Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 110 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada
Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 3:55 am Post subject:
LOL - thanks Joshua C.
Quote:
My advice would be the same as Andrea's; before you publish your site, try and get a professional to look over the code. Better yet use the w3c validator
one quick clarification...
I was suggesting that before we purchase a HTML editor, you get a chance to see the source code on a live site which uses the tool. Then, if you don't possess the knowledge to assess it yourself, have a professional look it over.
I also agree with your suggestion to validate your site at the publishing point - it's good to know what, if any errors exist.
The internet is not the only place to make a buck and even with the internet, natural search placement is not the only way to turning a profit.
I completely agree and that was exactly my point of the initial comments I made in this thread. When I said "Diversify your marketing", I believe someone else on this thread misunderstood me.
I said that because JM (the initial topic of this thread) specifically tells his students to stick to the manual. The manual only includes his narrow marketing SE methods and he actively says not to get involved in other forms of marketing strategies, ie. conferences, message boards, blogging, RSS, PPC, etc. These are clearly statements that each of his students should question.
Hope that clears up my point to the post. But again Colin, if I entrust you with my email address to get access to an ebook that I later find out was not written by you and contains mostly PLR, I'd be disappointed and that trust would be somewhat diminished, unless of course, the other content you provided me was pure Colin and excellent info.
What can we conclude here, is that your own method is the best method. Blend what you learn from others and make your own brand. Create the sites you like and use the tricks and tips from others
that improve your overall site performance.
Nicely said and a summarized version of my initial post, achiever!
Come on you guys. If the search engine cannot even get past the declaration tag on line one... they AIN'T READING YOUR CONTENT
Uhoh ... don't get me started on validation, Andrea.
Seriously though, I agree with you. Good clean code is important. BUT quite honestly I wouldn't spend too much time trying to validate every single character on 1000s of your pages. Here's what I recommend:
1. Check your site in browsers you "know" your website visitors (target market) will be using. Unlike most of us here and although Firefox is popular with techies, most consumers don't know about it. They use MIE or something similar that came packaged with their ISP access. Since most of us here are building affiliate sites that are visited mainly by the mainstream, we want to check our sites using the same tools our site visitors will be using.
2. Watch your server stats every day. Are your "targeted" search engines indexing your pages? If not, there might be a problem with your code. Double check your validation. If it doesn't validate, you need to decide whether intricately validating all 1000 pages and every character on each of those pages is worth your time. There's only so much time in a day.
When someone buys a template marketed as validated, most of the time the template will no longer validate after the person adds their content to it. This can be for a number of reasons and like you said Andrea, unknown to the website owner. I checked 2 websites from the people who commented in this thread about validation, and their sites did not validate. Andrea, your site was one of them. Most of your errors are related to your database URLs and your SWF files. I'm going to assume that you didn't feel it worth your time to correct these errors or you didn't know about them. That's my point. Validation is important - at least knowing what your errors are, BUT spending too much time validating every character on all your pages may not be the best use of your time. It's really a personal choice.
Again, don't misunderstand me. I do believe in good code but even some of the biggest most successful sites don't validate. Why? Because sales can be made and pages indexed often without validation. Check them yourself at http://validator.w3.org/. I've include some well known multi-million dollar sites and some that are less known but make $1000s a month from a diverse target market.
Here's a real-life example for you from a super successful affiliate site less than a month old. My wife recently developed a pet product related affiliate website. It gets a diverse amount of traffic mostly from the North America region (right now!). She used ecommerce software that I'd never heard of and wasn't too thrilled about. But she insisted. She's the type of person who has advanced foresight and this software had features she felt would be helpful in the years ahead. The software does not generate pages with a DOCTYPE and the pages do not validate. I'm not completely sold on it - yet - but every day when Google and the other major SEs index an additional 125 pages per day (average - some days its far more than 125), she just smiles at me. In less than 4 weeks, her new sites has more than 2,100 pages indexed by Google alone. And best of all she's making affiliate commissions like gang busters. The software developer says they have added validation to the list of future revisions. I'll believe it when I see it, but she's crossing her fingers. In the meantime, even though the site is not validating, the SEs are slurping up the pages. She and I both hand code, so maintenance or revisions to the site are super easy. I am now busy writing articles related to some of the more popular products which is far better use of my time than worrying about whether every character on every page validates. Yes, perhaps the site would do even better if the pages validated, but it renders fine in all the major browsers, so we aren't too worried about it. If amazon.com can sell millions of dollars in books every year and have over 1,600 errors with no doctype, well ... if makes you wonder.
Don't "blow off" rewrites of content as worthless and useless. I would encourage you to "study" what askthebuilder.com does.
I don't need to study Tim Carter's website. I already know he doesn't use and would never use PLR.
Quote:
I use to believe Diversify was smart - now I don't - Great for stocks and investing - not for building web sites.
I was speaking of diversified marketing strategies and not diversified targeted markets (the people visiting your site). Diversified marketing strategies is something that JM discourages his students to pursue. Which is likely one reason why many of them are having difficulties now.
To be fair to JM though, I have not entirely read his newest version of his ebook. I only read parts of it. Those I did read, did not impress me. One thing that stood out to me was the new site building software he raves about. A coding and maintenance nightmare but then that's the nature of most do it yourself WYSIWYG sitebuilding packages I've seen. It's too expensive too. Why pay $30+ month for (lame) content management software. I believe someone else in this thread mentioned the very same thing.
I hand code also but use templates to drop content in as it makes it much faster for me.
I don't spend much time crying over perfect code - but apprecaite the benefits of it.
All the Best _________________ Gary
- ONE is to small of a number to be a success!
Learn HOW TO create targeted, focused Content for your website!--> http://webcontenttips.com - Join Our Weekly Newsletter
Joined: 14 Sep 2004 Posts: 110 Location: Vancouver, BC Canada
Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:42 pm Post subject:
defrag
Quote:
Seriously though, I agree with you. Good clean code is important. BUT quite honestly I wouldn't spend too much time trying to validate every single character on 1000s of your pages.
You're bang on the money here Degrag.
Who wants to start with a crap-sandwich foundation though? No hope there.
I think you're agreeing with my overall point - which is not to create total paranoia and ultra-sterilized code on every page of your site... as you noted, even good sites aren't super clean in all areas. But if you don't even have a sense that the foundation is strong - you are abdicating a lot of responsibility in exchange for "easy".
I'm simply suggesting that tools marketed to help webmasters make revenue through internet marketing shouldn't produce 100+ lines of bad code plus all the deprecated tags and such that I finding on these example sites (there are more - sadly).
Some automated tools are great and if you know which ones to buy, they don't have to cost an arm-and-a-leg.
Degrag, I'll just have to write a book on it... the pitfalls and perils of... hmmm... maybe I'm onto something here _________________ Andrea Thomson
Degrag, I'll just have to write a book on it... the pitfalls and perils of... hmmm... maybe I'm onto something here
LOL ... there's actually more money in building good content affiliate sites than writing ebooks on topics that have been debated countless times for the last 10+++ years by 1000s of webmasters.
Btw, anything I've said in this thread is my opinion based on my personal (and successful) experiences in ecommerce and affiliate marketing. All of my posts/writing is copyrighted to me. I'm only letting Allan use it on this board in hopes of helping other affiliates "get it".
Hmmmmmmmmmm... I think it's all Allan's now! It's on his board. _________________ Gary
- ONE is to small of a number to be a success!
Learn HOW TO create targeted, focused Content for your website!--> http://webcontenttips.com - Join Our Weekly Newsletter
Joined: 09 Aug 2003 Posts: 1838 Location: Columbus, OH
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:58 pm Post subject:
defrag wrote:
But again Colin, if I entrust you with my email address to get access to an ebook that I later find out was not written by you and contains mostly PLR, I'd be disappointed and that trust would be somewhat diminished, unless of course, the other content you provided me was pure Colin and excellent info.
Regardless if it's pure Colin or pure PLR, doesn't it certainly matter more if the visitor gets something out of the material and answers any questions they might have? _________________ Robert
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As long as the information is Useful, and I can apply
it and see positive results, I don't care if it is PLR, with
a new spin. Especially if the new spin resonates with
me and helps me take new action or I get a new perspective
on things.
If it is just rehashed boring stuff, I won't like it.
I would agree you do own the copyright but since it is a public post it does carry some implied use. However, I would not post anything here you don't want "used" elsewhere.
Just my opinion.
All the Best, _________________ Gary
- ONE is to small of a number to be a success!
Learn HOW TO create targeted, focused Content for your website!--> http://webcontenttips.com - Join Our Weekly Newsletter
I would agree you do own the copyright but since it is a public post it does carry some implied use. However, I would not post anything here you don't want "used" elsewhere.
Hey Gary. Something just crossed my mind. I'm not trying to be a PITA at all. My intend from the beginning was to help other affiliates without any promotion of my own affiliate links or websites.
But in reply to your post, suppose I go to your website and copy-paste excerpts into this message board and 500 others. Does that give anyone on this board or any board the right to plagerize or redistribute what I posted? I'm just making an observation and raising the awareness that just because its on any website, email, forum, private message, IM, etc., doesn't mean its subject to free distribution at will.
I would also think that your public statement would scare off any legit posters here who sincerely want to assist others but who doesn't want their comments or advice they post lifted and used for someone else's content or ebook. Resulting in less posts for Allan to get indexed by the SEs. I posted my comments here and give Allan the right to display it on this board, but any other use would be inappropriate, unprofessional and not a good reflection on any legitimate business who wants to gain the trust and respect of potential customers here.
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