Although I’ve hung around SEOmoz for a few years now, this is my first attempt at writing a YOUmoz post *gulp*. Please be gentle with me……….
Approximately a year ago, I decided to start my own website - a semiconductor supplier directory company called Semi-Directory. I admit it’s a bit of a dry topic, but please bear with me as this post isn’t about the site per se. Instead, I thought it might be a good idea to share my progress over the last 12 months, and provide evidence that SEO actually works! (duh - as though you didn’t know that already). Still, it’s nice to see tangible evidence that this is the case now and again. Right?
I don’t profess to being an SEO ‘expert’ by any means, by I feel that I have lurked around SEOmoz long enough, along with becoming a PRO member, to feel reasonably confident that I would be able to make inroads with this venture. Furthermore, by operating in such a niche industry such as semiconductors, I thought my chances of ranking pretty high were pretty high.
I built the database driven site from scratch using a MS SQL backend, and spent a good deal of time making sure the factors within my control (i.e., site/page optimization) were taken care of. Having implemented all the basics (as detailed in SEOmoz’s The Illustrated Guide to Building a Search-Friendly Website), it was time to move on to the meaty stuff – promoting the site. Woohoo!
As I worked tirelessly in an attempt to increase the usage of the site and penetrate the market, I noticed that there were certain SEO activities that resulted in a definite and sustained increase in visitor traffic. I hope that by explaining my activities around the various jumps in numbers in the following graph, you're given some confidence to try new tactics if you haven’t already implemented them. They worked for me and, while I can’t guarantee it, I hope they can work for you too.
(Please note that although the visitor numbers aren’t that high, the emphasis should be on the percentage increases)
1: Launch of new section/tool on website
The first serious jump in traffic to the site came after the launch of an exciting new tool that was added to the website – a semiconductor conference calendar. It took a little longer than I hoped to complete, but I eventually launched what would become a seriously kick-ass, technology laden widget that the industry had never seen before.
Having such a unique tool on the site made a massive difference, but I didn’t stop there. Not one to miss an opportunity to put my SEO skills to use, I ‘widgetized’ the calendar and enabled users the ability to access the calendar API and embed a copy in their own website (obviously with a link pointing back to my site).
2: Email Marketing
At first I thought the spike was due to the lambing season getting underway, but I quickly remembered that I emailed all my registered users, advertisers, contacts and internet savvy farmyard animals ( totaling approx 4,000) promoting the launch of the new calendar. Over the course of two separate emails (one promoting the site, the other highlighting the events calendar), visitor stats jumped significantly, but dropped back down to normal levels with a week or so.
Looking back, I think it is clear to see the benefit of email marketing but, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have increased the length of the email campaign, contacting users over a longer period of time to increase brand awareness.
3: Migration From Dynamic to Static URLs
When the site was initially built, I didn’t know much about URL rewriting. “Big deal!” I thought. I didn’t see a problem with URL’s in the format I was using. They worked, spiders indexed them and I received visitors. What more could I want?
After hearing that moving to static URLs can help increase results in the SERPS, I posted a few questions in SEOmoz’s Q&A section asking for advice before deciding to take the plunge and undertake the rather large task of migrating over to static URLs. Unfortunately, due to the site being based on a Windows platform and on a web host server that didn’t allow custom software to be installed to handle re-writing at the domain level, I had to rely on some fancy server redirects in conjunction with my 404 page. Without boring you with the technicalities, it worked……boy, did it work!
Rankings increased only slightly, but visitor numbers almost doubled! I feel that the big change that occurred was that my site URLs became meaningful in their own right, instead of being full of variables. What reads better to you:
Old: https://www.semi-directory.com/category.asp?level1=5&level2=3&level3=9
New: https://www.semi-directory.com/chemical-mechanical-polishing/c9
I can only take from this that users trust results more where the URL reinforces the search term they are looking for.
4: What the %^$*!
So, visitor numbers fell through the floor. However, I’m not even bothered – not in the slightest. Why, you ask? Pretty simple, really – Christmas.
Being a niche B2B website, and having well over 75% of traffic coming from the Western hemisphere, it was not surprising that everyone shut down for a well deserved break.
With visitor numbers jumping straight back to their previous levels once everyone came back to work in the New Year, everything went back to ‘business as usual’.
5: Badges
The latest SEO tactic to be employed were badges. Everyone loves badges (even scientists in white lab coats)! I created a variety of badges based around the message ‘recommended by Semi-Directory’ (so as to appeal to the prospective webmaster’s ego), and contacted semiconductor vendors to ask if they would be willing to display the badge on their site. As an added incentive, I offered a small upgrade to their listing in my directory free of charge.
A number of vendors took up the offer and, on top of receiving relevant inbound links, I also get increased the site's visibility in the industry at the same time. Nice!
I hope this article has shown that SEO tactics DO work. Of all the things that I have tried so far, the one that returned the most noticeable increase in traffic was to move to static URLs. If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can take things to the next level, I’d love to hear them.
Very nice recap of your traffic/seo efforts. I really like to see this kind of thing as (anecdotal) evidence that SEO can have a really significant improvement.
Nice work on those badges. LS has only fair coverage of your site, but you can already see the impact of those badges.
These kinds of badges are really good I think:
1) it helps drive traffic, links, and perceived authority
2) it helps the site owner look more authoritative
3) it helps users know which sites to trust
Nick, I look forward to seeing Linkscape's stats once it's tracking at the same levels as Yahoo :o)
Regarding badges. I found that if the other sites receive some benefit for having the badge on their site, it would probably be worthwhile to create a spider that occasionally goes to the site and makes sure that the badge is still there.
Otherwise, the site can (most won't) take down the badge after they receive the upgraded status. 99% of sites won't and some may take it down by accident.
Great post. My clients also saw an increase after moving to static URLs and after submitting sitemaps.
How quickly have you seen a benefit from sitemaps and how often do you update them?
I usually start to see a benefit within 2 or 3 weeks after submitting the sitemaps. More of your pages get indexed faster. I update my sitemap all the time. We have a program that does it automagically. It crawls our site every day and updates it.
One way to gauge how effective sitemaps would be is to look at how many pages Google indexes on your site and compare that number to the total number of pages on your site. The bigger the difference, the more you stand to gain.
Autofusion - I do offer a benefit to people to display the badge in that I provide them with a small upgrade to a bold listing of their listing in the directory. In order to obtain the upgrade, they have to submit the URL where the badge resides. I have built a mechanism that checks for the code on the target URL they supplied.
I keep a record of any sites that report an error twice in succession (I try twice in case of the server being down etc). If this happens, an email is sent out informing them their listing will be downgraded.
I haven't come across one who has deliberately taken the badge down....yet. So, it seems to be working so far.
Wow, you are SO on top of things :)
Seriously. That's impressive.
Wow, you have thought of everything.
Thanks for telling your story and congratulations on your success! Behind all of the SEO tactics, the other thing you obviously did really well (and that we all need to remember) is to carefully track your campaigns and important events (like holidays).
Most people look back at a 6-month graph, and try desperately to remember why there was a spike or dip, and then they start panicking and trying stupid things. You had the discipline to record everything you did and all the relevant things that might have affected traffic, and now you know exactly how to tell your story. That habit alone will get you far.
I completely agree with Dr. Pete here. I've recently started freelancing and you just unleashed a long list of things I need to remember when starting a new SEO campaign for a client (your article got me thinking about everything, hence the long list). A good reporting system for tactics is a crucial first step!
Nicely written Mintyman.
Awww Darren, you're too kind! The compliments are strong in you today :o)
My original image was too large and milestone 5 wasn't visible so I resized it to fit the blog width (670px for those who will be making their own images in future).
Rebecca, the man they call Darren has spoken! Do you dare go against his advice and face the wrath of the blue man group's ringleader?LOL.
Nice story!
My two cents:
1) sitemap page - https://www.semi-directory.com/sitemap.asp - you have approx. 750 links on that page. So far I know, search engines collect info for maximal 100 links per page (unless site is not very well reputated)
2) Top navigation (Home, Downloads, Events etc.) - on HOME link I'd put "https://www.semi-directory.com/" or even "/", but not "index.asp". PR of https://www.semi-directory.com/index.asp is N/A and PR of https://www.semi-directory.com/ is 4. It could be that SEs look at the 2 URLs as two different pages ad that implies duplicated content, PR wasting etc.
@break787, 1.) The 100-links-per-page theory isn't really accurate. Matt Cutts just addressed this last week actually: Links per Page 2.) That's a good point. Normally, Google is pretty good about canonicalizing URLs, but in this case both versions are cached. (@Mintyman: in addition to changing all home page links to the same canonical URL, you might also want to try out the new Meta tag the SE's just released.)
"So how might Google treat pages with well over a hundred links? If you end up with hundreds of links on a page, Google might choose not to follow or to index all those links."
If I have good understood (sorry, english is not my nativa language) Matt said something like that it's not 100% accurate that Google will follow and index all of the links.
@break787, Matt is saying that the number 100 has no significance--it is only a rough estimate of what the average webpage should have.
This is quite simply one of the best YOUmoz posts I've ever read. The language is clear and concise, the grammar is perfect, and... did you seriously crop/resize your image to make a perfect fit?! That is awesome. Rebecca is out of her mind if she doesn't promote this to the main blog. I applaud you, Mintyman. Nice work.
Call heeded.
Great case study. Now that you got a steady amount of traffic, might I suggest you optimize your users. :)
Some free personalized tips for you (in semi-detail):
- When I went to your calendar (before reading your 2nd paragraph, in point 1), I sighed because there was no widget. Yet, I went back to the post and realized you do have a widget webmasters can embed. Tip: Put a snippet of code on your calendar page. For people to use the exact calendar you currently have (it's nice, it could be viral within your niche) and also link within the context of the page (not just a sidebar) to your 'customized calendar' widget. :) [Now you have 2 types of people linking to you. People that want a personalized widget and others who want your exact widget]
- Get feedback from your registered users, ask your email list what they want on the website. Ask them if they want you to sell specific types of products or be an aggregate seller for your niche. Also, a lot webmasters are using a nice widget to get feedback from all users. [Again, 2 types of people here. Those that have an account and those non-registered users that have quality feedback]
- Since your a b2b niche. Sell advertising to other white paper companies in your niche. I'm not talking the normal 'banner ads', I'm talking you host your niche companies whitepapers and you sell that feature to the niche companies. Many companies do that that now, including Third Door Media (SEland/Danny Sullivan's gang. :D). [FYI, this is a great asset to your users, companies, and your pocket book]
- Also, think about hosting webinar registrations too.
- For your advertise page, I'd suggest you target some niche niche terms. "ads semiconductor", etc.
So that people don't think I'm being too critical. I think your site is wonderful.
I'm just trying to help take you to the next level. :) Good luck!! Keep up the wonderful work and blog posts.
Joshua,
Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.
Regarding your idea of the full calendar widget, I wanted to avoid this as I thought it might detract people visiting my site if they can view the full calendar on someone else's. My site relies on vendor advertising so I want to try and make sure as many people visit as often as possible. If they can get my content on another site, sure it is classed as a visit in Google analytics, but my vendors don't get their name/advert in front of them :o( It's for that reason I only offer a personalized widget.
User feedback isn't something i've focused on much so its an area where your ideas could provide useful. Thanks.
Hey Minty,
Good work!
A very quick hit to improve your site "health" would be to change the navigation. Your 'home' link goes to https://www.semi-directory.com/index.asp . Just change that to "/" to go to the homepage to avoid any duplicate content. Good luck!
I'm all over it :o)
And FAST as well! Looks like it's already done.
No time like the present :o)
@Mintyman
Nice site - try not to link internally to https://www.semi-directory.com/index.asp as your homepage is also visible at https://www.semi-directory.com/
You could also try making an indexable page on your events calendar for every event. Slightly labour intensive, but will generate you more traffic still!
Hope that's useful!! @richardbaxter
@Richard
I'll be updating the hompeage link URL tonight at some point :o)
The calendar is powered by an underlying database so it actually wouldn't that difficult to create an indexable version. All I would really need is a template and then to fill in the blanks.
Thanks for the feedback!
Mintyman,
This is a great case study. Becsaue I work at a SEM firm our marketing department does all these case studies. Plus we have to ask permission from our client. So I hardly ever get to brag like this.
I miss the good old days working as a contractor or on free stuff when I could write up a case study like this. Really it juts made me feel so accomplished.
Excellent work Mintyman!!
Great post, great story. Awesome to see the timeline of visits correlated to your SEO efforts. Keep up the good work.
One thing that the graph would be great with too is the Search Engine Rankings related to traffic. Of course just the search engine traffic, so no counting the email marketing & other reffering websites.
I love how your badges say "recommended by". Excellent incentive to get that link back. Nice work, mate.
Wow, you consider nearly 1,000 visits/day to not be a lot of visits? That's about 3x as many as my largest site gets...I'm amazed to see how much attention it has gotten, considering that semiconductor buyer/directory keywords don't appear to get searched for that much.
@Pixelrage,
If only! My site gets nowhere near 1,000 visits a day. The graph in my post is plotting a 12 month period so don't be fooled into thinking that each little line is for a day's worth of visits.
Ahh, I thought that seemed a little too lucky :) regardless, great job and great site. I think you have a new side business there. If you ever created a link directory like that and sold licenses, it would definitely rival the likes of eSyndicat and phpLD.
great post, the only thing that is missing is that you talk the about the percentage increases, it would have been nice to include this in each step as to how much it grew based on the new additions
Consider it done:
While M1 was the largets % increase, M3 was most beneficial due to it attracting the largest increase in number of actual visitors.Hope that helps.
On the image versions of your badges I noticed that you have the style of the <span> containing the text set to "display:none". Does this still contribute to relevancy as anchor text, or do the spiders overlook this since it is not displaying? Could more benefit be gained from altering these badges (or any badge, I'm currently working on a badge project) to display the anchor text?
@Joel
As far as i'm aware, this is still a valid technique and the search engines seem to be picking up the badges. The SEOmoz Trfecta tool uses the same method.
Maybe someone else can help verify this?
I posted this question in Q&A and here was Rebecca's response:
"It's probably safer not to hide stuff with hidden tags, though I've seen a few people get away with it. If you can, have the anchor text revealed so that you're being honest and playing fair with Google (which will give them less of a reason to try and penalize you)."
I guess there is some wiggle room, but I think the take away is the same - if you can reveal your text, all the better. Although it doesn't really say it here I would add that if you want to replace text with an image, make sure the text you are hiding is the same as what appears in your image.
Really great post - well written and informative. Congrats on the SEO success :-)
I found the URL section particularly interesting. Is there a reason you've left specific supplier pages with dymanic URLs?
E.g.
https://www.semi-directory.com/company_details.asp?CompanyID=1564&level1=9&level2=15&level3=83
I think amending these URLs to be static and SEO friendly would help too!
Hi Tom,
Thanks for reminding me about this.
This is one of the few remnants of the old style URLs before I moved to static ones. I've just never got round to modifying the re-write script to handle these yet :o( It's currently set up to manage only the directory hierarchy and I haven't expanded it to account for the supplier entries yet. It is on my list of things to do, but I just don't have enough hours in the day right now to fix them up.
Maybe now that you've brought it up it will rise up the priority list!
Ha, no problems mintyman - I'm sure you must have lots of things planned and this perhaps isn't one of the most important. It's just you asked for suggestions so I thought I'd throw in my $0.02 :-)
Don't get me wrong Tom, I appreciate every comment that comes my way. It's not every day I get access to informed opinions from so many well respected SEO experts!
great post!
This will probably be the 6th peak in your stats graph.
I did click to view your badges :)
@Ludocb,
You're not wrong there! I checked my visitor stats for the last couple of days and i've absolutely shattered by previous highest day!
Milestone 6: Get publicity on a well read blog.
I wonder what Milestone 7 will be.......maybe getting some SEOmoz readers to link to me? Now THAT would be fantastic!
Doesn't everyone just love success stories?! I hope to see more of these on SEOmoz.
Mintyman -
Bravo! and a huge thumbs up. Great to see a practical, actual, real live site and success story.
You've done a bunch of positive things - most notably validating your tactics with results.
I'm in a rush tonight, but when I have a moment, I'll share some thoughts on other low/no cost tactics you might consider using to take things to the next level.
Thanks for sharing a useful case study!
Ha, with your new avatar I didn't recognise you there Sean! I like it.
Thanks for the compliments. I look forward to hearing your suggestions.
@Mintyman, LOL! I didn't even see it because my PC had cached his other one. After I read your comment here, I refreshed and saw it. @Sean, Nice. Why the blue image though? There's plenty copies of the original pic floating around. It's your call, but personally, I think the original does a better job of illuminating my face with a Christ-like glow.
Can you provide percentage breakdown of search, referral and direct traffic?
Nice case study. Loved it. I hope we get to see more of these on youmoz.
Best of luck with your website.
I have a site whose traffic is decreasing continuesly. I have worried about this.
I think your post will help me in increase the traffic of my site.
Anyway exilent post.
Best of luck
Nice, great to see someone elses effort and statistics in progress. It just shows when targeting potenial customers multiple ways enforces the popularity of the site. Also bet you have now increased even further posting here...
Good Job
Great job Minty...i'd say you're off to a good start. Adding more content should definitely help.
Congratulation Mintyman for your great success.
I liked your idea of developing tools for related industries that can provide us targeted traffic. I am also using Email marketing but traffic from Email marketing is showing for some days...
awesome post...it's cool when we get to see other real life examples...most of us rather keep our projects under wraps. this example reinforces the success you can achieve with widgets...if only those cool widgets applied to some of the more boring sites we deal with on a daily basis!
cheers
First of all Congratualtions!
It feels good when someone shares their experiences as well as you have done.
The badge thing is my takeaway from this!
Thanks and wishing you success in times to come!
Great post Mintyman - i really should make a better log of my analytics so i can see cause and effect more :)
Thanks for sharing.
I definitely think #3 and #5 are fantastic moves, especially #5. You have nice looking badges too.
Awesome you moz post! it is great to see aspiring business owners take upon themselves SEO.
Hi everyone
I am also new in SEOMoz but have been reading about it for a while and never could get exacte answare for what works and what doesn't .
iGreat read and looks like you should have good knowladge of website desging and programing inorder to take good advantage of your seo knowladge. As i don't have this knowladge I think I am going to start to learn php or asp in order to take care of my premade website I am dealing with high competetive nich which is online dating. is there any easy was to change your exising premade website URL to static by just wring some php code. would be appricated . good luck every one
check out mod_rewrite rules for apache webserver.
Pretty fun once you get it sorted, but learn it ALL first as this can get tricky.
Hi Minty,
Congrats on the success,
Other than banner advertisements, can you think of other ways to monetize the directory of yours?Also can you think of any other ways to create additional content to make your site less directory looking so it stays out of the gray bar hell. Also, great inbound links. Congrats.
@Mert,
Thanks for the compliment.
The site also relies on what I can 'PRO' accounts. Every vendor in the industry is entitled to a basic listing free of charge. However, if a company wants some extra features in their listing e.g. image/video gallery, multiple product listings, press releases, upcoming events etc, they can upgrade to a PRO account. This also has the benefit of granting them priority listing in each of their chosen categories.
There's a ton of new sections and content i'd like to introduce but it's finding the time to develop it all: a recruitment section, glossary of terms, interviews, white paper library........
Thank you for sharing
Mintyman:
This was a fantastic post! I've printed it out for a permanent place in my SEO instructional folder.
Thanks for all the work you put into it.
Great post Mintyman! I'm just starting out with a new site and trying to adopt good SEO while it's young. Nice to see a real-world example of what's working.
Great post. I found it very interesing. I run a business myself which has picked up over time and its been great to see each event kick off extra traffic.
Nice to see people are making real progress with their SEO tactics. I think that badges are a great way to get backlinks, might be worth trying to combine this with your calendar tool but like Autofusion said it's also a good idea to keep track of who still displaying, who has taken their badge down and so on.
Keep up the great work and all the best for the future, definitely hope to hear from you again in the future :D
Love the analysis . . . pretty much all of my GA graphs show the exact same Thanksgiving/Christmas dip. It was a scary first holiday in SEO for me, to say the least.
Finally a great YOUmoz post! The last few have been questionable. Nice work!
Yeah, why do you pay those YOUmoz authors anyway? They're all shite!
I really enjoyed seeing this peice of anecdotal evidence as well. It was really great to see the how the implemented marketing tools you used brought back results.
To your continued success!
Badges: what about changing slightly the anchor text among badges and/or over time? You could rank for more of your keywords and avoid raising suspicion from search engines.
Thanks for sharing! It's great to have a case study including website name, step by step implementations and results over time.
@Keonda
Thanks for the idea. I did think about this but didn't want to swamp the user with too much choice on what badge to pick. I ended up sticking with a choice of 3 text links or 3 different badges.
I know that if i'm given too much choice, I usually end up picking nothing. However, point taken. Maybe I could increase the choices by a couple and mix up the wording a bit.
Fantastic post full of useful detail. Thank you for sharing your experience. I have a fullow up question on your experience with monetizing the site. Is your enhanced listings strategy working at current traffic levels? Are there any changes you plan to your advertising model given your experience to date?
@Reveal
To answer your questions:
PM me in a week or two and i'll fill you in on the details.
Congratulations on your success. Just goes to show you that common sense and work equals success.
Very nice case study. I'm looking at compete's traffic sample and not seeing much for semi-directory.com
https://siteanalytics.compete.com/semi-directory.com/?metric=uv
I wonder why that is?
Your guess is as good as mine......
Great post. Thanks for being so open with your results and giving a good iunderstanding of the driving factors behind the successe. Good work and hope the trends continue
Can somebody answer these questions:
1. Is offering a free $100 upgrade to a listing in exchange for a link the same as buying a link or not?
2. Do you think a Google rep would penalize your site if they came across this badge offer?
I'm not a Google engineer, and I don't have specific experience with this, but that sounds a bit like a paid link to me.
I don't know that they would penalize your site, unless that was the foundation of your ranking, or you were doing it over and over. But they might drop those links to the extent that they aren't relevant for users.
I think an editorial (rather than paid-only) approach at a directory might be a better long-term strategy.
I wasn't trying to say anything against guidelines is going on here.
I think the badges are editorial to at least some extent. Webmasters are saying, "see, I'm listed here. You can get extra info about me there". That seems quite reasonable to me.
I am suggesting that a straight paid-links based, SEO-only focused directory to help ranking (and only ranking) is clearly on the other side of the line. But there is likely a vast separation between there and you.
I certainly hope not Rehab. The last thing I want is to be penalized!
There's a LOT of hard work that's went into building this site and i've never knowingly employed any 'illegal' tactics. The intention was never to create a link buying/selling scheme and I hope it doesn't come across as that.
The free upgrade was designed to merely act as an incentive for users to utilize a badge. I thought this strategy was ok?
If anyone has knowledge about this topic and whether I am infringing upon any Google guidelines, i'd love to hear more. If I am, I guess I need to do something about it.
You've got me wondering now.......
I really can't be sure, but your site is to small to be observed by Google. In fact I think that you're not doing anything illegal.
If someone pay 100$ he will get bold listing, right? Is it illegal? Not!
If someone put badge on his site he will get bold listing! What's that? Paid listing? No, it's reciprocal exchange, just the same as link exchange? Are link exchanges between two (topic related) sites illegal (in terms of search engines)? No.
I really think you're fine with that.
No its not. If if it Google is a hypocrite. For example if you become a Google adwords partner you would have paid Google millions of dollars in your clients money. But they give you a link on their approved Google Partners page. Your company would have spent a few hundred maybe a few thousand in adwords certifications by then too.
Essentially Google made out like a bandit and decides to say hey thanks for all the business, here is a link.
From what I heard its all about the are you buying a link with the intent to manipulate rankings or are in you giving incentives to to website owners to divert some of their traffic to you.Intention I think is what we would need to look at.
So the only way Google has to look at intentions is to see what you offer, and on top of that its more or less only a human review if you do thing so drastic you get a red flagged for the human review.
Point being is, is your heart in the right place? If it is you have nothing to fear.
Personal opinion. I also have some experience with this. And its mainly Yahoo who will ban you, Google penelaizes and is forgiving. Yahoo is a bitch, when it comes to getting back in.
Thank you for sharing and taking the time to create this post. You seem to be on the right track with things. All you have to do now is not get lazy and keep the finger on the pulse :-) Well done.
Congratulations for your overall achievements, it's amazing to see how well badges worked for your site.
I had confusion regarding URL rewriting which is pretty much removed now.
I will also implement URL rewriting in my website.
Really great post! Much has been said already, so I'll keep it short. I always appreciate real analytic data like this. There is so little real world advice that is this specific out there that when a post like this comes through it's like gold. Thank you for sharing. I hope it prompts others (myself included) to follow your lead.
Thank you for the info. I'm new to SEO so I have no feel for the work over a period of time. This is fantastic. I think I'll go to static URL's now.
thanks your post i am newbie
great tips and info!