SEO Resource for Webmasters

Нов блог за Интернет реклама и Маркетинг в България

2008-03-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

Здравейте,

Най-накрая реших да направя собствен Български блог за интернет и маркетинг. В него ще пиша всичко което ме вълнува, всичко което ми се случва в моята професия, всичко което знам за интернет рекламата в България. Маркетинг инструменти (банер и текстова реклама). Оптимизация на уеб сайт. Регистрация на уеб сайт в търсачки и портали и др.

Прятно четене и коментиране ;)

The New linking!

2007-11-04T12:24:00.000-08:00

The New linking!
Write articles for newsletters. Actually this isn't that new but it is becoming an increasingly important way to get sites to link to you without the use of the soon-to-be-obsolete link page.

The first thing you will need to do is write an article. Be sure to involve keywords you are optimising your pages for. A perfect example would have been the story about the gentleman from the UK who bet his life savings on one bet of roulette. Fill the story, and HTML, with your keywords. Consider what someone who saw the story on MSN news would type to search for more information and fill your story with these words. The title could read something like "Ashley Revell - British Bettor Bets all on Bouncing Roulette Ball". The advantage of a story like this is the search terms are really up for grabs when it comes to the search engines. You can grab a number one search result spot right away for the keywords "Ashley Revell" if you can get your page indexed quickly. Your number one position may not last long but you will have been number one during the busiest time for these keyword searches.
-Send Your Own Newsletter

Now, ideally you should first put your article in your own newsletter and send that out to your email list. Interesting stories can be very effective to make people want to read your newsletters. The SEO comes when you archive your newsletter on your site. People have reported being amazed at the increases in traffic from Google searches of their newsletter-archive pages. Content really does produce traffic.
-Get Others to Send Your Article.

You now want to offer your story to others who also have newsletters. I can tell you from experience that free, good content is always welcome. It beats writing your own stuff all the time, trust me. The very best is to find someone who archives the old newsletters and there you have your first link back to your site because you have included your URL in your signature. You also have the readership of this other person's email list who will no doubt want to see first hand what brilliant mind (or raving lunatic) wrote this article and will therefore click on your link. Finally you can do the old "To Get the Full Story…" trick with a link back to your page with your full story and your other articles.

How Important is Alexa Ranking?

2007-09-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Alexa Ranking - A Web Site Monetization Strategy?

All businesses that employ online marketing, strive to improve their conversion rate. Now, there are different ways of attracting targeted traffíc. Some try to achieve a good ranking in the SERPs, while others are satisfied with heavier traffic. Either way, everybody has the goal of achieving financial success.

But, while scoring high with Google may seem to certain business people the only way to make themselves known and thus reach their goal, there are others that think that a good position in the Alexa ranking system might benefit them just as well.

What is Alexa Ranking?

This is a ranking system set by alexa.com (a subsidiary of amazon.com ) that basically audits and makes public the frequency of visits to various Web sites. The algorithm by which Alexa traffíc ranking is calculated, is simple. It is based on the amount of traffic recorded over a period of three months from users that have the Alexa toolbar installed.

This traffíc is based on such parameters as reach and page views. The reach refers to the number of Alexa users who visit a particular site in one day. Page view, as the name indicates, is the number of times a particular page (URL) is viewed by Alexa users. Alexa.com makes it clear though that, if a particular user visits the same URL multiple times on the same day, all those visits will be counted as one.

The first step of the ranking process is calculating the reach and number of page views for all the sites on the Web on a daily basis. Alexa ranking is obtained by performing the geometric mean of reach and page views, averaged over a predefined period of time (three months).

How Alexa Ranking Works

It's quite easy to get started. All you have to do is visit the alexa.com site and download (and install) the Alexa toolbar. This toolbar offers a search function, but it mainly displays the rank (at a global level) of the visited site, as well as the sites that have been visited by Web surfers that are linked in some way to the site being visited.

The Alexa toolbar not only displays information, but it also sends data to the central server. Thus, each time you visit a Web page via a Web browser (be it Internet Explorer or Firefox) that has the toolbar installed, information is sent to the server indicating your IP and the page you are visiting. Such data is gathered from all the Web users who have the Alexa toolbar.

With Alexa, the smaller the numerical ranking, the better. Most people say that if you manage to make it in the top 100,000, it is a sign that your site enjoys quite heavy traffíc.

Is Alexa Ranking Worth Anything?

Benefits

Alexa Traffic can be used as a competitive intelligence tool, but you should take into consideration the fact that the audience sample size is fairly small. Just enter your competitor's site in the "Compare Sites" section and measure the results of your web marketing efforts in comparison with your competitors'.

As opposed to Google's PageRank, the lower your ranking number, the better.

It helps Webmasters and advertisers see the real marketing potential of your Web site. The better your Alexa rank, the higher they may be willing to bid to buy advertising space on your Web site.

Personal pages or blogs are also ranked in the same way as ordinary Web sites. They will even get a distinctive mark (*)

Because Alexa ranking helps you with information about your Web site, it is a good instrument for search engine optimization.

Disadvantages

Ways to Improve Your Alexa Ranking
If you want to boost your Alexa traffíc ranking, you just have to follow some quite simple rules, such as:
Conclusion
As we have seen, there are pros and cons to Alexa ranking. The bottom line is that most people consider it valuable only for direct advertising. Given the fact that Alexa ranking for a site is calculated on the basis of how many visitors with the Alexa toolbar installed have visited that particular site, the results can be inaccurate.
Nevertheless, it may prove useful for sites with very good traffíc that attract highly targetëd leads, since Alexa focuses more on the traffic that Web sites receive rather than on links to it. As a Web site monetization strategy, we can safely say that Alexa ranking might be the right solution.

Building Valuable Backlinks

2007-08-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

Building decent backlinks to your site can be one of the most important strategies in gaining awareness, in relation to sites of your circle, higher rankings and crucially, long term respect from the search engines.

The links you build should be on relevant higher ranking sites and not on link farms or useless directories. Relevant directory listings can definitely be a bonus but don't focus too much on them, though stuff like DMOZ, Yahoo directory listings can be valuable.

So, how do you go about getting backlinks? Well you can either pay for them or ask politely for a free link, simple as that. Just get a list of relevant sites to yours and ones which are at least... PR3 depending on your own pagerank, but then again, a backlink is a backlink, so just get a decent list of relevant sites to begin.

Once you have a good list, go to each of these sites, find the contact page or find another way to find out who owns the site and email the webmaster asking for a link. Just say that you like their site and ask politely if they wouldn't mind linking to you as you're another good resource for that topic.

Now some people don't just give away links willy nilly so you might end up in 1 of 4 scenarios, either

A: You get a response saying that they will link to you... (perfect!).

B: You get a response asking for a reciprocal link.

C: You get a response asking for payment for a placement.

D: You get a straight... no.

So if you get a straight up yes, that's perfect; you've just gotten yourself a free backlink.

If you get a reply asking for a return link... alot of people would say reciprocal links are pointless and cancel each other out... well, I'm not sure they entirely do but even if they do, depending on the traffic to the apposing site - it still may create a tiny bit more awareness / traffic to your site, so I would say it's worth it. It surely can't do any harm, so why not.

If you get a reply stating that he / she / they do not give out free backlinks and it will cost to have a link placed, ask how much, if they haven't said so already.

Then evaluate if it's worth it, go find out what sort of prices links are going for on certain PR's and if it's even worth buying one on this site. Find out the sites traffic, age, rankings etc.

If you get a straight no then try replying back asking why, if they give no reason -maybe they just didn't want to give out a free link, in which case either offer a return link or a payment (if it's worth it).

Also, when asking for backlinks it's important to get good anchor text. It's been proven that anchor text links are pretty valuable long term these days on the web so you should get in there now. You should vary the text in which you ask your link to be named each time, but not so much and so broad that it could be mistaken as spam. Too much of exactly the same text could also be wrongly taken as inerlinking or cheating by the search engines so make sure you get good healthy text links, but not overloaded.

Say for example you own a website about sleeping problems, get a few links with the text Can't Sleep? or something like that, maybe some with the text Sleeping Problems and then one or two with your actual site title.

A good cycle of healthy anchor text links should help remind Google etc that the backlinks are genuine.

3 Top Ways for Perfect Internet Marketing Campaign

2007-07-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows the Internet is growing exponentially and continually evolving. The major players in the continual evolution of the Internet are the major search engines and consumer generated media such as blogs. Because of the continual changes, a well rounded Internet marketing strategy must include a variety of proven marketing options to ensure success. I will outline 3 of the most effective Internet marketing solutíons available and how they relate to your marketing strategy.

SEO Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the first because the frëe advertising afforded by the search engines is partly determined by on-page optimization techniques. With thousands of new Websites being created daily, the competition for a listíng on the first search result page is increasingly saturated for the popular keywords. Statistics show better than 90% of people only look at the first search result page, and a similar percentage only clíck on the top search listing.

In order to compete effectively, a Web page must be designed around a keyword or more effectively, a keyword phrase. The keywords must be included in the page's title, keyword META tag, page's description, the first heading (using the H1 HTML tag), throughout the body of the page and within the last 25 words on the page. These are just a few of the basic SEO on-page options that, although will not guarantëe a first page listing, are definitely required as a starting point in an effective Internet marketing strategy.

In most cases, there is too much competition for certain keywords such as "golf clubs". A better strategy would be to use "golf clubs Chicago" or handcrafted golf clubs". The more specific you make your keyword phrase the better. A number of frëe tools are available that will show the popularity of keywords and how often they are used in the search engines on a monthly basis. These will allow you to customize your Web page knowing the keyword phrase's popularity. If you get the first page listing for a keyword with less than 100 searches per month for instance, then it doesn't matter because your traffíc will be very limited.

Link Exchanges

Once the on-page optimizations are complete, the off-page optimization options need to be addressed. Link exchanges are perhaps the best off-page SEO technique available. If you download and install the Google toolbar on your browser, you will see the Google PageRank of each site you visit. Your PageRank is determined by the number of other sites linking to your site, and the QUALITY of the link is a major consideration. Pages are ranked from 1 to 10. The higher the PageRank of the site linking to yours, the better. Sites with a PR7 and above are considered as authority sites and a back link will send Google's spider to your page on a regular basis.

There are a number of ways to get a back link to your site. You can email a request to the Webmaster for a link exchange and if they agree you would return the favor by placing a link to their site on your page. You can also purchase the link. A number of sites offër this service for a monthly fee. So if you want to quickly get your site listed by Google and the major search engines, then paying for a PR8 back link for a month or two might be well worth the ínvestment in the long run, as new sites are placed in a "sand box" by Google for several months until they prove their longevity.

One back link from a PR8 site is worth 1,000 back links from PR2 or less sites. As a matter of fact, numerous links from low ranking sites will actually be detrimental to your site, because each back link is like a vote for your site. If you have too many low ranking sites voting for yours, Google will be reluctant to reward your site with a higher PR. You have to do your research on the site that offers to link to yours because if they were blacklisted by Google, your site will receive the same fate and you probably will nevër recover from this.

A PR 4 or 5 is relatively easy to attain. So your best bet is to limit your back links to PR5 and above for the best results. And by all means avoid link farms. Before Google upgraded its algorithm, just the number of back links was considered. But now the actual PageRank of your back link is considered AND the PageRank of the sites listing to THAT link. Links from link farms are now looked upon as basically sp@m links. You would be better off purchasing a listíng in a major link directory like Yahoo or DMZ. It's definitely worth the ínvestment as these are authority sites and are a major vote for your site!

Blogs

As previously indicated, consumer generated media is a major factor in the evolution of the Internet. Case in point is the enormous effect blogs had on the last Presidential campaign. A very large percentage of most searches will include blogs on the first page listing. Over 50% of purchases, online and offline, are preceded by an online search for more information. And a large percentage of the information is offered by blogs. People are very interested in the opinions of others on their topic of interest.

The major blogs are updated on a daily basis which is very important to Google's algorithm which uses the frequency of updates (daily, hourly and by minute) as a determining factor in the search result ranking. A powerful marketing method used by the major blogs is to submit articles on a particular topic to the major article hubs such as EzineArticles.com. The article hub benefits by having continually updated information (which Google likes) where they can place their monëy makíng AdSense ads. The blogger benefits by having a back link to their blog at the bottom of the article.

As numerous other bloggers and Webmasters access the article hubs for fresh information, the article can be syndicated virally to a number sites on the Internet. This creates a number of back links to your blog or your site generating an enormous amount of pre-qualified frëe traffíc.

In Summary

These are just a few of the most effective online Internet marketing options available. Other options such as auto-responder email, Ezine advertising and pay per clíck advertising should be included in a well rounded Internet marketing strategy. No matter what options you use, you definitely need to start with your on-page SEO techniques. Your listing in the search results will be enhanced by a properly optimized page. Also professional search engine submission service like Addsiteonline.com

Does the PPC budget determine the agency fees?

2007-07-01T03:04:00.000-07:00

This is a question that I often get from direct clients, smaller agencies or larger agencies who are just starting to offer search marketing services. In all three cases, my client (e.g., the agency or the advertiser) is looking to me to help them price out search services.

For agencies, I actually favor a hybrid model of media percentage and flat fees for larger and more complex PPC campaigns. I personally base my fee structure on hours worked, something I provide prospective clients in the form of a 2-3 page estimate after we’ve hammered out the overall scope of work.

Estimating a PPC Job - A Consultant’s Viewpoint

To answer the main question here - I rarely base my estimate on the size of the budget because there’s not much difference between putting together a campaign with a $1000/month budget and a $10,000/month budget (for example). In my opinion, budget should only influence fees when it’s very large – over six figures a month, and that’s mainly because it’s generally indicative of a more complex campaign.

Here are the factors that I think should affect the estimate:

The number of vendors (engines) in the plan – it’s a lot more work to launch campaigns on three engines, monitor, report and optimize them than it is to focus on just one (*cough* Google *cough*) engine
The number of keywords/categories in the campaign– An e-commerce site with 12 categories and thousands of products has many keyword variables to test, while a company that just sells one product or service (e.g., online tax filing) has a limited number of keywords. Keyword expansion and refinement directly impacts the number of hours spent optimizing a campaign, and should be a factor when estimating hours.
The potential for campaign growth. Many campaigns I launch start small and then grow into great monstrous beasts that require a lot more time to manage then when they initially launched. As such, I find it’s important to do three-month trials so the scope of work can be re-evaluated to see if 1) an agency is even needed at all and 2) if the campaign has grown/changed significantly where the number of hours needs to be revisted
The amount of reporting involved. I provide weekly summary reports to most small clients as well as monthly keyword reports. If a client requires more reporting than this (e.g., CPA reports by keyword by week) than I would likely increase the amount of the estimate. Very large campaigns (of the type I manage with the large agencies) often are very complex and have teams of PPC specialists working on them, which justifies the higher cost of retaining these companies to manage a campaign. Well, that and the higher ROI the campaign achieves.

Many of the projects I work on with small agencies or directly with the client amount to about 25-40 hours to launch, and 20-30 hours/month to manage. This doesn’t seem to deviate much for budgets of $50,000 or less, and I’ve begun moving to a flat monthly retainer fee for these types of campaigns.

I’m certainly not sayng that the way I do things is the best way, but so far my clients feel it’s fair and I’m happy with the compensation. I have begun exploring the idea of getting paid for performance with e-commerce or lead-generation campaigns, but I haven’t yet taken that plunge. Still, it’s got some exciting potential.

The Main SEO Secrets

2007-06-01T12:22:00.001-07:00

The most important seo factor is KEYWORDS. Every website has specific keywords. What are your keywords? Keywords are the words that they use to lead visitors to your site. Keywords would generally include your company name, brand name, and any other words specific to your company or product. Keywords should also reflect the mind-set of your custome

read more | digg story

Guide to Traffic From Digg Comments

2007-05-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

Great post from the guys of SEOMOZ!!

Enjoy it!! :)

Rand's post on low referral traffic from Digg inspired me to write about a little-known potential traffic goldmine—Digg comments. I noticed some time ago that first post comments on front page stories can drive some remarkable traffic. Here are two recent examples.

Last week I posted the first comment on "4 Gas Saving Myths" just before it hit the main page and linked to two relevant articles about fuel efficiency and gas prices. This comment generated 1,438 visitors. The first comment on "Is Mythbusters The Best Science Show on the Telly?" about Mythbuster's flawed statistics drove 1,901 visitors. Thousands of visitors for simple comments? Here’s my guide to traffic from Digg comments. Read carefully—go about Digg comments the wrong way and you just might get death threats—I’m not kidding, more about that later.

First, your links must post to quality content. The three articles I linked to above are well-written, well-researched articles. Two of the three articles that I linked to have even been featured on Slashdot (1, 2). Quality, of course, is a relative term. Given the typical Digg banter, the threshold for adding quality content can sometimes quite low. The links, however, cannot point to pages that are clearly blogspam or you are sure to face Digg's wrath.
Must be on topic. This is probably more important than the quality of the link. It may seem obvious, but if your comment/link doesn’t relate to the article, especially if it contains a link, then it will be buried.
First posts comments are going to receive exponentially more traffic than later posts. They can set the tone for the rest of the discussion and can be almost as important as the actual article being linked to. If the Digg article already has a comment then it is usually better to reply to the first comment than submit a new comment. This is true even if your comment isn’t a direct response to the comment you are replying to. Otherwise, the first comment will eventually get dozens of replies, pushing the second comment way down the page where it will not be seen by most. For example, I replied to the first comment on a post about Google searches. The first post was buried with 16 negative votes which effectively gave me the first post. This comment brought 509 visitors. In my opinion, this is a flaw with the Digg comment system where you can only reply to root comments. It provides an incentive for disjointed discussions. I suspect that Digg will redo their comment system at some point in the near future.
If you are looking for traffic from your posts, it does little good to comment on articles that are already on Digg’s front page. There are two reasons for this. First, you no longer have the first post advantage and your comment will be lost among the masses. The second reason is that the highest amount of traffic will come while the post is at the top of main page. Each minute that passes is lost traffic. It’s much better to find future front page stories from the upcoming stories section. This is not hard. Checking the “hot in technology” on the right side of the page will show you which posts are most likely to hit the front page in the next few hours. Of course, you can drill down to other topics besides technology as well. The cloud view and other tools can also be used to predict which stories are most likely to hit the front page.
As with all forums and websites, if you focus solely on promoting your website it will eventually come back to haunt you. All your links and submitted stories should not be to your own sites.
Digg, as a general rule, has a negative bias towards all things SEO and marketing. If you have a name like SEOmoz (sorry), there are some people that aren’t going to give you a fair shake.
Digg does not use the NoFollow tag. However, if you receive a 'thumbs down' from four users your comment will be hidden by default. At some point in the future Digg may follow Wikipedia's lead and move to NoFollow tags. I'd recommend it to prevent link spam but generally the community is quick to bury.
Realize that although you may receive many new visitors they may be less likely to stay around than traffic you receive from other sources. As you can see from the statistics below, the bounce rate was between 74-92%. The average time on site was 20 seconds for the Mythbusters article and just over a minute for the fuel and gas articles. I'm sure that there are ways the site can improve its stickiness (any ideas?), but the point remains the same—Digg visitors are less likely to stick around than traffic from other sources.

By way of full disclosure, the site I linked to, OmniNerd, is not my site. I have no financial relationship with the site and don’t know how their GoogleAds performed, but I suspect that very few visitors from Digg clicked on ads. If AdSense earnings are your primary motivation, Digg is probably not your best option.

Although this is not my site, OmniNerd did let me peek into their Google Analytics for this story. Since the stats used above are from Google Analytics and not the server logs, the actual traffic may be higher than I reported. According to something I read on StumbleUpon, “A large portion of...Firefox users have added the NoScript add-on to their browser. This is one of the top-10 most popular extensions for Firefox. This extension blocks any javascript calls...caus[ing]...Google Analytics...to not work." If that's true, then the actual traffic from these comments could be higher than recorded. Currently about 50% of OmniNerd's recorded visitors use Firefox. How many are not being counted? Does anyone have experience with Google Analytics not counting all their traffic?

Although Digg comments can be a valuable source of traffic, the reaction to spam can be painful. A couple months ago Chandler Kent learned that the hard way when he submitted a comment with a link to his blog under his name, as is common practice in most forums. It quickly received hundreds of “thumbs down” but didn’t stop there. Someone posted his phone number and he began to receive creepy phone calls and comments such as he "deserves to be hunted down and stalked." Ironically, his recounting of the fallout was widely publicized as “The Most Hated Comment on Digg” and brought him a ton of traffic.

Comments on Digg can bring you some nice traffic if you are willing to risk your life.

Reciprocal Linking Strategy

2007-05-18T11:22:00.000-07:00

If you want to get serious about driving more traffic to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy. There are three primary linking strategies:

1. Reciprocal Linking
2. Purchasing text links
3. Employing a link finding service

This month's issue of BizAtomic Advisor focuses on Reciprocal Linking – How it can help. When a trusted site links to yours, people follow that recommendation.

Reciprocal link means your website links to another website and that website links back to you. Search engines use link popularity to rank websites. Exchanging reciprocal links with other sites will build a great link directory that will motivate visitors to bookmark your website to get access to your link directory.

One of the factors search engines use to determine your relevancy to a search term is the number of websites linking to your website. This is an effective way to increase your search engine rankings.

Three key success factors for a reciprocal linking strategy are:

1. Quality of links should outweigh quantity
2. Link partners must relate to your site content
3. Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible

Linking is what the web is all about. It helps you move from one document to another and from site to site while maintaining your focus on a particular subject. The ideal situation is to have one way links from related sites without you pointing back to them. However, you would have to have a lot of valuable information, tips, tools, articles, resources, etc. in order to motivate people to link to your website. Unfortunately most sites don't fall into this category and reciprocal linking is a requirement.

Step 1 - Get people to want to link to your website. Generating quality inbound links to your website requires a systematic approach and hard work. But the payoff is worth it. To begin with you must have good content on your website. Step one is to analyze the value of your content in relation to competitors. You will also need a page of outbound links on your website that visitors will find valuable.

Step 2 – Research websites that are worth linking to and that will bring relevant traffic to you. You need to identify the portals, directories, news sites, ezines, blogs, and other information sources specific to your industry. You can let your fingers do the walking across the keyboard or you can purchase one of the many software tools on the market designed to locate relevant sites. They also help collect email addresses and even prepare letters requesting that a site add a link to your site. Without making any recommendations you may want to look into the following tools:

Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution

Zeus Internet Marketing Robot

Linking 101 Linking Management Script

Duncan Carver's Link Management System

Hot Links SQL V2.3

LinkMaster Pro

Links Manager

Links4Trade

PowerLinks.com

Make sure you at least visit the sites these tools generate. However, the best way to build long-term link popularity is to offer good content and features providing real value to your visitors. People will discover your website.

Google is a great help with your research because it ensures your partners are properly indexed. Look for sites closely related to you in terms of theme and keywords. Google's ranking algorithm takes into account each link's importance along with other factors like the proximity of your search keywords in the documents. In other words, it's not just about the number of sites that link to a given page, but also the importance of those sites (measured by the links to each of them). Google has given a name to its ranking algorithm for determining a web page's importance; it's called PageRank(TM) .

Human based directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory project have a lot of influence over search results. List your site in the correct category with a good description.

Next, make sure you are linked to and from topic specific and niche directory websites. These are sites that provide information that is an exact match for what you provide.

Don't forget partners and vendors from your business. Since you already have a relationship you are more likely to be able to request and receive a link from their websites.

Step 3 – Implementing your strategy. Like any marketing campaign you need a plan.

Set business benefit objectives for your Linking strategy. Think about what you are trying to achieve and write it down on paper.

Develop a content plan for populating your website with valuable content.

Set linking policies, pages, and linking code you can give to link partners for your site.

Monitor the progress of your linking strategy so that you can see what results have been achieved and adapt or tweak what you are doing to improve results.

Benchmark your site's link popularity against competitors

A Reciprocal Linking Program will require that you manage the following:

1. The name of the site
2. The URL
3. The name and email address of the person who runs the site
4. The date you contact the person who runs the site and the date he or she responds
5. The resulting deal (Some will say yes, some will say no, others will not reply at all, others will want a link back from you, some may want money for links, some will be out of town and take weeks to reply, etc.)
6. The status of the deal
7. Verifying that the link is in place
8. Checking the site periodically for the link (Yes, some folks swap links and then pull yours for odd reasons.)

Remember the most important benefit of a link exchange is the traffic resulting directly from these links. Search engines are highly unpredictable. They keep changing their algorithms every now and then. Your site is on the top 10 results today, but it may not be so tomorrow. Of course, you don't want to exclude search engine optimization but your main concern should be getting traffic from direct links.

Different Ways To Increase Targeted Traffic To Your Website

2007-05-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

When I first started documenting the methods I used for my initial authority site case study I needed to figure out exactly how I could drive traffic to my site. So, I sat down and listed all of the methods I have used (and currently use) to drive traffic to my website. So, here’s a list of how you can increase targeted traffic to your website:

Article Submission

Article Directories
Article Trading
- Trade your articles directly with other webmasters / friends (be sure to include your resource box)
Article Giveaway (to relevant sites)
- Give away your unique articles to top sites in your niche (be sure to include your resource box)

Blogging

Create own network of “feeder” blogs (using free or your own hosted blogs)
Blog Traffic Services (purchase rights to post snippets in blog posts with anchor text links to your page)
Blog Comments (quality comments in relevant blogs – many blogs have nofollow)

Classifieds

Craigslist (short-term strategy)
US Free Ads (short-term strategy)
eBay (short-term strategy)

Linking

Reciprocal Links with Relevant Sites (trade links one for one with webmasters)
Three Way Links (do a three way link exchange with webmasters who own multiple websites)
Link Exchange Services (such as Link Vault or Link Metro)
Purchase Links (from webmasters or a link broker)

Lists

Co-Registration Lists
Joint Venture (other marketer’s email lists)
Opt-in List (requires you to build your own list first…)
Safe Lists

Advertising

Ezine Advertising (advertise in various newsletters)
Pay-Per-Click (such as Google, YPN, MSN Adcenter etc.)
Offline Advertising (flyers, direct mail etc.)

Press Releases

PRWeb (paid service with large distribution)
Free PR Services

Social Media

Social Bookmarking
Social Multi-Media Networks
- Podcasts (publish your own podcasts)
- YouTube
- Google Video
Social Networks
Social Voting
Other
- Forums
- RSS Feeds
- Yahoo Answers
- Wikipedia (if you have an authority site on a subject, list your link as a resource)

Obviously I have only listed a few of the article directories, social media networks and such. I will try to list a more comprehensive list of the ones I use in a later post.

Free search engine submission - Is it true??What are they say about this?

2007-05-12T12:38:00.001-07:00

Free search engine submission is something that we use to see everyday on the Internet. But, is it true? What are the seo gurus say about this. Most of the people think this is waste of time, but I think that is this services is done by professional company (like Addsiteonline.com) is very valuable. Because your website always must submit.

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How to Drive Traffic to Your Site with Squidoo!

2007-05-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

Don't laugh, this is not as insignificant as you might think at first glance. Not by a long shot.

Actually, it is quite significant.

Here's why: making any traffic form the web from a free site is quite rare.

At least this has been my experience. Others will no doubt disagree and argue otherwise, but I have found very few free sites worth pursuing. Google's Blogspot is the only other exception that readily comes to mind.

Everybody Loves A Freebie!

I never really started earning any significant online income until I created my own domain and web site. You must create your own virtual real estate. Your own content. Your own domains. Your own sites. It is the correct way to proceed unless...

Unless... you just don't have the funds or resources to create and build your own sites. The next best thing is using a Web 2.0 program like Squidoo.

What Is Squidoo?

Squidoo is a free, easy-to-use service or site that lets anyone post or write a lens (web page) on any subject that they have expertise in.

Squidoo lets you create your own lenses and pick highly valuable keyword phrases in your Squidoo URL. They are still some very worthwhile URLS to be claimed and more being born as new products come online.

Experienced marketers will know to place popular (well searched for) keywords or keyword phrases in their Squidoo URL and then have these keywords in the title of your lens and sprinkled throughout the page. Don't overdo it, but optimize your lens for your chosen keywords. Savvy marketers also know using a long tail keyword phrase often results in more targeted traffic which converts better.

How Is Squidoo Different?

Squidoo is a quality site. It offers highly focused content which often rises to the top of the search engine rankings very quickly. The Squidoo site has a PR7 (Page Rank) in Google. According to Alexa, Squidoo is ranked in the top 1000 sites on the whole web.

Why Is Squidoo Effective?

The main reason Squidoo is effective stems from its vibrant online community constantly creating diverse quality content and links. In the process, this community has made Squidoo a search engine haven. As with Wikipedia, Squidoo can be seen as the ultimate authority site. Besides, it is fun and easy to use because you have all your valuable content and links on one convenient page. It is also community rated so all the cream rises to the top!

How You Can Earn By Using Squidoo?

Every page on Squidoo carries Google AdSense ads which generate funds for the site and you. Also you can display affiliate links from Amazon, eBay and CafePress... Squidoo is more like a co-op where you share in the revenues generated from your lenses. There is also a charity element where you can donate your earnings to a whole host of charity groups.

Keep in mind, Squidoo is completely scalable. As with any marketing venture, once you know how to create that first one dollar profit, all you have to do is scale it up. If you make one dollar with one page, create a hundred pages and you will make...

Why You Should Use Squidoo?

From a purely SEO angle, Squidoo is worth your time, even if you're a professional marketer making 2 or 300 dollars a day from your sites. Squidoo lets you quickly tap into the whole Web 2.0 social media tagging system. It will help you improve your rankings for your other sites if you closely tie-in your links and content.

This is not keyword spamming. You must create unique quality content on Squidoo in order to generate the interest in your lenses. In a community monitored site like Squidoo, quality content does rise to the top. Done properly, Squidoo will easily let you tap into the whole Web 2.0 everyone is talking about.

In addition, Squidoo is an excellent hands-on training field for anyone wishing to learn more about Internet Marketing. It is the perfect place to study affiliate marketing and you can discover how SEO really works without even spending a dime.

More importantly, Squidoo is just plain easy and a whole lot of fun. Besides, if you give it a try, chances are almost 100% certain that you will make more than 1 cents!

Don't forgot to look my Squidoo page - http://www.squidoo.com/addsiteonline/

Addsiteonline.com - Search Engine Submission Company

2007-04-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

Today we start our project - Addsiteonline.com
This is a website, who offer search engine submission services, from free submission to the major search engines to the paid submission in more 512 search engines around the world.
We have many clients, and they are very happy from our services, we also :).
And if somebody need professional search engine submission services, let's call us - Professional Search Engine Submission Services. Submission in more than 512 search engines. Free submission

Cheers!!

Using Blog Search Engines to Build Links

2007-03-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

One of the questions that often pops up when I teach small businesses about link building is where to go to find sites to request links from. While most businesses understand the idea of going to directories and search engines and finding sites that way, many don't yet understand the power of using blog search engines to seek out blogs to target with your link building campaign.

Blog search engines are a great way to find sites that you might want to try to gain links from. One of the blog search engines that I use most often for link building campaigns is Technorati. The advantage of using a blog search engine like Technorati is that it allows you to search for blogs that are talking about topics related to your web site. You can also use Technorati's search tools to learn more about individual blogs in terms of how popular they are, how many incoming links they get and how often they are updated.

To search for relevant blogs on technorati you'll want to:

Visit http://www.technorati.com:

You can then scan these results looking for sites that might be relevant and have reasonable incoming link counts.

When you find a blog that looks promising, you can use Technorati tools to dig a little deeper so that you can decide whether or not this is a blog that you want to add to your link building list.

The great thing about Technorati is that once you've found some blogs related to your site's content, you can really dig down to get some solid data about the quality of the blog.

By running a search for a specific URL and selecting "in blog directory from the drop down box you can get a specialized set of search data that gives you information about that specific blog.

You can find out things like:

The Recent inbound links: this will let you find out what other sites are linking to this blog and how long ago those links were placed. Obviously a blog that has frequent incoming links is going to get more traffic and have more credibility.

You can find the blog's Recent outbound links: this will let you know what other sites the author has linked to (and when those links were placed.) This can give you a good idea of how willing the blogger is to link out as well as letting you know what kind of content they are willing to link to.

You can get an estimate of a blog's Traffic history: This chart will give you an idea of the level of traffic that this blog has received over the last six months.

You can find out how many posts the blogger makes on an average day, which can be a good way to determine how active the blogger is and how quickly you might be able to get coverage of your story.

You can also get General site information: This area makes note of the URL of the blog, the overall rank of the blog in the Technorati index, when the last time the blog was updated, and how many other blogs link in to it and so on.

Use this information to decide which blogs you feel are worth contacting the same way that you would use information about a publication to put together a media list to target. Also remember that as you visit each blog, you may find links to other blogs in their posts, in a blog roll, and so on, and you might want to go back and research those blogs on Technorati as well.

Once you've built a list of blogs you'd like to target, spend a little time reading them to find out if they do product reviews, if they link out to resources and so on.

SEO for Real Estate Company - Sunnyholidaybg.com

2007-03-16T02:48:00.000-07:00

Here you can see my SEO -Search Engine Optimization for Real Estate Company - Sunnuholidaybg.com - Real Estate property for sale in Suuny Beach. Bulgaria property. Real estate in Bulgaria.

I do search engine optimization for this website- Meta tags, Search engine submission in more than 521 search engines and directories, Link exchange program, changes in the html code. The results are great. The traffic is increase with more than 100%, which is perfect. And with that results I proof my work and my contract with them.

What's Wrong With Reciprocal Linking

2007-01-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

When the Internet was new to me, I was fascinated by following links and going to new sites. It was like an adventure. And when I had my own website the first thing that I wanted to do was to place my site's links on other sites. I began reciprocal linking (trading links with other sites) way back then, but 11 years later things have changed and now I dread getting a "reciprocal link request" in my email inbox. I have a few pet peeves with reciprocal linking, as it is practiced today, and here they are:

1. Most of the Requests are Automated

It used to be flattering to get a link request, knowing that someone had visited your site and wanted to exchange a link. These days most of the requests are done with software and it means that no one has really visited your site. Automation in itself is not bad, but it leads to all kinds of abuses, and it prevents you from picking out the good links from the bad. Even if you have an automated directory to handle link requests, which is what I installed, you will still be swamped with tons of link requests.

2. Most Link Requests are of Extremely Low Quality

The original idea of linking was to provide your own visitors with quality sites where they could visit next. The links were provided as a resource. Today, many sites have been set up only to make money from Adsense and other advertising programs. In addition, driven by the need to acquire PageRank many webmasters went into a link gathering frenzy and sent requests to any and all sites whether they were related to their site or not. If a link is to be a resource to visitors of both sites, then the two sites should somehow be related and the sites should be of comparable quality. Most reciprocal link requests fail this test.

3. Links are Buried on Pages Where Human Eyes Will Never See Them

In addition to being a resource to your own visitors, you want to exchange links in hopes of getting some targeted traffic back to your site. It used to be easier; a webmaster would have a site with say ten different pages and one of his pages would be a "links" page. On that page he would display 30 or so links. The link to this page would be prominent in the site's navigation menu. You could be assured of getting some meaningful traffic if your link was placed on this kind of page.

That has all changed. People now build huge directories of hundreds of categories, stuffed with pages and pages of links. It is extremely unlikely that many visitors will drill down through all the pages and find your site in such a directory.

4. Many of the Link Requests are for "Three Way Links"

I find three-way links "creepy." They work like this, if I link to site A, then they will give a link to my site originating from site B. This is done because Google is supposed to value one-way links more than reciprocal links. I can understand this. If someone links to you without asking you and doesn't request a reciprocal link it means that your site is really good and this is why Google values true one-way links. However, the three-way links proposed by many people are just an attempt to trick the search engines; they are not true one-way links. Sooner or later Google will get wise to such schemes and this kind of effort will yield little benefit to the linking websites.

In addition, I dislike this kind of linking arrangement because you first have to check out who you are linking to, and then you are faced with checking another site that is going to link to you. Usually the site where the link to you will be placed is some kind of strange directory, a link-farm.

This is the state of reciprocal linking today. I delete most requests coming into my inbox, and do mass deleting on my automated systems as well. Now I don't want to end on a negative note so here are a few suggestions on how to get quality incoming links without adding another reciprocal link request to the flood that is already out there:

1. Make Your Site so Cool that People Will Link to You Without Asking

People come to the Internet to solve a problem, find a solution and get information. If you can make your website a true resource and a great place where visitors can get the information that they need, then it will not go unnoticed. Even if you have a commercial e-commerce site, it is possible to add reviews, articles and information. This additional information will help your own customers and will be a resource for the entire web. Who knows? Maybe one day you will check your referrer logs and see that Wikipedia is linking to you. This is the goal, but it will take some work to achieve it.

2. Get Involved in Blogs and Forums that are Related to Your Field of Expertise

You can learn something from forums and blogs and you can contribute something as well. You can usually leave your url when you make a comment or a posting. If you offer solid advice, you will get a good online reputation and become known as an expert in your field. This newfound recognition as an expert, combined with links from these blogs and forums will be worth much more than low quality reciprocal links.

3. Get into Article Marketing

Article marketing means that you will write articles about your field of interest and distribute them for publication on other websites, blogs and ezines with a link back to your site. Each time your article is published on a website you get a one-way link to your site. As with most good things, this method has been pounced upon by Internet marketers and the net is flooded with a lot of low-quality articles. However, if you produce meaningful articles, you can still get a lot of benefit by distributing your articles.

4. Do Judicious Reciprocal Linking

There is nothing wrong with the idea of websites trading links. However, if you are going to do it, then only link to a site that you think is a good one or has some value for your web visitors. Make sure that your link will be placed on a page that has the potential of sending you some traffic. Make your request with an email that clearly shows that you are a living and breathing human being and not a robot.

So, instead of adding to the spam-like flood of reciprocal link requests, go about building your own content and start using more reliable methods of increasing the number of incoming links to your site.

Anatomy of a Web-Advertising Campaign

2006-12-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

In The Beginning There Was Marketing

Anyone in business who has any interest in using the Web to further his or her business is well aware of "search engine optimization." Not a day goes by that my email in-box isn't loaded with information on how to get the best search engine results, and not a week goes by that a client or potential client doesn't request that their website be not just search friendly but search engine fanatical.

For some time we have been preaching the importance of delivering the marketing message and that your message should not be corrupted or distorted by techniques aimed at attracting search engine robots while driving away real people who may actually be potential customers.

Now I realize that in many circles this attitude is considered outright heresy, but hopefully there are a few marketing types around that understand websites have to deliver more than miscellaneous random eyeballs; websites have to deliver a message that is memorable, understandable, useable, and if you're really good at your job, information that can be incorporated into your audiences' belief system.

With that in mind we were pleasantly surprised when Google the primary target of this SEO obsessive compulsive frenzy of technical slight-of-hand announced that they were instituting Google Video Ads and to add a little icing on the cake, they purchased YouTube adding to their already considerable investment in Google Video. Somebody at the big "G" thinks video is a viable Web-medium even if the purveyors of search engine fool's gold would have you believe otherwise.

The list of companies, including Forbes, Amazon, Wyeth, and Ford, delivering Web-audio and Web-video grows daily and we are not just talking about major corporations. Small companies are using multimedia to get the edge on their larger competitors who still have their heads buried in the search engine optimization sand.

Acknowledging All The Issues

In developing our campaign to promote the use of Web-audio and Web-video as an effective method of delivering marketing messages over the Web, we identified four key issues that would have to be addressed:

(a) We had to demonstrate that website design was about delivering the marketing message and not just search engine optimization.

(b) We had to demonstrate that even small and medium-sized companies could afford professional Web-audio and Web-video and that it wasn't cost prohibitive.

(c) We had to demonstrate that professional Web-audio and Web-video required more than just the ability to use a video camera and that professional multimedia story-telling required a unique set of creative skills and technical ability not often found in-house in most businesses.

(d) We had to demonstrate that the development and production of creative multimedia marketing and professional webmedia content had to do with talent and experience, not size. These were the challenges that informed all our subsequent decisions.

The Concept

In order to make people pay attention to what we had to say we needed a concept that was both familiar and edgy. Sure we were sticking a finger in the eye of all the search engine optimizers but you can't be afraid to make a strong statement if you want people to sit-up and take notice, especially if you are fighting a tidal wave of misconception.

The fact that we were telling people that delivering your marketing message on the Web using multimedia was more important than search engine optimization was enough to make what we were doing controversial, but we also needed a vehicle that allowed us to present the opposing point of view. What we needed was a recognizable style that demonstrated our ability to deliver a memorable, comprehensible, useable, belief-altering message in the medium we were promoting.

Since we primarily use Macintosh computers for all our work and only use PCs to check for compatibility, we thought we would pay homage to the brilliant Mac commercials running on television. The format worked for us because it allowed us to create two characters of our own that would present opposing points of view over a series of videos that would comprise the campaign. We knew that some people would react unfavorably to our using such a familiar format but we figured it would demonstrate how even small but talented production companies can deliver high quality multimedia Web-based marketing on tight budgets. A Market Primed and Ready

Our efforts in advocating the power of using the human voice and image to deliver marketing stories over the Web was finally getting through to companies who were fed-up with the cost and ineffectiveness of continually chasing the holy grail of search engine optimization. Company presidents and marketing managers were starting to listen, starting to realize there was another way. This campaign was aimed at pushing these business executives to act on what they already knew: good marketing is about delivering the message, not keyword density.

Preproduction, Production, and Post Production

We wanted to make sure we had a distinctive sound by composing our own signature theme music and creating our own cast of characters with a distinctive message promoting the concept of multimedia. In fact these planned web-commercials really don't sell anything, all they do is make people aware that search engine optimization is not the only thing they should be thinking about when they are developing a website or webmedia campaign. In short, the medium was the message.

The use of Web-audio and Web-video is the best way to implement this kind of marketing presentation. We sat down and started to write and before we knew it we had eighteen scripts each featuring a different issue in the search engine optimization versus multimedia controversy.

The next step was finding the right actors to play the part. Whereas Web-audio allows us to draw upon a vast number of voice talents across North American, video is much more limiting, especially if we wanted to keep the cost down to a reasonable amount. Even if we were prepared to blow the budget on actors, we knew our clients wouldn't, so it was important to demonstrate that we could get the job cast at a sensible cost. The casting proved to be an interesting exercise of frustration and humor. We had all types of applicants ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous to the outright bizarre, but ultimately we were able to find two fine young actors who understood exactly what we were doing and who took to the parts as if they were written specifically for them.

One of our greatest assets as a firm is that we do everything from concept to implementation, including writing, videoing, editing, graphic, motion, and website design; but if you want to produce a campaign at a sensible price you still have to be careful you don't write overly elaborate scripts that require multiple sets, locations or hard to acquire props. That said we still had to find a cute dog we could trust on set, links of various kinds of sausages, a hard to put together toy, and best of all a real straightjacket from an interesting website that specialized in rather strange items of clothing.

The shoot itself went extremely smoothly and we ended up shooting all eighteen videos in less than two days. We assumed some of the videos that looked good on paper just wouldn't translate to the screen, but to our surprise every one of the scripts worked. We knew what we wanted to say and weren't afraid to say it, even though we were flying in the face of conventional wisdom.

Bgwebmast-The Bulgaria SEO Competition

2006-12-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Ways to Earn with Google Adsense without Creating Your Own Site

2006-12-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

List of websites where you can display your Google AdSense ads
If you don’t have a blog or website to use adsense ads and earn revenue , no need to build one. There are many services that share 100% adsense earnings with users.This is a list of sites where AdSense publisher can use their own AdSense IDs to earn money.

1. Simpy

Simpy is a social bookmarking site.

Simpy has support for Google AdSense as a third party. Each Simpy member has his/her main page on Simpy (e.g. jaleel77 ). Every Simpy member can now enter his/her Google AdSense Id into Simpy, and his/her page will immediately start showing ads with his/her Id. All earnings from such ads go to members, as their Ids are used to display ads .

2. Digital Point Forums

Digital Point Forums is a forum site for webmasters.

This forum displays one advertisement in the upper right area as well is inline when viewing a thread. We use Google AdSense to automatically serve relevant ads for the content on the page. Google pays AdSense publishers on a per click basis as well as per impression.

If a user has an AdSense account, they have the ability to credit their account with the ads served on threads they start or participate in.

3. ArticleMuse

Articlemuse.com is a news article directory.

Sharing Ads Position: The Google Ads beside the main content of the article.
Sharing Ratio: Your ads will be displayed in any articles you have submitted 100% of the time till the end of 2006!

4. XpressIdeas

Xpress Ideas is an article directory.

If you have a Google Adsense ID, you can enter that ID when you register on the site. The Google Ads in the middle of the article will have YOUR Google Adsense ID in, meaning that if anybody who clicks on those ads, even on OUR site, YOU get the revenue!

5. Cybersist

Cybersist is place to share your photos and blog, free webmail, file storage and more.

Your Google ads will be displayed in 7 different locations on your public blog and photo pages. Those ads are specifically optimized to allow better penetration of the ads. Any click on those ads will generate a revenue for you through AdSense.

6. TagTooga

TagTooga is a free directory that anyone can edit.

It is easy to use TagTooga.com to earn advertising revenue. There are two ways to do it:

(1) Link to TagTooga.com. Traffic sent from your link will display Google Ads using your Adsense ID.

(2) Create your own category/tag pages.

7. ForuMatrix

ForuMatrix is a news posting site.

The posts you will make, will display 100% your Adsense Banner. No time limits or banner rotations. It’s simple, your Posts with your banners always

8. Flixya

Flixya is a video sharing site.

Start sharing your videos from Youtube, Google Video, Daily Motion, and other video sharing sites. Our revenue share program is split 50-50. You will make 50% of the Google Adsense revenue generated by the videos you submit. The more traffic your video drives, the more ads will be displayed, and the more money you will make.

9. Swicki

Swicki is a site that allows you to create custom searches

After you have saved your ad program preferences, ads will immediately begin appearing on your swicki’s results pages.
For each active ad program on your swicki, you’ll be credited with 50% of the ad impressions and clicks. The balance will be credited to Eurekster.

10. Senserly

Senserly.com is a content hosting website

Senserely.com is to provide a place for honest Google AdSense publishers to legitimately increase their daily earnings. As soon as you register, this basically becomes your website, with your AdSense blocks displayed next to your content, and you'll be able to write articles, reviews, and stories about your knowledge and experience with AdSense or any topic you feel confortable with, as well as read, ask questions, and exchange information with other AdSense publishers.

The Spam Sites of the Social Web

2006-12-05T04:39:00.000-08:00

Blogs and other social media tools have changed the publishing landscape over the past few years, making it easier than ever to share information with the world. The ease of use and focused attention of the medium has also helped create new opportunities for spammers to automatically generate content, buy links, and get noticed by search engines and other points of aggregation. In this post I will break down the operations of one spam network utilizing social media technologies such as WordPress, Digg, del.icio.us, and more to climb the search results and generate revenue through ads and affiliate programs.

Last weekend I noticed a Digg submission about weight loss tips had climbed the site's front page, earning a covetous position in the top 5 technology stories of the moment. The 13 sure-fire tips were authored by "Dental Geek" and posted to the "Discount Dental Plan" category on his WordPress blog. Scanning the sidebar links and adjacent content it was obvious this content was out of place on a page optimized for dental insurance. The webmaster of i-dentalresources.com had inserted some Digg bait, seeded a few social bookmarking services, and waited for links and page views to roll in, creating a new node in a spam farm fueled by high-paying affiliate programs and identity collection for resale.

The spammer's domain is managed by eBizzSol, a company with fake domain registration information including the address block of a Christian church in Fullerton, California. The dental site is registered to an address in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Based on the broken English I've found on the network's sites an offshore base of operations would not surprise me. eBizzSol mentions about 200 sites in its portfolio, including real estate, mortgage, casinos, and more. They even advertise a content generation service for SEOs offering six blog posts a month for $75 optimized for specific keywords, including guarantees for blog directory and ping submissions. There are other sources of content generation available for hire online, creating a flow of content republished across a target category optimized for specific terms.

Follow the money
Why would someone want to create a site optimized for dental services? A search engine such as Google or Yahoo! discovers the site, indexes its pages, and starts including its content in search results for targeted keywords. Web searchers associate search engine rank with authority on a subject such as lowering an insurance premium or mortgage and generate a large amount of money per action. This particular site is collecting $40 or more per dental plan sold through a dental plan reseller and targeting specific keywords of value and boasts search engine index inclusion of "just a few hours" on its pages.

The dental terms targeted cost up to $18 a click, offering incentives for top organic search conversion. Below is a price estimate from Google for keyword targeting in the United States.
Google AdWords
pricing Search term CPC ($)
teeth whitening 18.66
sedation dentistry 12.80
cosmetic dentistry 12.76
dental plans 9.78
dental implant 6.85
pediatric dentist 6.77
discount dental plans 5.93
oral surgery 4.95
braces 3.39
cavity 1.88

Yahoo! directory pricing

This webmaster bought links from the Yahoo! directory, the Microsoft Small Business Directory, Business.com, and a few others, placing a link to their site within targeted categories. They are cheaper than the $1000 links purchased on sites such as the W3C, but these listings are often just as spammy.

Virality

The article link was submitted to Digg by a user who joined Digg last month yet is already ranked in the top 150. The story received over 900 Diggs and is currently buried. A newly minted user posted to Reddit, posted to Newsvine, and posted to del.icio.us using the same name on each service. Seeding and voting up the content worked, as the blog post made its way to the top story listings on each social news service.

As of this evening the spam site has 353 inlinks from 212 external pages, mostly due to its viral marketing efforts on social networks. Some social bookmarking users include their bookmarked links in their blog sidebar, creating additional direct links throughout their entire site in addition to the original bookmarking service location. The spam network had successfully spread a piece of content throughout multiple user communities, and onto individual blogs in the process.

Summary
Certain topics are especially well suited for baiting the technology-oriented crowds of social news and bookmarking sites. Stories focused on Apple, Firefox, Google, Nintendo, history of computers, top X lists, or the target social site itself are common baiting practices used to attract attention and place a new content node on the map. Opportunists will continue to jump into new networks of influence and promote their own sites, gathering search engine juice even when the brief blip of attention has passed and the crowd moves on to another story of the moment.
World of Warcraft female human with shovel

I believe social media accounts are currently available for rent or for sale, rewarding active users with paid placements or account resells in much the same way as a World of Warcraft character might be resold on eBay. Social media sites and search engines need to stay on top of this new form of content creation, continually analyzing data and scrubbing out the dirt. Sites overrun with web spam quickly lose their utility and might be banned from search engines.

Social media sites continue to change the way we interact with data but expect more activity and content shaping in the future from marketers targeting the social media space for a quick link injection.

Search Engine Positioning for the Weary

2006-12-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

Do you want to get your site from page five to page one in Google? Here are a few tips to boost you on your way.

1. Clean Up Your HTML.

Keep a beady eye on Dreamweaver and avoid CMS software.

What, Dreamweaver, beloved program of pro webmasters everywhere?

Yes!

Dreamweaver adds lots of extra blank space to HTML code, and breaks lines. This is especially irritating in meta tags. Use EditPad's 'Find and Replace' function to get rid of newlines and double blank spaces in your pages.

Content Management Systems are a great time saver. An amateur can set up a professional-looking site in a few hours. The problem is they contain lots of code that's irrelevant to search engines. The top of a CMS page may contain only a few words relevant to its subject matter.

Then there's the duplicate content problem.

* Blogs have duplicate copies of their own content; sometimes exact, sometimes excerpts.
* Thousands of people are using the same CMS as you.
* A search engine spider sees the same header, sidebar and footer content in every page in your site.

Result? Your page is down the SERPs for any competitive keyword. Assuming it's indexed at all.

These programs are written by geeks. Their primary aim is to eliminate code errors and add features. Your marketing comes a very poor second. They're also posting security updates every few months. More hassle. For you.

Drastic solution:

1. Type your documents in a text editor like Editpad, then
2. Use a Text to HTML converter, then
3. (Use Dreamweaver to add formatting, then)
4. Use a index generator to make a HTML list of those pages, then
5. FTP them to your web site.

Benefits:

* Search engine spiders get to the 'meat' of your page immediately;
* You have more control over how the page looks;
* You have more control over what an SE 'bot 'sees';
* You're not relying on a MySQL database to maintain your site;
* Hackers won't be able to deface your site easily.

A clever webmaster would look into Conditional Server Side Includes. You can use them to 'program' your web pages, while still presenting clean HTML to search engine 'bots.

And as for Microsoft FrontPage, I wish all my competitors were using it.
2. Get Lots of Links to Your Site.

* Submit articles to article websites;
* Pay freelancers to make software for you, and give it away free;
* Submit to the top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ, but don't spend much time or monëy. Only half a dozen are worth a damn for SEO;
* Post in popular forums and blogs, if they will let you use straight hyperlinks in your signature;
* Be controversial - assault a few sacred cows;
* Do a press release, and think beforehand about how you can make it interesting to journalists;
* Make a better, faster, cheaper version of a popular product.

That should get you a few decent links. With millíons of cheapo, 'me too', linkless sites out there, yours will stand out like a snowdrop on a dungheap.

3. Offer Something People Really Want.

You like fuschia leg warmers. You think other people do too. You make a website selling them.

Cue sad disillusion.

People want monëy, sëx, friendship, human contact, cars, drugs, health and happiness. They know what they want (not need, want). You've got to figure out a better way to satisfy that want, for a fat net profit.

Simple, ain't it?

Actually, yes it is.

Save time. Pick a very profitable, popular industry. Think up a way to give people a better product. Or faster. Or cheaper. Or all three! Research costs little. Thinking costs nothing.

Or just go off half-cocked. Employ a cheap, angry webmaster. Half-finish the site for a product you're not 100% sure there's a demand for. Then sit back and wait for traffic.

Then give up, go down to the pub and gripe to your pals: "The internet's sh*t, innit?".

Funny thing about offering a popular good with a new twist; you get links without cadging them.

4. Be First With a New, Popular Good (or a smarter second).

MySpace wasn't the first social networking site, but they did it better. They designed it to be viral. Members could compete to get 'friends', and everyone wants new friends, right? Users could put anything they wanted online, even if it looked cr*ppy. Censorship was minimal. Result: Huge popularity, without needing the search engines.

Not easily done, but again, research costs little. Thinking costs nothing.

Stop the daily slog. Go for a walk. Have a long bath. Play a game of street-hockey. And see what pops into your head.

If you feel good about it the next day, it may be a good idea. Test it before committing to it. If it still makes you excited a month later, you may be onto a winner.

If complete strangers start feeling the same, you definitely are!

7 Characteristics of a Great Webpage

2006-11-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

What makes for a great webpage?

Wouldn't you like to know the main ingredients for creating a superior webpage? What basic elements you must have if you want a solidly designed webpage? A webpage that will stand out and be noticed by your visitors. One that will keep those visitors returning to your site, again and again. An effective webpage that is 95% better than most of the other pages on the Net.

Follow these simple design features when creating your next webpage and you will have the answer:

1. Good Keywords

The nucleus. The conception. Good keywords are the very first building blocks you must consider before your webpage even becomes a dim notion in your head. Picking the right keyword or keyword phrase is the ultimate factor that will determine the success or failure of your webpage. You must do major research on the keyword or keyword phrases that will be the focal point and drawing card for your webpage.

You must get this right. It is vital. It is the single most important element of a webpage. You can use keyword research software and sites such as GoodKeywords, Wordtracker.com, Nichebot.com, or superior keyword research software such as Brad Callen's Keyword Elite.

Regardless of what process you favor, you must choose your keywords very carefully. You must check the competition for your chosen keywords or phrase. You must check the number of searches made each month for your keyword. You must also check the keyword density of your page to see if it will register in the search engines. You may have to adjust or fine-tune your keyword density at a later date.

Make sure you place your keyword in the title of your page. Place it in the first Headline on the page and many marketers also place their keyword or phrase in the url. For example: www.yourdomain.com/keyword.html This will help the search engines and surfers to find your page quicker.

2. Simple Design

Keep it simple. You must keep your webpage simple and direct. Keep it professional. Make sure it is readable and clear to all your visitors. Do a spell check. Do a grammar check. You may also want to check how your webpage looks in all types of browsers (www.anybrowser.com). Better safe than sorry.

Keep your visitors in mind at all times when designing your webpage. Keep it on topic, keep it related to your keywords. Most marketing studies show that's it's best not to confuse your visitors with too many options. If you're selling a product or products, limit the number on each page to one product if you can.

If you have a comparison page, limit the number to three or four. Studies also show that if you present too many options or products, the conversion rate goes down, not up. Keep all your products related. If you have a page on laptops, don't start discussing the benefits of owning a SUV.

Keep your sentences short and the number of words on a page down to 200 to 300. Many sites break up longer articles into multi-pages, this will be of some inconvenience for your visitors but you will have more room for advertising - your call.

3. Optimized

Let's face it, the average webpage will get most of its traffic from the search engines, mainly Google, although MSN and Yahoo are also worth considering. Optimize your page for Google. Use a simple hierarchy, keep your pages no more than three clicks away from the main page. Linking all your pages to your index page is a good practice, always do this. The search engines will find your page faster if it is linked directly from the main index page of your site.

Using blogging software/structure that comes with such free blogging software as Wordpress will optimize your pages for you. Blogging systems have a linking hierarchy (categories, archives, etc.) that are very search engine friendly. It's almost impossible not to optimize your pages if you're using a blogging system. Plus, you have an RSS feed that will syndicate your content and place it into the search engines very quickly.

Check factors such as Mega Tags, title description and content. Use a robots text file for the search engine robots.

If you're new to building webpages, you may want to check out Google's Webpage Creator, you can create your pages and have it hosted free by Google and they will be indexed immediately in Google. Big Plus!

4. Easy Navigation

A great webpage will have easy and simple navigation. Link your page to and from your main index page if you can. Make sure you link to it from your sitemap page. Many webmasters put all the main links on their site at the top or the bottom of all their webpages, so that a visitor can freely move around and find what they're looking for. Keep your visitors' comfort level in mind at all times.

Double check to see all links on your webpage work! You may be surprised how many don't work, especially if you link out to other sites. The search engines don't like broken links, neither will your visitors.

Also double check to see if all images on your page display properly. Nothing will bring down the quality of your page faster than images that don't load.

5. Fresh Content

A great webpage will always have fresh content. Make sure you update your webpage often. Our world's technology changes rapidly, make sure your material is current and still revelant.

Remember, 9 times out of 10, the only reason a visitor is on your page is for information. Make sure you deliver. Make sure that information is recent and accurate. Besides, there is nothing like fresh content to keep your visitors interested and coming back for more.

6. Bookmarkable

A great webpage will always be bookmarkable. Your visitor will want to bookmark your page and return to it for more information. Make sure you make it easy for your visitor to bookmark your page. Use a bookmark script. Make sure you have a favicon, this is a small logo you place on your site and it will be automatically picked up and displayed in your visitor's bookmarks, drawing attention to your page. Consider a bookmark and favicon like bread crumbs, all leading the visitor back to your page.

7. Cool

Every great webpage should have a WOW factor! Try to make your page stand out from the crowd. Try to make it unique, try to make it cool. Just remember, a simple professional webpage with valuable information is always cool. And remember there is nothing like a little good 'word of mouth' to get some traffic drawing PR for your page. Great buzz about your webpage is worth its worth in gold.

So the next time you're designing a webpage, go all out and try to create your webpage with all of the characteristics listed above. Start with your keywords, keep it simple, proof-read and test for coding errors, create good navigation and optimize for the search engines, make sure you provide valuable fresh content and information. Last but not least, try your hardest to make your webpage memorable and bookmarkable. Make it a professional webpage that will be superior to the majority of other pages on the web.

Aim high and you will reap the rewards.

Five Tools for Spying on Your Competition

2006-11-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Did you know that an ancient Chinese military document unlocks many of the secrets to your online success? This book is called "The Art of War" and was written during the 6th century by Sun Tzu. This famous document is one of the oldest and most famous studies of strategy and has had a huge influence on military planning as well as business tactics.

Sun Tzu wrote about the importance of knowing your competitors before competing. This wisdom is crucial to your online success. Here are some quotes that verify this truth in the art of war as well as business.

"If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every battle won, you will suffer a loss."

"If you know your enemy and yourself, you will win every battle."

Before you create your own marketing strategies, you must first know your competitors. By understanding your competitor's strategies, you can always stay a step ahead of them.

The key is knowing how to obtain all of this vital information without having to hire a PR firm, an FBI agent, or an undercover spy. Luckily for us, all we need are a few online tools to find out exactly how are competitors are running the show.

1. SpyFu.com

The first tool you should add to your arsenal can be found at SpyFu.com.

SpyFu.com is the long-awaited sequel to Googspy.com, a free competitive research tool that allows you to research your competitors marketing campaigns. SpyFu.com, however, stands head and shoulders above its predecessor, providing over twenty times more data.

This website monitors nearly 4.5 million domains, showing you exactly how much your competitors are paying for search advertising on a daily basis, the total number of clicks they are receiving, and their average ad position. SpyFu also reveals the exact keywords that your competitors are ranking for in organic search and who their top 100 competitors are.

2. Internet Archive

The next spy tool will enable you to explore a website's history and how it has changed over time. You can find all of this information at http://www.archive.org.

Many of you have probably heard of the Internet Archive. However, you may not realize that it is an extremely powerful tool for spying on your competition. Using this free and simple tool you can discover:

* How often a website has changed their copy?

* Whether or not a website is split testing? (This alone could show you years of data on what type of copy works best. Testing your own website copy is extremely important, but you should also be checking to see what your competitors are doing as well. You can learn volumes just by looking at what their sales page looks like over time.)

* Find out if your competitors have made any big changes in their offer, including price, bonuses, guarantees, etc.

If you're just looking to have a little fun, then look up Google in the Internet Archive and see what their site looked like in 1998. You see, competitive intelligence can informative as well as amusing!

Next up is one of my favorite search tools.

3. Search Status

Search Status is one of the best SEO tools around. It is a plug-in for the Firefox browser so it comes completely free of charge.

You can use this tool to:

* Highlight no-follow links

* View any page in Archive.org

* Show all Whois information. This is especially useful if you want to find out who the owner of a website is. (great for setting up a joint venture)

* Show robots.txt file. This feature will show you exactly which pages and directories a website does not want listed because they want to keep them private. (can be quite informative.)

* Show Indexed Pages. Find out exactly how many pages a website has listed in all 3 major search engines.

* Show Backward Links. This feature will show you exactly which sites are linking to the current page or website that you are visiting. This is especially useful for finding link partners and affiliates.

The next tool will allow you to find out which web host a company is using. This information can be found at:

4. WhoIs.sc

Once you arrive at this site, you simply enter the domain name into the search box. You will then be taken to a page that will give you a wide variety of information on that domain. Scroll down to where it says "name servers". In this column you will often find the exact URL for the web hosting company they use.

Our final spy tool comes straight from Google, allowing you to keep full-time tabs on the Internet without the hours of research it would normally require.

For many years, companies paid lots of money to PR firms to provide news items and updates on their competitors, often referred to as a "clipping service". With the onset of the Internet, these tools are now automated and free.

One such tool is:

5. Google Alerts

Using Google Alerts, you can easily monitor what is being said online about you, your company, your products, and your competition.

Google alerts shows results from the Web, Google News, and Google Blog search. All of this competitive intelligence can then be sent directly to your email inbox.

Simply enter the terms you want to track and Google will scour the Internet on a daily basis to keep you updated on your particular industry.

These alerts can notify you of when new links start pointing to your website, when someone uses one of your articles, or when the blogosphere mentions your name.

If you want to keep up with your competitor, simply enter the company name or their product and you can begin tracking what people are saying online about them.

Google Alerts is an indispensable tool for market research. Start creating your own Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

Keep in mind, however, that these are only tools. Some of the most powerful competitive intelligence comes from actually surfing around your marketplace, visiting the forums, and buying your competitors' products. This is the only way to get a complete picture of what is happening in your industry.

If you want to win in your marketplace, it's time you go undercover.

Web Standards, Browsers and Designing For The Future

2006-10-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

At present, a vast majority of webmasters are designing for IE (Internet Explorer) 6, which is not as W3C standards compliant as is FireFox, Netscape, Safari and Opera.

The importance of a designer being cognizant of the fact that web browser standards are not yet fully harmonized - a web page that looks great in Internet Explorer (6) might look hideous in a Mozilla based browser like FireFox or Netscape.
I also noted that with the explosion of devices with which to serve Internet applications, compliance with W3C standards has become critical.

When the final release for IE 7 for Windows XP, Server 2003 & Vista is launched, hopefully before the end of 2006, the tables will be turned, so to speak.

Internet Explorer 7 will be more standards compliant and your HTML code will be subject to much more rigorous interpretation than is the case with IE 6, consequently some web pages that look fine in IE 6 might not look the same IE 7.

In IE 7 Microsoft has made a solemn effort to fix the browsers acquiescence to W3C standards and CSS(Cascading Style Sheets) compatibility. CSS interpretation as recommended by W3C has been improved tremendously giving designers and developers more leverage in functionality for cross-browser design.

Microsoft asserts that they are taking W3C compatibility issues seriously.

Concisely what this means is that IE 7 will tend to interpret your web page code more scrupulously than before.

Therefore, if you have been designing your pages and have not bothered to check how they render in W3C Standards Compliant browsers like FireFox, you may be in for a rude shock when IE 7 finally rolls out.
If you have not been incorporating W3C Web standards in your design strategy you may need to re-design for IE 7.

How should you go about it?

Design for "strict" browsers like FireFox first. Not only is FireFox a more standards-compliant browser but it is also the primary competitor to Internet Explorer. A contender backed by Google's marketing machine -- and therefore, is not likely do "a Netscape" on designers.

Prior and up to IE 4.x, Netscape was the leading browser in the market with almost 80% of the market, but in a bid to force the issue culminating with proprietary goofs by AOL to whom Netscape sold out, they screwed up big time with versions 4 up to 6. A bitter war of attrition with Microsoft in the late nineties did not help either.

Microsoft grabbed the opportunity and gobbled the Browser market overnight.

With version 7+ Netscape has been revived. How well it will compete with IE and FireFox remains to be seen.

I will be the first to admit that most the web pages I have built in the last several years are not always standards compliant... and so are ninety five percent of other web pages -- as I stated in my previous article, "if strict W3C standards were to be enforced in browsers, most websites would go out of business."

To design for FireFox a designer needs to combine Valid CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for "look and feel" and W3C compliant HTML for web page structure.
The combination of these two design strategies is powerful in that it elicits tremendous flexibility, ease of maintenance and opens up extensive possibilities in website design. The benefits are rewarding, and every webmaster should attempt to utilize this two pronged scheme in their design routine.

Making changes to and/or styling a site designed with CSS is much easier and more elegant than messing around with a traditional table-based design.

CSS may look intimidating to a first-timer but once you familiarize yourself with the basics you can progressively harness the power of CSS to your full benefit. In addition, most web page design tools such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage have built-in modules with which you can automatically generate CSS code, which you can then view in a plain text editor for study purposes.

To aid you in your CSS endeavor you need the following developer tools: Web Developer Extension for FireFox and the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar. Great time-saving tools for creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages.
As a matter of fact, by installing some of the 1,500+ available FireFox extensions you can eliminate the need for quite a chunk of standalone desktop applications.

After designing your Web page remember to use a MarkUp Validation Service to check whether your Web page conforms to W3C recommendations. If there are errors, the validator will notify you of them and suggest corrections.

Also, remember that when designing using W3C standards guidelines a lot of code(tags) that were very valid in the "Pre-Standards" era have completely depreciated and will be ignored completely by browsers. If you ignore these errors during validation, your web pages might not render correctly.

In many instances, you may never be able to achieve 100% HTML or XHTML validation. In such cases you may want put the following DOCTYPE declaration in your document -- at the top of your web page before the tag:

DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN

A "Document Type Definition" or DTD supplies Web browsers with information about which (X)HTML specification your web page is built upon, which instructs the Browser how to render the page for viewing.

In the example captioned above a standards compliant browser will interpret your web page as an HTML 4.01 document, and because it is marked as "Transitional," it will display it in "quirks mode," meaning that the browser will forgo the strict standards mode, and display your page like it would be displayed in older "non-strict" browsers, while still supporting any tags developed after IE 4, Netscape 4 and others.

On the contrary, the following DOCTYPE declaration tells the standards compliant browsers that your web page should be displayed in strict compliance with the DOCTYPE declaration.

DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN

A complete list of recommended DTDs can be found at the W3C Website.

If you leave the DOCTYPE out, the browsers automatically switch to "quirks mode," therefore, it is important to include the DOCTYPE declaration on every web page that you build in order for it to be rendered correctly.

If your Web pages render well in FireFox at present you probably will not encounter any major problems in IE 7 other than minor adjustments here and there. However, I think a realistic designer should at least make a meaningful attempt to follow W3C guidelines for it is the correct way forward.

Do it now so that you will be ready for the future...re-designs and total overhauls are a time consuming and painful process. A process, which becomes much easier if your initial design incorporated structurally clean and modular (X)HTML with CSS compliance.

Blog Services Pinging Tools

2006-10-06T07:08:00.000-07:00

So here are the Blog Services Pingback Tools

* Pingomatic - the most popular. Pings several popular services and specialized services. Create a bookmark for each ping url.
* Pingoat - Pings a huge collection of 52 blogging services, including special services and non english tracking services. You can easily select all services by selecting the category.
* King Ping - Pings multiple services - 18 in all. Easy to check and uncheck boxes. And you can also create a bookmark with your settings.
* Blogflux Pinger - Pings 32 services, including several specialized services and language specific services too.
* Feedshark - Ping, submit, & promote your blog, feed, or podcast for free to multiple services.
http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/blogomatic.aspx - Just enter the rss url and it submits to all the 12 listed services. You do not need to select each service.
* BlogBlip - Just enter the blog url and it will submit to 15 popular blog tracking services.
* Ping.ws - pings 16 popular services. 3 are ticked, rest you have to select.
* PingQueue - Pings 16 preselected popular services in one click.
* Pong - is a free desktop ping application that notifies blog tracking web services about updated blogs and feeds. It currently supports XML-RPC protocol pings for up to fourteen services at a time.
* Ping The Empire - Pings 18 common blog tracking services.

Clíck Fraud: Six Things You Should Be Aware Of Before You Buy "Guaranteed Traffíc"

2006-10-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

Bill was getting frustrated and desperate. He'd being trying to promote his website for months with little or no success.

Adwords didn't seem to be working. He'd devised the most fiendish ads he could think of and set them up on Google only to find that nobody clicked on them.

He had written several articles and, using an automatic article submitter, had placed them on hundreds of Article Barns across the web. There had been an increase in his Alexa Ratings, but that was it. Maybe there was a slight flurry of hits when he first placed the article, then nothing.
He'd set up a blog, made a press release announcement, and done everything except don a Shaman costume and dance around his computer.

He'd purchased ebooks on increasing his traffíc, and tried every idea he ran across. His budget was beginning to show the effects, and he had the chilling realization that if he didn't come across something that worked, he was simply going to run out of monëy and go bankrupt.

In other words, he was about to become one of the 90 per cent of the Info Marketers on the web who fail.

That was when he ran across a site that guaranteed traffíc. Little did Bill know he was about to become a victim of clíck fraud.

Clíck Fraud and Big Business

Clíck fraud has been discussed in a recent issue of Newsweek (Oct 6, 2006) as one of the most serious issues that faces online advertising. It has cast doubt on at least some of the efficacy of services such as Google Adwords to bring actual paying customers to a business website.

It began with the monitoring of clicks that appeared to be coming from outlying countries such as Botswana and Syria, and grew into the discovery of a scourge that threatens to undo the very concept of paying for clicks as a way of obtaining legitimate customers.
Whole cultures were discovered that sustained themselves by clicking on ads - "paid to read" rings consisting of hundreds of thousands of people who do nothing but clíck on sites.

Newsweek reports that Yahoo and Google claim they "filter out" clicks of dubious origin, but the credibility of pay for clíck advertising is beginning to be undermined. It's estimated that 10% to 15% of all clicks are fake. 300 to 500 million dollars of advertising revenue are being funneled into the clíck fraud industry.

The "visitors" COME FLOWING in

Bill was seriously considering paying for "guaranteed targeted visitors". For as little as $100 he could get this kind of traffíc directed to his site, and after months of frustration in building his customer base he pulled out his credít card.

And the clicks began. They started slowly and then gradually mounted. By the time they reached a thousand, Bill knew there was something wrong.

He was getting a lot of clicks, all right, but he was getting no sales. Bill knew from his experiments with Adwords that his site had a 1% "conversion rate". That is, for every 100 clicks he sold one ebook.

If he were truly getting paying customers he should be selling books, and he wasn't.
What to LOOK FOR in a "guaranteed clíck" service

So the question is, are all "guaranteed clíck" services fraudulent?

If you're down to the point of paying for a service that will send you customers, you should take a hard look at a few things:

1. How do they get their customers? They should have some reasonable explanation for how they entice 10,000 or so customers to clíck on your ad.

2. Do they allow sites with pop ups? If not, why not? Could it be their automatic clíck machine doesn't work on sites that have pop-ups?

3. Do you have the software necessary to monitor your site to determine if the clicks are coming from unique visitors? If you don't, you have no way of knowing whether or not you have 10,000 unique potential customers or 1 machine clicking your site 10,000 times.
4. Do you know what the historical conversion rate of your site is? If sales aren't tracking that conversion rate, why not?

5. Are there any complaints listed with the Better Business Bureau? (Or, if you want a report for consumers by consumers, chëck the Rip Off Report).

6. Finally, if you suspect fraud or feel you have been badly treated, email the company in question and demand your monëy back. If you don't get it, post to the BBB, or better yet, the Rip Off Report. Sites like this one will put some of these guys out of business.
THE MORE DESPERATE You Get...

As your business progresses and you are discovering that you aren't getting the traffíc you need to truly "make a go of it", you become more likely to search out quickie solutions such as "paid for traffíc."

* Thoroughly consider the credibility of claims and offers. Sleep on it before you jump in with your credít card.

* Recognize that you need an overall "system" for developing site traffíc, not a "band aid" approach. Band aid approaches usually don't work.

* Visit marketing forums and talk with people about what works and what doesn't. Get recommendations from reliable sources.

* Remember, every recommendation on a sales page is ecstatic, and the entire page is psychologically designed to sell you a product, whether it works or not.

In short, as time progresses and you aren't experiencing success, you become more vulnerable to fraud. You must take stöck of yourself and what you are willing to consider.

And be a lot more careful.

Build SEO Links & Web Traffïc With Your Content

2006-10-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe that trading links is the most effective way to build the hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But there's another way to build links that deserves your attention: content distribution. A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site.
Content distribution has usually been thought of as a website promotion strategy rather than an SEO or link-building strategy. But there are good reasons for adding content distribution to your SEO toolkit.

SEO Benefits of Distributing Content vs. Reciprocal Linking Alone

* Links come faster. You send an email with your article to a relevant website owner. That's it. No adding links to your site and then checking and re-checking for compliance. That means you can get more links from the time and resources you spend on link-building.

* Links are not always available through reciprocal linking. Many website owners simply refuse to do reciprocal linking. Content distribution is one way to reach this large segment of website owners.

* Links are one-way. Many SEO experts believe that reciprocal links may be "dampened" by the search engines; i.e., they will not help you rank as high as one-way links. Of course, reciprocal links are still valuable, there's a just a question of how valuable they really are.

* Links per page are fewer. Many SEO experts believe that the higher the number of links per page, the less SEO value each link has. When a website publishes an article, the author's backlink is often the only live link to another website on that page.
Distinct Non-SEO Benefits of Distributing Content

What makes content distribution a truly special method of link building is that it's the only method where the non-SEO benefits may even outweigh the SEO benefits:

* Website building. If you create special content for your link-building campaign, you can publish it on your site. As a general rule, the more content your site has, the more search engine traffïc it will receive. Just publish the article and get it indexed in search engines before distributing it, which should help you to outrank your republishers in search engines for that same content.

* Traffïc generation. The links in distributed content generate traffïc in the förm of highly qualified leads: people who liked what you had to say. Distributing content gets you traffïc even when it doesn't get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of highly qualified traffïc.

* Authority. Distributing content is the only linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the articles they've distributed.

* Mindshare. Distributing articles is the only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea. This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new products or services.
Drawbacks of Content Distribution

Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:

* Desired anchor text is not always available. Unfortunately, the content management systems most widely in place today make it easier for website owners to accept content as text rather than HTML. This means that many website owners simply have their content management system convert a URL into a live link, rather than taking the time to code in the anchor text. Still, an experienced content distributor can usually find ways around this problem to make sure that many if not most of the links use anchor text.
* Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as reciprocal linking. The site that publishes your article has to like not only your site, but also your article. This is especially true for the passively-generated links that come from content clearinghouse websites. But results can vary the other way, too: an article that catches on will yield more links than you ever could have gotten through the same investmënt in reciprocal linking. In order to minimize the risk of content not catching on with website owners, you should make sure your content is high-quality, and also plan for a large content distribution campaign: the more content you try, the more likely you are to find a wïnner.

* Requires significant investmënt. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the results. Of course, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of reciprocal linking, which is also significant. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Costs of outsourcing content distribution compare favorably with costs of outsourcing reciprocal link building.

* Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this requirement has to be weighed against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist.

In short, there are benefits to both reciprocal linking and content distribution. All things being equal, you should use both. Still, content distribution is the only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well. Plus, a professionally managed content distribution campaign may even yield greater SEO results than reciprocal linking would for the same investmënt.

You owe it to yourself or your clients to add content distribution to your SEO-toolkit--before the owner of the next highest-ranking site finds out about it.

Какво е Pay Per Click реклама?

2006-09-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

My first article about PayPerClick Advertising on my own language in one of the famous newspapers in Bulgaria.

Какво е Pay Per Click реклама?
Автор: Мартин Попов
Агенция Сайбърмарк

Рекламата в търсещите машини, често наричана PPC (Pay Per Click) или „цена за кликване”, набира все по-голяма скорост, като прогнозите са , че към 2010 г. тази индустрия ще достигне до впечетляващите 23,5 милиарда долара годишен оборот. Pay Per Click (PPC) рекламата е част от живота на всеки интернет бизнес по света, а скоро и у нас.Този вид реклама е едно от звената на онлайн маркетинга, и през последните 4 години измести по приходи банер рекламата, която беше острието на интернет рекламата през 90-те години.

В България , PPC рекламатa не е много популярнa, поради факта, че нещата при нас винаги идват със закъснение. В момента основните рекламни средтсва в България, са банер рекламата в най-големите и посещавани портали и сайтове, не много известните партнйорски сайтове( афилиейт програми, като EasyTrade, ), също и подобните на Google Adsense програма – като Exchange и Reklamna Mreja за показване на текстови и банер реклами на вашият уеб сайт, рекламни игри, и не на последно място спонсорираните сайтове.

Какво е PPC?
Този вид реклама работи по следният начин - търсачките определят позицията на PPC рекламата съобразно сумата, която е заложена за един клик от съответният рекламодател. Обикновено най-голямата сума пари заложена на дадена дума или фраза класира зададения сайт на първо място. Но не навсякъде е така. В някой търсещи машини (например Google) се отчитат и други фактори при класирането на по-предна позиция, като например процент на кликвания върху реклама, заглавие и описание на реклама и др..Успехът на PPC се дължи на огромия таргетиран трафик, който осигурява на уеб сайтовете и максималната възвращаемост на вложените средства (ROI или Return on Investment).

Тези обяви обикновено излизат в дясната част на страницата или над първите резултати, които потребителят вижда след приключване на търсенето и са обозначени като „платени препратки” или „sponsor links”.

Предимства на PPC рекламата:
• Максимално таргетиране на рекламата
• Можете да редактирате рекламите си и да коригирате бюджета си, докато постигнете желаните резултати
• Насочване по местоположение (на глобално или национално ниво)
• Възможност за насочване на рекламите в над 250 държави
• Подходяща реклама за уеб страници от всякаква величина
• Плащате само когато някой кликне на вашата реклама
• Ефективна реклама с малък бюджет
• Ежедневна статистика

Съвети за PPC кампания:
PPC рекламата е по-изгодна за рекламодателя, тъй като в този случай той плаща, само когато някой кликне на неговатa реклама, което води до посещение на неговия сайт. Възможно е 1000 души да видят рекламата, но ако само 100 човека кликнат върху нея, рекламодателят плаща само за тези 100 души, а ако никой не кликне върху рекламата, рекламодателя не заплаща нищо.

Основен елемент преди да стартирате кампанията е да определите целта й. Целта може да бъде генериране на трафик към уеб сайт ви, събиране на база данни от регистрирани и-мейли, продажба на продукти или услуги, или комбинация от тях и др.

Започнете първо, като опредлите целите които искате да постигнете. Без ясна престава за това което искате, няма да постигнете желаният резултат и ще загубите ценно време и средства.
Планирайте, планирайте и отново планирайте. PPC изисква доста планиране преди да достигнете оптималният и вариант.
Избирайте вашите ключови думи и фрази внимателно, за да успеете да привлечете повече потребители, които да кликнат на рекламата.
Направете списъка с ключови думи и фрази, които да бъдат тематично свързани със съдържанието на сайта и предлаганите продукти. Иначе рискувате да загубите голяма част от посетителите на уеб сайта ви, така рекламата ви няма да е ефективна.
Направете няколко групи от ключови думи, за да имате разработени няколко варианта, в случай, че единият не дава предвижданите резултати . Изпробвайте други варианти.
Планирайте внимателно дневните разходи, за да не изхарчите целия бюджет за няколко дни.
Проучете вашите преки конкуренти дали рекламират по този начин. Ако “да” – кои думи и фрази използват?
В интернет има много полезни програми, някои безплатни като Digital Point например (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/) а други платени като Word Tracker (http://wordtracker.com/), които биха ви помогнали да изберете най-подходящите ключови думи. Някои от най-големите фирми в бранша на PPC рекламата имат свои програми като Inventory на Overture (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/) и Keyword Sandbox на Google (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal). Използвайте ги, те могат значително да помогнат в избора на думи и фрази за вашата PPC реклама.
Много важна е т.н. “landing pages”, страницата, която посетителите виждат след като кликнат върху рекламата. Tя трябва да бъде максимално близка по съдържание на рекламата върху, която посетителите са кликнали.
Един от ключовите елементи на рекламата е ежедневното следене на статистиките на кампанията. Те ви дават много полезна информация за това как протича рекламата ви, колко потребители са кликнали на нея, по кои думи ви намират и др.
При избора на PPC програма, трябва да се съобразите с целите на кампанията. В действителност различните PPC програми предлагат различни услуги. Повечето хора предпочитата да се доверят на основните играчи в този бизнес, но не трябва да се забравя, че има още много други опции, които могат да ви осигурят отлични резултати ако се управляват добре.
Основните търсачки, като Google, Yahoo, MSN предлагат собствени PPC програми,
които предлагат много полезни програми за определяне на ключовите думи и фрази, ежедневни статистики, уроци и др.
Основните Играчи в PPC рекламата:

Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/Login)
Adwords е най-голямата и известна PPC програма в последните няколко години. Adwords е услуга на Google, която стартира с показване на PPC реклами заедно с резултатите от търсенето на потребителите. Отдавна Google разшири своята PPC програма, така че тя има мощна котекстуална рекламана програма - “Adsense”, която позволява на всеки собственик на малък интернет сайт да покаже резултати от Adwords на сайта на Google.
Adwords използва алгоритъм при класиране на рекламите, а самият алгоритъм зависи от няколко параметъра: процент на кликвания върху рекламата , от сумата която рекламодателите определят за клик, от заглавието и описанието на рекламата. Минималната цена за клик в Adwords е 0,05 долара, но при конкурентни ключови думи цената може да достигне до над 100 долара. Google Adwords може да ви донесе голямо количество таргетиран трафик, тъй като Google е най-известната търсачка с милиони потребители по света всеки ден.
Рекламата чрез Google Adsense се появява и в много други търсачки. Google е изградила огромна мрежа от търсачки и портали, които покават рекламите и от Adwords. Някои от тях са AOL, EarthLink, Shopping.com. Ask.com, Lycos, About.com, Nytimes.com, Info Space и много други.

Overture (www.content.overture.com)
Overture е компанията-основател на PPC бизнеса и тя е отговорна за неговата популярност. Загуби много позиции след идването на Google Adwords на пазара, но след като Yahoo! ги купи, успяха да задържат голяма част от позициите си.
В тази PPC програма можете да залагате за класиране (позиция или още rank) и също да избирате описание и заглавие на рекламното каре, което би ви осигурило висок коефициент на таргетиран трафик. По всяко време можете да контролирате и променяте своите залагания, в зависимост от качеството на резултати. Overture има може би най-добрия инструмент за анализиране и определяне на думите и фразите - Тhe Search Term Suggestion Tool, което ви показва колко често хората търсят дадена дума или фраза. Минималният залог в Overture е 0,05 цента за клик, но има и първоначална вноска от 25 долара за регистриране на сметка. Overture също като Google има мрежа от партньорски сайтове и търсачки, където показва резултатите си. Някои от тях са Yahoo,CNN, AltaVista, All the Web, NBC, Netzero, Salon.com и много други.
Някои по-малки играчи в PPC рекламата:

FindWhat (www.findwhat.com)
Въпреки че е по малък играч от Overture и Adwords, Findwhat е много добра алтернатива на големите PPC и на контекстуалната PPC рекламни програми.
FindWhat.com разпределя вашите реклами чрез голяма партньорска мрежа от стотици сайтове и портали с много голям трафик, включително в търсачки като CNET’s Search.com, Excite, Webcrawler, MetaCrawler, Dogpile и Microsoft Internet Explorer Autosearch и др. Те също официално си партнират със специални тематични сайтове с цел да осигурят максимален таргетиран трафик за даден сайт. Минималният залог е 0,05 цента за клик и за регистриране на сметка – 25 долара.

Kanoodle (www.kanoodle.com)
Kanoodle е четвъртата алтернатива. Минималният залог отново е 0,05 цента за клик. Количеството трафик, което бихте получили от Kanoodle или Findwhat, не може да се сравнява с това от Adwords или Overture, но резултатите за някоя специфична дума, която е много конкурентна в Adwords или Overture могат да бъдат много по-добри. Партньорската мержа на Kanoodle е доста голяма и би могла да ви осигури добър таргетиран трафик. Някои от партньорските сайтове са MSNBC.com, FOX.com, MSN, Six Apart, TheStreet.com, LifeScript,UsaToday.com и други.

Други PPC програми
Има стотици PPC програми, измежду които бихте могли да изберете. Ето списък с някои от тях, които можете да проучите, когато планирате вашата PPC кампания.
GoClick, 7Search Enhance Interactive, ePilot, Search Feed, Espotting, LookSmart, Enhance Interactive, Search123, Epilot, Xuppa

Landing Page Usability: More Than Just The Curiosity Factor

2006-09-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

A landing page is the page that visitors first see after becoming curious enough to click on a link to your site. The link may be found on search engine results pages, within a specifically-targeted email, on the site's navigation toolbar or within another website.

In many cases, these are links you pay for. The organic results delivered by SERPs are free, but, unless your site appears on the first two pages, it's unlikely that visitors will connect.
In many cases, the landing page is the site's home page - but not always, even within SERPs. Landing pages can appear anywhere within a web site.

Paid Links Demand ROI

If your landing page receives prominent display within search engine results pages, congratulations. Upward of 50% of visitor traffic found that landing page through an SE query. However, only 20 to 25 sites can appear on page one of Google's SERPs. What about the other 10,000 links Google delivers to its users?

Often, smaller sites employ paid links to drive site traffic. Google Adwords, for example, is a PPC (pay per click) means of building business. The important point is this: PPC programs have to more than pay for themselves in order for your site to remain a viable business.

Any form of paid linkage to one of your landing pages must deliver a nice ROI. And to do that, you need a fully-usable, engaging landing page. Otherwise, visitors won't stick around long enough to read about your low prices and free shipping.

The Purpose of the Landing Page

While all site pages have a purpose (at least on well-designed sites) a landing page typically has a special or singular purpose: to sell a particular item, to announce a product sale, to entice visitors to opt in, complete a questionnaire or perform some other MDA (most desired action).

First determine the MDA the landing page addresses. Then, design everything - from headlines and text to graphics and pictures - to support the completion of the MDA.
Try to keep to one MDA per landing page. Again, the landing page has a specific purpose. Extraneous information, slow-loading videos and a confusing call to action are distractions, along with affiliate links, text links and unnecessary animations. All distract the attention of the viewer from your MDA. Landing Page Design Principles

1. Create a headline that accomplishes the following:

* tells the visitors that they're on the right page;
* clearly states the purpose of the landing page - the MDA;
* engages the visitor, piques interest, encourages the reader to continue.

The headline should be a grabber and appear "above the fold" - the top of your home page. That's the most valuable real estate on your site.

2. Use short blocks of text and single sentences surrounded by negative space (white). Visitors tend to scan rather than read the entire page, even if the text is pure poetry.

3. And because readers scan instead of read site text, use lots of headers, sub-heads and bullet lists.

4. The first sentence of each block of text should provide the critical information you want to impart, again because visitors scan, often reading just the first sentence of a paragraph or block of text.

5. Employ an unambiguous call to action. "Order Now!" "Call now before you forget!" Leave no doubt what action is expected of the visitor. Calls for action can appear throughout the landing page text and a call to action should be the last thing visitors read.

6. Choose a type font that's easy on the eyes. Avoid script fonts and fonts with lots of curly-Qs.

7. If the landing page sells one or more products, provide visitors with pictures of the products.

8. Prices, including shipping and handling costs, should appear below the fold. But they should definitely appear.

Creating a Prominent Landing Page

If your landing page is also the home page, by definition it has prominence to visitors and to search engine spiders. However, if your landing page or pages are within the site, it's important to make sure search engine spiders recognize the importance of this page within the site - its prominence.
Spiders use a number of criteria to determine a particular page's prominence within the context of the entire site. Location is one criterion - the more clicks away from the home page, the less prominent - at least to the limited capabilities of current search engines.

Text is another criterion used to assess prominence. Keywords, keyword density and an automated comparison of keywords in the text against keywords in various HTML tags is another indicator of a page's prominence.

Finally, the number of links pointing to a particular page is an important factor in assessing page prominence. The more links connecting other pages to your landing page, the more prominent it will be to search engines when your site is indexed. This is especially important when landing page product offerings differ significantly from other products sold on the site. Search engines employ a mathematical taxonomy to classify each site within a particular category. So, if you market educational toys but introduce a landing page offering children's books, it's important for search engines to reevaluate the site's taxonomy and to expand the site's classification to include 'sellers of children's books'. One way to do this is to create links within the site all pointing to the landing page.

Landing pages are useful as motivators, as site directories, information sources and for many other valuable purposes. However, the development of an effective landing page takes careful thought and an understanding of what drives both humans and search engine spiders.

Generate increased site traffic and improve your conversion rate with a well-designed, well-written, well-placed and well-connected landing page on your site.

The Death of Google Adsense And Other Myths

2006-09-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense profits and income flatline... seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst.

What happened?

First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids. Search results convert better than content ads.
Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on 'squeeze pages' or 'affiliate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an opt-in list or use permission based email.

The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online marketers.

Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free report entitled 'The Death of Adsense".

Many affiliate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points, especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies per click with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affiliate links, they can produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why earn pennies per click when you can earn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per click?

But the fine people at Google are catching on...

In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credit for signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.

Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and open their Adsense affiliate program up to third party products/advertisers. In a recent company statement Google offered some hope: "We're always looking for new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers, and users," the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through AdSense." Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases or customer acquisition. It would help with the click fraud issue and the monetary returns could potentially make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.

As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for such diverse services as insurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hosting, travel, mortgage loans, cable TV, banking... you name it, almost any service or product sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and lifelong clients.

Enormous sums of money will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run these leads will generate huge profits.
It can also mean huge profits for the CPA networks like ValueClick's Commission Junction and Rakuten's LinkShare who supply the advertisers with publishers and website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.

Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more profitable. It will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities that never existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of advertisers, publishers and the Affiliate/CPA companies that connect the two.

Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affiliate/CPA networks ... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.
For an online marketer when you get a phone call or email from the CEO or the affiliate manager with a company or service you're promoting with your website - you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.

Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials... they just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the affiliate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like Google Adsense... "Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated."

However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual ads?

Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one. Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online, any product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these CPA transactions through its Adsense program.

On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally thrilling unless you're one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the process.

Answer of Questions for SEO, Sitemaps, B&P....

2006-09-21T04:20:00.000-07:00

Rather than keep answering one at a time, I'm going to try to expand on the whole process a bit here. (Again, this is what I generally do. I'm not saying it is the best or the worst but it is a method that works well for me.)

Lets start with some definitions. Some relate to the steps below the definitions. Some are just part of what I practice:

spider - a too the search engines use to visit your website to analyze your pages and store in a local archive for future use by the search engine.

index - the technique whereby the search engine moves pages from the local spider archive to the publicy available search engine results.

sitemap - an index of all or a portion of your site that basically has links to pages in your site. A 1 page sitemap that "maps" your entire site provides 1 click access to all your pages for that site.

site - one complete collection of pages - generally starting with an index.html (or php, asp, htm, etc.) and linking to all the pages in the site in some form or fashion. A site can be a complete domain, a complete subdomain or a subdirectory within a domain. A site may or may not be linked to other sites.

domain - a place to build 1 or more sites.

B&P - blog and ping - a combination of a site operated by blog software and a technique to notify the world of a new addition of content to that site.

Site builder - a tool or series of tools to build sites. This can be things like directory generator, traffic turbocharger, niche protal builder, traffic equalizer, etc.

Template(s) - These are "fill in the blank" web pages that are used by the site builder to form your site. If you buy a commercial site building package, it comes with default templates. If you are new, build a small site with the default templates (maybe 10 pages or so) and then do it again and again and again making small changes to the templates and trying different substituion variables the program offers so you get a good understanding of what the program is all about an can do. Once you understand what all the little pieces and substitution variables do, build your own templates from scratch or buy a template set from eBay and edit one that you like. NEVER USE THE DEFAULT TEMPLATES THAT COME WITH THE SOFTWARE FOR YOUR LIVE SITES. ALWAYS BUILD YOUR OWN FROM SCRATCH OR FROM A COMMERCIAL TEMPLATE.

Fingerprint - a fingerprint is something that identifies your website. It could be a copyright notice. It could be a fairly unique phrase you use over and over, etc. You do not want finderprints following you on the web for two reasons. The first is that you want to keep what you are doing reasonably private and if you do something like put copyright xyz corp in all the sites you build, someone who finds just one of your sites will be able to find all your sites. The second reason is to not give the search engine software tools an easy way to find all your sites in a way that they feel is identified as a spam site. You can use a single template with tweaks for a long time as long as you change things like default wordings a bit on the sites, etc. But never use a template that comes with a software package as it has fingerprints that identify it to the search engines as machine generated.

banning - I operate under the premise that every site I make in this way will eventaully get banned by yahoo. In fact I give each site 30 days from the time it gets indexed to the time it gets banned. Many do not get banned so quickly or at all but this is a basic premise to my site building model.

Tracking - I do track results to some extent. Mostly I let things happen how they happen but I want to know my top money keyword sets as these are sites I will regenerate fairly frequently. The other sites I don't care about so much. Let them earn till they stop earning. There are always more keyword lists.

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In all the below, the only search engine I target is yahoo. So the entire discussion is how I work related to making money from yahoo. (How you choose to make money from the traffic generated is up to you - adsense, affiliate programs, etc.) Just remember, the whole purpose of what we all do is to generate traffic targeted towards certain niches that we can in some form or fashion monetize. I state that because many think the whole purpose of this is to make adsense money - and there is nothing wrong with that but what we are really doing it generating a specific type of traffic and putting in place ways to monetize that traffic.

The process (assumes you already have adequate hosting somewhere):

Step 1: Make a decision about your domain name and plans for that domain name. For instance, you could build a single site on a domain name and want the domain name to in some way relate the topic or it could be a domain name for a series of related topics or totally unrelated topics.

Does the domain name matter if it relates to the content of your site or not? I have tried a variety of experiments but have not had any conclusice evidence that it matters. Some of my best performing sites have nonsense domain names. But if it fits what you are doing, it does not seem to hurt having a related domain name.

Step 2: Do keyword research for that domain. Depending on what I am doing, I will build anywhere from 1 to 200-300 keyword lists for a single domain. Each keyword list will be 1 site on this domain. If I were doing a niche domain (say insurance), I might choose a domain in the above step something like this insurance-answers.info to make it related. And I might do subdomains like this car-insurance.insurance-answers.info or home-insurance.insurance-answers.info.

If I choose a nonsense domain name, say xyzzy.com as I often do for random collections of keywords, I would do apples.xyzzy.com, bananas.xyzzy.com, etc. (i.e. I make the subdomain name relate to the topic of that site.) If it was subdirectories, it would look something like this xyzzy.com/apples, xyzzy.com/bananas.

In other words, I always try to make the domain path in some way relevant to the topic of the keyword list.

Does it make a difference? I don't know. Testing has been inconclusive.

Step 3: Design your template set for your site builder tool and build your domain. I use a custom tool that I wrote my self but prior to that I used directory generator. The thing I did not like about directory generator was that it did not make a site that was easy for a search engine spider to follow to get all my pages. I made lots of money with directory generator but wasn't getting very robust spidering/indexing of the sites. Directory generator does not make a site map so the spider had to follow the links that were available and I would typically end up with about 20% of my pages indexed. When I started working with sitemaps, the percentage of pages spidered and indexed increased dramatically - up to 60-80%. (This was prior to whatever yahoo was doing last week were it was just sucking in pages like mad. Yahoo still seems to be sucking in pages into its index pretty good but seems to be doing so at a much slower rate than last week. I'm guessing they just wanted a huge database to test their latest tweaks on and now it is back to a slower, more predictible amount of page grabbing again as they stabilize their algorithm changes.)

Also as an added note before you build your site. Verify that your html is correct. Too many mistakes in your html can hurt your ability to get indexed. If you do not know if your html is good, just do a search for an html validator. There are tons of free ones on the web. (You may have to load a sample page to the web for it to be checked but a few seconds up front can save you lots of time.) As an example, I had a friend build a site - about 20K pages - and the html was all messed up. It didn't display good AND the html had loads of errors. It got spidered a lot but never indexed so by rushing through this part, he wasted lots of time and potential income.

Step 4: Upload your site to your server and check it out. Be sure it displays nice and like you expect and that all the little additions you may have added (like affiliate banners, rss feeds, etc.) are all showing up. Click on some of the links and be sure they bring you were you expect them to, etc. Just make sure you have what you expected to have before you start telling the world about the site.

If your site links to other sites that you own/create, make sure you have all your sites up and that the links to the other sites work before you tell the world about your site.

Step 5: Tell the world about your site. This is where the blog and ping stuff comes in.

Step 5a: Set up a blog account. This could be a blogger.com account, a wordpress account on your own server or... There are lots of blog software and account options out there that you can use. Take a few minutes to make sure your settings are good and that you strip out all the default crap that is in the initial blog setup. In other words, just as you took the time to make a template for your site(s), make a template for your blogs. The default templates are very obciously default templates and if you use them the search engines have one more way to tell it is not a valuable blog for its community.

Step 5b: Make posts to your blog and ping the world to let them know there is a new post. There are lots of ways this can be done. It can be done by hand but that is tedious. It can be done by tools which is the best.

There are lots of posts about B&P so I will not go into detail of the process - except to say that I typically post anywhere from once every 30 minutes to about once per hour.

That is the entire process.

Now that the process is explained, let me tell you what I use for my blog content.

As I said, I am a big believer of sitemaps. Sometimes I create a single sitemap for an entire site and sometimes I create several sitemaps for an entire site to make each one smaller. An example of several sitemaps could be one for each letter of the alphabet - sitemapa.html, sitemapb.html, etc...

Every site I create has at least one sitemap, and many times multiple sitemaps.

I post the link to multiple sitemaps (on a single domain) to a single blog account -broken out into multiple blog postings (and of course multiple pings...)

Let me give an example. Lets suppose I have a domain with 40 sites on it and each site has 26 sitemaps (one for each letter of the alphabet.) 40 x 26 = 1040 sitemap pages.

Each of the posts I make to my blog account will have some number of the links to those pages posted as a single post.

For instance, this could be a post (ignore the odd spacing in the html - just don't want the board software to tweak it):

Best < a href = abc.xyzzy.com/sitemapa.html > abc < /a > Resources

Best < a href = def.xyzzy.com/sitemapa.html > def < /a > Resources

Best < a href = ghi.xyzzy.com/sitemapa.html > ghi < /a > Resources

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Then the next post could be:

Best < a href = abc.xyzzy.com/sitemapb.html > abc < /a > Resources

Best < a href = def.xyzzy.com/sitemapb.html > def < /a > Resources

Best < a href = ghi.xyzzy.com/sitemapb.html > ghi < /a > Resources

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etc... until a link to each sitemap page has been included in my blog. In this case 1040/3 = 347 separate posts would be made to blog and ping each sitemap page in the entire set of sites for this domain.

Hopefully this better answers some of the questions I have gotten by PM and hopefully offers some value over and above that.

Gotta rest my fingers now...

Nofollow Tags - New Nofollow Link Tag Explained

2006-09-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

NoFollow Link Tag Overview

The new nofollow link tag provides webmasters with the chance to add a link to their website without leaking PageRank to the page they are linking to. Using the nofollow tag in an outgoing link also means that anyone who runs a blog or a forum on their site does not have to worry about culling links so regularly.

The webmasters can leave all of the posted links on their blog or forum, as they will not leak any PageRank because of the nofollow tags. If they make it clear that they are using automatic nofollow tags on their links, it also means that they reduce the number of pointless posts that appear purely to try and affect the page rank of the linking site.

Why do People post links on Blogs?

One major factor in how your site is ranked by Google is the number of links you have pointing to your site. Many webmasters are now using unethical linking techniques to secure as many inbound links as possible because of this. The most common technique used by these webmasters is to post a comment in an online blog or forum. When this link appears, it not only allows people who are reading the blog to visit the linked site, it also drains PageRank from the website which contains the blog or forum. Hopefully the use of nofollow tags will dramatically decrease the amount of webmasters who try this.

Using Nofollow Link Tags

Anyone who can write a hyperlink in HTML should be able to add nofollow tags to their links. It only takes two or three seconds and could give your site a huge boost in PageRank by not sharing it with sites that are not willing to share theirs with you.

Adding nofollow tags is as easy as typing rel="nofollow" when you are coding the link.

A hyperlink without the new nofollow tag would normally look something like this :

href="http://www.linked-site.com">Link Anchor Text

A hyperlink with the nofollow tag is not much different, it would look something like:

href="http://www.linked-site.com" rel="nofollow"> Link Anchor Text

New Nofollow Tags - Good Thing or Bad Thing?

The nofollow link tag can be seen as good or bad, depending on how you look at it. From a blog owner's point of view, the nofollow link tag could be seen as an important tool in the fight against spam links. If they are willing to spend a small amount of time each day simply adding rel="nofollow" into any spam links added to their site they will be able to save their site from leaking its valuable PageRank to any unethical webmasters. In fact, many blog companies are already adding the nofollow tags automatically to the code, when someone enters a new link, in an attempt to discourage spammers.

One problem which the new nofollow link tag brings into light is the fact that unethical SEO companies will offer link exchanges to unsuspecting or amateur webmasters who do not realise the nofollow tag even exists. This could cause problems to anyone trying to gather links to their website to earn themselves some vital PageRank.

Nofollow Link Tag - Opinion

We have not formed a full opinion on the nofollow tags as yet. Like everything else, the nofollow link tag has its good points and its bad points. The only way to see how good or bad this new link tag will be is to wait and see how many webmasters use it and how they use it.

We cannot advise you whether or not to use this nofollow link tag but we do strongly advise you to be aware of it.

Anyone who values their sites PageRank should regularly check the link code used by all of their link partners. If you find one of your link partners using the nofollow link tag on one of your links, you may want to contact the webmaster and ask them to remove it. If not, you will be sharing your PageRank with their site and getting nothing back in return! At least, with the nofollow tag explained, you will now be aware of how it can benefit, or harm your site.

Organic SEO or Pay-Per-Click Advertising Which Should You Choose?

2006-09-19T01:55:00.000-07:00

When people hear about online marketing, they often think of two of the more popular methods that a company can use to enhance its visibility on the Web: organic search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. In an ideal world, you would use both strategically to maximize your site's profile. However, budgetary constraints often make this impossible, and trying to do both on a limited budget or with minimal resources can result in neither campaign producing ideal results. In this case, it'susually better to focus on one or the other. But which is best for you?

Organic Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine optimization campaigns offer several distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising campaigns, as many recent studies have shown. What follows is a brief listing of some of the findings.

Propensity to Clíck
Study after study indicates people are less likely to clíck on paid search ads rather than on results from organic search engine optimization. For example, one study found that search users are up tö six times more likely to clíck on the first few organic results than they are to choose any of the paid results [1], while an eye tracking study [2] showed that 50 percent of users begin their search by scanning the top organic results. Other studies have shown that only 30 percent of search engine users clíck on paid listings, leaving an overwhelming 70 percent who are clicking the organic listings. [3] And a 2003 study found that 85 percent of searchers report clicking on paid links in less than 40 percent of all of their searches, and 78 percent of all respondents claim that they found the information they were searching for through sponsored links just 40 percent of the time.[4]

Trust
Studies are beginning to indicate that the trust level for organic results is much higher than that of paid results, and that paid results are looked upon as a nuisance by some searchers. One study found that only 14 percent of searchers trust paid listings, and 29 percent report being "annoyed" by them. [5] Another study found that 66 percent of customers distrust paid ads. [6] Clearly, it's not generally a good idea to upset potential customers before they even clíck on your link.

Value of Visitors
Organic search engine results tend to be seen as non-biased, and they therefore are able to provide visitors that are more valuable. The overall conversion rate, or the rate at which searchers take a desired action on a site, is 17 percent higher for unpaid search results than the rate for paid (4.2% vs. 3.6%). [7] Trends also have shown that more of the salës that result from search engines originated in organic search listings. [8]

Visitors Becoming More Aware of Pay-Per-Click as Advertising
As more and more people turn to the Internet for research and information, more searchers are becoming aware of paid results as a marketing tool. One study showed that not only are 38 percent of searchers aware of the distinction between paid and unpaid results, 54 percent are aware of the distinction on Google, which is widely recognized as the most popular search engine. [9]

Pay-Per-Click Costs Rising
Meanwhile, pay-per-click costs are rising steadily. Between October 2004 and December 2005, average keyword prices rose from around $25 to just under $55.10 And the cost of keywords can increase by as much as 100 percent during the holiday season. [11] These costs aren't going unnoticed either; one study of problems experienced by U.S. companies found that 57 percent of respondents felt that their desired keywords were "too expensive," while 51 percent expressed concern that they are overpaying for certain keywords. [12] On the other hand, when you outsource to an organic search engine optimization firm, your costs will likely remain more stable than the prices for pay-per-click advertising.

Long Term Results
While a pay-per-click campaign may produce results more quickly than an organic search engine optimization campaign, organic search engine optimization campaigns can give you results that last. When the budget runs out for a pay-per-click campaign, or when your company decides that the pay-per-click campaign should be terminated, the results end as well. With organic search engine optimization, the optimized site content and other changes made to your site can have an impact on your search results until the next change in a search engine's algorithm, or possibly even beyond.

Relevance
Users also have rated organic search engine results as more relevant than paid results. On Google, 72.3 percent felt that organic results were more relevant, while only 27.7 percent rated paid results as more relevant. Yahoo offered similar results, with 60.8 calling organic results relevant compared to only 39.2 percent for paid. [13]

Pay-Per-Click
While the above statistics may make organic search engine optimization seem the clear choice in all cases, in certain situations it actually can make more sense to do pay-per-click advertising. For those looking for fast results on a small budget, a pay-per-click campaign may be the answer.

Results
As previously stated, the results from pay-per-click advertising are immediate. On the other hand, an organic search engine optimization campaign may take up tö three months or more for results to be apparent. In this case, pay-per-click is advantageous for those who are looking to promote an initiative that will go live in a short amount of time, or whose business is seasonal in nature and who only do promotion during certain months of the year.

Budget
Small businesses with extremely tíght budgets may find that pay-per-click is a better ínvestment than organic search engine optimization because a pay-per-click campaign will almost always cost less - good search engine optimization companies simply do not work for $100 per month. By limiting a campaign's keyphrases to highly specific terms relevant to a company's business, there will not be a large amount of traffíc generated, but the traffíc that is generated will be specific to the desired result. Plus, choosing such specific phrases can make them less expensive on a per clíck basis. Moreover, in niche markets with a high average dollar sale, where there's not a great amount of search activity because the prospect pool is limited, it may not make sense to engage a quality organic search engine optimization firm at several thousand dollars per month when you can instead buy varying niche-specific keyphrases and generate traffíc in that way.

Easier to Handle In-House
Non-complicated pay-per-click campaigns can be handled much more easily in-house than an organic search engine optimization campaign. Such campaigns generally involve business to business and high-end, service oriented companies, not those geared toward a large consumer base. Since organic search engine optimization requires a steep learning curve and since there are so many questionable tactics that can put a site at risk of penalization (the tactics that neophytes to search engine optimization are likely to use), it may make more sense to run a pay-per-click campaign. Since you are dealing directly with the engine, i.e., Yahoo Search Marketing and Google AdWords, you don't need to pay a middleman, and these sites offer helpful tutorials on how to use pay-per-click marketing. Perhaps most importantly, the concept of pay-per-click is much easier to grasp and understand at the outset.

No Contracts
Most organic search engine optimization campaigns require a contract of a certain length because SEO companies know that meaningful results will rarely happen overnight. When dealing with an in-house pay-per-click campaign, obviously a contract is not an issue. But in general, even when you are dealing with an agency, you will not tend to need to sign a contract because the agency instead makes monëy on a percentage of the spend, although there may be a setup fee. Without a contract, you are free to reallocate marketing dollars elsewhere if you discover that the pay-per-click campaign is not providing the desired results.

Conclusion
Clearly, organic search engine optimization has some distinct advantages over pay-per-click advertising. However, there are undoubtedly certain situations and scenarios where pay-per-click advertising makes more sense fiscally and strategically. With a high enough budget, you would be able to have an effective organic search engine optimization campaign running in tandem with an effective pay-per-click campaign. But if you have to choose one, look into your unique situation before you decide.

Sources:
[1] Oneupweb study
[2] Enquiro, July 2005
[3] Are Corporate Web Sites Optimized for SEO? by Paul Bruemmer, August 2005
[4] WebAdvantage.net 2003 Survey
[5] eMarketer, April 2003
[6] eMarketer 2003
[7] Marketing Sherpa, August 2005
[8] Are Corporate Web Sites Optimized for SEO? by Paul Bruemmer, August 2005
[9] Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2005
[10] Performics, 2005
[11] Ibid
[12] Jupiter Media, June 2003
[13] iProspect, Survey Sampling International, WebSurveyor, and Stratagem Research, April 2004

How to choose paid directory for web site listing?

2006-09-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

Search Engines are the major source of traffic for any website. High search engine ranking can boost number of your visitors and in turn leads to increase in sales. The best way to get top search engine placement is to improve link popularity by having one way inbound links from theme based sites or pages, with different optimized anchor text, from different IP Class blocks and domains. This can easily be achieved by buying Internet web directory listings. Directory promotion is one of the best methods of website promotion. Before buying directory listing or registeration you must check the following points to ensure that you are going to get what you need.

Dmoz and Yahoo Listing
Ensure that web page directory where you are going to buy registration is listed in Dmoz and Yahoo Directory. It will ensure quality of the web site directory.

Static Text Links
Ensure that you are getting static text links which are also known as search engine friendly url links from such directories. Various directories use redirection method in website listing to count hits or rating. Such links are usually not indexed by search engines and you cannot get any link popularity benefit out of it. For example domain.com/cgi-bin/jump.cgi?ID=5 (redirection method)

Web Directory URL's
Ensure that website directory URL's are search engine friendly as search engine index them easily. If website directory has dynamic URL's search engine some time find difficulty in indexing or may not index whole directory as it is generating duplicate URL's so your site also does not get any benefit of such listings.

Age of Web Site Directory
Check the age of directory which is very important to determine its stability and quality. Universal rule is " Old is Gold". Search engines give more weight to old domains. You can check Whois record to determine the age of web directory. Many new directories disappear after few month for one or another reason.

Major Search Engine Inclusion
Ensure that paid directory you choose are listed in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Recently Google has banned many directories or poor quality Internet directories.

Keyword in Title
Ensure that web site directory editor allows using anchor text of your choice so that you can add your keyword in Title as an anchor text.

Alexa Ranking and Google PageRank
Ensure that paid directory has good Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking. Quality directory is always a good source of direct traffic to your website.

"no-follow" Tag
Ensure that directory is not using "no-follow" tag on your static text link as this tag prohibits search engine to count it as vote or link, thereby the such listing is of no use to you.

Quality of Websites Listed
Check the quality of websites listed on directory as this will ensure the directory quality. Specially check the quality of websites listed in your category to ensure that your link will be from a relevant quality or authority page.

Sponsorship Listing
Ensure that there is provision to enhance your listing from regular to sponsored listing. Some time you get good traffic and may like to enhance to Sponsorship Listing.

Directory Ranking
Check search engine ranking of web directory for specific category topics. If web directory categories are ranking on search engine then it means it is a quality directory.

Too Many Empty Categories
Ensure that web directory should not have too many empty categories as search engine consider them duplicate pages. It indicates the web directory is not popular and it will not give much traffic.

Number of Outbound Links
Ensure that number of website listed on page is not more than 50 as higher the sites listed lesser the link popularity and traffic you will get. If links are higher the probability of visitor click on you listing will be less. Also ensure that you are listed on first page of category.

Back Link and its Quality
Check Web directory back links and its quality. See category where you are going to be listed is shown in search engines back links or not.

Payment Option Annual or Permanent
Check either web site directory accept annual fee for listing or One time for permanent listing It will help you in calculating ROI on directory listing.

Site-Wide Link
Ensure that web directory is not selling site-wide links as search engine banned few directories in past which are selling site-wide links or selling PageRank as they are considered as link sellers.

Mission of Directory
Carefully study the mission of web directory. Choose the directory which is committed to building a comprehensive directory, while maintaining a high standard of listings. Beware of web directories whose mission is to just sell PageRank or listing only for search engine purposes as sooner or later they will be banned by search engines.

So if you ensure some of these above mentioned points not only such directory listings will help you build a good link popularity for your website but will also increase your site visibility and lead to more traffic.

Picking Powerful Keywords: is important for Search Engine Optimization

2006-09-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

On-Page Optimization

1. Google & Yahoo! are known to pull from which sources for displaying web page descriptions on the search results pages?
AnsDMOZ listings, Title tags, Meta Description tags and text culled from the body of the page

Google has recently been identified as using text culled from the page, the meta-description created by the page author, or the DMOZ description when displaying results in their listings.

2. What is typically regarded as the "optimal" keyword density?
Ans.No optimal kw density exists because search engines do not use it for ranking purposes

Keyword density is used by the search engines only to determine which documents might be relevant to a particular query. Term weight is what the search engines use to determine the strength of a term/phrase in a particular document for ranking purposes.

3. Which of the following file types are NOT cached by Google?
Ans.Macromedia Flash files (.fla)

Google claims to be able to spider and cache all of the documents above with the exception of Macromedia Flash designer files (.fla) and nonsense files. However, tests by several SEOs, including, most recently, one that was posted about by Mikkel deMib Svensen at SEW reveals that Google can spider and create "cached snapshots" of any html/xml compatible file no matter its extension.

4. How many characters (including spaces) of a web page's title tag does Yahoo! display on the results page?
Ans.More than 80 characters

Yahoo! will show up to 119 characters (including spaces) in the title of a search result listing.

5. When designing the information architecture of a website, which of the following statements is NOT a good idea
Ans.Reduce external links to as few as possible to avoid leaking PageRank out of the site

Reducing external links to avoid leaking PageRank is an unwise decision as search engines, including Google do not penalize for "leaked" link popularity and often reward pages and sites with on-topic relevant outbound links.

6. Which tag is preferred by the W3C for emphasizing important text?Ans. 

The W3C notes that the tag is the preferred method of emphasizing text, rather than simply changing its visual effect.

7. What percentage of a page's contents must be the same for a search engine to consider it "duplicate content"?
Ans.No set percentage, the value change constantly and have never been disclosed

The percentage of similiar or replicated content required to trigger a "duplicate content" penalty varies among the search engines and is thought to be dynamic so that no testing can reveal the exact percentage.

Search Marketing and Social Media

2006-09-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

The phrase Social Media Optimization, (SMO), has quickly become an industry buzzword in search marketing circles. The term refers to the practice of crafting, altering or augmenting profiles, images, movies and other files to be easily found and well shared in social media applications such as 43Things.com, MySpace, Tribe.net or Flickr, and by interested parties throughout the blogosphere.

The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to put products or services in front of as many interested eyeballs as possible. Where the public leads, marketers, by necessity, must follow and if those eyeballs begin to congregate over there as well as over here, many marketers feel the need to move. Tens of millions of registered members populate dozens of social networks. People appear to enjoy the ability to form communities and inform each other. Online marketers looking for another winning venue are therefore turning to social media spaces as social marketing tools.
For the past five years, the number of high-traffic venues for search marketers remained fairly constant, consisting primarily of Google. More recently, the space has been supplemented by Yahoo, Ask and MSN. For the most part, five years of consistency has benefited the search engines, their users, online merchants and the SEO/webmaster communities. Nothing stays static very long on the Internet though. The online marketing metaverse has expanded yet again.

People like applications that make life easier. That's why search is somehow part of practically every application people use online. One of the major appeals of social media networks is that by nature, they are about sharing information, usually from a highly personalized point of view. As the theory goes nobody knows everything but everyone knows something. Collectively, we must know a great deal. Where search tools are about users pulling information and Web2.0 applications are about pushing information to users, social media steps into the middle ground by pushing information to subscribers and inviting others to pull information via shared files.

In a social network, large groups of people who would otherwise likely be strangers associate with each other based on spider-web networks of contacts, friends, images, interests, and occupations, creating ever expanding communities. These communities, built around shared ideas and interests, draw users by giving them the ability to educate, inform and share with others.

Both Google and Yahoo have embraced social networking in their membership based services for years, starting with Yahoo Groups and Google's Orkut. More recent products include Flickr (Yahoo), Picasa (Google), Yahoo Publisher Network, and Blogger (Google). The major search engines have learned from the lesson suffered by the music and movie industries over the past decade.

About eight years ago the true power distributive power of the Internet was demonstrated by peer-to-peer file sharing networks. When Napster appeared on the scene, the music files of millions of people became illicitly traded public property, virtually overnight. A similar thing happened to the movie industry two years ago with broadband and bit-torrent. As soon as a large enough number of Internet users catch on to a technology that delivers access to the information or entertainment they want, that technology becomes a trend. Sometimes, trends have a way of becoming habit.

Social media applications have transited from trend to mainstream usage. Thousands of new users sign up for Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Linked-In, Tribes and other community-active networks every day. As a result, blogging, image sharing and new-media content creation have moved well beyond creative geekery and corporate PR departments to become a trans-global pastime. Now that the various social network tools have acquired mass-market popularity they represent a pirate's treasure to corporate PR departments and the online marketers ready to serve them.

As far as treasure troves go, the world of social media is fairly easy to find; access and start working in. Creating a MySpace membership or a Flickr account is as easy as filling in a simple form. While building a MySpace profile is slightly more difficult than outfitting a Flickr portfolio, both are easy enough for new users to begin immediately. Partially because social media is so easy to use and partially because sharing information, recommendations and the latest outrageousness with friends and strangers alike is so cool, tens of millions of people have populated the social environments with hundreds of millions of files, ranging from music, images, documents and movies.

Social media is a cool, barely controlled environment in which individual users can form instant communities, finding friendships based on shared interest, passion and ideas. So how long do such environments remain cool after the invasion of barbarians cleverly disguised as marketing experts? That all depends on how we (the barbarians), make use of the virtual villages we're migrating into.

The problem with breaking in any new marketing medium is the instant gold-rush mentality of the advertisers who are early adopters. As recently as six or seven years ago, for instance, the majority of SEOs chased placements without a great deal of regard for the integrity of the search results. Claiming every possible Top10 placement under any given keyword phrase for a single site on AltaVista, InfoSeek and Lycos was entirely possible, and it was done with mercenary zeal. Ask any long-term SEO about the earliest days of the industry and most, if not all will show a slow, sly, satisfied smile. Back then, everything was blackhat. Before PPC paved the way to profitability, the search engines naturally considered SEOs as dangerous enemies.

Social media is a cool, barely controlled environment in which individual users can form instant communities, finding friendships based on shared interest, passion and ideas. So how long do such environments remain cool after the invasion of barbarians cleverly disguised as marketing experts? That all depends on how we (the barbarians), make use of the virtual villages we're migrating into.

The problem with breaking in any new marketing medium is the instant gold-rush mentality of the advertisers who are early adopters. As recently as six or seven years ago, for instance, the majority of SEOs chased placements without a great deal of regard for the integrity of the search results. Claiming every possible Top10 placement under any given keyword phrase for a single site on AltaVista, InfoSeek and Lycos was entirely possible, and it was done with mercenary zeal. Ask any long-term SEO about the earliest days of the industry and most, if not all will show a slow, sly, satisfied smile. Back then, everything was blackhat. Before PPC paved the way to profitability, the search engines naturally considered SEOs as dangerous enemies.

Wikipedia list of social networking websites

Mattcuttsarama: 21 Great SEO Tips From Google’s Matt Cutts

2006-09-14T14:34:00.000-07:00

This is a compilation of stuff Matt Cutts has said historically, minus some of the more recent stuff here, here, and here. I decided I'd dig backwards and document some of the older stuff. I dated it accordingly. Here it is:

1. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/
Matt recommends using dashes over underscores to delimit words in urls. 2005.
Google does not algorithmically penalize for dashes in the url despite the fact that some have raised it as a possible heuristic for spam detection. I think WordPress pretty much precludes this anyway. 2005.

2. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-sneaky-javascript/
Google takes action on individual instances of spam when they find it, but they focus on creating better algorithmic solutions. He states that he would not recommend using sneaky JavaScript redirects because your sites may get nailed in the near future. 2005.

3. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whats-an-update/
Google updates their index data — including backlinks and PageRank all the time. However, they export and publish new backlinks and PageRank data approximately every three months. New backlinks and PageRank are meaningless — it is not an update. The information is likely already factored in for awhile before you see it. 2005.

4. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-nearly-hidden-text/
Hiding text using similar colors and background colors can actually be worse than using the same colors. Using “#EEEEEE” instead of solid white on a solid white background can look worse — as if you’re trying to hide it. I suspect this is a heuristic for detecting hidden text. 2005.

5. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/q-a-thread-march-27-2006/
If you sell links, Matt says you should use link condoms. Otherwise your reputation may fall. I assume this means they will devalue your outbound links. 2006.

6.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Googlebot can only crawl the free portions that non-subscribed users can access since it does not log in. Therefore, be sure to excerpt material in the free version that that offers value. Vanessa Fox. 2006.

7.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
If you must use Flash, you must also make an HTML version available as well. Block the Flash version from the crawlers with a robots.txt file. Vanessa Fox. 2006.

8.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Use user-friendly URLs like "african-elephants.html," and not "343432ffsdfsdfdfasffgddddd.html." Don't overdo it either — african-elephants-and-their-habitats-etc-etc-etc-etc.html. Vanessa Fox. 2006.

9.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/
Assign unique, descriptive tag and headings to every page. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 10.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/ Minimize the number of redirects upon hitting a URL. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 11.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/ Minimize the number of URL parameters — 1-2 parameters if possible. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 12.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/ Don’t use a parameter named “id=” in a URL for anything other than a session ID. Otherwise, it may not be included in the index. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 13.http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-post-vanessa-fox-on-organic-site-review-session/ Earned-links are earned and given by choice. Google does consider buying text links for PageRank purposes to be outside our quality guidelines. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 14. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-analytics/ Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured. Vanessa Fox. 2006. 15. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-link-follow-up/ Google’s is against selling/buying links, and Matt indicates they are good at spotting them — both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines. 2006. 16. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-mistakes-spam-in-other-languages/ Google is focusing on detecting spam in other languages in 2006 — Italian, Spanish, Chinese, etc. 2006. 17. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/ External (domainA -> domainB) 302 redirects are largely treated as 301s now. 2006. 18. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages — www.example.com vs. example.com vs. www.example.com/index.html. Since all these urls are different, a web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, it tries to pick the best one and elimintes the others. To help Google, link to resources on a site consistently, and use 301 redirects to enforce it. 2006. 19. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ Do not use the URL removal tool to remove domain.com if you are worried about URL canonicalization and have both domain.com and www.domain.com in the Google index. This will remove the entire site. 2006. 20. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/ Search engines can perform canonicalization for things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, upper vs. lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software. 2006. 21. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/sitemaps-interview/ 404s (Gone, but may reappear) are treated the same as 410s (Gone, but will not reappear). Most web masters use 404s as 410s anyway. 2006. Following these tips will probably help you rank better, so long as you actually trust Matt Cutts. I'd assert it's wise to approach some of his advice with skepticism, since I'm sure Google gives him guidelines as to what he can actually say, but following the advice above won't get you into any trouble, I'm sure.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The 10 Best Resources for CSS</h1> 2006-09-11T12:23:00.000-07:00 If you have been paying attention, you certainly have noticed an increasing number of websites that are employing CSS and an increasing number of resources talking about how great CSS is. If you have not yet jumped on the CSS bandwagon, you may want to consider doing so immediately. CSS has many different benefits for website owners. The most obvious is the pure, raw design capabilities CSS brings to websites. CSS can control everything from the size of your font to the very layout of your page. A site designed with proper HTML and CSS can avoid incorporating almost any design elements into the actual HTML. This means a website owner can change the entire look of their whole site without changing a single HTML page. For owners of sites with dynamic content or sites that have a lot of content (blogs, forums, stores, etc), this becomes a huge time saver. CSS also allows a website owner to build their HTML in a nice, logical order. Often when using tables to layout a website, the HTML that powers the website is not laid out in a logical order (this is referred to as the 'code flow'). This can hurt website owners in two ways. The first, and more important way, is to recognize that not everyone who uses the Internet is viewing your website through a visual browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. There are a whole group of people who are viewing websites using web readers and other tools which rely on well-organized code. Secondly, a well-organized website can actually help your search engine rankings. When a spider discovers a page that is well organized and not filled with a lot of extra HTML code, it can determine more accurately and quickly what that page is really about. Let's face it, we all want to help the spiders, right? It is in the spirit of CSS that this article is written. There are hundreds of websites offering CSS tutorials, CSS examples, competitions, and showcases. There may be some that we are not aware of which are not displayed here, and if so, we encourage you to let us know in the <a href="http://forums.site-reference.com/">Site Reference Forums</a>. With that said, we must offer a word of warning before going to any of these websites. These sites can become very addicting if you enjoy web design in the slightest way. Some of these sites link to literally hundreds of other sites which will catch your interest. Now that the warning has been issued, we present to you a list of our favorite CSS websites. <a href="http://www.csszengarden.com/">CSSZenGarden</a> If you have any doubts over how powerful CSS really is, then you need to visit CSS Zen Garden. CSS Zen Garden is a display of the power and beauty of CSS. The concept is simple: see how many ways designers can take the exact same HTML code and produce completely different looking pages. As you browse through the various designs, you will find that the only thing changing the way each page looks is the CSS file. The HTML is exactly the same. CSS Zen Garden is a great showcase of creativity and technical expertise. It is also important to point out that CSS Zen Garden does not use any tables for their layout. Everything is done in pure, simple HTML and CSS. <a href="http://www.alvit.de/handbook/">The Web Developer's Network</a> Any of the sites that make our favorites list are certainly listed on this extensive resource page. Be warned, this page has so many resources listed it is easy to get lost for hours exploring them. Some of the resources are just fun to explore while others offer some very practical advice on practical matters. The page is not limited to CSS resources, but also delves into areas of good website design and creativity, along with anything else you could possibly want for your design needs. Our only criticism of this site is that it might be too extensive to find a specific tutorial or help guide. <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/">Official Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Specification</a> This is the place where it all starts if you want to learn CSS. Here you will find the official documentation on how to use CSS and what CSS is used for. Many novice website owners are scared away from this site because it is written in very technical language and they fear that they will not be able to understand it. If you feel this way, be careful not to sell yourself short. The specifications are actually much easier if you know how to read them. When going over this document, keep in mind a few things. First, CSS was built for more than just the Internet. CSS can be used in print media and broadcast media as well. So when you are reading some of the instructions in the official manual you may find some aspects that do not apply to what you are doing. Secondly, do not worry if you do not understand a certain chapter or bit of information. The trick to learning CSS is to get a basic understanding of it first, then practice, then go back and re-read what you have already read (things will make a bit more sense this time around), then practice, then go back and re-read again, and so on. Every time you practice what you learned and go back to re-read some of the specifications, it will make more and more sense to you. As a point of reference, if you want to just go over the most important chapters in the manual, be sure to read these chapters: Chapters 8-12, 14-18, and 4-6. <a href="http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/basics/index.html">CSS from the Ground Up</a> Ok, so you have tried the official manual and it is just too difficult to understand. That is fine. There is a lot of information included in the manual, and they certainly do not work at entertaining you with the manual. If you want a bare bones tutorial on CSS, the people from Web Page Design for Designers have put together a pretty good basic tutorial which should get you started on your first CSS pages. <a href="http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/">Listamatic</a> One thing you will learn as you begin to work with CSS powered layouts is that lists are extremely powerful tools. Lists are a vital part of building a website with good code flow. Getting lists to appear correctly in different browsers, or to appear in new, original ways, however, can be quite challenging. Listamatic offers several examples of lists that use simple CSS. The examples cover nearly everything that you could possibly hope to achieve from an HTML list. Of course, if you are working with a nested list, they have <a href="http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic2/">examples</a> of those as well. http://www.cssvault.com/ This site offers a little bit of everything. They offer a great gallery for you to stop by and gawk at, as well as a number of resources on everything from lists to building layouts that do not use tables. Definitely a good overall resource on CSS. <a href="http://glish.com/css/home.asp">CSS Layout Techniques</a> No CSS guide would be complete if we did not address the issue of building a layout that does not use tables. This is certainly the most challenging aspect of CSS, learning how to build a nice layout. The people over at Glish.com have put together examples of several different types of layouts. They may not offer every layout you could possibly use, but looking over their guides will certainly help you learn different techniques to learning how to layout your page. <a href="http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/index.html">Ruthsarian Layouts</a> There really cannot be enough resources on how to work with layouts using CSS. Ruthsarian Layouts offers several very good examples of popular layouts. <a href="http://www.positioniseverything.net/">PositionIsEverything</a> And yet again, we offer another site dedicated to learning layouts and the little quirks that each browser brings into your CSS design. This site may just have the most information on position with CSS than any other site. <a href="http://www.stylegala.com/">StyleGala</a> This is another site that goes a bit beyond CSS and into some other aspects of design, but still offers so much to learn from that it is highly worth putting in your favorites file. Included in this site is an impressive gallery, some forums, a collection of bullets that you can use on your site (where has this been for the past several years?), and a great collection of resources. Using These Resources to Learn Whether you are a code junkie or are a person who relies on FrontPage to do all of your design, moving in the direction of CSS and properly formatted HTML is the future of the Internet. For many, beginning the process of learning CSS may seem like a useless and overly-difficult venture. However, if you are responsible for the look and feel of your website you should begin to explore this technology which is being used more and more. The best way to learn CSS is to start using it. Experiment with different parts of CSS. Try and accomplish different tricks that you have never done before. If you have never created a page without tables, try and do so today. If you have never worked with a list to format it in a completely different manner, experiment with that. Browse through some of the sites in the many different galleries offered to us and get inspired. Use these sites and these resources to imagine what your website could look like. Your website is your sales pitch to your visitors. When they arrive at your website, it should be your goal to present to them the best looking page you can possibly provide. A well designed page will provide your users with the comfort that you are invested in your business, and you will be invested in them as a customer and visitor. The Internet is a rapidly changing environment, with new technology and new tools being made available to enhance your site every day, and thus enhance your visitor's experience. It is your responsibility to make sure that your website sells, and that requires using the modern and powerful technologies that are available to us.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Is Your Website Search Engine Friendly? Your Personal Checklist</h1> 2006-09-11T11:37:00.000-07:00 When I sit down with new clients and discuss the status of their new or existing site they are often shocked when I am forced to inform them that their site is not search engine friendly. Encountered with a blank but slightly shaken look I then explain that this means their site has a particular problem that is hindering search engine rankings. Often this is represented by an inflexible design, overuse of advanced web technologies, or simply a weak navigation scheme. As a result, if they were to continue with the site as it stands they are unlikely to attain competitive search engine rankings. The following is checklist designed to help you gauge the search engine friendliness of your website and, if you are in the midst of planning a website this checklist will help you avoid the common pitfalls of unfriendly designs. Technologies First consider what technologies your website is using. There are certain technologies that require a little more hand holding than others to ensure search engine compatibility. 1. FRAMES Lets start with this oldie. Luckily, frames are becoming a way of the past what with the use of DIV layers and the slow onset of incredibly flexible AJAX coding. The long and the short of it is that if you have Frames on your website then you are starting off at a disadvantaged position that cannot be truly search engine friendly no matter what you do. There are, however, some remedial fixes that will tie you over until you can redesign your site; yes I said redesign. The fix that I recommend is to use a noframes tag whereby you place another version of your web page inside of your framed page. This 'backup' page is what the search engines will view; here you can place relevant content and navigational elements so that the search engines can at least navigate portions of your site that are (hopefully) not framed. More info on the <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/present/frames.html">no frames tags.</a> 2. FLASH There was a big brouhaha that Flash had become search engine indexable and you no longer had to worry about its search engine issues. Frankly, I have not seen the fruits of this 'improvement' to a respectable degree yet so I still consider it a kiss of death for websites designed solely in Flash. If you have a Flash-only website then I recommend one of these two options; one is to design an html version of your website and make the home page of your website html rather than Flash where you can then allow users to choose between html or Flash. The second option is to redesign the site so that it mixes both html and flash together. For example, this might mean implementing Flash amidst content on an HTML page as you would an image. I realize there are certain limitations to this option but if you can create a slick site in this manner then you will have the best of both worlds; clean search engine friendly content along with an interactive, multimedia feel. Just remember that the majority of relevant text should be in HTML format for the search engines to index. 3. Search Engine 'Unfriendly' Dynamic URL's Unfriendly dynamic URL’s are a common side effect of using a Content Management System that is not designed with search engine rankings kept in mind. Here are some examples of some unfriendly URL’s: Sample 1: http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts.php&354=prod333&subproduct Sample 2: http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/filename.php? id=F98ZF4&productId=39222§ion=wicked&brand=582&template=532 These URLs are problematic because a search engine may consider these addresses too complex to spider. Why too complex? Suffice it to say that the more complex the URL, the higher the chance that a search engine robot will consider the content too dynamic to read; it changes too often to be valuable to a search engine. The way around these types of URLs is actually not so difficult; it may only require a small investment of time and money. The 'time' will be required when researching which URL fix is right for your system. The money may be required to pay a programmer to implement and test the new URLs. Here are how the URLs might look once they are fixed to be search engine friendly: Sample 1 Fixed: http://www.mydomain.com/myproducts/354/prod333/subproduct/ Sample 2 Fixed: http://www.surfboardsforyou.com/boards/wickedboards/39222/board532/ These URLs are better because they do not include the extraneous characters that are so telltale on dynamic websites. In addition, the URLs are designed to appear like normal website directories when in fact they are dynamic URLs. Important: it is vital that you minimize the length of the URLs that you use. Search engines may stop crawling a website if there appear to be too many subdirectories. The samples above show fixed URLs that have about as many subdirectories as I would allow (4). Design This section focuses on the overall layout and usability of your designs from the perspective of a search engine robot. Search engine friendly design is occasionally quite complex so I have provided a list of the most common issues to consider. 1. Menus Are the menus on your website spiderable? If not you may be hiding major areas of your website from search engine spiders and missing out on additional search engine rankings. The fact is there are very few menus out there that a search engine will have a problem following, but there are definitely some worth avoiding. For instance do not use a JavaScript Jump Menu <a href="http://www.doit.wisc.edu/accessibility/online-course/standards/jumpmenu.htm">(example)</a> as the core mode of navigation of your website; search engines cannot index this type of menu. Also be careful of Flash menus, they look slick but they will impede the progress of a search engine spider especially if they are the only means of navigation within your site. General Menu Rules The ideal menu would be text based and each text link would include the keywords you are targeting on the destination page. Setting up a menu with this much forethought requires that you determine the layout and content for your site before web design begins. Once you have a clear picture of the content for each page you can then research the keywords that are best to target per webpage. This essential keyword research can be done in house easily enough using systems-like <a href="http://news.stepforth.com/tools/">keyword research tools</a> that provide you with a glimpse into how your customers think by showing how many searches there are per month (or year) for a particular term. Remember, almost every page within your site has a very real opportunity to gain a top ranking; all you need to do is ensure that the design, content and site structure is optimized. Ensuring that the menu is carefully thought out and designed is a crucial step for top rankings. Finally, if you are at all uncertain whether your menu is search engine friendly then be certain to back it up with a text menu in the footer of your page using the same keyword targeting principles noted above. Tech Advice: a simple text menu may be less than desirable for you; in this case I recommend <a href="http://www.smartmenus.org/">DHTML menus</a>. These menus use text but in a manner that is quite appealing and very search engine friendly. 2. Sitemaps Sitemaps can dramatically help the visibility of your website by allowing search engine spiders easy access to all of the pages in your site. Place a link to the sitemap on every page within your site to ensure easy access no matter where a search engine or user enters your site. Sitemap Tips Just having a sitemap will help but how you build your sitemap will also play a role in how well the search engines catalogue it. For example, if you have a twenty-page website it would be ideal to create a sitemap where each page is represented by a title along with a short description. Ultimately, the page may be a bit long but it will have content that the search engines like to index and it will boost the relevance of the linked pages because the titles will accurately represent the content. So in effect, you will now have more than just a sitemap; you will have a table of contents for your site that has the potential of getting a ranking and provides an extra boost to the ranking worthiness of each page. Google Sitemap Google Sitemap is an additional design element that you should consider adding. Here is an article Scott Van Achte wrote on <a href="http://news.stepforth.com/2006-news/Google-XML-Sitemaps.shtml">how to implement your own Google Sitemap.</a> 3. Layout How you layout your page can make a significant difference in how well your site ranks and ultimately how search engine friendly it is. Tips for Layout Search engine robots read a webpage from the top of the source code (the programming that made your page – see "view source" in your browser) all the way to the bottom. As a result, it is important to ensure that both of the following elements are found as close to the beginning of code as possible: A) A short sentence introducing the topic using the keyword targets you have chosen for the page. B) Your text menu and other navigational aids, or if this is not possible it would be even more beneficial to start with a paragraph or two of relevant content followed by the navigation. By placing this information near to the top of the page, you will promptly present the search engine robot with relevant text that backs up the page title and backlinks. You will also provide an immediate sitemap of sorts for the search engine to spider, which includes keywords relevant to each page. 4. Splash Pages – ACK! With the odd exception Splash Pages are a kiss of death for a website because the home page (the first page seen when someone visits your domain), your most important page, is often converted into nothing but an excess entry point with little or no relevant content on it. Aside from reducing your chances for ranking, you are also making your visitors take another step to get to content or sales material in your site. Any additional steps you add will lessen the likelihood of a successful sale. Please Let Me Change Your Mind If you think you need to use a splash page then you need to talk to someone who will change your mind. No, honestly, give me a call if you want because there is nothing more painful to a SEO or search engine friendly web designer than to see a Splash Page in use. If, in the unlikely scenario your splash page is required, there are ways to make it slightly more search engine friendly. 1. Add a highly relevant and well-worded paragraph to the page so that the search engines have something to index that shows them they are in the right place. 2. Either provide a link to your sitemap or implement a text menu in the footer of the page so the search engines can access the internal workings of your website without having to take an extra step. In Summary Creating a search engine friendly website requires a basic to advanced understanding of how a search engine works, depending on the complexity of the planned website. Complexity aside, the notes above provide a good basis for you to evaluate the friendliness of your website and make changes where necessary.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How To Analyze Your Website</h1> 2006-09-07T23:29:00.000-07:00 I found this article by Jerry Bader.And I think is really useful. How good is your website? Does it do its job? Is it effective? These are all good questions that every business owner and marketing manager needs to ask him or herself. The website has become an essential tool for business. We all know we have to have a website, but are we using this venue to its greatest advantage? Most people responsible for their company's websites have stats packages and counters to tell them how many hits, how many unique visitors, where they are coming from, what their IP addresses are, what browser they're using, and of course the all important monitor resolution. So what! Who cares? The real question is do we have an effective website? Now if you have a transactional website, commonly referred to as an e-commerce site, you know the number of sales you are generating from your site, which is important, but do you really know how effective your site is? How many orders are you losing because of bad layout, awkward design, confusing navigation, and poor copy? How many potential clients have you chased away because you haven't put a phone number on your site and an accessible real-person that can answer questions? A website is your business' public face. Big businesses can look like mom and pop operations and mom and pop operations can look like General Motors. The design of your website should not be taken lightly, its budget should not be an afterthought, and the designer you hire should be someone who understands more than code. Your Web-designer should be a multimedia-marketing advisor, someone who can counsel you how best to deliver your marketing message, and someone who can go beyond technical issues. You can spend a lot of money and have someone analyze your site for you, but are you really going to believe him, are you really going to act on their recommendations? You can't sell somebody something they really don't want - that may sound obvious, but believe me, sales people do it everyday. If you don't think you need a new website, you aren't going to spend the money to have one built. So the best way to tell if you need one is to analyze the one you already have, yourself. Below is a set questions you can ask yourself. If you answer them honestly, you'll know whether you need a new site or not. After you've gone through the process, ask some colleagues to do the same. See if your answers compare. 1. Does Your Website Have A Purpose? Every website should have a clearly defined purpose. Having a website just because everyone else has one is not an acceptable strategy. What is your website's purpose? a. Transactional sales-oriented site b. Customer service support site c. How to instructional site d. Product or service demonstration site e. Lead generation site f. Marketing, branding, positioning site g. Promotional campaign site h. Viral or buzz creation site 2. Is Your Website Focused? Too many businesses both large and small use their website as an information junkyard, a dumping ground for everything you do, everything you've done, and everything you ever thought of doing. This won't work. Customers are like children; they want clarity, direction, and unequivocal answers. Your website should be focused on a singular function. URLs are cheap, there is no reason you can't have different websites for every major thing you do, or every marketing campaign you initiate. How focused is your website? 3. How Functional Is Your Website? Everybody knows that websites should be easy to use, that you shouldn't have to drill-down too deep to find what you're looking for, and of course everything should work. Your website is a communication tool. If your website doesn't work properly, the only thing you're communicating is incompetence. How functional is your website? 4. Does Your Website's Construction Balance Competing Concerns? Websites by their very nature are a compromise of competing issues. Aesthetics, multimedia, frame construction, HTML, Flash, client-side, server-side, data bases, SEO tactics, information architecture, marketing communication, transaction efficiency all compete for precedence in the design of a site. Are you sacrificing clarity, focus, and communication for SEO tricks and unattainable traffic numbers? Did you start with an IT solution like a database and build your site around a poorly conceived information delivery system. Does your website's design reflect your sites' defined business purpose or is it a result of secondary technical concerns? 5. Does your website honestly reflect your business personality? Does your website represent and promote your marketing objectives? Okay, this is a trick question for many small owner-managed businesses. Marketing is not sales. Marketing is about communicating who you are, what you do, and why you do it better than the other guy. Marketing is about image building, branding, and positioning, in other words, enhancing your business personality. Does your website honestly reflect your business personality? 6. Is your Web-presentation integrated into your overall marketing plan? Too many websites bear no relation to the rest of their business' marketing initiatives. Everything your company does should reflect an over-riding ethos, point-of-view, and personality. If your marketing collaterals don't match your website presentation, you are confusing your audience. Is your Web-presentation integrated into your overall marketing plan? 7. Is content king on your website? I once had a fairly large manufacturing client ask me to build a website based on a business card and ten 8x10 glossies of discontinued merchandise. This fellow was so paranoid that his competitors would see what he was doing that he hid his products from his customers. This business is now bankrupt. We've all heard the saying 'content is king'. Is content king on your website? Does your website adequately display and explain what you do, what products you sell, and what services you provide? Are there examples of your work? Are there testimonials from your customers? Have you provided information on how to order, how to use, and how to resolve problems? Is content really king on your website? 8. Is your website an experience? You watch television, you listen to the radio, you read a magazine, but you experience a website. Unlike other marketing vehicles, websites provide you the opportunity to deliver your marketing message with the full complement of multimedia tools. Websites can stimulate all the senses, sight, sound, and interactive touch in order to communicate and connect with your audience. Websites are not brochures. Visitors shouldn't just see your website, they should experience it. Is your website an experience? 9. Does your website have a distinctive look? The notion of the flaming animated logo has become a cliché for bad design and style over substance, but that does not mean your website should be aesthetically boring and visually dreary. Your site should display clarity of vision; it should provide functional page layout; its use of colors, type, and static and kinetic visuals should be distinctive and purposeful. Your website should provide a defining "Look" that enhances your business personality. Does your website display a distinctive look that represents your business personality? 10. Do you list appropriate contact information on your website? I remember going to a meeting with a client who was in the construction business. The Vice President of the company was hopping mad. He demanded his email address be taken off the site immediately. He wasn't going to waste any more time dealing with client emails and inquiries. Websites are all about connecting you to your clients, not hiding from them. If you think you can put your website on autopilot and that a FAQ and Q&A are going to cut-it, you better think again. Does your website have adequate contact information? Do you list appropriate email addresses and phone numbers for the people responsible for various aspects of your business? There you have it. Ten questions that when answered honestly will tell you whether or not you have a website that works and whether or not you need to rebuild. <div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Geotag -Meta Tags</h1> 2006-09-05T05:55:00.000-07:00 What is a geotag? A geotag is simply a properly-formed XML tag giving the geographic coordinates of a place. The coordinates can be specified in latitude and longitude or in UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) coordinates. Why should I geotag? We believe that there are many benefits accrued from locating data and news on maps. Geo-located information can answer lots of questions: Where did that happen? Was it near me/my colleagues/my family/my friends? How many are near me and how many are over there? Is that a good place to be or a place to stay away from at all costs? The events of interest can be anything from rock concerts to earthquakes to poltical gatherings to superfund sites to terrorist activities. We can see patterns emerge and watch trails being made. What can I geotag? Weblog posts, web pages, RDF resources, even arbitrary HTML and XML elements. The details The RDFIG Geo vocabulary from the W3C is the common basis for the recommendations below. It supplies official global names for the latitude, longitude, and altitude properties. These are given in a system of coordinates known as "the WGS84 datum". (A geographic datum specifies an ellispoidal approximation to the earth's surface; WGS84 is the most commonly used such datum; it is utilized, eg for GPS). To specify that the longitude of something is X, that its latitude is Y, and, optionally, that its altitude is Z, tags of the form <pre class="preindent"> <geo:long>X</geo:long> <geo:lat>Y</geo:lat> <geo:alt>Z</geo:alt> </pre> are used. Altitude is specified in meters. The prefix "geo:" represents the RDFIG Geo namespace, whose URI is: http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#. If you don't know about namespaces, and are concerned with geotagging web pages or ordinary HTML, then just follow the examples below. Geotagging an HTML element The following will pass muster as correct XML in the context of XHTML (the newer dialect of HTML that adheres to the XML standard), but will also work in earlier HTML dialects, in the sense of being tolerated by all modern browsers. To geotag an HTML element, include a span of the following form: <pre class="preindent"> <geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat> <geo:long>124</geo:long> </pre> If the geo namespace is defined at an outer level of the document, the namespace definition in the span tag can be omitted, leaving <pre class="preindent"> <geo:lat>46.1</geo:lat><geo:long>124</geo:long> </pre> In earlier HTML dialects, omitting the namespace definition is also appropriate, since the objective of adhering to the XML standard is irrelevant. This technique can be used to geotag a post in a weblog, or elements within any HTML document. Geotagging XML (including RSS and RDF ). Simply include elements of the form <pre class="preindent"> geo:lat>46.1/geo:lat geo:long>124/geo:long </pre> as children of the element you wish to tag, and place the definition of the geo namespace at the outermost level of the document (or at the level you prefer). Geotagging a web page Use this method to assign a location to a web page as a whole, rather than to its parts. In the <head> element, include meta tags of the form: <pre class="preindent"> <meta property="geo:lat">46.1</meta> <meta property="geo:long">124</meta> </pre> In XHTML, the document namespace definition should include the geo tag. This form of meta tag follows the recommendations contained in http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf.html<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Search Engine Facts</h1> 2006-09-05T02:46:00.000-07:00 Google updates parts of its index daily A large fraction of Google's index is updated every day as Google crawls the web. That means that there is always an update going on. In addition, Google has algorithms and data pushes that are going out on a less frequent basis. The latest were on 27 June, 28 July and 17 August. Unfortunately, Matt Cutts doesn't reveal any information about the details of these updates. Google's BigDaddy update BigDaddy was a software infrastructure upgrade that finished in February. The BigDaddy update introduced a new way how they crawl the web. Supplemental results This summer, Google also updated their supplemental results index structure. It was a complete rewrite and the indexing infrastructure for the supplemental results is different from then main indexing structure. Another update is on the way Matt Cutts mentions in the video that another software infrastructure update is on the way. The new update should increase the quality of the search results: "If we find out that we can improve quality by changing our algorithms or data or infrastructure, or anything else, we’re going to make that change. The best SEO's in my experience are the ones that can adapt, and that say 'OK, this is the way the algorithms look right now to me, if I want to make a good site that will do well in search engines, this is the direction I want to head in next.'" Matt Cutts talks about the different updates on Google but he doesn't say what this means to your web site. He doesn't reveal how Google's algorithms analyze your web pages.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Why XSS is Here to Stay</h1> 2006-09-05T02:36:00.000-07:00 On the drive to work today, I started wondering what it would take to stop cross site scripting. Not from a website perspective - because god knows that’s such a huge task it would take forever to accomplish. But rather, what would happen if all the browsers, on the same day at the same time decided to shut off remote script includes? That would be great from a web application security perspective, but what exactly would break if that happened? A lot is the short answer, but here are a few things that make Fortune 500 type companies rely on it: Analytics Yup, you can thank the likes of Google, Omniture and Hitbox for making JavaScript counters that do more than count, but also gather statistics that are only availible in JavaScript space. If remote JavaScript was turned off the only alternative would be to include some local proxy, to call the local dynamic page and proxy that information back to the analytics programs. Even huge companies would rather use their data warehouse only for auditing or spider analytics (which fly under the radar of JavaScript reporting systems) and use these JavaScript includes as the primary source for information about their site. Contextual Banner ads Here you can thank the banner companies (Google and Overture primarily) for increasing the placement of dynamic banner ads all over the web. In doing so they have made a huge dependence on remote JavaScript for revenue generation (this site is no different). AJAX Information super-highway 2.0, here we come! Tons of applications are starting to request off host XML files to include in their website. It’s the new way to deliver content without refreshing the page. If we got rid of it, what would happen? Well, we’d probably go back to refreshing the web-page, or using some other cross domain software, like Flash. I doubt anyone is giving up on this one any time in the near future. Akamai I love Akamai in concept. Caching is a huge part of performance on big website design. If you can throw your static content, like images and, oh, JavaScript on remote hosts that cache that content for you, you can dramatically decrease load time and processor power. It’s sexy, and it’s here to stay. Too bad it forces me to allow JavaScript from everywhere if I want to see “Hello, RSnake” on the top of the websites I visit. Page load and SEO Going hand in hand with Akamai is that big companies don’t want to include all the JavaScript on their page because it dramatically slows down the time it takes to render the page. The reason is because it is not cacheable if it’s a dynamic page (which large companies typically have a lot of). Also, if you are very bandwidth conscious and you have a ton of cookies you don’t want their browser sending those cookies over and over again (typically upstream is always slower than downstream too), so you are better off keeping the JavaScript off host so cookies aren’t sent in transit on every request. Additionally, spiders discount JavaScript in terms of SEO (search engine optimization). So keeping JavaScript on the page reduces the relevance of the content on your page. All of those things together (and probably a lot of other things I haven’t thought of as well) make it pretty clear that there’s no way big companies are going to lobby the browser companies to shut off remote script sources. They want them. It’s good for business. It’s terrible from a security perspective, but there you have it. There are mitigating factors, sure, but the concept isn’t going away. And speaking from experience, you can’t surf without JavaScript turned on all the time. Tons of websites force it (thanks, Adsense and Orkut!) forcing their users into a lower state of security, regardless of their intentions. So we continue to fight the issues on the server instead.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to Cross-Link Your Websites</h1> 2006-09-02T23:50:00.000-07:00 Cross-linking, the practice of linking to one site from another, is a valid and useful thing to do when you own multiple websites. It is valuable because it sends both PageRank and traffic from your established sites to your newer sites. However if your sites are unrelated the cross-linking can look spammy and while you'll still get a PageRank benefit you likely won't get as much traffic through the links. Plus if you have many sites having so many external links on your pages might cheapen the look of your website, and Google (or another search engine) may think you're trying to manipulate PR and thus punish you. So, what I recommend doing is a hub and spoke linking scheme, this type of linking is perfectly valid to do, regardless of the topics of your site, because the practice predates link popularity algorithms with search engines, and companies that care nothing about search engine optimization practice this method and do not even know it. This scheme also gives you great control over which of your websites are getting the most benefit. The center of this method is a hub, usually a business site. All of your websites link to the hub, and then the hub links back out to your websites. My favorite place is to put the link in the copyright statement of a site. For instance my business name is Jalic LLC and so I link to Jalic.com from within the copyright statement of my websites. Even without PageRank I would still do this, as Jalic is in effect the "parent company" of the websites. Then from Jalic.com I link back out to sites I own and voila, a hub and spoke linking scheme. No matter how many sites I own each site only needs one link on it, going to Jalic.com, then Jalic.com contains a list of sites. Well, actually, it is a little more complicated than that. You may have scrolled down to the bottom of this page and check out the copyright statement and see no link. Confused? Well the beauty of this linking scheme is that you can easily control which sites you wish to be PageRank donors and which sites you wish to be PageRank receivers. By not linking out I'm not donating any of this site's PageRank as this site is still very much in it's growth stage and I don't want to take any PageRank away from it. So if you have a site that needs PR, you don't need to link to the hub from it. Then, on the hub, you can do many things to control the flow of PageRank. For instance lets pretend the hub has a left side menu on every page. Instead of linking to a site from a "Portfolio" or "Sites We Publish" page, you could link to it from the menu that appears on every page of the hub. This way that site would get a lions share of the PageRank and really flourish. I've gotten a new site to a PageRank of 7, initially, by linking to it in this manner. Another thing you can do is link out to subsections or subpages within a site in addition to the site itself, thus sending more PageRank (and possibly good anchor text) to that site. Of course, if you have a site which does not need any PageRank at all, you don't need to link back to it from the hub site. If you have sites that are topically related then direct cross-links between them are still a good decision, but for publishers with a wide variety of websites the hub and spoke method is best.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to Analyze a Competitor’s Website</h1> 2006-09-02T14:45:00.000-07:00 Competitors' websites, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic and the popularity of your site. Here is an article on how to analyze a competitor's website. Identifying the Leaders Start off by identifying the major players. A good place to do this is Yahoo’s directory. It is good to view the major players in similar fields to your own so that you have a better view of your web site as perceived by others. You may want to print out the directory to take a closer look. Check some of the bigger companies and find out some of the innovative approaches and new products offered. Sites like Media Metrix 500 can tell you which companies get the most traffic, and you can learn about the relative traffic by using Alexa. It is a free add-on to your browser that ranks the traffic for each site you visit and informing you whether it is in the top 100 or top 1000 ranking. This gives you a rough idea of where your competitors are in the ranking order. Scrutinize the Leaders The next step is to study the top 5 or 10 competitors very closely. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at competitors' web sites and analyzing them. These are the things that you should look for: 1. Make sure you check to see what products or services competitors offer, and note anything that’s different from your own offerings. 2. Look for gaps that you could fill. 3. Think about the look, feel and functionality of the competitors' web sites. 4. Check the advertising campaigns and offers they are running. 5. Look at their strengths and weaknesses, from the customer’s point of view. 6. See if you can figure out their strategy. If you are dealing with a public company then you can get detailed information from proper sources and write down the names of their key players. Then it is possible to look for any interviews, articles or speeches they might have made about relating to their web site. Look for Strengths, Vulnerabilities, and Gaps Now summarize the information you have found into few sentences for each competitor, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Note down the strategies to be followed to counter your competitor’s offering. With this research, you can create or modify your marketing plan. Be sure to include how you intend to deal with competition, and what steps you think you would require getting top rankings in the search engines. On the basis of your research on your competitors' websites, you need to make a decision of either to compete with your competitor or walk out of the competition and focus on other areas. Don’t get frightened away prematurely, though – make sure you know what you are getting into before you start, and don’t let big companies intimidate you. Remember that you can move faster than your competitors if you have confidence in your abilities. All you need to do is offer your customers things that they cannot find anywhere else.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The Google PageRank Algorithm</h1> 2006-09-02T14:09:00.000-07:00 The PageRank Algorithm The original PageRank algorithm was described by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin in several publications. It is given by PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) where PR(A) is the PageRank of page A, PR(Ti) is the PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A, C(Ti) is the number of outbound links on page Ti and d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. So, first of all, we see that PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually. Further, the PageRank of page A is recursively defined by the PageRanks of those pages which link to page A. The PageRank of pages Ti which link to page A does not influence the PageRank of page A uniformly. Within the PageRank algorithm, the PageRank of a page T is always weighted by the number of outbound links C(T) on page T. This means that the more outbound links a page T has, the less will page A benefit from a link to it on page T. The weighted PageRank of pages Ti is then added up. The outcome of this is that an additional inbound link for page A will always increase page A's PageRank. Finally, the sum of the weighted PageRanks of all pages Ti is multiplied with a damping factor d which can be set between 0 and 1. Thereby, the extend of PageRank benefit for a page by another page linking to it is reduced. The Random Surfer Model In their publications, Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin give a very simple intuitive justification for the PageRank algorithm. They consider PageRank as a model of user behaviour, where a surfer clicks on links at random with no regard towards content. The random surfer visits a web page with a certain probability which derives from the page's PageRank. The probability that the random surfer clicks on one link is solely given by the number of links on that page. This is why one page's PageRank is not completely passed on to a page it links to, but is devided by the number of links on the page. So, the probability for the random surfer reaching one page is the sum of probabilities for the random surfer following links to this page. Now, this probability is reduced by the damping factor d. The justification within the Random Surfer Model, therefore, is that the surfer does not click on an infinite number of links, but gets bored sometimes and jumps to another page at random. The probability for the random surfer not stopping to click on links is given by the damping factor d, which is, depending on the degree of probability therefore, set between 0 and 1. The higher d is, the more likely will the random surfer keep clicking links. Since the surfer jumps to another page at random after he stopped clicking links, the probability therefore is implemented as a constant (1-d) into the algorithm. Regardless of inbound links, the probability for the random surfer jumping to a page is always (1-d), so a page has always a minimum PageRank. A Different Notation of the PageRank Algorithm Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin have published two different versions of their PageRank algorithm in different papers. In the second version of the algorithm, the PageRank of page A is given as PR(A) = (1-d) / N + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) where N is the total number of all pages on the web. The second version of the algorithm, indeed, does not differ fundamentally from the first one. Regarding the Random Surfer Model, the second version's PageRank of a page is the actual probability for a surfer reaching that page after clicking on many links. The PageRanks then form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all pages' PageRanks will be one. Contrary, in the first version of the algorithm the probability for the random surfer reaching a page is weighted by the total number of web pages. So, in this version PageRank is an expected value for the random surfer visiting a page, when he restarts this procedure as often as the web has pages. If the web had 100 pages and a page had a PageRank value of 2, the random surfer would reach that page in an average twice if he restarts 100 times. As mentioned above, the two versions of the algorithm do not differ fundamentally from each other. A PageRank which has been calculated by using the second version of the algorithm has to be multiplied by the total number of web pages to get the according PageRank that would have been caculated by using the first version. Even Page and Brin mixed up the two algorithm versions in their most popular paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", where they claim the first version of the algorithm to form a probability distribution over web pages with the sum of all pages' PageRanks being one. In the following, we will use the first version of the algorithm. The reason is that PageRank calculations by means of this algorithm are easier to compute, because we can disregard the total number of web pages. The Characteristics of PageRank The characteristics of PageRank shall be illustrated by a small example. We regard a small web consisting of three pages A, B and C, whereby page A links to the pages B and C, page B links to page C and page C links to page A. According to Page and Brin, the damping factor d is usually set to 0.85, but to keep the calculation simple we set it to 0.5. The exact value of the damping factor d admittedly has effects on PageRank, but it does not influence the fundamental principles of PageRank. So, we get the following equations for the PageRank calculation: PR(A) = 0.5 + 0.5 PR(C) PR(B) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2) PR(C) = 0.5 + 0.5 (PR(A) / 2 + PR(B)) These equations can easily be solved. We get the following PageRank values for the single pages: PR(A) = 14/13 = 1.07692308 PR(B) = 10/13 = 0.76923077 PR(C) = 15/13 = 1.15384615 It is obvious that the sum of all pages' PageRanks is 3 and thus equals the total number of web pages. As shown above this is not a specific result for our simple example. For our simple three-page example it is easy to solve the according equation system to determine PageRank values. In practice, the web consists of billions of documents and it is not possible to find a solution by inspection. The Iterative Computation of PageRank <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/bsp1.gif"></a>Because of the size of the actual web, the Google search engine uses an approximative, iterative computation of PageRank values. This means that each page is assigned an initial starting value and the PageRanks of all pages are then calculated in several computation circles based on the equations determined by the PageRank algorithm. The iterative calculation shall again be illustrated by our three-page example, whereby each page is assigned a starting PageRank value of 1. Iteration PR(A) PR(B) PR(C) 0 1 1 1 1 1 0.75 1.125 2 1.0625 0.765625 1.1484375 3 1.07421875 0.76855469 1.15283203 4 1.07641602 0.76910400 1.15365601 5 1.07682800 0.76920700 1.15381050 6 1.07690525 0.76922631 1.15383947 7 1.07691973 0.76922993 1.15384490 8 1.07692245 0.76923061 1.15384592 9 1.07692296 0.76923074 1.15384611 10 1.07692305 0.76923076 1.15384615 11 1.07692307 0.76923077 1.15384615 12 1.07692308 0.76923077 1.15384615 We see that we get a good approximation of the real PageRank values after only a few iterations. According to publications of Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, about 100 iterations are necessary to get a good approximation of the PageRank values of the whole web. Also, by means of the iterative calculation, the sum of all pages' PageRanks still converges to the total number of web pages. So the average PageRank of a web page is 1. The minimum PageRank of a page is given by (1-d). Therefore, there is a maximum PageRank for a page which is given by dN+(1-d), where N is total number of web pages. This maximum can theoretically occur, if all web pages solely link to one page, and this page also solely links to itself.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Defend Against Black Hat SEO: Your Web Host Can Help</h1> 2006-09-02T00:40:00.000-07:00 The world wide web is a dynamic, exciting place to launch a new business or promote your organization's message. It's also a lawless landscape in which black hats – crackers, hackers and other on-line evil doers – roam with very little oversight or law enforcement. And that means it's up to every site owner to ensure that his or her site is defended against intrusions, code injections and other forms of attack. There's plenty of software to help keep hackers out of your desktop pc, but what about your hosting service? How can you protect server-based data? Top-tier web hosting firms design proprietary hardware and software protection to ensure that your business is secure. But site security doesn't stop with impenetrable firewalls, spam zappers and e-mail scanners. In fact, if you go with a hosting service that isn't up to speed on the latest forms of hacker attackers, you could quickly find your site is no longer under your control! Great hosts "harden" their server systems to deter and deflect known exploit points in the software the servers run and in any client-site's code! There is where the value of quality hosting comes into play . XSS Attacks XSS stands for cross site scripting and it poses a threat to even the most secure sites because XSS exploits vulnerable hardware and software holes that allow black hat SEOs to circumvent commonly employed security systems. In an XSS attack, black hats inject malicious HTML script into site pages of other domains. They do this for two reasons. First, in some instances, black hats inject undetected scripting into competitor sites to taint these sites when SE bots spider them. Imagine, a competitor is able to access your site's code, insert invisible text (at least invisible to you) and, when an SE bot discovers this invisible text, your site is slammed. Even banned from Google. Don't think it can happen? It closes down on-line businesses daily. So what kind of attacks can be "planted" on your site? There are plenty: * Redirects take visitors to another site as soon as they reach yours. * Overloading alt tags, meta tags and other interior coding with keywords, sometimes called keyword stuffing. * Inaccurate or misleading keywords inserted within site pages. * Cloaking, which detects search engine spiders and changes site text to improve PR. * Pagejacking, the practice of stealing site content, can not only cost you in sales, it can also slam your PR because your content isn't "original" any longer. Any of these black hat SEO tactics and more (spamglish, links farms, virus injections, etc.) can and will do severe, if not irreparable, damage to your on-line enterprise. Why? SE Bots Are Brainless SE spiders are dumber than a box of rocks. They're unable to discern legitimate text from a malware injection. They rely, solely, on automation to assess and categorize a site. There's no subjective analysis. Just text strings that are sorted completely by brainless bots. A competitor, using one of the XSS attacks listed above, exploits to "de-optimize" and make it appear that you're using black hat SEO tactics, or can gain access to your site through a web browser and/or inject toxic data to devalue your content. Google Penalties For Black Hat Tactics The purpose of any search engine is to deliver relevant, useful SERPs to users' queries. So, when a Google bot discovers what it perceives as an attempt to falsely increase value, the site may suffer serious, site-threatening sanctions. Some of these penalties may be imposed without you even knowing about it – until you discover that site revenues have dropped 75% in two days as a result of lost rankings and traffic! A site discovered to employ black hat SEO may be penalized in page rank, may lose PR altogether, may experience SE indexing issues (partial or mis-indexing, for example) and, for the worst offenders, banishment from the Google site altogether. Dead in the eyes of Google bots So, here's the problem: without your knowledge, a black hat competitor can inject toxic script into your site that could, conceivably, get your site banned from Google. Even if you and your web host have all the firewall and intrusion detection protection there is. It Gets Even Worse The second reason black hats use cross site scripting is to actually gain access and control of your on-line business. Certain types of XSS attacks actually enable a complete stranger to acquire the same system privileges reserved for the site owner - you. Access to sensitive customer data, bank account information, the entire back office – all can be achieved with relative ease by a knowledgeable cracker looking to steal and plunder your site. Whether the black hat is a competitor who wants to eliminate the competition, or a script-kiddie looking to clean out the till and sell some credit card numbers, your on-line business is at risk regardless of how much security you and your web host deploy. This Is Where Quality Web Hosting Enters During the design, administration and growth of a web-based business, numerous tools and applications are used by site owners and designers. There's site building software, email management software, a check-out, customer database, automated shipping apps, tools for developing site metrics and many others. This software isn't necessarily designed with security as Priority One. Often, there are openings in commonly-used ebiz software that are exploited by black hats during the execution of an XSS attack. And, because of the nature of these attacks, system and server security measures can be breached because, in essence, the hackers piggyback their way onto an unsuspecting site using the site administrators' credentials to gain access and/or control. The key to protection from XSS attacks is in the proper configuration of all of the applications and tools that comprise your on-line enterprise. These apps must be synced up to work together while, at the same time, developing protection against XSS attacks. This configuring of applications is done at the host level and should include a detailed analysis of potential XSS entry points within the site's design and reconfiguration to fit the server security already in place. Go With The Host Who Knows If your web hosting service isn't familiar with the growing danger of XSS attacks based on application exploitation points, consider finding a more informed host. It's not a matter of securing your business system locally. And it's not a matter of the multi-layers of protection offered by your web host. It's a matter of thinking like a black hat and taking a proactive stance against XSS attacks they may employ. If you aren't sure your site is protected, and your hosting rep can't provide the assurances you require, talk to another hosting company before disaster strikes and your site is banned from Google. It's that important.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Top 10 AdSense Tricks To Boost Your Commission</h1> 2006-08-30T02:14:00.000-07:00 Google AdSense is fast becoming the preferred way for people to earn an income online. Forget eBay and multiple affiliate programs - Whether you are a work-at-home mom trying to make a little extra cash or an Internet entrepreneur with hundreds of monetized websites, AdSense is truly the easiest way to earn money. Simply sign up for a free account, grab your ad code and paste it in your site. But here's the amazing thing - no matter how much money AdSense is making for you right now, a few simple tweaks can increase that amount considerably. And I should know, after learning about these tricks, I more than doubled my AdSense commissions! The self-proclaimed AdSense gurus and experts are sharing this insider knowledge, for a fee. You can learn all these secrets from them, as long as you buy their e-book, sign up for their seminar or purchase their newsletter. But I'm going to share all their AdSense tricks for free. Here they are: 1) Color code your ads to match your web site palette *exactly*. Don't use frames around your ads. Instead, in the AdSense code generation interface, make sure you choose the same color as your page background for the ad frame and the ad background. When choosing the ad heading colors, match them to the *exact* color of your page headings. Use the exact same ad background shade as your page background. Use the exact same ad text font and color as the text on your pages. You can see an example of this color-matching on my search engine advice blog - notice the 4 link ad unit and skyscraper text ad unit on the left hand side under the headings Ads by Google as you scroll down the page? The link and text colors are identical to the color palette used throughout the rest of the page. Near enough is NOT good enough. If you can't quite get the color matching right, use Google's built in color palette together with the RGB to HEX or vice versa color converter on <a href="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style">this page</a>. That handy little tool was a life saver for me. This is probably the one single tweak that made the most difference to my commission levels. 2) Try not to use the traditional horizontal banner style or leaderboard image ads because people are blind to them. 3) Use Google's own <a href="https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html">AdSense optimization tips</a> and visual heat map to assist you in deciding where on your page to place your AdSense ad code. 4) Research competitive keywords using a keyword research tool such as <a href="http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/">Keyword Discovery</a> or grab a list of the most popular keywords from various sources and use them in your web site pages where relevant. <a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156041">This article</a> is a good source of frequently searched keywords. Targeting popular keywords should trigger AdSense ads on your pages that utilize those keywords. The more popular the keyword or phrase, the higher AdWords advertisers are generally willing to pay per click for it so the higher your commission on those clicks. 5) Incorporate the AdSense code into your page so that the ads look like a regular part of your site. You can see an example of this on the <a href="http://www.lovestory.com.au/">Internet Dating Stories</a> site where link ads are incorporated within the regular left hand navigation of the site under the heading "Sponsor Links". 6) Use Google's new 4 and 5 link ad units wherever possible. They seem to have a much higher Click Through Rate (CTR) than regular ad styles. You can view all the AdSense ad formats <a href="https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats">here</a>. 7) Place images next to your ads to attract the eyes. You can see this in place on the search engine article library page at the bottom where 3 images draw your attention to the bottom of the page. But be careful here - the use of arrows or symbols enticing viewers to click are NOT allowed by Google and publishers may NOT label the Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements". 8) Use the full allowance of multiple AdSense ads on each of your pages - 3 regular AdSense ads, plus 1 link unit. Use careful placement of these ads so they blend into your site and don't distract from your content. Clever use of this allowance can be seen on this <a href="http://www.lovestory.com.au/bad-stories.htm">page about bad Internet dating stories</a> where you see: - 1 horizontal 4 link ad unit towards the top of the page under the first paragraph - 1 vertical skyscraper text ad unit about halfway down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links" - 1 vertical skyscraper image ad unit down the left hand side under "Sponsor Links" - 1 horizontal text banner unit at the bottom of the page with images above each ad. You can also include 1 AdSense referral button in addition to the 3 other units. 9) Tailor your page content to a particular niche or focus. Page content that is tailored towards a specific theme is more likely to trigger AdWords ads that closely match the content and are therefore more likely to interest your visitors and inspire them to click. Donâ€™t create pages merely for the sake of placing AdSense ads. Visitors (and search engines) can see through this ruse in an instant. 10) Use custom Ad Channels for each of your ad placements, for example, "Top 5 Link Unit Blue Palette" or "Left Side Navigation Image Skyscraper" etc. Tweak, track and measure the success of each of these custom channels so you know what gives you the highest CTR. Some ad formats and colors will work better than others, but you won't know which until you test, test and test some more!<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Secure Payer Authentication</h1> 2006-08-28T05:46:00.000-07:00 3-D Secure Payer Authentication A.K.A Verified by Visa & MasterCard SecureCode Introduction: The Industry and The Goals Payer Authentication is the newest and most powerful tool available to ecommerce merchants today. Payer Authentication provides merchants with the electronic equivalent of a signed sales receipt. Under the umbrella of Visa’s 3-Domain Secure initiative, internet merchants can participate in Payer Authentication. Visa’s program is called Verified by Visa. MasterCard and Japanese Credit Bureau (JCB) also have 3-D Secure programs: MasterCard SecureCode and J/Secure. All three programs operate exactly the same way, they validate that the consumer shopping on your website is the legitimate cardholder. Why would the payment associations (Visa, MasterCard, JCB) want to do this? They are worried about brand erosion. The benefits of payer authentication are pretty substantial. First and foremost is guaranteed payment on all fully authenticated transactions. Even if the transaction is later determined to be fraudulent. The merchant will NOT be charged back. In fact, the chargeback is actually blocked from being submitted to the merchant’s acquiring bank by Visa and MasterCard, so there is not even an awareness at the merchant bank level that a chargeback occurred. More importantly, the number of chargebacks that a merchant records with their acquirer will drop dramatically. Typical participating merchants see a drop of 60-70 percent in their monthly chargeback rates. Even more monumental in concepts than the guaranteed payments is the shift in liability from the merchant to the card issuing bank. Never before in the history of card-not-present (CNP) transactions, have the payment networks ever offered a way for merchants to avoid liability for CNP transactions they accept. It has ALWAYS been the merchants liability. Those days are now over. This is ground-breaking stuff here folks. Now, how about a little lower margin for doing busy more securely? Visa says sure. Just for installing Verified by Visa software on your site, Visa will lower your interchange rate by 5 basis points. I know, I know, basis points are confusing, what does that really mean? Well it works out to $0.05 for every $100.00 you process. A nickel doesn’t seem like a lot, but it adds up when you are processing $1,000,000 a month or more in sales. Why did Visa do this? Well they want to motivate merchants to participate, and the 5 basis points is intended to help offset the cost that merchants pay for the payer authentication service (typically between 5 and 10 cents per transaction). Common Misconceptions Misconception #1: Not enough cardholders are enrolled. This is irrelevant. 300 million plus US Visa cards are enrolled. Visa is offering merchants guaranteed payment on all Visa cards* regardless of whether the cardholder is enrolled or not. This means that from day one, with Verified by Visa enabled on your site, a merchant can cut their transaction liability by 50-60 percent, just on their Visa transactions. MasterCard does not offer attempts processing liability coverage at this time, but 5-10 percent of MasterCard transactions are guaranteed payment, and their adoption rate is growing every day. When a merchant combines the coverage of Visa and MasterCard together, they are typically getting guaranteed payment on 60-70 percent of their overall transaction volume. They are also eliminating 7 out of 10 chargebacks. Misconception #2: Not enough banks offer the service. Completely untrue. 45 of the top 50 U.S. issuing banks, and over 10,000 issuing banks now have the software up and running, worldwide. Misconception #3: If it is such a good program, why aren’t the big name merchants doing it? Good question. These merchants would like to know why you don’t consider them big names: Walmart.com, JCPenney.com, Hotwire.com, 1800Flowers.com, CompUSA.com, TigerDirect.com, NewEgg.com, Etronics.com, Crutchfield.com, OfficeMax.com, JetBlue.com, NorthwestAirlines, eCost.com, Zales.com, BlueNile.com, FogDog.com, PlayStation.com, LizClaiborne, Wilsons Leather, eBags.com, Nickelodeon, Cooking.com, and about 30,000+ others worldwide that I don’t have room to list here. Misconception #4: I have heard that Verified by Visa/MasterCard SecureCode cause higher “abandonment” rates? First of all, lets define abandonment: Abandonment is the process by which a customer leaves/aborts the CHECKOUT process prior to a final submission of the order – including items for purchase, billing and shipping method, and payment information. Pay attention to this: payer authentication occurs AFTER CHECKOUT (or shopping cart) has been completed, but PRIOR TO AUTHORIZATION of the credit card (it works with both real-time and batch authorization). Understanding the definition of abandonment explains why Verified by Visa contributes to absolutely zero ‘shopping cart abandonment’. It can’t. Fundamentally, Verified by Visa, as a process that a consumer would see, does not begin until the checkout has been COMPLETED. With that said, the initial implementation of Verified by Visa, more than two years ago, had some problems with the authentication process. But those problems have been fixed. First and foremost, pop-up windows are no longer allowed for the authentication screen. Due to pop-up blocking software and the almost instinctive act of a consumer closing pop-up windows, Visa realized that this was not going to be effective. Since then they have mandated the “in-line” presentation method, which presents the Verified by Visa screen within the same browser window. This in-line method has proven to be dramatically more effective reducing authentication abandonment from 20-30 percent, down to less than one percent. The in-line method also allows the merchant to keep their brand on the same page as the authentication screen, which provides additional reassurance to the shopper that they are not being enticed by a ‘phishing’ scam. Also, Visa and MasterCard strongly encourage the prominent display of the Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode logos, both on the homepage, and the checkout page, so that it is clear to the shopper that this site is protected by these programs. Finally, the strategic placement of consumer messaging (which is the fancy phrase for providing instructions and guidance to your shoppers in the from of text) has been surprisingly helpful. Amazingly, just telling consumers what they can expect to happen (ex: You may be prompted to enter your password if you are enrolled in Verified by Visa), and what to do if the expected thing does not happen (Ex: please call this 1-800 number if you experience a delay or are unsure how to proceed), has been extremely helpful. Misconception #5: I have so many passwords, and I can never remember all of them. What happens if I forget mine? First of all, do you have a debit card? If yes, then what’s your PIN number? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question (and you never know who might be listening!). But you get the point, right? Why can you instantly recall the PIN number for your debit card amidst the tens, if not hundreds, of passwords you have? Because it’s the key to your bank account – your money. The same goes for payer authentication. In regards to consumer experience, it’s almost identical to entering your PIN number for a debit card purchase. In fact, if you want to make your Verified by Visa password a ‘PIN’ number, instead of a password, go ahead, it’s OK. The point is, we already have a proven and flourishing example of consumers successfully protecting their money with a password (PIN) and payer authentication works exactly the same way – you just enter the password in your web browser instead of an ATM machine. What are the merchant benefits of Payer Authentication? Guaranteed Payment. Yeah, right. Guaranteed payment? Where’s the fine print. What is that supposed to mean? Exactly what it says. Guaranteed payment. If you are an ecommerce merchant, and you install payer authentication software on your site, Visa and MasterCard will guarantee that you get paid, and can NEVER be chargedback on fully authenticated transactions. For a typical ecommerce merchant, this represents about 25-33 percent of Visa card volume and 5-10 percent of MasterCard volume. In addition Visa also offers guaranteed payment, including chargeback protection, on what they call “attempts processing”. This means that if the merchant has the Verified by Visa software on their site, even if the shopper is not enrolled (has not set up their password), Visa will guarantee payment on that transaction, and block any chargebacks from coming back to the merchant on that transaction. This represents an additional 60-65 percent of the merchants overall Visa card volume. When you combine the protection outlined in the above two paragraphs together, that equates to roughly 60-70% of your overall credit card volume being covered by the two programs. That means 60-70% of your overall credit card volume will be guaranteed payment, and will be protected from chargeback liability. Sounds crazy right? See Misconception #3 above to see how crazy it really is. Chargeback Blocking. What the heck is chargeback blocking? It’s exactly what it sounds like. Literally, Visa and MasterCard step in between and block chargebacks from being passed by Issuing bank who issues credit cards to consumers, to the Merchant Acquiring bank, who receives funds for settled purchases from issuing banks on behalf of you the merchant. What this means is that a chargeback is blocked from ever reaching your Merchant Acquiring Bank. This means that the number of chargebacks that show up on your monthly chargeback report are going to drop – dramatically. Typically by 65-70 percent. When the number of chargebacks drops, the fines for those chargebacks (usually $15-25 each) also go away. In addition, since their was no chargeback, you the merchant can keep the funds for that purchase. The issuing bank again is blocked from pulling the funds for that fraudulent purchase out of your merchant account. Why? Because you have done your part. You have the payer authentication software on your site. You are off the hook for those transactions that are protected. But somebody has to pay for that fraudulent transaction, right? Right. Lets’ read on… Transaction Liability Shift. Transaction Liability is the end result of chargeback blocking. If fraud occurs on a transaction, and the merchant is no longer required to reimburse the consumer for that fraud because the merchant was employing payer authentication, then who will? The bank that issue the credit card. Yep. You read that right. All banks that issue Visa or MasterCard credit cards are now liable for all ecommerce transactions that are protected with payer authentication by merchants. When did this happen? Well, it’s actually always been this way with Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode. Now are we starting to understand why the biggest merchants in the world want these programs on their websites? So why would issuing banks allow this to happen? Aren’t they now exposed to a huge amount of fraud? That’s partially true, but banks, as members of Visa and MasterCard, are bound by the rules of the card associations they are members of. Also, issuing banks realize in the long run, these programs will strengthen the brand of their cards, and make consumers more willing to shop online. And as you know, issuing banks love it when you use your credit card. The ecommerce channel today represents only 2-3 percent of the overall commerce in the U.S. However, it is the fastest growing payment channel. Issuing banks realize that ecommerce is really still in it’s infancy, or maybe now more like a toddler. It’s learning to walk, but its still stumbling around like a drunken sailor trying to get his sea-legs. It may not be perfect, but it’s getting better, and becoming ubiquitous. Pretty soon it will be so big, it will be too big to fix, so banks are willing to scrape their knees a little now, and get the problems fixed. When ecommerce eventually is 5, 10, 20, or 50 percent of US commerce, consumers will feel good about using their credit card to shop online, and not be afraid of identity theft and fraud. Accept International Transactions. Do you accept transactions today from Nigeria? No? Not surprising. Nobody does. However, what about Canada, or Mexico, or England, or Germany, or Australia, or Japan. There are most certainly customers in these and many other countries that we would be happy to do business with, if we only could feel safe about accepting the transaction. But there’s no Address Verification System (AVS) for these countries, so what can we do? Well, if you enable Verified by Visa/MasterCard SecureCode on your ecommerce site, not only can you accept transactions from these countries and all over the world, you can do so with exactly the same benefits and protections that you get on U.S. issued credit cards. A conservative approach for a merchant who is hesitant to test the international markets may be to simply offer to accept international orders ONLY if they are made with a Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode credit card. That seems fair enough. Talk about expanding your markets! Reduce Overall Cost of Doing Business (operational overhead). This benefit probably takes the longest to realize, but can be pretty substantial. Ask yourself this question: How much manpower, time and resources do I spend preventing/screening transactions for fraud, and dealing with chargebacks that I have received? Whatever the answer is, now cut that manpower, time and resource allocation by 60-70 percent, and that’s what payer authentication has to offer your business in terms on reducing your costs of doing business. Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode make your business more efficient. They reduce the time you spend as a business trying to be a security expert, and give you more time and resources to focus on selling your products, which is what a “merchant” should be doing. It’s a beautiful thing! Verified by Visa Chargeback Reason Codes Covered U.S. Visa Credit and Debit Cards – Full & Attempted Authentication 23: Invalid Travel & Entertainment 61: Fraudulent Mail Order/Telephone Order/eCommerce 75: Cardholder does not recognize transactions Visa International Credit and Debit Cards - Full & Attempted Authentication 23: Invalid Travel & Entertainment 83: Fraudulent Mail Order/Telephone Order/eCommerce MasterCard SecureCode Chargeback Reason Codes Covered U.S. MasterCard & Maestro Cards – Full Authentication 4837: Cardholder non-authorization 4863: Cardholder not recognized Which merchants can benefit the most from these programs? If you accept credit cards as payment online for merchandise, then you can benefit. It does not matter if you are a small business run out of your basement, or if you are selling millions of dollars a year in merchandise. Every merchant can benefit from these programs. More specifically, merchants that are in high risk categories for fraud: jewelry, consumer electronics, software, DVDs; merchants whose items can be easily pawned or fenced: sporting goods, tools, tobacco, ticketing; merchants who sell ‘soft’ products: games, music, content, airtime/phone minutes So where can I go to get this software? Visa and MasterCard both have published vendor lists on their websites. You should also talk to your Merchant Acquiring Bank, your Payment Gateway, and/or your Payment Processor to find out if they already have a vendor that they recommend or are partnered with. Verified by Visa Merchant Information Site: http://usa.visa.com/business/accept...ng_support.html Verified by Visa Consumer Information Site: https://usa.visa.com/personal/security/vbv/index.html MasterCard SecureCode Merchant Information Site: http://www.mastercardmerchant.com/securecode/index.html MasterCard SecureCode Consumer Information Site: http://www.mastercard.com/securecd/welcome.do<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>All for E-Banks and E-commerce Money</h1> 2006-08-28T04:51:00.000-07:00 All for E-Banks and E-commerce money What is a Merchant Account? Quite simply a merchant account allows your business to accept credit cards. Typically this is used to describe the ability to accept Visa and MasterCard credit cards but does also include American Express, Discover Card, and other types of credit cards. What is a third party processor? A Third Party Processor is a company that allows you to use their merchant account to accept credit cards for your business. The merchant account is theirs and therefore they set the rules you must abide by. They are also responsible for ensuring that you receive payment for your sales and for debitting your account for fees as well. Paypal, Worldpay, and 2CheckOut are some examples of a Third Party Processor. The benefits of Third Party Processors are primarily in their cost benefits to small businesses. Since most Third Party Processors only charge processing fees and nothing else (like monthly fees or annual fees) they keep billing simplified and costs low for small businesses who don't have money to throw away for nothing (like an annual fee). They also tend to supply everything a merchant needs to process sales online with no other accounts required. The downsides of Third Party Processors are pretty severe relative to a true merchant account. Since Third Party Processors assume all risk associated with your account and therefore they tend to have very strict policies on risk which frequently allow them to seize and hold money on a whim. Their processing fees are also very high on average and can take quite a chunk of a merchant's sales if they are processing more then $1,000 a month. Should I get a true merchant account or use a third party processor? This all depends on your business needs. The easiest way to determine which is best for your business is to base your decision on your average monthly processing volume. Generally, if your volume is over $1,000 per month you should establish a true merchant account. This is because even though you will incur extra fees for your monthly statement and processing gateway, you will still save money versus Third Party Processors and will have much more flexibility with the whole process. Third Party Processors will save small merchants money only because even though their processing fees are higher they charge less fees overall (they typically do not charge monthly fees or gateway fees). What you should do when comparing any processor to another one, whether they are a true merchant account provider or third party processor, is to take the core fees you will be paying (see below) and do the math for your business. Typically knowing your businesses average ticket size and estimated monthly number of sales will allow you to make a comparison of what you will pay with one processor vs another. What kind of rates and fees should I expect to be paying? In the world of credit card processing their are a lot of potential fees and costs that you may encounter as a merchant. However, 99% of merchants won't see the vast majority of these fees so we'll cover just the ones that significantly affect the majority of merchants. The most common fees that affect merchants are: Discount Rate - Also known as the Percentage Rate this fee takes a set percentage of a merchant's sale as a fee for processing that transaction. Retail stores typically pay between 1.60% - 1.80% per transaction. Mail Order and Internet businesses typically pay 2.10% to 2.30% per transaction. Third party providers typically charge between 2.80% - 5.00%. This fee affects higher ticket merchants the most. Per Item Fee - Also known as a Transaction Fee this fee is a flat fee charged every time a transaction is processed. This fee is typically between 20¢ - 25¢ for retail business, 25¢ - 35¢ for Mail Order and Internet businesses, and up to $1.00 for third party processors. This fee affects lower ticket merchants the most. It is possible for this fee to not be charged to a merchant but is rare and at the expense of having a higher discount rate. Monthly Fee - Usually referred to as a Statement Fee this is a flat fee a merchant pays each month to keep their merchant account active. This usually includes a statement being sent during the month that breaks down the merchant's processing history for that month, customer service, and technical support. This fee typicically runs between $5 and $15. Annual Fee - Also known as a Membership Fee (and many other names) this fee is charged to a merchant simply for keeping the service open for a full year. This fee is not required by Visa and MasterCard. Monthly Minimum - This is a fee which guarantees the merchant will be paying a minimum amount each month in processing fees. If a merchant’s discount fees do not equal their monthly minimum fee they will be charged the difference between the two in addition to their discount fees. Example: A merchant has a discount rate of 2.50%, a monthly minimum of $25, and a monthly volume of $600. The discount fees for the month will be $15.00 (.025 * $600). Because their discount fees are less then their minimum fee ($15.00 < $25.00) they will be charged an additional $10.00 as a monthly minimum fee ($25.00 - $15.00). This fee is not required by Visa and MasterCard. How long does it take to open a merchant account? Believe it or not the process of establishing a true merchant account is usually fairly quick and easy (assuming your sales agent is knowledgeable in what they are doing). An account can be opened in as little as four hours or as long as a few days depending on when the application is submitted and the underwriting guidelines of the processing bank. The application process should never take longer then that without a clear and legitimate reason. If your application is taking two weeks to be approved and you've had little to no communication with your sales agent, something is wrong and you should consider cancelling your application. Establishing a third party account will vary from provider to provider as each has its own criteria and verification process. Your account can go live anywhere from immediately to several days or weeks. Also, the services made available to you may depend on verification of your business or personal information. For planning's sake, the process setting up of a merchant account should be started two or three weeks before you expect to "go live". This will allow for unexpected delays and testing of the account and gateway. What is a Reserve? A reserve is when a bank holds a portion of a business' sales and sets it aside. This is money that is normally deposited into a merchant's account. This money can be a set amount or a percentage of a merchant's monthly volume (also known as a rolling reserve). This money is usually set aside to offset the risk a merchant account poses. Reserves can be temporary and the funds returned to the merchant (typically this doesn't happen until the merchant has processed for at least six months) or permanent and the funds are not released until six months after the merchant account is closed. What is a Cancellation Fee? Just as the name implies a Cancellation Fee is charged if you were to close your merchant account before reaching the end of your contract agreement (which can be anywheres from one year to five years with three years being typical). The amount for this fee varies and should be considered before choosing a merchant account provider. An average cancellation fee is around $300. However, some merchant account providers will charge up to $800. A cancellation fee over $300 is excessive and should be considered a negative factor when choosing a provider. A cancellation fee under $300 should be considered acceptable. Some merchant providers do not have a cancellation fee, however, this is rare. Others do have cancellation fees that decline in amount as the end of the contract nears. What is a Chargeback? A chargeback occurs when a customer contacts a credit card-issuing bank to initiate a refund for a purchase they made on their credit card. The reasons why chargebacks arise can vary greatly but generally, they are the result of a customer being dissatisfied with their purchase. The customer may or may not have contacted the merchant about remedying this situation ahead of time. They may even be completely wrong. However, responsibility falls to the seller to ensure that the transaction goes smoothly and the customer is satisfied. A failure somewhere within the fulfillment process, including at the customer service level, can lead to a chargeback. What is The Match File? The Match File is a database file used by MasterCard and Visa processing banks to identify specific merchants and owners who have had their merchant accounts terminated. Once a merchant is on this list it is highly unlikely that future merchant account applications will be approved. The Match File is essentially a BLACKLIST from which it is almost impossible to be removed. For a business or merchant to be added to the Match File they need to violate Visa and MasterCard rules in some way. The most common reasons include: - Fraud - Factoring (ringing sales for another business) - An excessive number of chargebacks - The processing bank concludes that serious violations of the merchant agreement could result in increased loss exposure to itself or the credit card community. Once a merchant has been placed on The Match File only the processing bank that added them can remove them from it. The merchant must work with them directly to accomplish this. You do not want to be on the Match File! What you can't do with credit card processing. Just because you have a merchant account doesn't mean you can do anything you want with it. Visa and MasterCard has guidelines governing their use. Here are some thngs you cannot do: • Personal Use - Visa and MasterCard do not allow their services to be used for personal reasons. All accounts must be established for one business and to be used only for that business’ products and services. An account cannot be established for an individual nor can a merchant use their merchant account for personal reasons. • Factoring - Visa and MasterCard do not allow more then one business to use a merchant account. All accounts must be established for one business and to be used only for that business’ products and services. When a business processes transactions for another business, even if they own that business, they are “factoring”. • Charge More for Credit Card Transactions - Visa and MasterCard does not allow a merchant to charge more for products/services paid for by their credit cards. They do not want paying by credit card to be seen in a negative light. If a merchant wishes to offset the additional costs of accepting credit cards, they should do one of the following: • Increase prices on their products/services for all purchases • Increase prices on their products/services and then offer a cash discount Charging a convenience fee for accepting credit cards is not considered acceptable. • Set a Purchase Minimum - Visa and MasterCard do not allow merchants to set a minimum purchase amount for which credit cards may be used. For example, a merchant may not declare that a purchase must be at least $50 in size in order to use a credit card for payment. What is a Gateway? In short, a gateway connects your ecommerce Website to your merchant account. The gateway facilitates online payments by connecting your secure order form with your specific merchant account at a processing bank. The gateway takes the submitted form data and presents it to the processing bank. When it receives a response from the processing bank, it presents that return data to the site of origin for appropriate handling. The gateway itself doesn't provide ecommerce features such as shopping carts, Web hosting, or merchant accounts, although many larger gateway providers do offer additional services like these. Popular gateway providers include Authorize.net, Verisign, Plug 'n Pay, and LinkPoint. Gateways like Authorize.net does not provide merchant accounts! They are two very different and separate things. Both are very complex to offer and thus are offered as separate services. I want to process my Internet sales without using a gateway. Visa and MasterCard forbid Internet merchants from using software or equipment that does not support the Electronic Commerce Indicator. Electronic Commerce is when the cardholder’s information leaves possession of the cardholder and travels through an open connection, such as the Internet, to reach the merchant. In order to designate this type of transaction, the Electronic Commerce Indicator (ECI) must be included on the payment transaction message format to show that the transaction originated form an Internet source. This indicator is assigned in the point of sale product utilized by the merchant. Credit card information sent via email does constitute a transaction needing the ECI in the transaction to the processing bank. Visa U.S.A. introduced a penalty structure effective June 1, 2000, for acquirers who fail to identify an electronic commerce transaction with the correct electronic commerce indicators. MasterCard International introduced a penalty structure effective August 1, 2000, for acquirers who fail to identify an electronic commerce transaction with the correct electronic commerce indicators. If a merchant's software sends an ECI (values of 5, 6, or 7) the transactions are noted as a secure ECI transaction and must be using a secure form of processing card data. These transactions are eligible for CPS rate programs. If the software sends up an ECI value of 8 or 9, the merchant is processing the card data in a non-secure format and the transaction cannot qualify better than EIRF (i.e. the highest rate you can pay for a transaction). All terminal products that are certified to pass an ECI send a value of 8 because this is a non secure way of processing electronic commerce transactions. But there aren't any credit card terminals currently supported to handle ECI. This means you must use special software or a gateway only. Visa and MasterCard employ 250 employees whose sole purpose is to find web merchants who violate this policy. Violating could result in fines, your account being terminated, and/or you being blacklisted for accepting credit cards. Other Definitions ADDRESS VERIFICATION SERVICE - A service that verifies the cardholder’s billing address in order to combat fraud in mail order/telephone order transactions. BATCH - A grouping of credit card transactions as captured by a merchant. A batch is usually an entire day’s activity. CARDHOLDER - Merchant’s customer who holds a credit card. The person to whom a financial transaction card is issued or an additional person authorized to use the card. DISCOUNT RATE - A percentage rate that merchants are billed for the processing of Visa or Mastercard transactions. This discount rate can be applied to net or gross sales. MERCHANT - Any business that, having met the qualification standards of MasterCard and/or Visa and having been approved by any acquiring member, accepts MasterCard and/or Visa cards as payment for goods and services. RECURRING TRANSACTION - A transaction charged to the cardholder (with prior permission) on a periodic basis for recurring goods and services, i.e., health club membership, book-of-the-month clubs, etc.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Apply for an eCommerce Merchant Account</h1> 2006-08-28T04:44:00.000-07:00 So, what do you need to sign up for an eCommerce merchant account? It's not just like signing on the dotted line. This is what you'll need to get that account up and running: Option 1) The ownership will have to have strong personal credit. Credit checks are done on the owners of businesses when an application is submitted. For online business, especially high risk ones, it's a huge factor. If the ownership has strong personal credit, you've overcome a big hurdle. If the ownership's personal credit is very strong you'll be fine. Option 2) The business will have to have strong financials. If this is a new business, skip the next paragraph. But if this is an established biz (at least a year but more like three or more) and it's got good financials (it has debts it pays on time and has a steady flow of cash) you should be fine. Regardless of which option you choose, here's some more of what you should be prepared for when applying for your account: - Be sure to have two forms of verification of the existance of the business (i.e. any document from the local, state, or federal gov't with the business name on it). This replaces the traditional photographs of retail establishments. This is how the bank verifies this is for a legitimate business. - Make sure you have a business checking account in the business' name. It's a must. - Have a (mostly complete) web site for the bank to review. If you provide a safe and secure place for your customers to shop, they'll feel better about accepting your application. Here's a checklist of an acceptable website: + Merchant’s DBA name appears prominently on the web site The name of the merchant’s business name (DBA) should be prominent and obvious on the website. Ideally, the DBA name will be at the top of every page and very clear. Also, there should be a correlation between the DBA and product(s) being offered. For example, if you plan on selling car tires, a good DBA name would be Bob’s Discount Tires. A bad DBA name would be Mary’s Flowers. + Customer Service phone number is clearly posted A customer service phone number is required for your customers to be able to call to ask questions. It should be clearly posted. Ideally it will be on every page and very prominent. It need not be a toll-free number. + Return/Refund policy is clearly posted? Your customers should be aware of how a refund/return is handled by your business. How long do they have to request a refund? Will they receive their form of payment back or will it be a credit only? Is it possible to get a refund at all? Even if your items can not be returned and you will never issue a refund, that policy must be clearly stated for your web site’s visitors to see. + Delivery methods and timing are clearly posted? How long from the time an order is placed can a customer expect you to ship your product/ deliver your service? How will you be shipping it? UPS? DHL? Fed Ex? Next day air? Ground? Mule? Make sure your customers are aware of how their order will be shipped and how long they can expect to wait for it. + Privacy statement is outlined How do you plan to use the information your visitors give you when they place an order? Will you use it only to complete their order? Will you sell it to a third party? Privacy is a concern of all web users. A privacy policy should be very clear and easy to read. It should be obvious and easy to find. + US dollars currency Although you may offer your products in any currency you wish, you must also display a price in US Dollars ($). The amount of the sale will be transacted in US Dollars. + Product offered is clearly described What exactly is a widget? If you’re selling them, a clear description of what they are must be present. If you can answer the following questions with a description, it is a good one: Who would use this product? What is it called? What does it do? How do you use it? Is there a warranty? What colors are available? What is it made of? + Page where credit card info is entered is secure Probably the most important checklist item. The page where a customer enters their personal information and credit card number must be secure. This means purchasing and installing a secure certificate on the web server. This will encrypt a customer’s private information so hackers can not steal it while it is being sent to the web site. Most customers won’t place an order on a web site that does not have one anyway. If you are prepared when applying for your merchant account, you will almost certainly get it. Being a high risk style of business, it's key.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>WordPress and SEO</h1> 2006-08-28T02:26:00.000-07:00 There is a big bunch of resources on optimizing your blog for search engines. I have tried to collect the best tips and plugins in this article. These tips won’t flood your blog with visitors - no SEO tips will. Use these tips to improve your site, and fight for a lot of backlinks and visitors by writing quality content and putting a lot of work into it. It has never been easy to run a website, and it for sure isn’t getting easier. <h2>Permalinks</h2> Use a permalink structure and be sure that the post title is in it. In the WordPress administration go to Options>Permalinks and select a permalink structure, or make your own. I use /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ on this site. <h2>Page titles</h2> The title tag should show the title of the current post or page you are currently visitng. Eg. this page will have the title »WordPress and SEO | The undersigned«. In your themes header.php file you can do this by making sure that the title tag looks like this: (title)(?php wp_title(‘ ‘); ?)(?php if(wp_title(‘ ‘, false)) { ?) | (?php } ?)(?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?)(/title) <h2>Headers</h2> Search engines weigh headers (h1, h2, h3 …) higher than other content (p, li …), so it is important that you write good titles that also contains keywords that matches the content. The best thing is to only have 1-2 h1 tags on each page, eg. the blog title and newest blog post. <h2>Alt tags</h2> Use alt tags for your images, and be sure that they match what the image shows - this helps google image search and other image search engines. <h2>Tags</h2> The internet is evolving, and in this process tags is the next »big thing« - using tags makes sure to keep a lot of cross-linking from posts to posts, which eventually will let search engines dig deeper into your site. <a href="http://www.neato.co.nz/ultimate-tag-warrior/">Ultimate Tag Warrior</a> <h2>Related posts</h2> If you read an article on this site, you will notice the recent posts list in the end of each article. This also helps search engines digging deeper into your site. <a href="http://www.w-a-s-a-b-i.com/archives/2006/02/02/wordpress-related-entries-20/">Related posts</a>. <h2>Landing sites</h2> When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, they are definitely looking for something specific - often they just roughly check the page they land on and then closes the window if what they are looking for isn’t there. Why not help them by showing them related posts to their search on your blog. <a href="http://theundersigned.net/2006/06/landing-sites-11/">Landing sites 1.1</a>. <h2>Google sitemaps</h2> Google has a feature for webmasters, called <a href="http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login">Sitemaps</a>. This helps google index your site, and lets you weigh what content on your site, you find most important. <a href="http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final">Google Sitemaps Generator</a>. <h2>Pinging aggregators</h2> Use the feed feature! Set up your WordPress to ping a list of aggregators automatically in Options>Writing. A great list of ping services can be found <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Update_Services">here</a>. <h2>Valid markup</h2> Be sure that your your site <a href="http://validator.w3.org/">validates</a>, this might not be the most critical point from a SEO point of view, but it might weigh some. <h2>Avoid this</h2> <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/guidelines.html">Google</a> says you should avoid this: <ul><li>Avoid hidden text or hidden links.</li><li>Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.</li><li>Don’t send automated queries to Google.</li><li>Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.</li><li>Don’t create pages that install viruses, trojans, or other badware.</li><li>Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.</li><li>Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.</li><li>Tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.</li></ul> <h2>Get backlinks</h2> Write to your friends, to other bloggers, and trade links with them. Get a linking-network established, and make sure that some people link back to your site, using your blogs title or primary keywords as anchor-text. Amount of links and especially links from quality sites, helps you being placed better in search engines search results. When writing an article, be sure to link back to your sources (if these are blogs, in most cases, a trackback link to your blog will be shown on their site). Be sure to link to your blog in forum signatures, mail signatures etc. as well. <h2>Update your blog</h2> Be sure to keep your blog updated - no one visits a dead site. Eventually you can let <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> post your daily bookmarked links to your blog - this helps making your site look active. <a href="http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=499">How to automatically post daily links</a>. <h2>Stick with it</h2> Stick with the same domain name, blog title, permalink structure etc. <h2>Write quality content</h2> Write quality content, it is the most important. Write quality content that people want to read. Stick to a few topics, and write mainly about those. Quality content might bring you to <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> and <a href="http://digg.com/">digg.com</a> as well. <h2>Involve the reader</h2><h2 style="font-weight: normal;">Encourage your visitors to comment on your posts and join the discussion. Involve the reader by writing to them. »You should«, »We could« and less using »I have«, »I did« etc.</h2><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>The Three Principles of HTML Code Optimization</h1> 2006-08-25T05:37:00.000-07:00 Just like spring cleaning a house, the html code of your web pages should get periodic cleaning as well. Over time, as changes and updates are made to a web page, the code can become littered with unnecessary clutter, slowing down page load times and hurting the efficiency of your web page. Cluttered html can also seriously impact your search engine ranking. This is especially true if you are using a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web design package such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver. These programs will speed up your web site creation, but they are not that efficient at writing clean html code. We will be focusing this discussion on the actual html coding, ignoring other programming languages that may be used in a page such as JavaScript. In the code examples I will be using round brackets ( ) instead of correct html angle brackets < > so that the code examples will display properly in this newsletter. Up until recently when coding a page in HTML we would be using tags such as the (font) tag and (p) paragraph tags. Between these tags would be our page content, text, images and links. Each time a formatting change was made on the page new tags were needed with complete formatting for the new section. More recently we have gained the ability to use Cascading Style Sheets, allowing us to write the formatting once and then refer to that formatting several times within a web page. In order to speed up page load times we need to have fewer characters on the page when viewed in an html editor. Since we really do not want to remove any of our visible content we need to look to the html code. By cleaning up this code we can remove characters, thereby creating a smaller web page that will load more quickly. Over time HTML has changed and we now have many different ways to do the same thing. An example would be the code used to show a bold type face. In HTML we have two main choices, the (strong) tag and the (b) tag. As you can see the (strong) tag uses 5 more characters than the (b) tag, and if we consider the closing tags as well we see that using the (strong)(/strong) tag pair uses 10 more characters than the cleaner (b)(/b) tag pair. This is our First Principle of clean HTML code: Use the simplest coding method available. HTML has the ability of nesting code within other code. For instance we could have a line with three words where the middle word was in bold. This could be accomplished by changing the formatting completely each time the visible formatting changes. Consider this code: (font face="times")This(/font) (font face="times")(strong)BOLD(/strong)(/font) (font face="times")Word(/font) This takes up 90 characters. This is very poorly written html and is what you occasionally will get when using a WYSIWYG editor. Since the (font) tags are repeating the same information we can simply nest the (strong) tags inside the (font) tags, and better yet use the (b) tag instead of the (strong) tag. This would give us this code (font face="times)This (b)BOLD(/b) Word(/font), taking up only 46 characters. This is our Second Principle of clean HTML code: Use nested tags when possible. Be aware that WYSIWYG editors will frequently update formatting by adding layer after layer of nested code. So while you are cleaning up the code look for redundant nested code placed there by your WYSIWYG editing program. A big problem with using HTML tags is that we need to repeat the tag coding whenever we change the formatting. The advent of CSS allows us a great advantage in clean coding by allowing us to layout the formatting once in a document, then simply refer to it over and over again. If we had six paragraphs in a page that switch between two different types of formatting, such as headings in Blue, Bold, Ariel, size 4 and paragraph text in Black, Times, size 2, using tags we would need to list that complete formatting each time we make a change. (font face="Ariel" color="blue" size="4")(b)Our heading(/b)(/font) (font face="Times color="black" size="2")Our paragraph(/font) (font face="Ariel" color="blue" size="4")(b)Our next heading(/b)(/font) (font face="Times color="black" size="2")Our next paragraph(/font) We would then repeat this for each heading and paragraph, lots of html code. With CSS we could create CSS Styles for each formatting type, list the Styles once in the Header of the page, and then simply refer to the Style each time we make a change. (head) (style type="text/css") (!-- .style1 { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; font-size: 24px; } .style2 { font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 12px; } --) (/style) (/head) (body) (p class="style1")Heading(/p) (p class="style2")Paragraph Text(/p) (/body) Notice that the Styles are created in the Head section of the page and then simply referenced in the Body section. As we add more formatting we would simply continue to refer to the previously created Styles.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to Integrate RSS Into Your Marketing Mix</h1> 2006-08-22T08:24:00.000-07:00 RSS is changing the way we consume information online. Instead of being overloaded with mounds of information in our inbox, we can pick and choose exactly which content providers we want to hear from. On the other side of the story are the publishers. Not only is RSS changing the way visitors view information, but it is also opening up vast opportunities for publishers wanting to syndicate their content across the Internet. RSS is turning into one of the most popular distribution channels for webmasters, publishers, article writers and news syndicators. With RSS, you have the opportunity to have a continual digital conversation with your readers. You can use RSS to syndicate a wide variety of media formats including text, video, and audio. No longer is the Web all about text. You can use RSS to syndicate your very own talk show, weekly podcast, or a collection of video tutorials. With over 100 RSS and blog search engines available online, it's time that you started integrating RSS into your marketing mix. This article will outline how you can combine the power of RSS with your current marketing activities. To begin, let's start with email marketing. Some people have predicted that RSS will one day overtake email as the top communication model. However, this is not likely to happen considering the differences between these two technologies. Instead, the two should be combined to form a powerful marketing duo. Email Marketing and RSS Intertwine You can complement your email marketing campaigns with one or more RSS feeds. By providing your readers with alternatives, you will reach a much larger number of subscribers. There are a number of ways that you can integrate RSS into your current email marketing campaign. 1. Use RSS to announce each new issue of your ezine. Announce your e-zine in your RSS feed as a single RSS content item. When your subscribers click-through, they can access your newsletter in full on your website, drawing additional visitors to your content. 2. If you are currently using email autoresponders, provide those very same autoresponders as RSS feeds. You can do this at <a href="http://www.zookoda.com/">http://www.zookoda.com</a> . Using RSS, you can syndicate a wide variety of content. One of the most obvious uses of RSS is to deliver content updates to your users. RSS is an excellent communication medium for delivering daily updates of your web site content. You can't expect your visitors to come back to your site every day to check for updates, but with an RSS feed they can quickly pick up any changes that interest them. However, this is just the beginning of what is possible with RSS. Deliver Content Updates, News, and So Much More... You can also use RSS feeds to deliver news announcements, forum discussion updates, new product releases, quick tips, quotes, new coupons, job listings, classifieds, and real estate listings. RSS can even be used to deliver content that is not available on your site. Let's face it, you cannot possibly publish all of the great information that is available on your site's particular topic. However, you can supply your users with a content aggregation service that directs them to the best content within your industry. With all of the digital junk that is currently being delivered online, you would be delivering an extremely valuable service simply by syndicating the most important and relevant information within a particular niche. Keep in mind that relevant information goes beyond whether or not the content relates to your visitors' interests. Relevant information can also speak to each individual user. Just like email marketing, you can use personalization within your RSS feeds to increase your response rate. Speak Directly to Your Visitors with Personalized RSS Feeds One of my favorite examples of personalization can be found at Babycenter.com. As soon as you enter the site, you are asked for two pieces of information: Your due date or your child's birthday and... Your email address After you submit your information you start receiving a weekly e-zine that is relevant to your pregnancy stage or the age of your child. If you have a 2-year old, you'll be receiving articles, tips and product recommendations for that age. Do you see the power in this? By using profiling, webmasters are able to send information that is highly relevant to their readers on a case-by-case basis. You could use this same idea with your RSS feeds. Basic personalization might include elements such as the reader's first name, while more advanced personalization might deliver personalized content, product recommendations and so on. Once you have decided on what type of content you would like to syndicate, you must then start organizing content for your feed. If you want to use RSS to its full potential, then I would highly advise you to create multiple RSS feeds for your users. Use Multiple RSS Feeds to Increase Your Exposure You can do this by creating RSS feeds for each category of content you cover. This extends your reach and marketing capability. Do not pack all of your content under one generic RSS feed. This is not beneficial for you or your visitors. By breaking your RSS feeds into categories, your visitors will be able to tap into the exact information that they are looking for. For example, visitors who only want to keep up with forum updates shouldn't have to sift through articles, news, and other content. When you begin marketing your RSS feeds, keep in mind that this is still a fairly new technology. RSS Isn't Quite Mainstream, So Educate Your Visitors Take your visitors step-by-step through the process of locating, subscribing and reading an RSS feed. By doing this, you are informing your website visitors and helping to promote the use of your own RSS feed. To see a really good example of this, go to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/help/3223484.stm">BBC News</a>. There is one last step to integrating RSS into your overall marketing strategy. This one is often overlooked, but can be extremely powerful when executed properly. Take Your RSS Marketing to the Next Level with Your Affiliates Provide your affiliates with an RSS feed of your product catalog. They can then use your feed to syndicate your latest product releases on their own websites. Whenever someone clicks on a headline, they would be directed to your web store. If they decide to make a purchase, the referring affiliate would make a commission on the sale. Of course, this type of RSS would most likely need to be customizable, allowing the affiliate to carry only the products updates they feel would be a good match for their website. Amazon.com has implemented this very same technique and it's time that the rest of us do so as well. RSS is one of many ways to communicate with your customer base. RSS should not be your only communication mechanism, but rather simply a piece of the marketing puzzle. When RSS is combined with other communication models, including email and postcard marketing, your message will finally receive its true potential. When any of these techniques are used alone, they lose much of their marketing power. Start combining your communication models to see much higher response rates.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Google XML Sitemaps - The Basics</h1> 2006-08-22T08:14:00.000-07:00 Google XML Sitemaps have been around for a while now and many webmasters are starting to become familiar with them. They can help you to achieve up to date indexing in Google, and, in a round about way, play a small roll in assisting with rankings. Sitemaps are not needed by everyone, but can be of significant use for many websites. This article will touch on the basics of what they are, who can use them, and how to implement them. What is a Google XML Sitemap? In short a Google XML Sitemap allows webmasters to submit a master list of all their site's pages to Google for indexing. This information is stored in an XML file along with other relevant information where specified by the webmaster. It can be as simple as a list of URL's belonging to the site, or can include, last modified date, update frequency, and priority. The purpose of this Sitemap is to have the most recent version of your URL’s indexed in Google at all times. Who needs a Google XML Sitemap? XML sitemaps can generally help any site needing to be indexed by Google; however, small sites may not see the need for this. For example, if you have a small 10 page website that seldom sees any of its pages updated and your entire site is already in Google's index, the XML Sitemap is not necessarily going to help much. It is best used when trying to keep the latest versions of your pages current in Google. Large sites with an extensive list of URL's will also benefit, especially if 100% of their pages are not appearing in the index. So a general rule of thumb, if you have either a dynamic or large site, Google XML Sitemaps just may benefit you. Will using XML Sitemaps improve my Google Ranking? In most cases this will not improve your rankings, however it can help. By having the most current version of your site in Google's index, this can speed up your movement in the results pages. This is because if you make an update to a page for optimization purposes, Google's index will have this page updated more quickly than without the XML sitemap. What this essentially means is that with more frequent spidering you can help influence what version of your site is in the index, and ultimately, help with rankings by decreasing response time. How do you create the XML Sitemap? If you have a very small site, or a lot of time on your hands you can create your XML sitemap manually, but for the vast majority of webmasters, automated tools are an absolute must. There are a number of available solutions for this. One of the simplest methods of creating XML sitemaps is through the use of VIGOS GSitemap. This is a free, easy to use tool that will help you create your XML sitemaps with ease. There are also number of downloadable and online tools listed on Google's site which cater to both beginners and seasoned professionals alike. Submitting your XML Sitemap to Google is relatively straightforward. After the file has been created the first thing you want to do is upload the file to your server, preferably at the root level. Log into the Sitemap console using your Google account login. From here you can add a site to your account. Simply enter your top level domain where it says "Add Site" (see fig 1.0). This will add the domain to your account and allow you to then submit the XML sitemap. Figure 1.0 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.sitepronews.com/images2/addsite.jpg"></a> After this is done it will take you to a screen with the summary for this site. You will see a text link that says "Submit a Sitemap". Clicking here will take you to a screen to enter the online location of the XML sitemap. (see fig 1.1 below). Click "Add Web Sitemap" and you are on your way. Figure 1.1 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.sitepronews.com/images2/addsite3.jpg"></a> Once this is complete you have the option of verifying your Sitemap. This can be done by placing a specific meta tag on your home page, or by uploading a blank html file with a file name provided by Google. Verification will allow you to access crawl stats, and other valuable information regarding your Google listing. Below is a basic example of an XML Sitemap. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> < urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84/ sitemap.xsd"> <url> < loc>http://www.stepforth.com/</loc> < lastmod>2006-08-09T04:46:26+00:00</lastmod> < changefreq>Weekly</changefreq> < priority>1.0</priority> < /url> ... ... < url> < loc>http://www.stepforth.com/company/contact.html</loc> < lastmod>2006-08-08T04:46:26+00:00</lastmod> < changefreq>Never</changefreq> < priority>0.5</priority> < /url> </urlset> Implementing an XML Sitemap is generally straightforward and worth the effort. Taking the time to implement them is well worth it as there is no negative down side to this tool provided by Google. Every little thing adds up in terms of obtaining site rankings and frequent spidering by Google is certainly one of them.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Checking Out with Google's New "Checkout" Service</h1> 2006-08-22T08:11:00.000-07:00 After months of "buzz" online about Google's proposed "PayPal Killer," they've finally launched their new service, "Google Checkout." After all the hype that was floating around, you'd have thought this new creation would be the death of Paypal, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Online payment options are important, so it's always nice to have another way to accept payments from your web site. But Google's new service is also good news for consumers who are concerned about their privacy when shopping online. We all know Google likes to do things their own way and put a little "Google Twist" on their work, so it comes as no surprise that they've added some integration with their Adwords program. You don't need to use Adwords to utilize Google Checkout, but if you do, Google gives you some other nice benefits. If you are a seller who also uses Adwords, you'll love this: For every $1.00 you spend with Adwords, Google will allow you to process $10.00 in "Google Checkout" sales for free. So if you're already using Adwords and start using Checkout you'll save money on your transaction fees. What are the fees, you say? 2% and $.20 per transaction, which does beat Paypal's current fees of 2.9% and $.30 per transaction. Another advantage to offering Checkout on your web site is that your Adwords ads will display a small graphic of a shopping cart next to them. This is called a "Google Checkout Badge," and will identify your site quickly to searchers as one who will take "Google Checkout" payments from shoppers. Some are wondering if this may help your Adwords ranking. This is something that still remains to be seen. To sign up, you'll first need to have a Google account, which you can get at no charge by going to http://google.com/accounts. At this time, you must live in the U.S. and have a bank account if you wish to process payments as a merchant. If you're a merchant you'll also need to specify your return and shipping policies. Merchants can accept payments by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. If you have an Adwords account you'll want to link it to your new Checkout account during the registration process in order to earn your free transaction credits. Before you get too excited, be aware there are some things not allowed to be sold using this new service. They include: Adult Goods Alcohol Body Parts (don't you need to keep those?) Buyers Clubs offering goods at wholesale Credit and Collection Services Drugs MLM and Gambling For a complete list, see <a href="http://tinyurl.com/hmujh">http://tinyurl.com/hmujh</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Using Blog PR to Promote Your Site</h1> 2006-08-15T23:39:00.000-07:00 The recent trend of using the press release to promote an online business has emerged with good reason – good press costs very little and can do more for a business than thousands of dollars of marketing. Most businesses use press distribution services like PR Web or PRFree to get the word out about their news. While distribution services certainly can be effective, they tend to miss out on arguably the most influential group of the press – bloggers. Bloggers mold and shape the opinions of their readers, who are normally the most important in their particular industry, many of whom are also bloggers. Not long after a post from an influential blogger, your news has been picked up by several other bloggers and within days you are all over the blogsphere. Before you know it your site is getting more attention than it would if a story ran in the local newspaper! So how do you get the influential bloggers in your industry to run a story about your business? Why Would Anyone Do a Story About Your Business? Are you a new company? Did you just launch a new product that they could review? Did your business wín an award? Are you a group of college kids who started a company on savings from your summer jobs? You get the idea. There needs to be a reason that someone would want to read about you. Bloggers take pride in the content they feed their readers. You don't stand a chance of getting a blogger to write about you if you don't have a story that their readers will be interested in. Research Bloggers in Your Industry More is less when it comes to contacting bloggers. Buy a list of 1,000 bloggers and send out a generic email to all of them and you'll likely get no response. But send a small amount of personalized emails to the appropriate bloggers and you'll be shocked at how many positive responses you get. The first step is to make a list of the bloggers that would be interested in your story. You can generally get a feel for whether or not a blogger would be interested in your story by reading a couple of posts and checking out their bio. If they've done a few similar stories in the past or they are heavily involved in your industry, there is a good chance they'll want to hear your story. If not, leave them off your list and move on. The single best method that I have found to research blogs is the Technorati Blog Directory. You can peruse blogs in your industry in order of "authority" - how important Technorati thinks a blog is. This is extremely useful. For example, if you are in the travel industry, you can view a list of the most influential blogs in the world of travel. Another great way to find the right bloggers is to search through your competitors press sections on their websites to see what blogs have mentioned them. You can also find out who has mentioned your competitors by looking at the sites that have linked to them (type in "links:www.theirsite.com" on Yahoo!). There's a good chance that if they found your competitors story interesting, they'll find your story interesting as well. Compose Your Email The best way to contact bloggers is by email. The good news is that most bloggers make themselves easy to access and provide their email addresses on their blogs. The bad news is that most people don't know what to do with said email address once they get it. Use the following outline for your email and you'll see amazing results: * Have a simple subject. You probably won't get many responses by treating your email like a press release and writing RELEASE in the subject line. Try something simple like "fan of your blog" or "comment about your blog." You want to make sure they actually read your email and don't mentally mark it as späm when they see the subject. * Start by complementing them. Since you've read their blog and learned about them from their bio, you know quite a bit about them. Use it to your advantage. Compliment them on your favorite post, or how cool it is that they worked for XYZ company. * Request them to post about you (be direct). In three sentences or less, tell them your story, why you think it would be of interest to them and their readers, and respectfully ask that they write a post about it. Be direct and to the point. They will respect that. * Offer something in return. You have something that could help them. Maybe it's a link back to their blog from your personal blog, or maybe you could provide them with a free product or service that could help them or their business. One way or another, there's something you have to offer them in return for the time spent on a post about you. * Close with something nice. Thank them for their time and wish them luck with their blog and/or business ventures. Notice that of the five components of the email, only one is about your story. The rest of the email is spent complimenting them and offering them something. Your chances of getting a positive response have just gone through the roof. Every blogger, no matter how large, likes to hear that people are enjoying their posts. Respond Promptly and Respectfully Not everyone is going to agree to run your story. Some will say that they don't do that type of thing or that they don't have time. Since you have been so nice as to compliment them, they will still usually reply either way. Regardless of the response, be sure to thank them for their time and wish them luck with their ventures. You nevër know when they will encounter someone who needs your product or service in the future (remember, they are in your industry) and if they have a positive image of you and your company they will undoubtedly give you a good recommendation. Sit Back and Watch the Traffíc Roll In Over the course of the next few weeks you will see post after post appear about your business. Be sure to send another thank you email to the blogger after the post and also be sure to promptly provide whatever you offered them in return. At this point you have developed a mutually beneficial relationship with someone important in your industry that can become invaluable over time. That wasn't that hard was it? With a little research and a carefully crafted email, any business can effectively use blog PR to drive traffíc to their site.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Checking Out with Google's New "Checkout" Service</h1> 2006-08-15T23:32:00.000-07:00 After months of "buzz" online about Google's proposed "PayPal Killer," they've finally launched their new service, "Google Checkout." After all the hype that was floating around, you'd have thought this new creation would be the death of Paypal, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Online payment options are important, so it's always nice to have another way to accept payments from your web site. But Google's new service is also good news for consumers who are concerned about their privacy when shopping online. We all know Google likes to do things their own way and put a little "Google Twist" on their work, so it comes as no surprise that they've added some integration with their Adwords program. You don't need to use Adwords to utilize Google Checkout, but if you do, Google gives you some other nice benefits. If you are a seller who also uses Adwords, you'll love this: For every $1.00 you spend with Adwords, Google will allow you to process $10.00 in "Google Checkout" salës for free. So if you're already using Adwords and start using Checkout you'll save monëy on your transaction fees. What are the fees, you say? 2% and $.20 per transaction, which does beat Paypal's current fees of 2.9% and $.30 per transaction. Another advantage to offering Checkout on your web site is that your Adwords ads will display a small graphic of a shopping cart next to them. This is called a "Google Checkout Badge," and will identify your site quickly to searchers as one who will take "Google Checkout" payments from shoppers. Some are wondering if this may help your Adwords ranking. This is something that still remains to be seen. To sign up, you'll first need to have a Google account, which you can get at nö chärge by going to http://google.com/accounts. At this time, you must live in the U.S. and have a bank account if you wish to process payments as a merchant. If you're a merchant you'll also need to specify your return and shipping policies. Merchants can accept payments by Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. If you have an Adwords account you'll want to link it to your new Checkout account during the registration process in order to earn your free transaction credits. Before you get too excited, be aware there are some things not allowed to be sold using this new service. They include: Adult Goods Alcohol Body Parts (don't you need to keep those?) Buyers Clubs offering goods at wholesale Credít and Collection Services Drugs M-L-M and Gambling For a complete list, see http://tinyurl.com/hmujh. There are three ways for sellers to accept payments: 1) Buy/Now Buttons: These are similar to Paypal buttons. You just copy and paste some HTML code and you're done. 2) E-Commerce Partners: For use with Google's approved partners' shopping cart systems.Some of them are: Channell/Advision, Infopedia, Mercantec, Monster Commerce, ShopSite, Volusion. 3) API: A more complex way to integrate more options. This involves a programmer to setup. One disadvantage to the cut and paste button method is you cannot specify tax or shipping rates. You'll need to use the API checkout method in order to do that. Another shortcoming is the inability to specify your own return page after a customer completes the purchase process. They get taken back to a "Google Thank You Page." All orders are placed into Google's Merchant Center inside your in box. To view your orders you'll need to log into Checkout and go to the "orders tab." If the order can be fulfilled, you then clíck the "charge button" that's located next to each order. After the order is sent you'll need to let the buyer know by clicking on the "ship button" next to it. If you're worried about chargebacks, don't. They're all evaluated by Google and Google will go to bat on your behalf. If the transaction is covered by their "Payment Guarantëe Policy" and you supply Google with all of the documentation they request within 10 days, they will reimburse you within one week. If you sell on Ebay and want to use Checkout, you might want to review their current approved payment types. There's been talk on the Net that they are not currently allowing sellers to offer this payment option. For more, see http://tinyurl.com/gowgy. Checkout's privacy features are great for your buyers. Google handles all of their personal information -- instead of entering a credít card with each transaction, all they have to supply is a user name and password to complete a purchase. All credít card details are maintained by Google with complete details of all transactions. With the rise in identity theft and people more nervous then ever about sharing their personal information, this should make everyone happy. There's also the added benefit of a faster checkout experience which is to be appreciated if you've ever been put through page after page of a badly put together shopping cart. Buyers can also clíck a box during the purchase process to specify if they would like to receive future promotional emails from this seller. This should help some with their already "too full" in boxes. No matter if you're a merchant or a consumer there are advantages on both sides when it comes to Google Checkout. I'm sure with time Google will add more benefits and features that will make their Checkout process even more impressive. And who knows, maybe someday they will give PayPal a run for their monëy. For more information see: https://checkout.google.com and https://checkout.google.com/sell<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Outsource SEO vs In-house SEO</h1> 2006-08-15T08:27:00.000-07:00 SEO is becoming increasingly important to all who look to do business and use the Internet as a marketing tool. It is the path in which your market finds your offering. It has become almost a necessity for businesses to incorporate SEO in to their marketing plan. Many companies struggle with the decision on whether to hire a firm or conduct their SEO in-house. Unfortunately many companies lack the knowledge about SEO and assume it will be cheaper for them in the long run to hire someone "in-house". For some companies this may be efficient while others the overlooking the hiring of a professional firm to SEO can be costly. It is as critical to your business' health as if you were to feel that you could heal a fatal disease yourself because you have access to the Internet and books instead of going to a highly trained physician. Now you laugh and say that would be absurd, but is the growth of your company worth the risk. Knowledge Versus Cost Versus Time = Your Success SEO is an ever changing business. Search engines change their algorithm frequently and new rules are put into place. One has to have the resources to find this information and understand how to implement the changes. An SEO firm is more likely to be aware of changes to search engine optimization protocols than an in-house individual. Many in-house individuals will focus on developing and implementing your SEO strategies but typically remain in the dark about what goes on outside your organization. Outsourced SEO professionals must perform these same functions while constantly studying the industry, staying current with changing trends and familiarizing themselves with the latest SEO techniques. It is a part of their day to day business and necessary if they intend to compete in the marketplace and wish to survive. What about cost? Surely the cost of hiring an individual is substantially less than the cost of hiring a company, right? This is a common misconception. Let's look at it this way. You hire an E-Commerce Marketing Manager whose job is to develop and implements the strategic online marketing plan for an organization. Staying abreast of changes in the online marketing environment to best serve the objectives of the organization and adjusts plans accordingly. They may even be responsible for overseeing other aspects of the website such as the advertising and content components. In most cases the individual will be wearing many hats spreading them thin. His or her base salary according to Salary.com on average would be $85,703. That is $7141.92 a month and roughly $42 an hour. This is for one individual with hopes that they bear positive results. Let's say they do not. It will take 3 to 6 months to start to truly see if the individual is an asset or not. That is $21,425.76 if you decide to let the individual go in just the third month. Not to include cost of taxes and benefits. And if successful, your company just paid $85,703 per year for SEO. The average SEO firm charges anywhere from $5500 to $35000 to perform the same task with a staff of highly trained professionals in the area of link building, writing, optimizing, web development etc. Even on the high end you are getting a staff for the entire year for around what it cost you to hire an individual in-house for a quarter. And if it does not bear positive results and you decide to terminate the relationship you will only have lost less than $10,000 if prorated based on the $35000. in most cases you can even get some of that back. This logistically saves you time and money. Would you agree that having one individual do the job of five is rarely a good idea? Would you feel it cost effective? Time is another concern with in-house SEO. Will one individual be able to optimize multiple pages, write content, tags, build links, run reports and perform other SEO tasks in a timely fashion? One person can only do so much. Would you agree that time is money? Most SEO firms can do in a matter of days what might take an individual weeks to do. Many companies who use in-house SEO personnel spend more than necessary to get the same amount of work done in a longer amount of time. Once again you have one individual doing many task versus many individuals doing one task effectively. In any case, is outsourcing the right move for you or your company? Whether you choose to outsource or not, here are a few things to keep in mind: Do your research by performing a simple cost/benefit analysis on what outsourcing versus in-house SEO will cost. It cost twice as much when you do it wrong the first time. Results are all that matters. Top rankings for phrases no one is searching for means little, and shouldn't be used as a guage of someone's abilities. Ensure they can provide you with keywords that work for your business as well as a diverse plan of action. What do others say about the company or individual? Ask for references and check them. But even if they have limited or no reference don't panic. They still may know what they are doing. Just test them on a small project and see if they bear results for you. This is a true way to measure if they work for you. There are many variables you may not have privilege to in a reference such as their personal relationship or if they were a part of a team that was successful but they contributed little. Remember, SEO is important to your business growth and time is money one way or another. Do the math and ask yourself what makes sense for you.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Matt Cutts from Google Video Search Engine Lessons and Tips</h1> 2006-08-11T06:03:00.000-07:00 Matt Cutts from Google answers a fictional reader's question: - What tips and tricks do you recommend for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose <div id="autoplaylink"> </div> <table id="upnexttable" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr style="background-color: rgb(225, 218, 225);"> <td><table id="upnexttable" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr style="background-color: rgb(225, 218, 225);"><td><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648779681675044189" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648779681675044189" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="My tips for SES"> My tips for SES</a> Matt Cutts 6 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4526554928294588907" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4526554928294588907" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Google Webmaster Tools"> Google Webmaster Tools</a> Matt Cutts 7 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51167291563232332" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51167291563232332" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Reinclusion requests"> Reinclusion requests</a> Matt Cutts 3 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1756437348670651505" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1756437348670651505" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Lightning Round!"> Lightning Round!</a> Matt Cutts 5 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3494613828170903728" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3494613828170903728" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Supplemental Results"> Supplemental Results</a> Matt Cutts 4 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8726665066825965913" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8726665066825965913" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Google Datacenters"> Google Datacenters</a> Matt Cutts 5 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8475081922887713591" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8475081922887713591" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Google Terminology"> Google Terminology</a> Matt Cutts 5 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1156145545372854697" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1156145545372854697" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="How to structure a site?"> How to structure a site?</a> Matt Cutts 5 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5179191836301432169" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5179191836301432169" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Qualities of a good site"> Qualities of a good site</a> Matt Cutts 6 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6860320126300142609" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6860320126300142609" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Static vs. Dynamic urls"> Static vs. Dynamic urls</a> Matt Cutts 5 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""> <td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8553629667451959310" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8553629667451959310" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Optimize for Search Engines or Users?"> Optimize for Search Engines or Users?</a> Matt Cutts 4 min</td></tr></tbody></table></td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> </td> <td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> </td></tr></tbody></table><table id="upnexttable" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr style="background-color: rgb(225, 218, 225);"><td><a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648779681675044189" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td><td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648779681675044189" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="My tips for SES"> My tips for SES</a> Matt Cutts 6 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""><td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3583760678227172395" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td><td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3583760678227172395" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Some SEO myths"> Some SEO myths</a> Matt Cutts 4 min </td> </tr> <tr style=""><td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1147504221425038991" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td><td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1147504221425038991" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Matt Cutts' Disclaimer"> Matt Cutts' Disclaimer</a> Matt Cutts 27 sec </td> </tr> <tr style=""><td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5196068039997874888" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td><td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5196068039997874888" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Ozzie Jumps!"> Ozzie Jumps!</a> Supercat Productions 2 sec </td> </tr> <tr style=""><td> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9028425054136856586" onclick="setMyPlaylist()"> </a> </td><td class="playlistentry" valign="top"> <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9028425054136856586" onclick="setMyPlaylist()" title="Does Webspam use Google Analytics?"> Does Webspam use Google Ana...</a> 5 min</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Search Engine Strategies San Jose Exhibit Hall Photos</h1> 2006-08-11T04:26:00.000-07:00 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210323664_19ca513345_m.jpg"></a> Google Booth <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210323666_f844e48859_m.0.jpg"></a> Yahoo Booth <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210323662_e7dc378ea1_m.jpg"></a> Microsoft adCenter Booth <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210323661_e38765053f_m.jpg"></a> Ask.com Booth <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210302249_1a77acd440_m.jpg"></a> SEMPO Booth <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210302248_c4a598647b_m.jpg"></a> Mick Jolly and David McInnis of PRWeb <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210139820_cbd8ee1819_m.0.jpg"></a> Super SEO Bloggers Aaron Wall and Loren Baker <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4086/1970/1600/210146941_75ddced6ca_m.jpg"></a> Ask Gal Offering Matches and RedHots You can find more SES San Jose on Flickr using the tag, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/toprank/tags/sessanjose06/">sessanjose06</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Seven reasons why your website might not be a success</h1> 2006-08-11T03:20:00.000-07:00 With so many new websites going up, it is hard sometimes to tell if your site will be a big success or an unexpected flop? if you are unsure of whether or not your site will fly with visitors or crash and burn, this article is definitely for you. now we all know the importance of great service, but if your website doesn't communicate this, then you could be headed for failure. Seven Reasons Why Your Website May Be a unsuccessful. Long Load Times If your websites takes more then 30 seconds to load, especially on DSL/Cable then visitors will leave your website, it is as simple as that. You must remember that people want information and they want it yesterday (I know, I know). Since it is so easy to get information from many other sites online, you must make sure that they can get it from your site first and that they can get it quickly. This will keep them coming back to your website everyday, since it is so easy to get what they want. Bad Navigation Your Navigation should be located in a easy to access area that the visitor can easily get to as soon as they reach your site. Areas include the top of the page, just below the header and to the left of the page. Navigation that is hard to find will leave a visitor feeling frustrated every time they come to the site. Even though they may get use to its unusual placement, they may not come back to get use to it! Un-finished Pages There is nothing worse then coming to a website that has just had a new design done on it(even if it looks great) and finding out that even though the links are active, there is nothing on those sub pages. Of course a nice "coming soon" text can work to let them know the page is coming soon, it does serve us both best if the page and its content are actually there. So make sure all the pages are ready to go before you upload the new site. Bad Color Combination All I have to say about this is live green, blue, brown and red may work in some way on a site design but I can't imagine it looking good. Make sure to use colors that jive well with each other, that compliment each other and that doesn't hurt or strain the eyes. One thing to make sure is that if you use a light color on the background then make sure to use a dark text and vice-versa. This will make it easier on all of us to read what is on your website. No Contact Information We must all be in touch in one way or another. Well sort of! You Must have contact information on your site, it doesn't have to be on the front page, but it should be at least on its own page. This will give visitors a way to get in touch with you if they need to ask you a question about your site or product. Old Dates/Updated Often Make sure you update your site often. People come to your site for updated information, if what was on your site last week, is still there today, they probably won't be coming back. Make sure old dates are taking off as well as new dates are entered correctly. This is extremely important if your site has to do with events going on in the community. Script Errors Finally, make sure you test every part of your website, especially when it comes to scripts. Also have it set up so that if a script error happens you catch it before too many of your visitors do. This can be done by either checking the site each day(or a few times a day) or by having an automated email sent to you when someone experiences a error on the site. I hope these tips help you build a Successful Website! <div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Search Engine Optimization - Get Indexed Fast</h1> 2006-08-11T02:43:00.000-07:00 You can't place in the search engines until they index your site. Get listed fast with these easy tips. <h3>Direct Submission</h3> Most search engines offer a form to submit your site to. This has led to mixed results and a lot of speculation as to whether this helps or hurts your site. The search engines do seem to prefer discovering your site through links as opposed to having it submitted. The reason is popularity. The more you show up online, the more of a priority your site becomes for getting indexed. <ul><li><a href="http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl">http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl</a></li><li><a href="http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request">http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request</a></li><li><a href="http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2">http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2</a></li></ul> <h3>Use an RSS Feed</h3> The RSS feed should have your site navigation in it. It should include a link to each page in your site with a brief description. The descriptive text should be of value to a human reader for the best results. Then set up personal accounts with Google, Yahoo! and MSN and submit your feed to those accounts. This makes the SE's aware of you, but doesn't quite guarantee instant results. <ul><li><a href="http://www.google.com/ig">http://www.google.com/ig</a></li><li><a href="http://my.yahoo.com/">http://my.yahoo.com/</a></li><li><a href="http://login.passport.net/">http://login.passport.net/</a></li></ul> You can also submit your feed directly to Yahoo! at <a href="http://publisher.yahoo.com/submit.php">http://publisher.yahoo.com/submit.php</a>. <h3>Site Maps</h3> Create a site map and then submit that map to Google and Yahoo! Google preferes XML maps but the .txt works just as well in my experience and then you can use the same map at Yahoo! <ul><li><a href="https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login">https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login</a></li><li><a href="http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request">http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request</a></li></ul> <h3>Press Release</h3> Write a quick press release and submit it at <a href="http://www.prweb.com/">www.PRWeb.com</a> for free. If you have industry trade publications you should submit it to them as well. This can also get you relevant backlinks from the beginning. Age is playing a big role in Google, including the age of links. Getting some good ones from the start will definitely help you long-term. You can also add this release to your RSS feed. Set up a free blog at <a href="http://www.blogger.com">www.blogger.com</a> and announce your site in it. Why Blogger? Google owns it. 'Nuff said. <h3>Get Backlinks</h3> Finally, start getting backlinks. Submit your site wherever you can. <h3>Track Progress</h3> Watch your server logs for the search engine robots in your User Agents. It will say "Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/" or "msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)" or "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)". Once you've seen these appear check the search engines by entering your domain in the search field. In Yahoo! you can click the "More from this site" link to see all the pages indexed. In Google, look for "Find web pages from the site domain.com". MSN automatically lists all the cached pages.<div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> </main></body></html>