have successfully taken a site from zero to 2,000 hits a day with only search engine placement as the marketing strategy in two months time.

Since the desire to "adjust" search engine position is getting harder all the time due to efforts by the search engines to foil various tricks that worked in the past, it is necessary to understand the individual search engines and how they "look" at your page. Understanding what matters, what will and will not affect the indexing is the key to creating a page that does well by using the rules of the search engine to your own advantage.

This time around we will focus on Infoseek. Infoseek is one of the favorite engines for attempting to improve position because it is the fastest of the bunch at adding an entry. You can often add an entry and have the listing available and included within minutes at some times of the day. At the outside it might take half an hour. This speed of processing submissions gives rapid feedback as to the success or failure of your efforts and makes it the ideal site for working on that first Top 10 listing. Even a failure can be removed after 24 hours or resubmitted with changes to try your luck again. This rapid feedback loop makes learning what works and does not work much easier than say Excite or Web Crawler where one month or more wait from submission to posting of the page in the index is the rule.

So, how does Infoseek handle data? What is and is not indexed? Here is my take on the subject based on observation and testing.

Well, as was discussed last week, Infoseek does index the title, and it is important to have keywords in the title at Infoseek. Also, Infoseek is one of the search engines that indexes the meta keywords, and if meta description is present it is used as the description for the listing. Infoseek also appears to index words that are contained in the head of the HTML page but not in the title of the page. Also indexed are words that appear on the page before the HTML tag itself! Also indexed of course would be words that appear within the body of the page between the body tags.

Now what about all the other odd tags and places words occur in a HTML page? Infoseek does index the description in a link as in http://www.webthemes.com">MY WEB PAGE where "my web page" would be indexed. What is not indexed? It appears that image alt tags are not indexed, and neither are words in hidden input form data tags such as Here the words after the word value= are just a waste of effort even though you will find this method in some of the higher listings, this is not what is helping. Also curiously enough, the information or words in the description meta tag are not indexed, but will be used for the description of your site!

A couple of other items worth mentioning: Infoseek is case sensitive, First Letter Capitalized will return different results than all lower case in a search, as will all capitals. This being the case, you would also think plurals would be treated differently, such as dog and dogs but it appears plurals make no difference. Keep this in mind when making your keyword list to avoid spam penalty. On some of the engines these situations are not the case and dog is not the same keyword as dogs.

Last of all, comment tags are not indexed. Comment tags play an important part in the page design for Excite for instance but at Infoseek, they are a waste of time.

Knowing where you should place the data and what is a waste of time will save you from wasting time trying things that will have no effect, or when combined with things that do work, might give you a false impression of their value and take your attention away from what you really did right to improve your position. My advice is to take it easy on keyword repetition in the title and meta tags, and to focus your work on keyword density in the body of the page before a submission to Infoseek.

Next week in the continuation of the regular series I will be talking about things like keyword density and keyword relevancy.

Hayden Mitchell < mailto:webhitman@infofree.com> Web Themes <http://www.webthemes.com >

I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS

"Well, my goal was to bang through the alphabet [under the 500 places to register] by year's end, and I believe I've succeeded.

I'm surprised at the number of non-related sites that took my entry. A "Canada only" and a "widget-makers only" site both happily accepted my submission ... I did email first with a plea that perhaps when widget makers travel they'll want to stay at a B&B [which I thought was stretching it] -- but every time I asked, I was accepted.

Under the "do as I say, not as I did" category ... I followed your advice to a T ... including whipping up a nice little spreadsheet on each site, date I tried, how long they said it will take, if the site failed, did I just do the flash page or all the pages, dollars involved, etc ... the one thing I did not note, and I'm now poppin' Tums because of this wee oversight ... I did not make note of which email address I submitted from. Most of them got my aliased email address, but in some cases, there was a request for the "true" email address ... and this sucks because? .... because my ISP just got bought and the new owner will force us to change our email addresses. sigh. big, heavy sigh."

Tracey Campbell <http://www.innseekers.com>

SNIPPETS

Several valuable directories for you submit to, all on one site! Tile.net <http://tile.net/> has just launched a new directory with a narrow focus. Mostly things that would be of interest to webmasters and web merchants. Submit if your site falls into any of these categories.

Discussion Lists on the Internet
Usenet Newsgroups
FTP sites
Computer Products Vendors
Internet & Web Design Companies

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Do you offer an award for web sites? If so, go to Wetwired Webcenter <http://www.wetwired.com/submit.html> and register your award. Wetwired is planning a multi submit engine and will launch when they have 100 awards registered. While you are there, be sure to wander around and check out the other resources they offer to webmasters.

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Time to mention Four Corners Effective Banners http://www.whitepalm.com/fourcorners/index.shtml again. This is where you start your search for the perfect banner design. You know, that magical design that gets clicked on every time it is displayed? Well, Four Corners may not get you that far, it is the right place to start your research into designing a better banner.

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Hack-A-Mac is still going on. Global Access throws out this challenge: 'Hack this Mac and win an Apple PowerBook 3400c' If you think you are a pretty good hacker head on over to http://hack-a-mac.global.de/ and try your hand. These Mac contests have been going on for a long time, and to date none of the Macs have been hacked. If I were planning a mission-critical e-commerce initiative, I'd be seriously tempted to look at the security offered by a Mac server.

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Dr. Ralph Wilson of Wilson Internet Services has written an excellent article about choosing an ISP to host your site. The article lays out a very good road map to finding a service that you can stick with. http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt2/issue27.htm

FIVE WAYS TO PROMOTE YOUR E-ZINE

---Jim--- We continue our series on building you web community through the publication of a Zine of one sort or another. Chip has such a broad knowledge of the promotion aspects of zinedom that I asked him to contribute this segment. I think you'll agree that this material he has written is valuable.---

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Because I maintain a site devoted to zine culture <http://www.zinebook.com>, I often receive mail from editors asking me how they can get the word out about their e-zines. (Quick aside: Traditionally, the word zine is short for fanzine, not magazine, although the Net has expanded its meaning.) E-zines cover the gamut, from obsessive fanzines like "Former Child-Star Palooza" at <http://www.bulmash.com/formerchildstar> ("the zine that dares to ask, Would you like fries with that?") to advertiser-driven magazines like Salon to e-mail newsletters such as the Gazette. We can set these distinctions aside, since the methods to promote an online publication are the same no matter what drives you to create it.

Hit all the search engines and directories -- Obviously. If you have a Webzine, treat each article as a separate site (and adjust your META tags). For example, I enter my Book of Zines site but then also submit individual pages, such as "How to Publicize Your E-Zine" at <http://thetransom.com/chip/zines/resource/publicz.html>. This page includes a long list of directories devoted to e-zines, including the popular Ezines Database and E-Zine List. You should list your publication there, but be sure to also list at directories by subject. That is, don't just list your e-zine in the "Ezines" category -- list it under "Travel" or "Humor" or whatever best describes the content of your publication or article. If you have an e-mail newsletter, post it on your Web site as well -- now you have a Webzine to publicize (same house, different doors). There are also directories devoted exclusively to e-mail newsletters.

George Myers Jr. of George Jr. <http://www.georgejr.com> offers a suggestion to keep in mind as you inform other e-zine editors, award givers and directories about your creation: "If you can explain your zine in a sentence you have a fighting chance." That shows you are focused. People don't have time to figure out what your e-zine has to offer if you aren't sure yourself. They'll move on.
Create an e-mail newsletter -- Most Webzine editors I've talked to have suggested this. Offer visitors the chance to sign up for a free e-mail newsletter. It allows you to send out news and notices when you update your publication or post a new issue, and in the process invite readers to come back. Make sure you are diligent about removing people who decide they want out. Doing an e-mail newsletter also allows you to reach people who don't have Web access. It's the simplest of push technology.
Exchange ads -- Christopher Pirillo, editor of Lockergnome <http://www.lockergnome.com>, an e-zine of Windows 95/98/NT resources, has built his subscriber list to 77,000 people. Not bad. In his experience, ad exchanges "work best for e-zines distributed only by e-mail. It kicks the heck out of banner advertisement. You can be more descriptive with a text ad. Plus, I believe that the people who subscribe to one e-mail pub are more than likely to subscribe to another." Banner exchanges are fine too, but chose your friends carefully.
Give Them What They Deserve -- You've got competition. Attention spans are short. Do what you can to get return visitors. Updating your site is key. Jim Romenesko of Obscure Publications <http://www.primenet.com/~obscure> notes that his visitor count was flat when he let cobwebs grow on his site. "When I add to it at least once a week, I've noticed that at least some visitors return for the possibility of new content," he says. (He's right: I'm one of them.) Other "reader-friendly" advice: Go through your publication with a fine-tooth comb and fix all typos (if you can't read your e-zine twice, why should a reader read it once?). Eliminate any link rot (see <http://www.greenpac.com> for free help). Finally, do your best to answer your mail promptly.

"How does this relate to publicizing?" asks Christopher Pirillo. "It crafts your image." As content goes, check out what's being done and do something original. "How much crud do you have to wade through on the Net before you finally get to quality content?" Christopher asks. "Remember that before you even start typing. Dave Palmer of DIY Search <http://www.diysearch.com> calls fresh content "half the battle." With all the new e-zines being launched nowadays, it may be closer to 95 percent. If you have a great e-zine, word will spread. Don't work long hours to promote it only to have return readers see the same content and never come back.
Design a Logo -- Christopher makes his 88x31, which I love because it's small enough that it's not a hassle to drop on a site. What's up with all these 20K animated awards anyway? Are they an honor to win? When you review a product or page, let the Webmaster know and give them the URL of your logo. Can't hurt. And offer a brief accolade--it changes your logo from "hey, give me a link!" to "I love your site, and here's why." Also, I discourage anyone from doing reciprocal links. It muddies your reputation in the sense that a visitor can't tell if you really liked the site or just want some of its traffic. If you want your e-zine and opinion to be respected, never make it a requirement that anyone link to your site to be recognized. If you do a quality e-zine, the site you honor will be proud to post your logo.

---Jim--- I agree with the above. Don't link from you main pages and resource listings to another site just because they link to you. But.... you can create a page just for those types of links. We have one at JimWorld called 'Links2Us' and we make it clear that it is simply a listing of people that thought enough of VP to give it a link.. OK. Back to Chip---

That's a start. "How to Publicize Your E-Zine" has more tips and links to e-zine directories I dug up while promoting my e-zine, The Chip Electric <http://thetransom.com/chip>. I hope you find it useful!

Written for the Gazette by:
Chip Rowe <mailto:chip@interaccess.com>
The Book of Zines <http://www.zinebook.com>

---Jim--- Visit Chip's site for the listings of resources you can take advantage of to promote your zine. He has done such a good job of developing and maintaining the zine promotion resource directory, I'm not even going to bother doing one on VP. It's been done.---

MS FRONTPAGE AND META TAGS

---Jim--- I've been seeing a lot of talk about META tag problems and Microsoft FrontPage. I've also gotten a lot of email that turned out to be this same problem masquerading as several other problems.
I asked Jim Rhodes, publisher of "The Art Of Business Web Site Promotion" <http://deadlock.com/promote/> to develop this article for us, since I have seen so much coverage in his fine promotion newsletter.---

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I've never been a big fan of MS FrontPage because of the horrible mess it makes of HTML code. It's aimed at novice designers who want to create pages in a WYSIWYG environment without having to grapple with the raw code. Fair enough, this is all a matter of taste. However, there are aspects of FP that affect promotion, so if you're an FP user (or you're thinking about it) this might help you avoid some pitfalls.

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FrontPage and META tags:

The Northern Webs Meta Medic < http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html> is an online tool you can use to check the syntax and relevancy of your Meta tags, and it says this:

"Meta Medic is like the Search Engine Spiders in that it can not read files on servers using the Microsoft Frontpage97 Server Extensions. If your page starts to load, then halts briefly before continuing to load, you are using these extensions. We cannot read your page, nor can the search engines."

If you have FP97 you can avoid this by opting to upload your files by regular FTP instead of using the "publish" function. The bug has been fixed in FP98.

You might also notice that your FP97 page will flash the message "Transfer Interrupted!" briefly before the page reloads, if you're viewing it in Netscape 3.xx. I don't know if this has anything to do with the previous point, but it's a Netscape bug which can be avoided by deleting the (unnecessary) line:

..or similar (depending on which character set your system is using), which is inserted by FP97 and a few other HTML editors.

Another thing to watch out for in FP98: if you're writing the HTML by hand, it'll automatically convert special characters into HTML format. This can have potentially disastrous effects. For example, if you try writing your META keywords tag, it will be converted to:

Comment tags are converted to:

<-- comments -->

Not very helpful, I'm sure you'll agree.

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FrontPage and Security:

FrontPage invites hackers.

When you set up a FP "web", the default is for NO PASSWORD. As a result there are many, many, many FP sites out there with ROOT UNPROTECTED! All someone has to do is to point FrontPage at a web, and if it is unprotected, full root access is granted immediately.

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The problems I've outlined can all be avoided, or they're fixed in new releases. On the other hand, are you willing to take the chance that there are more bugs waiting to rear their ugly heads?

I've discussed this topic in my own promotion newsletter (you can join by sending a blank email to <mailto:Jims-List@deadlock.com> - it's free) and I got a lot of feedback from FrontPage users. Of those that were satisfied with the product (about 20% of the people that contacted me), the main argument was this:

"Nobody should have to learn HTML, I would rather spend my time concentrating on page design than messing around with code."

The difference between FrontPage and other HTML editors is like the difference between taking a train to your destination and learning to drive a car. If you take the train, all you need to do is buy a ticket and take the Bill Gates train to one of his (pre-defined) stations, along with lots of other people (that's why many FrontPage sites look similar). If you "learn to drive" with an editor that shows you the HTML code, it takes time, but once you know how you have the freedom to go anywhere you like (advanced HTML techniques are dreamed up by people who know HTML code), and if you hit a pothole it's because of your driving, not somebody else's.

What do I use? A plain text editor called Textpad <http://www.textpad.com/> and I would also recommend both of these:

WebEdit <http://www.luckman.com/webeditpro/edittrynow.html>
HotDog <http://www.sausage.com>

You won't find many ground-breaking HTML techniques on my pages, but that's through my own choice (he says, trying to avoid hate mail).

SUBMIT URL UPDATE

This is the first Submit URL update to appear in JimWorld Gazette.

Some background information is probably appropriate. I started the Submit URL page in March of 1996. At that time, the information I was using to submit Web sites as the Web Hitman was next to impossible to find in one place. Lists of submit URLs had to be put together by visiting each search engine or directory, searching for the link and recording the page as a bookmark. Submission sites never listed the URLs they submitted to, only the name of the sites.

I decided I needed to do something to generate more hits to my new business which was not doing that well in early 96. I broke the "rules" and put together a free resource to show people with a limited budget where they could submit their web pages for free if they wanted to do it themselves. Back then a posting to 100 places could cost you several hundred dollars. The site started out as a one page list of links and has grown in size and content ever since. Mine was the first or one of the first of this type to my knowledge and I know this because it was really difficult to find information to include in the listing in the early days. I chose how to promote as a topic because that is what I knew how to do and building and maintaining this resource made me better at it!

The site has grown quite a bit over the last few years, and I have to admit some sites may be doing a better job than I have time for now. (Yes it needs a facelift, any volunteers?) I still keep up the site and try to make regular additions. Why? It not only was successful as a traffic builder, but it brought me in contact with many of my best Internet contacts.

I met Jim when he applied for the award I have for his brand new JimWorld page. If you look at his award page, way way down near the bottom you will see I turned him down when he first applied. But Jim is tenacious and when I reviewed the site a second time, he earned top billing on my "Start Here" page. His site had some of the best information I had seen and has gotten better ever since.

Now for the site update.

I recently have started adding to the "Traffic Control" section. This section has to do with counting your hits or monitoring traffic patterns. For a long time there have not been any additions because there was nothing new that was free in this area and the old reliable sites like wishing.com had become less than reliable, and then gone.

This has changed. We are now seeing a whole new class of free Web Statistic type sites that offer great statistics including referring URLs. This means you can have top notch information on where your hits are coming from including the search engine with the search words used. This is invaluable in tracking what keywords are getting people to your site. Most of these services will require that you display a banner on your page that includes the code to track and is used by them to advertise on your site and thus support the free service. The URL for Submit URL is <http://www.webthemes/submit.html> The new additions can be found at this page <http://www.webthemes.com/submit6.html#2> You can take a look at the new additions at this URL. I will be including updates in the Gazette as they happen, not necessarily every week.

Hayden Mitchell
Web Themes