I’ve been running websites for over 10 years now and in that time I’ve owned dozens of domain names but I never had a need to transfer my domain registrar. In fact one of my first domains, singletracks.com, is still at Network Solutions where I continue to pay $35 a year to renew my domain registration just because I was never entirely sure how difficult a transfer would be.
Over the past couple of years I’ve generally used Yahoo! or 1and1 to register new domains and today I probably have about a dozen domains with each company. Regular readers will recall my recent rant about Yahoo!’s domain renewal price increases that went in effect July 1, 2008, effectively raising prices 350% from a year ago. With some of my domains I wasn’t too concerned – I figured I would just cancel them once they came up for renewal since I wasn’t using them anyway. But then my company domain name (bluespruceventures.com) came up for renewal and I knew I had to do something.
So, I started the mysterious “domain transfer process” between Yahoo! Domains and 1and1. Yahoo! actually makes it easy to unlock your domain in the online control panel and even gives you the transfer code you need to initiate the move. 1and1 provides good documentation for transferring domains as well and after adding the domain to my cart just as I would a “new domain,” I was asked for the transfer code. Now at this point, the process was a bit surprising: 1and1 requires you to further verify you are the domain owner by responding to an email sent to the address on record with your domain registration. Fortunately I still had access to this address and was able to complete the verification.
After about 5 business days 1and1 confirmed the process was complete and I was able to update DNS settings to point the domain to my server. The great thing is that during the whole process I was able to keep the name servers going with the correct info so there was no drop in availability for my site (as far as I know).
So if you’re getting the business from your domain registrar with renewal price increases, don’t fret. Just transfer your domain – it’s easier than you might think!
In the old days it was understood that search engines could not crawl web content (particulary dynamic content) that had to be accessed from drop down “select” menus. For example, if a site was about restaurant reviews in the US and users were asked to choose a state from a form menu (like the one below), the state listing pages would be all but invisible to search engines. But is this still the case?
In our test we “hid” pages with our keyword behind a select menu and found (to our surprise) that Google was able to quickly navigate the form with no problems. In fact the pages behind the select menu were picked up and indexed just as quickly (within a few days) as other, normal pages on our site. Yahoo!, on the other hand, still has not indexed the pages behind our select menu and it’s doubtful they ever will (we’ll keep you posted here).
This new finding begs the question: is it still necessary to have alternate entry points for search engine crawlers to access dynamic content? I say yes for two reasons: 1. because less sophisticated crawlers aren’t able to get past menus and 2. because it’s better to be safe than sorry for those that can access your content. It’s also important to consider the other ways folks may be accessing your content where drop-down menus aren’t ideal (mobile phones, text based browsers, screen readers, etc.). Sure it means more pages and more development but it also means even more pages indexed by those sophisticated search engines
Google Adsense has resuscitated many online publishers’ business models over the past 3 or 4 years and it’s easy to understand why: because it works. If you’re unfamiliar with the program, publishers (webmasters like you) can sign up for a free account and start serving targeted online ads immediately. The ads are automatically targeted to your site content which means you get reasonable click-through rates while adding a valuable service to your readers. No more need to serve annoying mortgage ads on your site (ahem, Weather.com).
Over the years Google has added more sophisticated features to the Adsense program that allow publishers even great flexibility. Publishers can, for example, block certain advertisers from their site; choose the ad types shown (image, text, video, etc.); and customize ad colors to fit virtually any site design. What’s amazing is that this free tool that’s available to everyone is being used by some of the biggest sites around (myspace, CNN, etc.). If it works for them it must be pretty powerful and effective.
On our own sites we typically see Google Adsense clickthrough rates between 0.5% and 1% which may not sound like much but is actually slighly above industry averages. Our payment is typically around $0.25 per click but this can vary widely depending on your site’s content, industry competitiveness, etc. Google isn’t saying what percentage of the revenue they collect from advertisers they pay out to publishers but suffice it to say it’s around 50%.
If you’re looking for the industry standard in website monetization, look no further than Google Adsense. It’s a great place to start to get a feel for the types of advertisers that might target your site’s content – and you’ll earn some dough in the process!
When your consumer review website grows beyond a certain size you may find that your users inadvertently add duplicate listings. This could be because folks are having a hard time searching through all your listings or it could just be that they didn’t even bother to search to see if a listing already exists before posting. In either case, it’s important to deal with duplicate content quickly and properly, particularly if your site is set up for user reviews.
When a site contains duplicate listings it gives users the impression that the site is not being actively managed and this makes them less inclined to add a review. Duplicate listings also make it tough to determine which one is the “right” listing where new reviews should be posted. Once reviews have been posted to both listings, neither is “complete” and the confusion grows.
It’s important to make it easy for your site manager to find and deal with duplicate listings quickly. Review App, for example, gives administrators the option to be notified whenever new listings are posted so they can double-check the uniqueness of the listing. Administrators can choose to either delete a listing or temporarily remove it from the public site for further review.
In some cases managers may wish to “convert” duplicate listings into a review of the original listing. For singletracks.com we created a custom tool that takes all the content associated with a duplicate listing (photos, reviews, wishlist entries, etc.) and reassigns that content to the original listing. Using this function singletracks is able to keep categories clean while avoiding potential duplicate content issues.
Consumer review website managers should create a duplicate content plan early on to ensure a clean and useful web experience for every visitor. Web based tools make dealing with duplicate listings quick and easy – be prepared!
We’re back with a fresh set of SEO tests results to share and this first one is pretty interesting: Do search engines count anchor text as page content?
One SEO specialist we spoke to claimed text within anchor (link) tags did not count toward the content of the page itself but rather assigned that text to the linked page. This makes alot of sense because the text within an anchor is describing the page you’re linking to and not necessarily the page the link is on. But it’s sorta wrong.
In our test, we built two pages – one with our keyword placed 6 times within the page content, the other with the keyword placed on the page in 6 anchors pointing to a third page on a different domain. After about a week or so we had 3 pages indexed for our keyword – the non-anchor text page, the anchor text page, and the linked page itself (which, by the way, does not contain our keyword at all). The non-anchor text page gets top billing which does lend some credence to the theory that linked keywords hold less power for a page than non-linked words.
We’re still waiting for Yahoo! to pick up our test page but the way things have been going over there it might be a while. We’ll keep you posted once the pages are indexed…
So what does this mean? For starters it means you shouldn’t “send” your most important keywords off your page through links, though doing so won’t completely tank your ranking. It also means that pages can be associated with keywords even without having the keyword itself anywhere on the page – so long as the keyword is in referring link text. Stay tuned next week for more search engine test results!
Last week I wrote about fake user reviews and how they are generally easy to spot and basically harmless for sites with good review flow. Today I wanted to talk about how consumer review website managers can resolve online reviewer disputes while minimizing editorial intervention.
To make this discussion a bit more concrete I’ll frame this with an actual situation we dealt with on our mountain biking website. Our site includes reviews of local bike shops (among other things) and from time to time folks use the reviews to rant about poor customer service experiences. In this particular case a reviewer wrote about a very specific dispute he had with a shop owner and ended his review with the standard “I will never shop here again” postscript.
Shortly after this review was posted the shop owner contacted us with a different take on the dispute and asked if we could remove the review. Of course we didn’t know who was right and who was wrong in this case and we politely informed the shop owner that we could not remove the review. We considered offering to edit out the details under dispute (the amount of money spent, the number of days the bike sat in the shop, etc.) but ultimately decided to give the shop owner a chance to reply to the allegations through a “review of the review.” You may have seen these on other sites like Digg or eBay where the “review of the review” is visually attached to the review under dispute. But of course this begs the question: When does it end? Do you allow a review of the review of the review?
Fortunately this situation ended peacefully and the originally reviewer did not seek to post a reply to the reply. In the end we found out from the shop owner that this customer had been posting the same comments on half a dozen other mountain bike sites to get even for his perceived slight. In the process of working with this shop owner we gained the respect of a potential customer (advertiser) by simply giving him a voice in the review process.
When building your consumer review website it is important to consider your policies for managing and policing online reviews. Consider ways to make your site an unbiased source of fair and useful information and your reviewers (and reviewees) will thank you.
If you’re looking for a way to monetize your website content look no further than one of the first and largest online affiliate programs, Amazon Associates. In 1996 when we were building our first websites, Amazon Associates was pretty much the ONLY way to monetize a site. The program works on a referral basis: You send your visitors to Amazon, the visitorss make a purchase, you get to keep a portion of the sale (around 5% or so).
Over the years Amazon Associates has added features and tools that give webmasters unmatched flexibility in generating referrals. I won’t get into all the different link types and web services that Amazon makes available through the affiliate program but suffice it to say if you can imagine it, they’ve done it. From Omakase banners, individual product links, custom storefronts, and much more, Amazon continues to push innovation in the affiliate game.
Our experience with Amazon Associates has been mainly positive over the 10 years or so that we’ve been members. Amazon has among the highest conversion rates in the industry meaning once you send your visitors to Amazon they’re more likely to make a purchase than on any other site. For example, our Amazon referrals convert to purchase around 3-5% of the time while other programs we’ve been in usually see 1% or less.
Amazon also offers products for virtually every niche you can possibly imagine, meaning there is a good chance that Amazon carries products your site visitors will enjoy. Of course there are books on just about every subject imaginable (and Amazon carries more of them than anyone else) but don’t forget about other stuff. Running a camping website? You can easily link your visitors to tents, sleeping bags, and camp stoves for sale on Amazon. Search the site for yourself and you’ll be amazed at what Amazon is selling these days.
Many webmasters use the Amazon Associates program as an important source of revenue and you should definitely consider it for your site as well. It’s free to sign up and low risk – the only thing you can lose is your time in adding the links to your site!
Last week I talked about Alexa rankings and how the value of thosee rankings is questionable at best. Quantcast provides a similar free service but take a different approach which seems to yield more accurate info.
Quantcast gives webmasters a code snippet to place on their site to ensure that every visit is counted, regardless of whether visitors have installed a browser plug-in. Quantcast also estimates traffic for websites without the code snippet but for low traffic sites the accuracy of these estimates is on par with Alexa.
Unlike Alexa, Quantcast gives webmasters and advertisers alike insight into visitor demographics. The screenshot below shows the demographics for our camping and hiking website, TripleBlaze.com. As you can see TripleBlaze attracts a middle aged, middle income, slightly female audience. This is great for advertisers to understand but it’s also helpful for webmasters seeking to tailor design and content to their core audience. I wasn’t able to find any information on where Quantcast gets their demographic data but my guess is either a panel of web surfers (similar to Nielson) or zip-code based demography. If you need to rely on this info for large scale decision making I suggest looking into the methodology further.
Quantcast also provides tools for comparing visits and pageviews between multiple websites. This means you can keep tabs on your competition while understanding the online traffic patterns that affect your industry. Of course you can also see how your site ranks compared to your competitors but we already know this doesn’t mean much – though sometimes it can provide a nice ego boost
If you’re looking for a free internet rating service for research or finding advertisers, Quantcast is a great option. Sign up for your free tracking code to see who your site is reaching and how you stack up against the competition.
We’re giving away a free Review App installation worth thousands to the best idea for a new consumer review website. We’ll even throw in 2 years of free hosting services for the winner to be announced in September. Just post your idea in the comments section of this post. Be concise but specific about your idea – after all we need to understand it to judge it!
For those of you who might be afraid of sharing online and that others may “steal” your idea: Don’t worry. For one thing, it’s probable that your idea has already been attempted, completed, or is under construction by someone else as we speak. It’s ok. Our experience has taught us that the idea is such a small part of starting a business – in the end success comes down to your product, marketing, operation, etc. Review App is here to help with those things.
So tell us your wild ideas for a Review App website – who knows, you could have your very own professional site before you know it!
The Bed Breakfast Traveler posted a provocative question on their blog this week: Do fake online reviews hurt businesses? Admittedly I hadn’t given much thought to fake reviews since in my own experience they are few and far between but it’s an interesting question to consider.
Online reviewers can be motivated to post reviews for a number of reasons as we’ve discussed on this blog before. But sometimes a reviewer’s motivation can be deceitful as he or she uses online reviews to harm a competitor’s business. Of course we’ve also talked about the effects of negative online reviews here before (not as detrimental as one might think) but the fact is that the internet makes it very easy to share unfair or untrue comments about people and businesses with a wide audience.
Fake reviews aren’t all negative either – some business owners may use online reviews to paint a glowing picture of their business while posing as a satisfied customer. Admittedly these types of fake reviews often walk a fine line between self-promotion and deception but it takes just one dissatisfied customer who is duped by a glowing review to come back and give online readers the real scoop. A 5-star rating quickly becomes a 3-star rating after just a single bad review.
Just how prevalent are “fake reviews” online? While I don’t have any concrete numbers to share with you (mostly because it’s impossible to tell for certain which reviews are fake) I can tell you that many times it is obvious which reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. As you’ve probably noticed most regular folks aren’t good actors so it follows that there aren’t many good fiction writers out there either. Fake 5-star reviews are the easiest to spot because they’re often so over the top they are just unbelievable. Fake negative reviews often lack details about what the reviewer dislikes and often fail to include a single positive statement (even the toughest critics always find at least one good to say).
Fake online reviews can be a problem on some websites but as a webmaster and a user you can trust in the wisdom of the crowd to minimize the effects of the fakes. Next week I’ll talk about some specific things you can do to resolve online reviewer disputes – good info for webmasters and reviewees alike!
