Archive for August 2nd, 2006
We all know the value of getting links to our site. Links bring you traffic from related sites and boost your search engine rank, which brings you, umm, more traffic. So, basically, links = traffic.
However, gone are the days of simply asking for a link (in exchange for a link from your site) and actually getting one. These days, bland reciprocal link requests such as these almost never yield any benefit because they are simply ignored. Think about this old-school approach from the email recipient’s point of view to understand why your link requests are ignored.
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August 2nd, 2006
In the fall of 1990, the musical group Snap had a monster number one hit record called, “I’ve Got The Power.”
Nowadays, a search engine and a directory (AKA) Google and Yahoo!–number one and number two respectively, have “the power,” and we handed it to them on a silver platter.
The aforementioned search engine and directory are the two biggest players in the multi billion dollar pay-for-search industry.
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August 2nd, 2006
This is my question…
I spend a fortune on SEO and now I am #1. If there are 976,840 businesses like mine on the internet, why is that I am # 1?
Am I the only one who cares about being #1? Are 970,000 other business owners stupid? Are they all so poor they can’t afford to bid? Am I really #1? Why is it that the next 3 listings just below mine are not the sites of my competitors but listing for directories? Is it really possible that I am the only one who understands search engine optimization? Or…
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August 2nd, 2006
5 Less Known Tips To Consider For Fast Search Engine Indexing And Better Search Engine Placement
by: Dmitry Dowzhenko
1. Domain expiration date. Most really good websites are registered for 10 years or more. Nobody will take website seriously if it was registered for 1 year only. So, extend your domain registration if it will expire in less than 10 years. This will tell search engines that you are serious.
2. Links. If your site has broken links, don’t even start submission. Google won’t care about you if you don’t care about your visitors. There are some web services that do link checking for free. I have forgotten URLs; try to search Google, if you need.
3. Website speed. If you have slow website, you will get lower position. Company I use is http://hostingishere.com
4. Size. Websites under 40-50 pages get faster indexing. Even if you have large website, remove some pages before submission. Add them later, one by one, 2-3 pages in 1-3 days. Search engines love growing sites.
5. If you are using 3rd party articles for content of your website, then you have to remove old ones and use only fresh ones (1 week old articles maximum) Search engines penalize sites without own content, but there is a delay which you can use.
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About The Author
Dmitry Dowzhenko is an expert webmaster, writer and articles editor of hosting reviews site http://infite.com where he has special expertise to explain the technical facts in easy to understand manner.
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August 2nd, 2006
SEO - Web Directories in Black and White
by: Decebal (Dudi) Scraba
Beside website optimization, rich content and frequent site updates, link popularity is a pillar of SEO and website promotion. This is a fact and we’ll not waste time on this topic.
Beside exchanging links, providing free content for links (see my “WAF for free, quality inbound links” article) and waiting for crawlers / editors to discover and index / promote your site, getting listed in topic directories is a pillar of link popularity building.
Free or paid web directories - the choice is yours
Let’s focus on the directories you should choose in order to get the best results out of your site submission. I will not point here names of the best web directories, but I will make a list or two of what you should check before submitting your site to a directory. When you start a directory submission campaign, keep in mind that 20 quality “votes” (read “links pointing to your site”) from value directories will weight more than 200 junk ones - speaking in terms of traffic and ranking.
Of course, depending on the budget, you will be the one to decide if you go for free or paid directories, but, whichever you choose, pay attention to directories’ “White” characteristics (the ones you will benefit from) as well as to their “Black” characteristics (those that do you no good). Enough talking, let’s dig in!
“White” characteristics of a web directory:
1. A decent Google Page Rank (PR). Use Google Toolbar(TM) to check the PR of the web directory’s category page which best matches your site’s profile. Consider as decent a PR over 3.
2. Good link popularity. Use Google to determine how many other sites (domains) link to the directory you choose. Anything over 50 is OK for the start.
3. Topic-oriented content. It is best for your site’s listing to be placed on a page having topic-oriented content. Avoid placing your link, for example on the SEO category page which holds also text links to “dating”, “used cars dealers”, “sewing” or other non-related-to-you categories / sections of the directory.
4. SEO-friendly structure and content. There are several characteristics which make a directory SEO-friendly and I will list the most important ones, from my point of view:
- a clean and simple design: no excessive Flash animations, fancy Java design scripts, no frames, not to many columns
- a short loading time of the category page
- a coherent and SEO-friendly manner of displaying the listed sites: a descriptive title (which should be also the anchor text for the link to the listed site) and a short description that makes sense for each site
- no more than 80 - 100 links on the category page and I mean the TOTAL number: navigation + outbound links!
“Black” characteristics of a web directory:
1. Crowded categories. There is no good for you to be placed on page 10 of the chosen category.
2. Indirect links to listed sites. If you move your mouse over a listed link (without clicking) and you see in the bottom bar of your web browser anything else than a clean and simple URL, you are dealing most likely with a redirected link. This doesn’t add value to your site from the search engines point of view.
3. Link to a “details” page. Sometimes, clicking on the listing takes you to another directory’s page displaying “detailed” information about the listing, including the link to the listed web site. This “details” page has a zero PR and will not bring benefits to the listed site.
4. “nofollow” atribute. Right-click somewhere on the chosen category page, select “View source” from the menu that appears and search for: rel=”nofollow”. If you find this atribute in the hyperlinks of the listed sites, be aware! A link to your web site with “nofollow” atribute may only bring traffic to your site, but the search engines will not “read” this as a vote. The “nofollow” issue should be “Grey” on my scale, but I have listed it in the “Black” section of my article.
These would be, in my opinion, the “Black” and “White” aspects of the web directories from the SEO point of view. If you find a directory that it worths to submit to, just before clicking the “Add URL” button, read carefully it’s “terms and conditions” as well as “submission guidelines” sections.
Read more (on www.ewolwe.com) to learn more and good luck to you all!
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About The Author
Decebal (Dudi) Scraba - Graphic Designer, website SEO optimization specialist and owner of www.ewolwe.com - a source of web resources
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August 2nd, 2006
Did someone tell you you can make money easily with Google Adsense? Did they tell you that to put up a site and people will click on the ads and you can make hundreds of dollars per day?
Maybe that’s true, for them, because they have a system to make this happen. They may have omitted how to make and Adsense site successful. In this article I will highlight the most important points to make your site successful.
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August 2nd, 2006
Thinking about purchasing that premium SEO software that will hyper-optimize a website in under 2 minutes and 2 seconds?
Ask the following question first: What do I know about SEO?
If the answer is “nothing”, then don’t buy it.
Marketers are banking on the lack of knowledge among consumers. It is no different whether it is the SEO world or the automobile world or the cell phone world. The best search engine optimization tip I can provide is this: educate yourself.
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August 2nd, 2006
If you’re looking for an SEO firm, we recommend that you weigh 10 factors that can save you trouble down the road.
1. Check out their experience.
You shouldn’t have to try hard to find samples of their clients or their SEO performance on individual websites. How competitive are their search terms that are ranking well on Google? Are the search terms that are ranking well difficult terms to position–one, two and three word phrases, or are they easy terms to position because no one else is using them at all–six, seven and eight word terms?
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August 2nd, 2006
15 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Blog
by: David Riewe
There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:
1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by http://TNL.net
2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.
3.) Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.
4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.
5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.
6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.
7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?
8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.
9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”
10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.
11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.
12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.
13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.
14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.
15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.
Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!
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About The Author
David Riewe - Internet Marketer and Publisher - Try his FREE Ezine “The Ultimate Marketing Tips” that that will Make Your Business An Outstanding Success! http://www.riewe.com.
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August 2nd, 2006
How To REALLY Use Google Part Three
by: Andrew Wroblewski
In Part One, we covered the basics of searching on Google.com and in Part Two we moved into more advanced search techniques. In today’s third installment we will peer into some ways of using Google you may have never thought of or knew existed.
DATE RANGES: You may limit your search to an exact date of a “range” of dates that a page was indexed by Google. To use Google’s “daterange” function, you will need to express your dates in “Julian” dates. This date format is express as an integer. To convert a common date into Julian format go to: http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm
As an example, if I wanted to find pages (about a certain topic) indexed by Google during the month of May 2003, I would type in:
“spyware removal” daterange: 2452774-2452803
TYPES OF FILES: You can limit your Google search results to specific files ending in a particular extension (.doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf etc…)
To find a file on the topic “spyware remover” in Adobe (.pdf) format you would type in: “spyware remover” filetype:pdf
You can exclude certain types of files from your search by doing a “negative” search and placing a “minus” ( - ) sign in front of the “filetype:”
ANCHOR TEXT SEARCHES: Allow you to just search the “anchor” text in web page link anchors. Link anchors are the words that appear between: anti-spyware software In this case it’s the phrase Anti-Spyware Software
PLAIN TEXT SEARCHES: By using Google’s “intext” search capabilities, you can search JUST the body text of web pages and not any links, urls or titles, just the body. Simply type:
intext:”spyware remover”
CACHE SEARCHING: This form of searching will only search for results on sites that are stored in Google’s “cache’ or memory. This sometimes can give you older versions of sites. Example:
cache: spyware.pcwash.com
LINK SEARCHES: Want to know how many and what sites have links back to your site? Just search for your domain preceded by “link:”
link: spyware.pcwash.com
INFO SEARCHING: Find out what information Google has stored about a particular web page or site by searching:
info: spyware.pcwash.com
GOOGLE’S PHONEBOOK: Yes, Google has a phenomenal phone book database allowing you to search for both residential and business phone numbers. You may use the following search orders:
FN or FI (first name or first initial), LN (last name), city
FN (FI), LN, state
FN (FI), LN, area code
FN (FI), LN, zip code
phone # including area code (ex: 111-222-3333)
LN, city, state
LN, zip code
To find the phone number of the Whitehouse you would search:
phonebook: whitehouse washington dc
To find the phone number of the John Smith in Anytown, NY you could search:
phonebook: john smith ny
or
phonebook: smith anytown ny
or
phonebook: j smith ny
STOCK SEARCHING: Google can generate results on just about any stock because they use the stock information from the Yahoo! finance pages. For example:
stocks: ebay
Phew! Now, this list isn’t even exhaustive, but it will give 99.99% of you enough information and insight to start REALLY tapping into the top ranked search engine in the world: Google.com. Go have some fun!
Did you miss one of the previous search articles? Just go to: http://spyware.pcwash.com/articles_1.html
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About The Author
Andrew Wroblewski
When not on his soapbox, Andrew Wroblewski is doing battle with the thousands of spyware programs that can affect you via his ant-spyware and spyware removal website: http://spyware.pcwash.com where you can get a free spyware scan of your computer system.
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August 2nd, 2006
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