designforweb.co.uk/blog

Hi, It's getting a usual weekly posting habbit with my coding problems. I usually don't go into Ajax because I'm really not good at it but I have to following problem, I'd like to "Post" some values with Ajax/JS but it does not work.


function update_form(myForm) {
http_request = false;
if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {
http_request = new XMLHttpRequest();
if (http_request.overrideMimeType) {
http_request.overrideMimeType('text/xml');
}
} else if (window.ActiveXObject) {
try {
http_request = new ActiveXObject("Msxm12.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {
try {
http_request = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch (e) {}
}
}
if (!http_request) {
alert('Error create XMLHTTP instance');
return false;
}

theForm = document.getElementById('theform');
theStr = '';
for (i=0; i < theForm.elements.length; i++) {
ele = theForm.elements[i];
theStr += ele.name + ' : ' + ele.value + "n";
}

url = "administration_ajax.php?update=ajax_adm_centerboxes.php";
http_request.onreadystatechange = update_form2;

http_request.open('POST', url, true);

http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
http_request.setRequestHeader("Content-length", theStr.length);
http_request.setRequestHeader("Connection", "close");

http_request.send(theStr);
}

function update_form2() {
if (http_request.readyState == 4) {
if (http_request.status == 200) {
document.getElementById('status').innerHTML = http_request.responseText;
} else {
alert('Have problems loading new page');
}
}
}


Everything works fine, file is called like it should, but the "POST" data does not arrive. I've tried with "GET" and it arrives good, but i cannot use it, because the URL length might exceed. therefor I really need to find out how to get this to work, and am sure someone knows the answer out here on 9r.

Hey everyone!

Last week’s newsletter article on Google’s Paid Links Smackdown sure caused a fury.
Some people were wondering why I was making an example of my friends at
Search Engine Guide in the article. My answer to that is simply that they
were already mentioned in numerous articles as having their PageRank
lowered, and I was just pointing out what I felt Google’s reasons for doing
so were (the paid-for anchor-text links at the bottom of the Search Engine
Guide home page).  I do admit to going overboard when I called those text-link ads a “link farm” and I personally apologized to them for that, but wanted to mention it here as well.  In
reality, link farms are when bunches of sites all link to each other and
place the same links page on each site, which of course is not what Search
Engine Guide is doing at all.  They were merely selling ads on their site,
and Google was merely (apparently) lowering their visible toolbar PR score
to let them know they don’t approve.  Case closed.

This week I have an article on pricing SEO services that I hope you will
enjoy! - Jill

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Hi Jill,

I read your newsletter regularly and I have also read many of your articles
in various places on the web. I have a great respect for your knowledge and
expertise and wondered if you would mind taking a little time to answer a
couple of questions.

I have 25 years experience in I.T. working for various UK and international
finance companies as an employee. 3 years ago I decided to go it alone and
set up my own business as an SEO consultant. Currently I work from home and
am in partnership with another colleague.

One of my biggest headaches is working out how to charge and how much to
charge my clients for my services.

Do I charge an upfront fee?
Do I charge monthly rates?
Do I use standing orders? Not sure if you have those in USA but they are a
bit like Direct Debit.

Most of my work is involved in promoting my clients’ websites (mostly on
Google). I use mostly natural optimisation techniques and PPC (don’t like
the latter).

I would be grateful for any advice.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,
Steve

++Jill’s Response++

Hi Steve,

This is a tricky question as it really depends on the types of services you
offer.  There is such a variety of SEO services and thus payment options
that you have to choose from.

At High Rankings, we’re always experimenting with different service
offerings and different ways of charging for those services.  For the most
part, we’ve found that it’s good to be flexible, because every client has
different needs. Here’s a little info on how we do it, which might help you
better sort out how you could do it.

Much of our SEO work is done in the form of site reviews and
recommendations.  Our years of experience in the field make it easy for us
to look at any website and know right away what its major challenges are in
terms of it gaining more targeted search engine traffic.  We’ve found that,
depending on a client’s budget and the severity of the problems inherent in
their website, offering different levels of review seems to be helpful.

Right now we offer a type of review that comes with our recommendations
provided solely by phone, and it’s charged in one up-front payment.
However, we’ve found that many clients like to have some written information
about what’s wrong with their site and what they need to do to fix it, so we
provide info in writing as well, for an additional fee.  Then for those who
have more complicated sites and want a complete copywriting review, plus a
full usability review, we offer a full site audit report package. This is
our premium offering.  Our fees are generally paid up-front, but I know of
some companies who will charge half up-front and half upon delivery of the
recommendations, especially if it’s an expensive service.

For full-service SEO campaigns it’s slightly different and really depends on
what you offer.  I’m not sure that any 2 SEO companies offer exactly the
same services, which certainly must make it confusing to potential clients.
We’ve tried a number of different ways of offering full-service SEO, and
have found a bundle of different deliverables that nearly every client can
put to good use.  Nearly all of our full-service SEO campaigns start out
with the full site audit report because we’ve found that this helps us to
gather enough information about the site to create a complete SEO strategy
from there.  The client will generally have to pay for the audit when
signing the contract.

After the audit is completed, we decide upon the exact deliverables that are
necessary to gain the targeted traffic the client is looking for, and we
work on them in sequential order.  For instance, in-depth keyword research
is usually one of the first deliverables, and payment for that would be due
before we get started.  We have a number of other deliverables that follow
in the same manner.

For most clients we’ve gotten away from charging monthly rates, as our
deliverable method seems to be more appropriate. However, there are some
exceptions, mostly for brand-new companies that don’t have an existing
website.  In those cases, it’s a different story as we can’t “audit” what
doesn’t exist! So for those clients we work as consultants on a monthly
retainer fee and basically work with the developers as they program the
site, making sure they do it in a crawler-friendly manner.  Much of our SEO
work involves strategizing the SEO plan, and then implementing it
incrementally over time.  We’d generally ask for at least a year’s
commitment for this type of work, but that can also be adjusted as
necessary.

You’ll notice that we charge for everything in advance and this is for a
very good reason — basically, we’ve been burned when we didn’t do this!  No
matter how big a company is, nor how much you trust them, and even if you
have an airtight contract — stuff happens and sometimes they simply don’t
pay.  I used to not mind doing the work in advance if we had a purchase
order and contract set up with the client, but recently got burned on one of
those as well, when the company got embroiled in a hostile takeover!  You
just never know what can happen, unfortunately. We’re still trying to
recover what they owe us for the work we completed, but I’m not holding out
a whole lot of hope.

All that said, many clients may not be prepared (or trust you enough) to pay
in advance, so you’ll need to play that one by ear and use your own
judgment.  If you have a good reputation in the industry you should at least
be able to get a good portion paid up-front; if nothing else, you should
certainly shoot for this and back down only if absolutely necessary when the
company has good reason not to pay in advance.

Hope this provides you with some ideas of how to charge for your own SEO
services.

Best,

Jill

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Karon Thackston has just finished her new ebook on how to write successful
PPC ads.  It’s so new, in fact, that it hasn’t even been announced to the
general public!  As a long-time friend, Karon is allowing me to announce it
here first, and also offer you — the High Rankings Advisor subscribers — a
huge discount!  The price for the general public will be at least $29 (she’s
still trying to work out the ultimate price).  But for you right now (if you
purchase by November 10, 2007) you can buy it for only $19!

Here’s what Karon has to say about the ebook:

“This was written because I kept hearing individual site owners, in-house
marketing people and even professional copywriters complain about the fact
that they were just guessing at what worked and what didn’t when it came to
PPC copywriting.  There was no method to their madness.  I’ve also heard
tons of complaints about the frustration of fitting your message into such a
short space.  So, I decided to create a short ebook specifically about
writing PPC ads.  I compiled some research (my own along with research from
others) and developed a step-by-step method for writing PPC ads that work.
I’ve also included tables and charts with Google-approved abbreviations and
tips for shortening your copy without making it look like encrypted code!
There are lots of examples, too.”

Karon let the High Rankings team have an advance copy and we definitely
found it to be a great step-by-step guide for PPC copywriting.  It was a
quick read and it has a lot of useful techniques and tips for creating and
optimizing PPC ads. We plan to use the ebook as a strategy / best-practice
guide when we craft our own PPC ads. We especially like the ideas Karon
provided for simple changes that can lead to dramatic increases in
clickthrough rates!

So if you’re looking to improve your PPC copywriting skills or refine your
writing process, you should definitely take advantage of Karon’s generous
offer to HRA subscribers. Please note that this ebook is JUST about writing
PPC ads.  It has nothing to do with PPC account management, bidding
strategies, landing pages or other areas of PPC.

You can purchase via my affiliate link here.
Don’t forget, the price is going up Nov. 11.

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Forum member “Reflections” is looking for a quick way to increase PageRank
because the usual routes take too long.

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In case you missed it, I wanted to point you to my article at Search Engine
Land from last week called “Social Media Marketing: The New SEO?”

There will be no newsletter next week because we’ll be getting ready for the
next SEMNE event in Newton, MA on Nov. 7 from 6:30PM-9:00PM.

Catch you in 2! - Jill

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It is no secret that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the most powerful, cost-effective, and results-yielding website promotion tool, but if your optimization service provider or the webmaster is cutting off the online campaign at SEO set-up only, then it is not meeting the campaign objective fully. SEO has to be followed with well planned on-going maintenance and off-page optimization strategies to continue to improve and/ or retain the top rankings. You could agree with the fact that competition webpages for your every target keyword/ key-phrase has increased multiple folds now. A well planned on-going SEO maintenance and off-page optimization strategies will guarantee that you continue to reap the benefits of top rankings and thus get guaranteed qualified traffic and leads for a long time.

And by non-blogs I mean portfolios, magazines, communities - essentially anything that doesn’t tend to come under the banner of a blog. You get the idea. I aim to showcase some of my favourite Wordpress powered sites that don’t follow the traditional layout. And following that, I’ll explore why these sites have deviated from the mean.

Straight to the juice…

I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting for some examples, would I?

Jen Gordon’s portfolio oozes character and flair. Her Wordpress install powers the portfolio, page hierarchy and her blog.

ComplementaryDuo mixes portfolio and blog effortlessly.

Darren Hoyt shows off his brilliant design talent. Definitely not ‘just another Wordpress blog.’ (more…)

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Submitting articles to sites such as ezinearticles.com is a great way for Prosper clients to get some direct traffic as well as some backlinks on relevant pages. Even if your article is not published by any sites, at the very least you’ll get a backlink from your ezinearticles listing because Google crawls those pages.

However, there are some website owners who will publish your content yet not include credit to you. This is plagiarism. In addition to violating the user agreements for ezinearticles, it’s also illegal. I recently had one of my articles plagiarized. I was showing a Prosper client digg.com via glance, and did a search for “LSAT”, which would bring up one of my dugg articles. It did, but the article was listed on another website. At first I was pleased to see that the article had been published on another site. Unfortunately, the website owner had cut off my name and link. If this happens to you, try the following.

Your goal is to get the backlink. So, your first step should be to contact the website owner and politely explain that you are the copyright owner and that it’s a legal requirement to post credit. Also state that you expect to have proper credit posted within 48 hours or you will take further action. Most likely this will solve your problem and within a day or two you’ll be listed as the author and have your backlink.

If you cannot find the contact information on the website, go to www.whois.sc and do a search for the domain name. This will likely provide you the needed contact information. You might also be able to contact the person via a social media site such as digg.com.

However, if after 48 hours you have not seen credit posted, you’ll need to do more. In the situation that I mentioned earlier, I had tried sending an e-mail to the website owner but the message came back stating that the e-mail address did not exist; I had tried calling but only connected to a fax line; I had sent messages via digg.com but received no response.

If you end up in a similar situation and are unable to contact the website owner, or if the website owner ignores your request (or flat out refuses), you can contact the web host. You may find the webhost’s contact information via www.whois.sc, then visit the webhost’s page and look for legal information, and look for the host’s policies on copyright violation. You are unlikely going to be able to simply send a quick e-mail asking that the host fix the problem; instead you’ll likely need to mail or e-mail a detailed message to the host with your complaint. For this, you may use the following template, which will likely cover the host’s requirements, although you may need to include more information.

Dear (Web Host) Legal Department,

My name is (Your Name). I am the copyright owner of (link to your ezinearticles listing). Under penalty of perjury, I attest that I am legally authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner of (link to your ezinearticles listing). I, in good faith, believe that this copyright has been violated at (link to webpage that has violated your copyright) because no credit has been given to the copyright owner. I request that access to this be denied.

Under penalty of perjury, I attest that, to the best of my knowledge, the statements within this notification are accurate.

Thank You,

(Your Name) – This serves as a legal electronic signature.
(Your Mailing Address)
(Your Phone Number)
(Your e-mail address)

At this point, if your notification meets the host’s requirements, the host will disable access to that particular page, and then contact the site owner about the problem. The site owner has the option to provide a counter notification, but it’s unlikely that this will occur. What will likely occur is that access to the page will be permanently disabled. In my situation, the hosting company disabled access to the entire website, which apparently had numerous violations.

Copyright violations of this sort are relatively rare and should not dissuade you from posting articles. However, should your copyright be violated, use the above information to get your just due.

by Michael Stone

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