SEO techniques for the home enthusiast

What Attracts People To Your Site?

2006-10-24T02:44:00.000-07:00

For eCommerce sites that sell physical goods such as poker chips, sofas and rugs, most of your traffic will come from visitors searching for your products by name or type, such as “WPT poker chips” or “persian rug”. For those of you (myself included) who sell intangible items (such as software or eBooks), where does most of your traffic come from?

I’m sure you get some traffic from search engines, but the majority of people will arrive at your site looking for free information, not your product. Consider this portion of text from SiteSell’s web site (http://ctpm.sitesell.com):

Let’s review C=>T=>P=>M, the proven way to build any business online.

Content Web users search for information, for solutions. They are not looking for you - they don’t know you (yet!). They seek what you know. Give it to them. Convert your knowledge into in-demand Content. To succeed online, start where they start - at “the search.”

Traffic Your topical content ranks high at the Search Engines (ex., Google, Yahoo!, MSN), attracting free, targeted (i.e., interested), open-to-you visitors. Basically, these future customers “meet you” at your site. These visitors are known as “Traffic.”

PREsell Complete strangers develop trust and confidence in you. Why? You “PREsell” by OVERdelivering what they seek… relevant, original, information. Deliver it in your own voice, in your own way. Go beyond merely instilling confidence… your visitors will like you. (Immediate “selling” on Web sites is ineffective unless you have a brand like Amazon.)

Monetize Convert warm, willing-to-buy (”PREsold”) visitors into income. Called “Monetizing,” this is the easy part. But “M” cannot happen if you fail to first execute C=>T=>P. This is where 99% of small businesses fail.

So in summary, people come to your site looking first for information, and once you’ve earned their trust by providing them with free articles that they find useful they will they begin looking at your product and seriously consider purchasing it.

If this sounds strange to you, consider how you look for information online. I was recently after information on building a set of stairs, so I search for “build a set of stairs” on Google. I ended up at a builder’s web site (AskTheBuilder.com) that contained hundreds of articles on everything you could possibly want to build out of wood. Only after reading about 5 of his free articles did I stumble across his paid eBook that promised I could build a set of stairs in a weekend.

Because he had already earned my trust from his free articles, I decided to buy his eBook for a few dollars and spent that weekend building the set of stairs.

If you aren’t providing your visitors with a way to gain your trust, you could be hurting your web sites conversion rate. Now is the best time to start writing articles, start a useful blog or even start a newsletter relating to topics that people might search for to find your site.

Keywords in Image Tag Alt and Title Attributes

2006-08-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Search engines do index content found in image alt and title attributes—and placing keywords within the image tag can have a small positive impact on rankings. These attributes were designed to make images accessible to the vision impaired and to people who surf the web with image loading turned off in their browsers—and that's how these attributes should be used. Content placed in image alt and title attributes should be descriptive and concise. Imagine a blind person is viewing your site using a screen reader. You should be asking yourself; What is the most effective way to describe that image to them? That's what you should include in the alt and title attributes, while still making sure the description contains one or more of your targeted keywords. This is particularly important if the image is also a link. That's because alt attribute functions as the anchor text for that link. Link anchor text is a critical part of search engine ranking, so be sure your image links make smart use of the alt attribute. Although the title attribute is less important than the alt attribute, it can still have a very small positive effect on rankings. The title attribute is used to add descriptive text to your html tags. And, even though most tags don't need descriptive text, it can still be an effective way to add some additional search-engine-friendly information to your links and images. From web standards, accessibility, and usability specialist 456 Berea Street One good use of the title attribute is to add descriptive text to links, especially if the link text itself doesn't clearly describe the linkâ€™s destination. This way you can help visitors know where the link will take them, possibly saving them from loading a page only to find out it wasn't anything they're interested in. Another potential use is to provide additional information for an image, like maybe a date or other information that is likely not essential. It's important not to stuff these attributes full of repeated keywords. While we have seen sites achieve high rankings this way, it's a form of easily detected spam. Sooner or later sites that engage in this practice are detected and penalized. So, use your keywords in a way that appears natural to users (both sighted and vision-impaired) and you'll always be fine. Unnaturally forcing an excessive number of keywords into your pages can result in a ranking penalty. If it makes sense to do so, images can also be named using your keywords (i.e. keyword.gif). Combined with alt and title attributes, this can also help these images to rank in a search engine's image search. In the BIG picture, alt and title attributes are not critical ranking factors—but they do play an important role for image link anchor text and, used judiciously, are useful for placing keywords on your webpages. Also note that if the image is purely decorative, such as a bullet or spacer, then it's a good idea to include these tags but to leave them empty. This is done by placing a blank space between the quotation marks; as in alt=" ". Bear in mind however that this practice has no affect on ranking, it just makes your site more usable to the vision-impaired and conforms better to HTML validation guidelines.

Keywords in Your Page's Content

2006-08-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

Ranking-wise, search engines tend to pay attention to keywords found within certain tags. These include bold, italics, and bullet (or list) tags. Just remember, if you're bolding, italicizing and bulleting everything, that's the same as emphasizing nothing—because nothing stands out for the rest of the page. So, choose the keywords you want to emphasize carefully. It's important to write naturally as you seamlessly weave your keywords throughout your page content. Don't become so obsessed with keywords density and placement that you make your pages look like they're meant to be read by robots. Remember that writing in a more natural way will also lead to using more variations in your keywords, such as plurals and synonyms, as well as placing your keywords near the type of modifier terms and topically-related terms that people are likely to search for. For example, you might want to target the keywords Palm Springs Timeshare. Writing naturally, you might say something like "Are you looking to buy an affordable Palm Springs Timeshare for your winter vacation?" Since people are known to search in a rather haphazard way, this approach could help you rank for potentially valuable (and less competitive) terms like affordable Palm Springs Timeshare or Palm Springs Timeshare winter. Such modifications to your primary keyword terms often convert better to sales. And they are easier to rank well for than your primary keywords. Many times the best way to discover them is to simply write naturally. In the recent years we've downplayed keyword density because people were becoming overly focused on it. But the fact is that keyword density is still important—just not so much as it once was. Often, people want to know, "What is the exact number of times I should repeat my keywords in order to get high rankings?" The fact is, there isn't an exact number. But you can easily get an idea of the keyword density that a high-ranking competitor is using within your keyword topic with a tool like Keyword Density Analyzer (KDA). We use this tool quite often just to get a ball-park figure when analyzing our competition—especially when optimizing for Yahoo. KDA is actually most valuable for doing keyword density analysis on your competition to see which keywords show up on their pages most often. This can help you learn;

which keywords your competitors are targeting, and
help discover potentially valuable keywords you may have overlooked.

Combined with WordTracker, we find KDA to be an invaluable tool for doing keyword research. We also use KDA to find terms related to our primary keywords. Many search engines (including Google) use a technology called latent semantic indexing to group keywords into related families. We won't go into the details here, but the important point is that by also including keywords related to your primary keywords, you help make your pages seem more relevant for those primary keywords. So how do you hunt down those related keywords? Google Sets is a great tool for this purpose. It gives you a pretty accurate idea of what keywords Google judges to be related to your main keywords. Not all keywords produce great results, but many do. Another useful option is Google's synonym search. This search requires that you precede each keywords with a tilde (~). Use Google's negative keyword filter to remove the actual keyword itself, so you'll just get synonyms. For example, ~guitar -guitar. This can turn up some synonyms, but works poorly for multi-word phrases. Google Sets is a much easier approach.

Keywords in Headers

2006-08-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

Placing keywords in H1 (and to a lesser degree H2 and H3 tags) is an effective way to increase rankings. All search engines respond to this on-page strategy although the effect is more pronounced in Yahoo given their greater focus on on-page factors. Make sure the indexing spiders are finding your keywords in your headers, but also that they make sense to your human page visitors. Don't repeat them in abnormal ways just to increase keyword density. Bear in mind there's no magic keyword density percentage that applies to every page or every keyword. As already mentioned, formulas like this vary constantly. What matters most is that your keywords are found in your headers—and don't stress over the number of times you repeat them. Ranking-wise, we know that H1 tags are the most effective. But, they'll probably make your headers look too big. That's where the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to modify the size of text found within H1 tags are safe and effective. CSS gives you the best of both worlds—a header tag that Google likes as well as a font size that tastefully appeals to people. The best approach is to use a single H1 tag featuring your primary keywords near the top of your page, then have a keyword-rich H2 subheading for each paragraph or section of paragraphs on your page. Not only does this reinforce your keywords in the eyes of the search engines, but it makes it easier for people to quickly scan your pages and pick out the main ideas while reading.

Meta Tags

2006-08-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

As we've covered many times, the description meta tag is the most useful. (And, the NOODP tag is now useful for reasons that we discuss in this month's updates section.) All others are basically useless in terms of having any effect on search results or link descriptions. The point to remember is that the description meta tag provides your webpage's description on the search engine results page (SERP). Therefore it's important to use it to provide a compelling description that motivates people to click your link within the search results. This factor is far more important than any ranking boost that keywords placed within this meta tag may or may not provide. By the way, this is another topic that we covered in detail in our report How to get Google, Yahoo, and MSN to Title and Describe Your Webpages the way YOU want them to! And, as is the case with your title tag, every page on your site should have a unique meta description tag for the search engines to use as they describe your webpage's link. The only other meta tag that has any potential influence on rankings is the meta keywords tag—but it has little, if any, effect. In general, it can be entirely ignored even though Yahoo recommends the meta keywords tag in their webmaster guidelines. Here's what they say... Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords for every page. Source: Yahoo Ranking Guidelines The meta keywords tag is one of those page elements that's unlikely to help your pages much, if at all, but it's not going to hurt. If you have the time, there's no reason not to add a few of your page's most important keywords to your meta keywords tag, separated by commas. Include common misspellings as well. Just don't go overboard and repeat keywords multiple times (i.e., keyword stuffing) or it could backfire and get your page penalized. And be aware that your competition might fish around in your meta keywords tag to get a look at where you're focusing your optimization efforts.

Title Tags

2006-08-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

Title tags are the most important ranking factor on your page. It's critical to get them right. Proper title tag strategy is comprised of three factors:

Prominence. The closer your keywords are to the beginning of the title tag, the better.
Proximity. Your keywords should be grouped together, in the exact order that you anticipate someone will enter them into a search.
Density. Repeating your keyword in some variation later in the title tag will often lead to improved rankings. But don't overdo it by keyword stuffing your title tag. Stick to no more than one repetition.

tag will appear as the link in the search results, it's also what motivates people to click your link—or not. That means you must strike that delicate balance between what search engines like and what people like. Good SEOs are always experimenting with their title tags. They know it's fruitless to create a keyword-rich title tag that gets high rankings if it fails to motivate people to click the listing. So, it's a constant balancing act in search of the perfect blend that appeals to both.Since your webpage's We've seen many cases where a title tag featuring a well-written sales message ranks lower, yet garners significant traffic because more people click on it. The best title tags are both keyword-rich and compelling to human readers. Regardless, when starting out, it's better to lean more toward keyword-rich, since no one will click on your sales-oriented title if they can't find you in the first place. Title tags are such an important part of optimizing your web pages that we've devoted an article section and one special report to them over the past six months. For instance, check out this Title Fix strategy; Four Simple Strategies to Increase Rankings Today! ...and see this special report: The 7 Essential Title Tag Strategies of High Ranking WebPages in 2006 tag tips to remember are:Perhaps the most important

Every page should have a unique title
tags should utilize the specific keywords you want that page to rank for.
Each page on your site is a potential entrance for customers and should be designed to rank for its own keywords.
Target 1 or 2 primary keyword phrases per page as well as a smaller batch of 2 or 3 secondary keyword phrases.
Your primary keyword phrase(s) should appear in your title tag

A-Z of Blog Advertising Programs

2006-06-12T03:32:00.000-07:00

So, without further ado, here's the list:

AdBrite

Description: Allows publishers to sell text ads on their sites
About page

AdEngage

Description: Allows you to sell text ads on your blog.
About page

AdGenta

Description: A kind of manual Adsense
About page
Blog - Feed

Adsense

Description: The ubiquitous contextual ad program from Google
About page
Blog - Feed

Affiliate Sensor

Description: Contextual affiliate text links
Warning: Snake oil seller one page sales letter website with spammy looking text links in the footer. Does not inspire confidence.

All Feeds

Description: Varied offerings from contextual ads to search ads and affiliate links
About page

Banner Boxes

Description: Contextual looking Adsense like ads
About page

BidClix

Description: Allows publishers to sell text ads on a PPC basis
About page

BidVertiser

Description: Adsense looking ads where advertisers bid for placement by site
About page

Blog Ads

Description: Banners in all shapes and sizes where publishers join groups of similar publishers. Blog specific.
About page
Blog - Feed

CB Pro Sense

Description: Provides auto generation of ClickBank affiliate links
Warning: Snake oil sale one page sales letter with lot's of exclamation marks and outrageous promises of instant wealth.

Click Ads Direct

Description: Unclear what the exact model is, but they appear to be pitching the exclusivity angle
About page

Chitika eMiniMalls

Description: Contextually served interactive ads filled by Shopping.com and others. Allows readers to find reviews and more info on products aswell as purchase
About page
Blog - Feed

Clicksor

Description: Contextual network matching to affiliate programs
Warning: These guys do pop-up/unders
About page

Context Web

Description: Adsense look-a-like contextual ads
About page

Crisp Ads

Description: Blog ad network where publishers can join the "catalogue" and have advertisers be able to browse their blog then buy ads, or earn on PPC from showing text ads
About page
Amusingly, this blog network doesn't appear to have a blog

Expo Active

Description: Lord knows, there's no way to tell without signing up
Warning: Website looks like it was thrown together in about 10mins. Very worrying.
About page

Fast Click

Description: Variety of different formats including regular text ads
About page

Feedburner

Description: Various kinds of banners and text ads for RSS feeds
About page
Blog - Feed

Feedster

Description: Similar offerings to Feedburner, text ads and banners in feeds
About page
Blog - Feed

Federated Media

Description: John Battelle's ad network for blogs. Banner ads in various sizes.
About page
Blog - Feed

Info Grabber

Description: Autogenerated contextual links to affilate sites advertising with Commission Junction / Share A Sale
About page

IntelliTXT

Description: Links words in the body of your text contextually to advertisers
About page

Kanoodle BrightAds

Description: Contextual Adsense like ads
About page

Kontera

Description: Very similar to IntelliTXT
About page

Mirago Context Stream

Description: Mirago is a third tier PPC engine, it can deliver contextual PPC results into content
About page

Nixxie

Description: UK specific IntelliTXT like product
About page

Pheedo

Description: Provide "tools" to integrate ads into regular and feed content
About page
Blog - Feed

Quigo AdSonar

Description: Private label PPC bidding for text ads on your site
Note: Must have 1M+ page views a month to join
About page

Revenue Pilot

Description: Provides a PPC Search solution for sites. Possibly a little too complex for most busy bloggers to be bothered with.
About page

Search Feed

Description: Search and content PPC text ad integration. Like Revenue Pilot, a little complex
About page

Target Point

Description: Contextual affiliate text ads payed out on a CPC basis
About page

Veoda

Description: Auto generated PPC text links provided by other third tier PPC engines
About page

MFA web sites grow

2006-06-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Let the number of MFA web sites grow, let Google be infected until it will train its immune system. Here is a "Developing Made for AdSense Web Sites for Dummies" tutorial.

It took us 65 minutes to do it (we recorded each step with a stop-watch).

Find an expensive and popular keyword. We used TheDowser Niche Database. It took us 1 minute.
Register a junk domain like "top4websites.com" or "insurancetop4.com". We haven't ordered any domain specifically for this purpose, but used one of our experimental domains (totally unrelated to the main theme of MFA web site).
Extract search results from Google or any other search engine. It took us 5 minutes.
Create HTML page with these search results. It took us 7 minutes.
Insert Google AdSense code in the way that search results aren't visible without scrolling. It took us 10 minutes.
Upload html file to your web site. It took us 2 minutes.
Create a new Google AdWords campaign for this keyword by copying any other MFA campaign. It took us 10 minutes.
Wait for 15 minutes until you will see first clicks from Google AdWords, wait for another 15 minutes until you will see new clicks on Google AdSense.

We started to earn $1/day after a single hour of work. $1/day is $33/month, spend 333 days to earn $10,000/month. It's that easy.

This tutorial will definitely increase the number of MFA web sites as well as our previous research on Digg.com attention grabbing words increased the number of stories with "amazing", "digg", "revealed" words. When the number of MFA web sites will reach the critical mass, Google will turn on its immune system.

Google's link Trust Algorythims

2006-06-02T03:47:00.000-07:00

..algorithms had very low trust in the inlinks or the outlinks of that site. Examples that might cause that include excessive reciprocal links, linking to spammy neighborhoods on the web, or link buying/selling.

Some Interesting Fire Fox Tools

2006-06-02T03:41:00.000-07:00

Advertising : I want to ...

block ads on webpages : Adblock
block ads on webpages : Adblock Plus
automatically update adblocker filters : Adblock Filterset.G Updater
block Flash ads/content : Flashblock
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Archive/History : I want to ...

create a log of browsing history : Slogger
see sites visited today/yesterday/2 days ago/etc : History Menu
see thumbnails of pages in session history : Reveal
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Blogging : I want to ...

blog about the current page : Performancing for Firefox
blog to Blogger service : BlogThis
blog to LiveJournal/etc : Deepest Sender
comment about the blog page : coComment
know when blog content is under Creative Commons license : mozCC
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Bookmarking : I want to ...

add a bookmark-here link in the bookmarks tree : Add Bookmark Here
bookmark at del.icio.us : Bookmark with Del.icio.us
bookmark at furl.net : Furl Tools
bypass/customize the add-bookmark dialog : OpenBook
edit bookmarks easily : Flat Bookmark Editing
search the bookmarks : Locate in Bookmark Folders
store and sync bookmarks online : Chipmark
store and sync bookmarks online : Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
sync del.icio.us and Firefox bookmarks : Foxylicious
sync Firefox bookmarks on different computers : Bookmarks Synchronizer
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Chat : I want to ...

chat on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) : ChatZilla
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Clips/Notes/Scrapbook : I want to ...

save a webpage : ScrapBook
save clips from web pages : Clipmarks
write a note about a webpage : QuickNote
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Customizing/Editing Website Display : I want to ...

add/remove/change some features for sites : Aardvark
add/remove/change some features for sites : GreaseMonkey
customize a page and save as GreaseMonkey script : platypus
manage user styles for sites : Stylish
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Discover : I want to ...

discover new sites being recommended by others : StumbleUpon
see useful sites for pages geographically marked with ICBM/geo.position tags : GeoURL
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Downloading/Files/FTP : I want to ...

automatically save downloads to different directories : Download Sort
download all the links on a page (filter by type) : DownThemAll!
download/upload files using ftp : FireFTP
manage file downloads : FlashGot
open the download manager in another tab : Download Manager Tweak
see download speed in a statusbar : Download Statusbar
stop opening blank windows for downloads : Disable Targets For Downloads
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Email/Gmail/Webmail : I want to ...

be notified when new mail arrives at Gmail account : Gmail Notifier
email the entire webpage : Amazing webpage emailer
insert custom signature into emails : Signature
insert smiley icons in messages : Smiley Xtra
manage multiple Gmail accounts : Gmail Manager
treat plain text email address as link : text/plain
use different Gmail accounts in different tabs : CookiePie
use disposable email addresses : Create disposable email addresses
use Gmail for space : Gmail Space
use Yahoo Mail with AJAX support : AJAX Yahoo! Mail
use webmail when mailto: link is clicked : WebMailCompose
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Financial/Stocks : I want to ...

see prices in different currencies : ViewMyCurrency
see stock prices in a ticker : StockTicker
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Google : I want to ...

add more links to Google search; remove ads : CustomizeGoogle
display my Adsense earnings : Adsense Notifier
enhance Google search results with more links : CustomizeGoogle
search Google and use other Google services : Google Toolbar for Firefox
view an unavailable page via Google archive : Cacheout!
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Internet Explorer/Other Browsers : I want to ...

view an Internet-Explorer-only webpage in Firefox : IE Tab
view the same page in Firefox when it is open in Internet Explorer : FirefoxView
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Images/Graphics/Maps/Video : I want to ...

click on Google images thumbnail to get full image : Google Images Re-Linker
map an address; get directions : Map+
save background/un-save-able images on various sites : Backgroundimage Saver
save all the images/media on a page : Magpie
show ALT attribute in a popup bubble : Popup ALT Attribute
zoom in/out on an image : Image Zoom
save video of a URL in clipboard : Clipboard-Save-As
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Links : I want to ...

copy the anchor text of a link : Copy Link Name
copy the anchor text of a link : Copy Link Text(CoLT)
drag a link or picture and open it in a new tab : SuperDrag&Go
double click on plain text url to open it : Text Link
download/open all/selected links on a page : Linky
number the links and use the keyboard to navigate : numberedlinks
see small icons to show different link types (secured, pdf etc) : TargetAlert
select and open multiple links in one action : openselectedlinks
treat a plain text url as a link : Fetch Text URL
treat a plain text url as a link : Linkification
wrap long links that require side scroll : MR Tech Link Wrapper
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Managing Extensions : I want to ...

backup instaled extensions : Firefox Extension Backup Extension
edit extensions options from Tools menu : Options Menu
install and manage extensions locally : MR Tech Local Install
list installed extensions and themes : InfoLister
list installed extensions and themes : ListZilla
restart Firefox with one click : Restart Firefox
see updates available for extensions : Update Notifier
sort the extensions list : Slim Extension List
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Mouse : I want to ...

use mouse gestures (auto/history/tab scrollers etc) : All-in-One Gestures
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Music : I want to ...

control iTunes using Firefox : FoxyTunes
launch windows media player for embedded video : MediaPlayerConnectivity
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

PDF : I want to ...

open PDF files in a new tab : PDF Download
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Passwords : I want to ...

bypass mandatory registration of username and password for sites : BugMeNot
create new different passwords for different sites : PasswordMaker
remember my username and passwords on sites : Always Remember Password
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Performance/Speed/Tuning : I want to ...

edit userChrome.css/userContent.css/user.js : chromEdit
edit/delete/move the menu items : Menu Editor
minimize Firefox to system tray : MinimizeToTray
see page loading progress bar : Fission
see page loading statistics in a statusbar : Extended Statusbar
make the stop and reload button act as one button : Stop-or-Reload Button
speed up Firefox : Fasterfox
use colorful menu icons : CuteMenus - Crystal SVG
use colorful menu icons : CuteMenus2
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Print : I want to ...

remove unwanted text/image block before printing a page : Nuke Anything Enhanced
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Privacy : I want to ...

add/edit cookies : Add N Edit Cookies
block phishing sites : NetcraftToolbar
clear everything after the browsing session : X (Paranoia) Mod 0.6.5
clear the cache with one click on the toolbar : Clear Cache Button
see where form information is being submitted : FormFox
surf the web without leaving a trace in my computer : Stealther
use multiple proxy sites to surf the web : SwitchProxy Tool
use multiple proxy sites to surf the web : xyzproxy
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Productivity : I want to ...

add a powerful multi-functional preference bar : PrefBar
add bookmarks to history to make auto-complete URL : AutoMarks
add more search engines to Firefox search box : Mycroft
automatically reload a page every few seconds : Reload Every
automatically show/close the sidebar with mouse motion : Optimoz Tweaks
create a tiny url : TinyUrl Creator
disable the install default countdown delay : MR Tech Disable XPI Install Delay
drag a link to a text area : DragToScroll
enhance search engine results with more information : BetterSearch
navigate up one folder level on a site : Uppity
open links/mailto with external applications : Launchy
remove content from pages permanently : Remove It Permanently
restore all open pages after a crash : Crash Recovery
restore the browser exactly as closed last time : SessionSaver
see all open tabs together on screen : Firefox Showcase
see date and day in the status bar : Statusbar Clock
see more search result/image entries on pages : repagination
smoothly scroll up/down the page : SmoothWheel
switch between multiple sidebard : All-In-One Sidebar
track time spent browsing / on a project : TimeTracker
use a calendar : Mozilla Calendar
use a sidebar to control multiple functions : All-in-One Sidebar
use keyboard to go to next page/previous page : NextPlease!
use the keyboard for more functions : mozless
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

RSS/Feeds/Livemarks : I want to ...

Add RSS feeds to web-based/desktop readers or reader extensions : LiveLines
read RSS feeds : Sage
read RSS feeds : Wizz RSS News Reader
reload all LiveMarks : Reliby
scroll LiveMarks feeds in a tickler : RSS Ticker
see newsfeeds/blogs raw xml with styles : Feedview
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Search : I want to ...

add search engines to context menu : ConQuery
automatically resize the search box for longer terms : Searchbar Autosizer
change the order of search engines : Search Engine Ordering
choose from a list of search engines : Groowe Search Toolbar
choose from a list of search engines : Hyperwords
delete a search plugin : SearchPluginHacks
preview thumbnails of search results in Google/Yahoo/etc : Cooliris Previews
preview thumbnails of search results in Google/Yahoo/etc : GooglePreview
search 1-25 custom chosen sites : Roll your Own Search for Firefox
search via contextmenu thru customized bookmark keywords : SmartSearch
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Search Engine Optimization : I want to ...

see Alexa information, search engine backlinks for a page : SearchStatus
see Google Pagerank in statusbar : Google Pagerank Status
see information about the site : About This Site
see search engine link counts and ranks for the page : SEO Links
see search engine backlinks, analyze links, keyword density etc : SEOpen
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Security : I want to ...

allow javascript/java/plugins/etc only on trusted sites : NoScript
control more javascript options : JavaScript Options
see cookie information on page dialog : View Cookies
manage cookies : CookieCuller
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Tabs : I want to ...

add a close button on each tab : Tab X
change colors for different tabs : Colorful Tabs
duplicate a tab : Duplicate Tab
manage tabs (add/move/etc) : Tabbrowser Preferences
manage tabs (multiple links/duplicate/close same domain/etc ) : Tab Mix Plus
marks some tabs as permanent : PermaTabs
move to next/previous tab via keyboard : SwiftTabs
toggle the tab bar via chosen key : HideTabBar
use multiple tab rows : superT
undo/reopen the tab I just closed : Undoclosetab
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Text (Copy/Cut/Paste/Spell/Translate) : I want to ...

automatically copy the selected text to clipboard : AutoCopy
copy plain text (without formatting/html) : Copy Plain Text
fill web forms with name/address/email etc : Autofill
fill web forms with name/address/email etc : InFormEnter
find the meaning of selected word in a dictionary : DictionarySearch
find the meaning of selected word in a dictionary : Dictionary Tooltip
find the meaning of selected word from Google definitions : Inline Google Definitions
find the selected word with search plugins : Context Search
highlight a paragraph and navigate with keys : Paragrasp
highlight every instance of a word/phrase on the page : Context Highlight
increase/decrease/back-to-normal text size of the page : Text size toolbar
paste a url and load the page in one step : Paste and Go
resize text areas in forums : Resizeable Textarea
see all tabs in one window : Viamatic foXpose
spell check text in form fields : SpellBound
translate selected text using google translation service : gTranslate
write in WYSIWYG mode in a text area : Xinha Here!
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Weather : I want to ...

see weather information : ForecastFox
see weather information (+ radar images) : Forecastfox Enhanced
Back to Top of the Page
Suggestions/Corrections : Comment in blog : wordpress : I want a Firefox Extension to ...

Web Development : I want to ...

change user agent for certain sites : User Agent Switcher
find the color code of a given pixel : ColorZilla
capture screenshots : ScreenGrab!
capture screenshots : Pearl Crescent Page Saver
check the validity of links on a page : LinkChecker
copy and format selected text/title/url : Copy URL+
debug ajax/css/html/javascript : FireBug
debug javascript : JavaScript Debugger
download an entire website : SpiderZilla
edit CSS stylesheet : EditCSS
find whois information of the site : domainFinder
inspect the DOM of HTML, XUL, and XML pages : DOM Inspector
inspect the selected element with DOM Inspector : InspectThis
measure pixel width with a ruler : MeasureIt
modify http/https headers and post parameters : Tamper Data
preview the Adsense ads that might be shown on a page : Adsense Preview
run automated tests on a site : TestGen4Web
see anchors on the page : Show Anchors
see color contrast page information : Colour Contrast Analyser
see cookie information for a page : View Cookies
see current page's heading structure in a sidebar : Document Map
see errors categorizxed by type : Console2
see GET and POST parmeters of the page : UrlParams
see how a page will look on mobile screen : Small Screen Rendering XPI
see http headers of a page : Header Monitor
see IP address of the site : ShowIP
see web development references in a sidebar : DevBoi
see Xpath information : XPather
simulate WAP browsing by viewing WML : wmlbrowser
test nightly versions of Firefox : Nightly Tester Tools
validate html : HTML Validator
view css styles; view html in another app; validate css/htmlWeb Developer
view page html source constructs directly on the page : X-Ray
view rendered source : View Source Chart
view source with an externall app : ViewSourceWith
write lorem ipsum content for test page : LoremIpsum Content Generator

Free non reciprocal link building

2006-05-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

A Few Ways to Build Links to Your Website at a Rapid Pace

1. Post in numerous forums with a link in your signature that points to your website. Search engines will pick up on these links and count them towards your inbound link count. 2. Write articles and submit them to article directories. This will not only allow you to increase your number of inbound links but it will also allow you to drive targeted visitors to your website. 3. Send out press releases. Sending out press releases increases inbound links and can also lead to articles or others types of publicity if the media is interested in your story. 4. Submit to free link directories. The tips above can go a long way towards increasing the number of links pointing to your website. And if your hat is black, and you have a few high PR sites in your back pocket. http://www.x-href.com & http://www.linkexchangeexperts.com http://www.pyramidlinking.com Mazeltov!

PR Prowler Review

2006-05-19T04:33:00.000-07:00

PR Prowler has definitely found it's place in the hearts of the Beanstalk staff, especially among those doing link-building. This tool essentially searches the Internet for high quality relevant links and provides you with an easy-to-use interface to tell it what kind and how many links you'd like it to seek out for you.

What Does PR Prowler Do?

Essentially you enter into PR Prowler your main keyword phrase(s), the minimum PageRank you are looking for in link exchange partners, and the number of link partners you would like it to seek out for you. Then you walk away, make yourself some coffee and relax for a while while it works on finding you your link partners.

Once it's completed it's run you simply visit the sites it provides in it's results and make the request for a link exchange.

How Do I Use It?

As a picture is worth a thousand words here are some screenshots of PR Prowler in actions:

This is the screen you will start at. If it looks simple there's a reason - it is. When we first "trained" someone on it's use it took approximately 3 minutes.

The first thing you'll do is enter the keyword phrases you're targeting. I took this image off the PR Prowler website. When we're using this tool generally I would recommend adding the words "add url" or "partners" to the phrases to insure that you'll only get results from sites that will exchange links with you.

Now all that's left to do is click "OK" and PR Prowler will find you quality potential link partners with good PageRanks. You can export the results to either HTML or Excel format and get started on your link building.

This SEO tools has become an invaluable part of our link building campaigns. With it we can begin to see much better results in far less time.

PR Prowler costs $97 from TopNet Solutions. The price might seem a tad high but the time it saved and the increased speed in attaining higher search engine positioning more than paid for the software in the very first website promotion we used it on. We would recommend it for SEOs and for website owners alike.

Their Guarantee

I rarely purchase software that doesn't come with either a free trial or a guarantee. In the case of PR Prowler, it comes with a 90 day money-back guarantee. Needless to say I didn't request my money back but it's always nice to know that it's there if I didn't find it useful.

You can get more information, read testimonials, and order PR Prowler at http://www.prprowler.com/.

Expired Domains

2006-05-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

ExpiredDomains Search Results Thanks for using our Free Domain Search Engine. This search returned 1262 domains matching your criteria. Our results include Expired , Soon to Expire, On Hold, Redemption and For Sale domain names. If you like this, you can't miss our members area! With an ExpiredDomains.com Membership, you can take advantage of the same tools used by the professionals to uncover and register the best domain names. Subscribe now: we will send you a password to access and use our products online, anywhere, at any time. Get a closer look at all the features that make up ExpiredDomains.com, and see how they work in a collection of screenshots and audio tours. Don't forget to get our Free Welcome Package, featuring tons of insiders' tips and tricks and our exclusive course "Top 5 Strategies To Profit From Expired Domains" (including the one thing that EVERY domain player should do, but less than 1% use)

Bulk Page Rank Checker

http://www.seowebmastertools.com/bprc/bprc.php

Browsing Source Forge & Oops there it is!

2006-05-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

Not tested by author yet --- Search Engine Tools

http://seo.sourceforge.net

Full Text Search Engine Project

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kneobase

YACY is a p2p-based search engine for the WWW, based on it's distributed crawler and the built-in caching/scraping http proxy. Brings it's own database, has a httpd/web interface. Implemented in Java, supports all platforms.

http://www.yacy.net/yacy/

phpSERA is a PHP/MySQL-based tool for Search Engine Ranking Analysis (SERA). The rankings are based on parsing output of search engines, using simple regular expressions.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpsera

Search Engine Submission Software

http://sourceforge.net/projects/sesubmit

Free Search Engine Ranking Software

http://www.expertwebinstalls.com/free_search_engine_ranking_software.html

Basic functionalities such as,

Allow the user to to query Google
Retrive Spelling Suggestions
Retrieve CACHED web pages in a readable format
Retrieve Number of hits
Retrieve Time Taken for Query

http://google-hack.sourceforge.net/

"Google Hack" Honeypot Project. GHH is written in PHP and assists the development of web based honeypots designed to lure search engine hackers.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghh Some wierd Url, I threw in for good measure.

http://www.theworldsend.net/

Google Sitemaps Toolbox (GSToolbox) is a toolbox designed for webmaster to generate, manage and view Google sitemaps files. It is composed of Google Sitemaps Stylesheet (GSStylesheet) and Google Sitemaps Director (GSDirector).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gstoolbox

The APIlity PHP Library provides an object-oriented way to easily access and manage the Google AdWords API from within PHP. This comes along with an abstraction from the SOAP and WSDL details.

http://google-apility.sourceforge.net/

GoatTracker collects information about your website referes to create e.g. Top Referer lists. It supports grouping (e.g. to count all google domains as one) and blocking.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=161465

MyHeadlines is a web based news feed aggregator and scraper. RSS / XML / RDF are all supported. Also includes Blogger API, Google API, Skins, Templates, Subscriptions, and Sections.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/myheadlines

Adsense Simple - windows software that helps you monitore your google adsense account, track information instantly, show graphs, everything is done with a few mouse clicks, you don't need everytime to enter username and password on adsense page.

http://tvilda.stilius.net/adsense_simple/

PHPLinks is an open source project written in PHP for use with MySQL, allowing one to run an extremely efficient Link Farm with full search capabilities. A "simulated" search engine in many ways.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phplinks/

Expired domain names

2006-05-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Search among 2,700,000+ expired domain names

Catch valuable name from expired domains! Thousands of domains delete every day and become available for registration.

Click Here

Max Media Manager

2006-05-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

Max Media Manager - Open Source Ad Server

Max Media Manager is a set of tools which enable online marketing campaigns. Written in PHP, Max is based on phpAdsNew. The core modules include an Ad Server and Conversion Tracking Tools. The most recent version of Max also has an API for extension modules developed by the community.

How users read your web pages

2006-05-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

and how to improve them. Here is a short summary of an article entitled "How users read on the web". In a recent study, John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen have discovered that 4 users out of 5, scan the web pages, taking words from some paragraphs, rather than reading them word after word, from the start to the end of the text. Here is the method for designing web page that are made to be more easily scanned:

create significant sub-titles rather than clever ones.
use lists, just as this one you are reading ;)
highlight important words.
avoid long paragraphs : only one idea per paragraph.
start by the conclusion, at global level and for each section.
be credible, one doesn't know who has written the text. A good writting style is required, avoid a marketing style and always quote your sources with outbound links.

Here are results from the study by the two authors, and how to obtain a 130% improvement in effects on readers:

The starting point: a marketing paragraph without any of the improvement described above, it is given a reference value of 0.
The text is rewritten to be more concice: 60 % of improvement for readability, and for what is memorized by the reader.
Using again the starting text, a list is created to ease scanning: 50% of improvement.
The original text is rewritten in a neutral style without marketing phrase: 30 % of improvement.

The previous modifications are combined all together: neutral text, concice text, one idea per paragraph, and a list:

More Googlebowling

2006-05-12T04:51:00.000-07:00

The key to Googlebowling successfully is through HTML injection techniques. For those of you who do not know, HTML injection is a method of taking exploitable input fields (search forms, sign up forms, forgotten password forms, etc), typing in html, and getting the results page to display that html. If you find an exploit on the site (most larger sites have them), then you begin to work... Say your competition is a site that sells tools. For example, say they sell saws and drills. Your exploit input should be something like /"[<]h1[>]saws, saws, saws, saws, saws[<]/http://www.competitorssite.com'[<]/script[>]/" These results pages will look like javascript redirecting doorway pages. Do this for all of the keywords they are competing for and copy down the results page urls, the more the better. Then use your linkspam tool to get those urls indexed into Google or Yahoo or MSN, and then report them for doorway pages. This method works like a charm over and over and over again and is very difficult to trace back to you.

Googlebowling: The New Conditions

2006-05-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

Last year there was a new term coined: Googlebowling. Definition: GoogleBowling is when you put site-wide links on multiple sites, and the link is pointing at your competition for the sole purpose of eliminating them from the Search results. Google’s ranking algorithm will penalize the target site, and the target site will disappear from the SERP’s. You just bowl them over. GreyWolf details the “original” how to of Googlebowling your competition. Does Googlebowling work anymore? Search engine algorithms have changed. Is googlebowling just a lot of meaningless talk nowadays? Question: Will multiple site-wide links qualify as googlebowling as per the original definition last year? Is it possible that too many site-wide links will trigger Google’s spam filter? And effectively Googlebowl your competition. Okay, here’s my first bold statement: There is no such thing as too many links. Basically, Google doesn’t count the sitewides any more. Google will only give the site credit for 1 backlink. And, Google isn’t penalizing for a sitewide links. Think about blogs. All those links are sitewide. And, you just get 1 citation rather than 1 for each page. So, if you’re buying a $1,500 site-wide link to rank on Google; it’s WAY overpriced. But, people are willing to pay for it. The benefit of site-wide links is on Yahoo and MSN. So, should you throw out the theory of Googlebowling? Here’s the catch, and how Googlebowling can work…Linking the competitor to bad neighborhoods will trigger Google’s spam filter, and get the site penalized on Google. I guess the NEW definition of Googlebowling is: Site-wide inbound links coming from bad neighborhoods, and using a competitive term as the text link’s anchor text. However, some “authority sites” are impossible to googlebowl. Eg: 10 years+ in the index and thousands of inbound links already. Furthermore, with Google, it usually takes multiple offenses to get de-indexed. So, just bad links alone won’t do it. Although, bad links + cloaking will. But, it’s really difficult to knock a strong site out of the index. Just look what happened to BMW. They already have 1 offense for cloaking. So, I wonder if they are highly susceptible to be Googlebowled by Mercedes-Benz. hehehe But, you can Googlebowl if the competitive site doesn’t hold much creditably with Google. Yahoo and MSN are a different story. A lot of site-wide links will boost you to the top SERP’s on Yahoo and MSN. Why can’t you “YahooBowl” or “MSNbowl”? That’s because on Yahoo and MSN, there is a major hole in their algorithm. Using sitewide links are probably the #1 Black Hat strategy to rank on Yahoo and MSN. Hence, Googlebowling. But remember, Googlebowling only works if the links come from bad neighborhoods, and the site has multiple offenses

Really Simple Site Generator Modified

2006-05-12T03:08:00.000-07:00

Written by ElvisThePelvis Born out of the Open Sourced Really Simple Site Generator; this new branch of RSSG, RSSGM, provides all you need to automate portal website building. RSSGM will automatically create targeted web pages based around your niche keywords lists and templates. Simply add your keywords to RSSGM and run the installer. Page generation and content generation is done for you automatically. A huge variety of content sources and generated articles await your site building. RSSGM is modular so adding a content source is a simple matter of adding a PHP include to your template.

HITS algorithm

2006-05-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The HITS ("hypertext induced topic selection") algorithm is an algorithm for rating,(J.Kleinberg) and therefore also ranking, Web pages. HITS uses two values for each page, the authority value and the hub value. Authority and hub values are defined in terms of one another in a mutual recursion. An authority value is computed as the sum of the scaled hub values that point to that page. A hub value is the sum of the scaled authority values of the pages it points to. Relevance of the linked pages is also considered in some implementations. J. Kleinberg’s algorithm is similar to PageRank, in that it is an iterative algorithm based purely on the linkage of the documents on the web. However it does have some major differences:

It is executed at query time, and not at indexing time, with the associated hit on performance that accompanies query-time processing.
Its use in SE’s… not common!
It computes two scores per document (hub and authority) as opposed to a single score.
It is processed on a small subset of ‘relevant’ documents, not all documents as was the case with PageRank.

Ghost Pages

2006-05-11T12:00:00.000-07:00

“Ghost Pages” come under many different names: stealth, cloaking, food pages, and more.

The technique employed (usually based on Perl/CGI) consists of feeding the search engine spider a different (ghost) page from the one the normal user gets to see. As these do not have to be human-readable, you can optimize them no end to comply with SE requirements.

Note that this is no simple redirection trick (which would be penalized by many major SEs): the Perl program will actually READ the ghost page and feed it to the SE spider without redirection. It is only the human visitor's browser that gets redirected. Hence, the SE spider will never know the difference.

Obviously, it all depends on recognizing the SE spider when it comes. This is where many programs default: the bad ones will simply rely on the spider's UserAgent code, which, however, is dead easy to simulate or forge. (This is an important point in that your competitors might otherwise peek into your phantom page and steal your optimization code — quite a common practice, unfortunately.)

Good ghost or cloaking programs will identify spiders from their unique IP which cannot be forged (or, at least, not that easily — IP spoofing requires a lot of tech expertise and is actually illegal in many jurisdictions now). For this to work, you will need as comprehensive a SE spider database as possible.

E-mail Signature Marketing

2006-05-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

They are often forgotten, but E-mail signatures can prove to be a very useful website promotion tool that produces great results compared to the effort required to use it. After all, most of us send a lot of E-mails, and many end their messages with expressions like "Take care" or "See you later" followed by the writer's name. Such signatures are nice, but why settle for just one brief line with very little useful content?

Think about it for a while. People are used to handing out their business card to nearly everyone they meet, but the same people sign their E-mail messages with merely their name, if they even bother to sign them at all. Instead of just signing with your name, why not include a full-scale E-mail signature at the bottom of your messages? Since you're going to send those E-mails anyhow, it would be a very good idea to turn them into a traffic generator by using a good signature. But how can that be achieved?

Unfortunately it is hard to give detailed instructions on what to put in your E-mail signatures. Because people are different, signatures should also be different. A teenage girl promoting her site about the latest pop band would hardly want to use the same style in her signature as a middle-aged man trying to get visitors to his online computer store.

Before you create your signature, think about what kind of people you usually exchange E-mails with. Then try to figure out what these people like. Should you use "power" words in your signature, such as "FREE" or "NOW", or would you be better off with a strictly formal version that only contains the name of your site and its address?

If you are unsure about what kind of signature you should create, I would advise you to go with a more formal style instead of marketing hype. Since a signature is something that very much represents you in the eyes of everyone you exchange E-mails with, you should be careful not to spoil your reputation with a signature that the receiver might consider to be unprofessional or tactless.

Creating a good E-mail signature

So, what does a good E-mail signature consist of? In my opinion, it

Starts with a brief courtesy, such as "Sincerely" or "All the best", followed by your name. While such wishes alone won't do you much good, they do tend to give a more positive image of yourself to others. If appropriate, you can add your title into your sig as well, since it gives you a bit of authority. Everyone who has a site can rightfully call himself a "Webmaster"!
Includes a brief description of your site. It should give people the information they need to determine what your site is about and encourage them to visit it. At the same time, you don't want to try too hard. The key to good E-mail signatures lies somewhere between a simple list of contact information and a blatant advertisement.
Always remember to think from the receiver's point of view. It is darn easy to accidentally create a description that tells people why you want them to visit your site instead of telling them why they would want to visit it!
A good description is nothing unless it is followed by a link to your site. Remember to use http:// in the link, ie. http://www.apromotionguide.com/ instead of www.apromotionguide.com. This will allow many E-mail programs to identify it as a link so that users can click on it to go directly to your site instead of having to open up a browser window and cut & paste the address.
Is short. A good general rule of thumb is that your signature shouldn't exceed four lines in length. If your signature is too long, people won't take the time to read it. If your E-mail signature obeys the four line rule, you can use the same signature in Usenet and most other discussion forums as well.
Contains no spelling errors or bad grammar. In addition to that, it should also be easy on the eyes. In some cases, using upper-case in certain words might work, but generally it's a good idea to avoid SHOUTING or ThiS aNNoyiNg WRiTiNg STyLe.

OK, we have went through the theory. Now let's have a look at an example signature:

--- Sincerely, Joe Kirkegaard, CEO of Best Computers Inc. Best Computers - powerful hardware at a price you can afford: ---

Why is that a good example? Because it is short and gets right to the point. At the same time, it is able to deliver accurate information about who you are, where your site is located and how the receiver might benefit from visiting it. The above signature is also an excellent example of a plain and un-aggressive "one size fits all" signature that could be used in messages sent to just about anyone. If you want to add a bit more "hype" or "action" to your signature, feel free to do so, but as I warned before, make sure that you don't overdo it.

Now that you know how to compose the perfect signature for yourself, it is time to add it to your E-mail program so that you don't have to type it again every time you send out an E-mail. How this can be done depends on the program you use, but here is a set of brief instructions on how to add E-mail signatures to some of the most popular E-mail programs.

Reciprocal Links

2006-05-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Reciprocal links are one of the most common and most effective forms of website promotion. The basic concept is simple - you link my site, I'll link yours and we'll both get an increase in traffic. But there is more to it than just exchanging links with a random site.

The very first problem is to find the right site to do an reciprocal link exchange with. A good partner has content that appeals to the same kind of visitors as your site does, and vice versa of course. For example, a Futurama fan site could have reciprocal links with a Simpsons fan site, a free stuff site with a sweepstakes site and so on. To create successful reciprocal links, the exchanging sites need to be similar yet different enough so that they don't compete with each other.

After you've found a site that fits the above description, there are a few other important things that need to be figured out. First, is the other site interesting? If it's filled with banner ads and typos, you're better off finding another site to exchange reciprocal links with. A good rule of thumb is "If it doesn't interest me, it's not going to interest my visitors".

The second thing is to figure out how much traffic the site gets. Usually you can make a rough estimate just by browsing the site - if it looks and feels professional, it probably gets a pretty good amount of visitors. If it feels like it was a poor site to begin with, and no one has updated it since 1997, it probably doesn't get more visitors a day than you have fingers in your hands.

For the exchange to be useful to both parties involved, sites performing an exchange should have similar amounts of traffic - that way one site doesn't just rip visitors off the other one without giving any in return. Because most webmasters know this rule (some even monitor the amount of traffic they receive/send out), it's unlikely that a low-traffic site can get a link exchange with a high-traffic one. But if your site is really good, your proposal for a link exchange could be accepted even if you get less visitors than the site you're trying to exchange with. The old "content is king"-rule applies here, too :).

After you've found a site that seems to be suitable, it's time to contact the webmaster of that site. Tell him that you run a site that has a similar topic and describe your site a bit (remember to give your front page's address). Say that you like his site and have included a link to it in your site (give him the address of the page where the link is), then ask him to return the favor by linking to your site. If you never get a reply or your proposal gets rejected, just forget it and find another site.

If you manage to make a deal and get the other webmaster to link to your site, keep your end of the bargain - don't remove your link without contacting the webmaster of the other site first. Because there are some webmasters who agree to exchange reciprocal links, add your link on their site for a few days/weeks and then remove it without noticing you, you should also check the site of your partner every now and then to see if he's keeping his part of the deal. If he is not, contact the guy and kindly ask him to explain why your link has disappeared. If you don't get a satisfactory explanation, remove the link to his site from your site and find another partner.

Increase Your Return Traffic

2006-05-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Why is it important to increase return traffic?

There are many reasons why you would want your visitors to come back to your pages. If you sell banner advertising space, you can easily calculate that a person who comes to your site, looks at five pages and then returns ten times within the next year and checks out an average of two pages per visit is four times as valuable to you than one who reads five pages but forgets all about you after leaving.

Owners of online stores benefit from an increase in return traffic as well, because in many cases it takes more than one visit to make the sale. The visitor might not need your product right now, but if he bookmarks your site and uses that bookmark once in a while, he is likely to buy from you when the time is right.

Another advantage that arises from such visitor loyalty is that those who regularly visit your site often mention it to their friends, family and colleagues. This can easily create a so-called traffic virus, which is born when people tell about you to their acquaintances, who then spread the word to their own acquaintances and so on. While it might not sound like a very big deal, word-of-mouth is the primary source of traffic for many larger sites and the reason they have become what they are today.

Start a newsletter

Running a newsletter takes a lot of work, but brings large rewards in return. If you are able to get your visitors to subscribe, you can then E-mail your newsletter to them without the fear of being accused of spamming. This way they won't forget that your site exists and after reading your E-mails for a while, they will remember its address even in their sleep.

Your newsletter can be a simple announcement service that lets everyone know when you have made changes to your site, have several original articles in each issue that pertain to whatever it is your site is about or be something in between these two. In any case, you should keep in mind that the more unique content your newsletter offers, the more interest it will attract. A simple announcement service is merely an extension of your site, but a high quality newsletter can become so famous that people come to your pages just to subscribe to it.

Remind people to bookmark

There are two schools of thought on this subject. The first believes that offering a link to bookmark your site will increase the amount of visitors who do so. Because remembering Internet addresses is difficult for some, being bookmarked ensures that you won't be losing return traffic just because the user happened to wander off and then forgot your URL.

The second school thinks that while it is important that your site gets added to the surfer's bookmarks or favorites, asking for someone to do so isn't very effective. The supporters of this line of thought say that if someone knows how to use bookmarks, he will also know how to add them. All you will have to do is to provide enough good stuff that will convince the visitor that adding your site to the favorites list would be a good idea.

I'm leaning towards the latter opinion, but my mind is not completely made up yet. So, it might not be a bad idea to consider adding a "Bookmark now!" link, provided that you're able to integrate it to your design so that it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. I will be running a test on this subject in the near future, so remember to stay tuned.

Add a monthly sweepstakes

Giving something valuable for free is a sure-fire way to get some extra hits. The word about sweepstakes and contests usually tends to spread well on its own, but running one will also give you the opportunity to submit to the hundreds of sites that list sweepstakes and competitions. As a result, you should see a nice increase in traffic and also get more return visitors as people come back to enter next month's sweepstakes. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, there's a small fly in this soup. The traffic you will receive is interested in winning the prize, not exploring your site and seeing what it has to offer. That is why I'd recommend that you choose a prize that should attract the kind of audience you want to capture instead of random sweepstake-enthusiasts.

To give an example, if my site sold gardening tools, I'd set up a contest where participants could win a set of gardening equipment and a subscription to a gardening magazine instead of offering money as a prize. There would be less visitors and less entries, but the people that would come just might buy something instead of simply entering the competition and leaving.

As said above, offering other than money as a prize is usually a good idea, but you should also prominently display the estimated value of your prize in dollars. "A set of rare comics" doesn't sound exciting, but "$395 worth of rare comics" sounds a lot better, don't you think? Whatever you do, make sure that the prize is worth winning but also one that you can afford.

Discussion forums are like glue

I'm not kidding you. A well-maintained, busy discussion forum can become a huge success. There are several sites I originally visited because of the content, but after a while the biggest reason that kept me coming back was that they had such great discussion forums.

The best part about these boards is that most of the content is produced by the visitors themselves and even moderating them can be partially transferred to the most intelligent and reliable participants. You will have to stop by every now and then to read and write messages, answer questions, remove offensive content and otherwise make sure that everything is going all right, but that isn't very hard work.

However, before you break out the champagne and start dreaming about your new automatic content generator that will draw surfers by the thousands, you'll need to hear about the negative sides. The largest problem is that your site must be popular, very popular, when you start your forum. A forum is like a nuclear reactor, it needs to achieve critical mass before it starts working on its own. If your site doesn't get enough traffic, the forum won't be frequented by many users and they will write very few new messages.

This "critical mass" can become a vicious circle, because when there aren't any new messages, users won't be tempted to come back to the forums and won't write new messages. Most message boards suffer from this syndrome in the beginning, but the operator can alleviate it by actively participating to old threads and by starting new ones. However, even that won't help if the forum just doesn't have enough traffic, so wait until your site has grown a bit before you try this trick.

Make your address easy to remember

Our last suggestion is very simple to implement and doesn't cost much, but there are many sites out there today that haven't taken up on it for one reason or another. Let's be honest, is http://www.angelfire.com/music/joeysmp3s/ or www.joeysmp3s.com easier to remember?

Domain names are cheap these days, you can get one for around ten bucks or less. If you value your site at all, and because you're reading this you probably do, get one. It will help people to remember your address and your site will also seem to be more reliable and professional than it would if you didn't have your own domain.

Can we expect a shift in Google's ranking algorithm?

2006-05-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

Google recently acquired an advanced text search algorithm that has been invented by University of New South Wales PhD student Ori Allon. Although the acquisition has not been confirmed yet, Google has confirmed that Ori Allon is now employed at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Three search engines tried to get Orion The new algorithm has been given the name Orion. The ownership rights of Orion belong to the University of New South Wales in Australia because it was developed as a part of Ori Allon's Ph D program. The University acknowledged that Yahoo and Microsoft had conducted negotiations with its business development company. As all big search engines tried to get the rights to use this new algorithm this seems to be a hot algorithm for the future of search. How does this advanced algorithm work? Unfortunately, there's no live demo of the new algorithm yet. Orion aims to make searching easier and less frustrating. According to what has been revealed so far, Orion rates the found web page texts by quality of the site in which they appear. For every search, Orion will offer a list of topics related to the original source: "Take a search such as the American Revolution as an example of how the system works. Orion would bring up results with extracts containing this phrase. But it would also give results for American History, George Washington, American Revolutionary War, Declaration of Independence, Boston Tea Party and more. You obtain much more valuable information from every search." Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to the key word. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the key word so the user can pick the most relevant. "Orion will display the results to the query in the form of expanded text extracts, giving you the relevant information without having to go to the website - although you still have that option if you wish." What does this mean to your Google rankings? It's hard to tell how this new algorithm will change the way Google ranks web pages. If the algorithm really allows web surfers to get information from web pages without really going to the web pages than webmasters might choose to block search engines that use the Orion algorithm. There is no point in giving search engines valuable information without getting something in return. Until Google uses the new algorithm, you should make sure that your web pages are optimized for Google's current algorithm so that you get customers and sales now.

FFA Submission Software

2006-05-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

FFA pages are a waste of your time and your effort. Use your energy for something more productive - you'll find plenty of information about methods that actually work on this site. But if you for some reason or another decide to submit to FFA's, do not use your E-mail address and make sure that the page you submit doesn't contain any E-mail addresses either. One of the E-mail harvesters that visited my site was even clever enough to grab my index.html page after it noticed that the redirect page I sent it to didn't contain any E-mail addresses.

Could FFA pages, in any circumstances, produce significant traffic? The answer is yes, it might be possible. Using FFA autosubmitters doesn't work because your link rolls off from the pages too fast as other people submit their sites via the same tool. Submitting manually to FFA's doesn't work either, because it takes too much time per submission. But it just might be possible to have some success, if you could use the power of auto-submission without having your link roll of the page five minutes after you submitted it. This would require a tool that searches individual FFA pages from the Internet and submits automatically to them, making sure that you won't be submitting to the same list of pages everyone else is using. I haven't tested such software yet, but if I do so in the future, you'll be the first one to know.

Click Exchange Programs

2006-05-11T11:25:00.000-07:00

Because they are simple to use and promise fast results, click exchange programs have become very popular among webmasters. While all kinds of sites participate in them, especially those that have a hard time attracting traffic with other methods seem to have embraced the idea. This means that the majority of members in most click exchange programs are trying to push the latest get rich quick-scheme, advertise MLM programs or send visitors to an online store that pays the member a commission every time a person sent by him purchases something.

Before we continue, let me explain what a click exchange program is. The concept is simple and at first, it feels like it makes a lot of sense. As you know, there are vast amounts of sites out there that have owners who believe their site isn't receiving the traffic it should be. Many of them also spend plenty of time on the web, wandering around searching information or just to have fun.

Click exchange programs attempt to merge these two things together. They form a network out of the participating sites and webmasters then surf on it. For each page visited by the participant, someone else will visit his, so the programs make it possible to get traffic just by doing what you would have done anyhow. To sum it up in one phrase, click exchange programs can be described as "If you visit my site, I'll visit yours".

Sounds reasonable, doesn't it? But does it work or is it just another dead end in the maze that is website promotion? In order to get an answer to that question, I participated in four popular click exchange programs and monitored the results. ClickThru, the Traffic Generation Network, Ezhits4u and the iLoveClicks Network all talked the talk on their front pages, but could they walk the walk?

The Results:

Program	Unique visitors	of which actually did anything	Percentage

ClickThru	170	10	5,88%
iLoveClicks	170	3	1,76%
Ezhits4u	170	2	1,18%
TGN	170	6	3,52%
Total	680	21	3,09%

Now, let's look at what is behind those numbers. The "Unique visitors" field means just what it says, it is the number of unique visitors received from the network. However, keep in mind that it does NOT mean that I had to visit 170 sites to receive 170 unique visitors, as occasionally the same person was sent to my site more than once by the network. These multiple visits were counted as one, just as long as it was the same person. Visitors from some known proxy servers have been excluded from the above statistic for this reason. I'd estimate that in order to receive 170 unique visitors, you'd have to visit 180-200 sites depending on the click exchange program you are using and on your luck.

Moving on, the "of which actually did anything" field means the number of visitors that decided to venture further to the site or bookmark it. This number measures the interest displayed by the audience towards what I was offering. A high number of such visitors compared to the total visits naturally means that the people truly wanted to learn more about my pages. A low number on the other hand is a telltale sign of the fact that they just wanted to get someone visit their own pages and left after they had spent the minimum 30 seconds staring at my front page.

The percentage field probably doesn't need much explaining, but let's briefly look at it anyhow. A percentage of one means that from 100 unique visitors sent by the network, one bothered to explore this site. A percentage of two means.. well, you get the point. If you want to compare the results produced by these programs with some other traffic generation method, you might be interested to know that around 80% of visitors that come to my site via a friendly link from a high-quality on-topic site take the time to browse through multiple pages.

While I could predict the outcome to some extent, it still disappointed me. After all, this site is a guide on how to promote your site - A Promotion Guide - and the audience consisted of webmasters that were clearly attempting to get traffic, even if it meant spending some time in front of the computer. This leads me to believe that personal sites or online stores should expect a result that is even worse.

Observations and thoughts on the audience of click exchange programs

Aside from the fact that the visitors from click exchange programs are untargeted traffic and tend to vanish in 30 seconds, what did I learn about them? By looking at my logs, I could notice that many participants seemed to be members in more than one click exchange program. It is difficult to give a good estimate on how common such behavior is, especially because the sample I have is very small, but I'd say that at least 25%, but possibly 50% or more, have a thirst for clicks that is not satisfied by one program alone.

This partially explains why the quality of visitors is so low, since people that have joined several click exchange programs usually use them all at once. Because the visitor is continuously jumping from one browser window to another instead of spending time on the sites, this renders the 30 second minimum visit required by many of these programs useless.

Whether there are any significant differences in the quality of traffic sent by different programs is hard to tell. Again, the sample is too small to say anything for sure, but ClickThru does seem to be slightly better than the others. However, it is still far from the point where I could say that participating in it could be reasonably justified.

As a conclusion based on the above data, I believe that one visitor from a good reciprocal link is equal to at least 15-80 visitors from a click exchange program. To reach 21 people who are interested about your site, you'll have to spend two hours, seven minutes and thirty seconds if you use four click exchange programs at the same time and spend an average 45 seconds on a site.

By spending five dollars on advertising your site in a PPC search engine, you would be likely to receive a similar result. Is it worth the trouble? I'll let you decide. However, if I were you, I'd stop reading this article right now and would select some other one that is about a more effective promotion tool.

Desperate attempts to improve the results

If you have been paying attention, you are well aware that my thoughts about click exchange programs are less than flattering. Still, it would be dishonest to say that it is impossible to improve the results achieved in this test. So, if I haven't been able to convince you to stop using these programs, I might as well give you some tips on how to get the most out of them.

The first thing you should do is to sign up with at least four programs. This might sound a little odd, as just a while ago I complained that people who are doing so are partly the reason why these programs are so useless. Unfortunately, it is a "tragedy of the commons" kind of thing. It would be best if everyone used only one program, but because that is not happening, you might as well maximize the amount of clicks you can get in an hour. So, there's a four program minimum in this game and to top it all off, you'll have to use them all at the same time.

In most situations, a little planning before rushing into action is a good idea and this one is not an exception. Before signing up to anything, you should create a page where you are going to direct the visitors you'll receive. Directing them to your front page is usually a waste of time, because they are in too much hurry to read long texts or appreciate your beautiful design.

The page where the traffic from click exchange programs is directed should be simple and go straight to the point. Use a very large heading to get their attention, then briefly explain why they would benefit from browsing your site or reading more about your wonderful product. You should also ensure that your creation loads up fast even on slow connections. Due to these restrictions, the result won't be very beautiful, so it probably is a good idea to ensure that only people from click exchange programs see it. Don't link to the page from other pages and use a robots.txt file to keep search engine spiders from indexing it.

The last thing to remember is that your content or offering has to have appeal to the people who use these programs. This means that sites targeted at webmasters probably perform better than others. Also, pages that have content that is both easy and fast to browse through, such as humor sites or pages that have pictures of women in swimsuits might stand a chance, even while they shouldn't expect too great results either.

Needless to say, a site that has 400 pages of scientific material about global warming would be lucky to get one in a thousand click exchange program users to do anything else than promptly go away.

Optimizing Banner ads

2006-05-11T11:04:00.000-07:00

Banner ads are probably quite familiar to you if you have been on the Internet for a while. At first, they might have been able to capture your attention with their blinking animations and bright colors. But as time has passed, you've grown to completely ignore them, giving new banner ads a quick glance at best. Only on rare occasions do you click on them, and the same holds true with those of your friends who use the Internet. Given these facts, it shouldn't surprise you that the average CTR (clickthrough ratio) for banner ads is nowadays around 0.2%, meaning that on average a banner has to be shown 500 times before it gets clicked even once.

Banner ads used to be a very popular form of advertising in the past. Five years ago, in 1997, the average CTR for banner ads was as high as 2%. With today's CTR being a tenth of that and continuing to drop, there are two questions in everyone's mind. Should I forget about banner ads completely and if not, how can I get a better clickthrough ratio than what the current industry average is?

Due to the current dismal state of banner advertising, I'd recommend that you examine using different sponsored search engine listings instead of banner ads. Overture (GoTo) and Google AdWords are among the best solutions and will probably give you more bang for your buck. However, if you can create significant profit from each visitor who arrives to your site, experimenting with banner ads can produce reasonable results, just as long as you remember to start out small. Test the effectiveness of your banners in small campaigns before you spend a great deal of money on banner advertising. That way you can determine with fair accuracy whether larger investments in banners will pay off or not without risking to lose a great deal of money.

Again, remember that banners are a promotion method suitable only for online stores and similar sites that have a high profit/visitor ratio. If your site earns its revenue from affiliate programs or by selling advertising space, I'd advice you to look into other things to drive traffic to your site instead of using banners.

If you believe that your site is of the type that can benefit from banner advertising and are willing to take a shot at it, don't just jump in head first. Before making any moves, read my little survival guide below in order to make your banner ads more effective.

Increasing the CTR of banner ads

Although there isn't anything you can do to turn back time and make your audience click like it is 1996 or 1997 all over again, by making sure that your banner ads obey some basic principles you can achieve a significantly higher clickthrough ratio than you normally would.

The first thing you should do is clear one misconception out of your head. Banner ads aren't about cool design or fancy graphics. When creating their banner ad, many people focus on how good they can make it look. And that's where they are dead wrong.

Your banner's purpose is not to look good. Its only purpose is to get people to click on it, arrive to your site and complete the action you want them to, for example purchase your product or browse through your content. It doesn't matter whether they arrived through an ugly banner or a pretty banner, just as long as they arrived. Don't hesitate to use a less sophisticated design in your banner ad if it results in a better clickthrough ratio.

While understanding the above is an essential part in creating a banner ad that performs well, it alone won't get you very far. Here are some other tips that will surely come in handy:

Include a "click here" note or two in your banner ads

If you have examined the banner ads on different sites, you have probably noticed that several of them include a button that says "Click here". Why? As always, the reason is fairly simple - banner ads that contain the words "click here" get on the average clicked more than those that don't.

At first I couldn't understand why this was happening, because I've always thought that if the viewer is interested in the product advertised in the banner, he will click on it. On the other hand, if he isn't interested, no amount of click here-signs is hardly going to make him do so. Still, the including those words does raise the CTR and there must be a reason for it.

This is one of those things I'd blame on the well-known scapegoat, the television. The advertisements that run on TV don't require you to do anything else except to stare at them, while the goal of banner ads is to get the user interact (click the banner). As people have been exposed to passive forms of advertising for decades, they assume that Internet advertising is similar in nature and doesn't require any action from their part. This is where the "click here" signs kick in by letting the users know that they can and should do something instead of just watching. The result is the increased CTR observed by many advertisers who incorporate these elements in their banner designs.

Whether my thoughts are on the mark or not, one thing remains proven: Including the words "click here" in your banner does result in it getting clicked more and you should use this fact to your advantage.

Animation is your friend

Have you ever tried to read something from a web page, only to be distracted and annoyed by a blinking banner at the top of your screen? Most of us have and nearly all of those who have had it happen to them wish that they'd never see another banner that blinks or moves. But like it or not, a banner ad with action in it catches the eye better than an ad that is completely static. In this case, it is worth it to be a little annoying to get some attention.

While animation can make banner ads perform better if used correctly, it can also cause a disaster if you don't know how to use it right. Over-use of animation will increase the file size of the banner, which results in it taking a longer time to load and increases the chance that the visitor has already scrolled past your banner ad before it even appears on the screen. This of course has a very undesirable effect on your clickthrough rate, so before including any animation, make sure that it doesn't make your banner too heavy and slow to load.

Use large text that clearly spells what you are about

Many people tend to clutter their banner with pictures or their company logo. While using them is not always a bad idea, you should make sure that there's enough room left for text. Use a large font size, even if it looks less attractive than a smaller one. You'll have to get noticed and small text just doesn't stand out the way bigger text does.

In your message, get right to the point and be brief. Don't try to explain in detail what your site is about and don't cram all of your offers into one banner ad. You'll have about a sentence or two of time to persuade the viewer to click to your site. If you can't do it in that time, you'll lose the visit.

Outline the benefits

To be clicked on, the ad has to be read. But getting the user's attention is only half of the task. To get the click, the user must also have a good reason to visit your site. This creates the need to use some traditional marketing tricks in your banner. Words such as "free" and "sweepstakes" for example are known to generate a healthy response from the average Internet user, so if you are running a sweepstakes on your site or offer a product for free, it can be well worth it to mention it in your banner. It is also a well established fact that sex sells. Banners that contain a picture of a beautiful lady and a hint of sex usually perform extremely well in terms of clickthroughs.

Unfortunately, there are drawbacks in using these "power words" to boost your clickthrough ratio. If your site sells pet food, using the power of sex to draw in visitors is hardly a good idea. You would get more clicks, but at the same time you'd end up targeting the wrong audience. People would come to your site, but they wouldn't buy anything.

The same problem is present in using the words "free" and "sweepstakes", as they will draw in people who are interested in entering the sweepstakes or receiving the free product, but they might not be interested in actually buying anything. So be careful with these tricks. While they are occasionally very useful, using them can cause problems as well.

Small is beautiful

The faster your banner loads, the more time it has to attract a response. If your banner is too heavy, people won't bother to wait for it to show up and will just scroll down to see the actual contents of the page. By the time the overweight creation finally appears on the screen, it is already too late.

To prevent this situation from ever happening to you, you should always remember to optimize your banners for size, if you can do so without losing too much in image quality. It is often a good idea to also remove excess graphics or give up at least a part of that cool but heavy animation. I usually attempt to keep my banners at 5000-5500 bytes if possible. Fortunately as broadband connections keep slowly spreading, ultimately this limitation in size will be lifted. Until that day comes, your banners have to load up snappy on a 56K modem, which places pretty strict limits on their size.

A banner ad? Me? You've got to be kidding!

As users have learned to disregard banner ads, designers have strived to create banners that look less like advertisements. Blending the border between editorial content and advertising, these modern-day billboards are known as "trick banners" in the industry.

Trick banners are banners that fool the user to click on them by disguising themselves as an ordinary application window or a site navigation method. These banners can also include an animated cursor just to get the user to focus their attention on them, or they can fool the user into thinking that it is possible to use the banner without getting redirected anywhere else.

Generally, trick banner ads receive a very high clickthrough ratio when compared to normal banner ads, but their downside is that the traffic they bring can be of lower value. Let's say we have just created a banner that looks identical to a Windows application and someone clicks on the "X" at the right upper corner of the banner in order to close it. The user does not want to visit your site, he just wants to get rid of the banner, but he still gets taken to your pages. It is highly unlikely that this type of visitors who are tricked into coming to your site will stay there for a very long time.

Nevertheless, it is definitely worth it to at least experiment with using at least some trick elements in your banner ads. I wouldn't recommend trying to emulate Windows applications or placing a "Cancel" button in your banners, but using an animation of a cursor or emulating a site design element can result in a good clickthrough ratio without reducing the quality of the traffic too much.

Targeting pays off

To receive attention, your banners have to be seen by the right audience. Rather than having your banner run on random sites, try to find places that attract the type of people who might be interested about your site.

For example, a banner that advertises search engine optimization services would get a significantly higher CTR if it was placed on this site than it would if it was placed on a site that focuses on Wayne Gretzky's hockey career. Always make sure that the banner is in perfect harmony with the content of the site it is going to be displayed on, even if that means you'll have to pay slightly more for the campaign.

CTR is important, but it isn't everything

The above tips should help you to achieve a decent CTR for your banners, but as I've already mentioned, getting the visitors to come to your site isn't enough. It is fairly common to focus solely on the CTR without paying any attention to what happens after the click. That kind of thinking rarely produces results that you can brag about.

It is just as important to ensure that your visitors do what you want them to do after they've arrived than it is to make sure that they arrive in the first place. The process of converting visitors into sales is a topic that is far too broad to cover in this article, so I won't venture further into that territory. However, there is one tip I just have to give to you, because I've simply seen too many banners that go against this rule.

Direct the visitors straight to what you promised them

Have you ever seen a banner that advertises a specific product at a discount, become interested and clicked on it? Were you happy when instead of taking you straight to a page where you could find details about the product and purchase it, you were taken to the store's front page, where you could find no clues on how to order this specific product? Did you bother to search through the massive inventory just to find what you wanted, or did you just shrug your shoulders and leave?

I've had that happen to me and to tell you the truth, I'm too lazy to start searching for something I shouldn't need to search for. The store in question was having a sale handed to them on a silver platter, but they lost it just because they didn't bother to take me where they had promised to. The moral of the story is, if you promise something in your banner, deliver it to the user on the very first page he sees.

If I clicked on a banner that said "See the new McLaren Formula One racing car", I want to see that car right now! After I've seen it, I can take a look at the rest of your site, but if you don't give me what you said you would, I'll just get mad and disappear. The average Internet user has a very short attention span and is quite lazy, so do the work for him instead of forcing him to do it.

What about banner exchanges?

After reading the survival guide, perhaps you're starting to get interested in giving banner advertising a try. But it seems very expensive and you can't afford it or just plain don't like the idea of paying so much for an advertising campaign. You've hear about banner exchanges, programs where you display banner ads on your pages for free and in return, other members of the program show your banner ad on their sites. This sounds like a good idea, especially as it doesn't cost any..

Stop right there. Banner exchanges sound very useful, but they are more trouble than they are worth. For starters, several banner exchanges have a 2:1 ratio, meaning that for every 2 banner ads shown on your site, your banner gets shown once on other sites. There are programs with a 3:2 ratio out there, but if you think that makes it a good deal, read on.

The second major problem is that many exchange programs don't offer a very sophisticated targeting method. This results in your banner being displayed on sites that have very little in common with your site and leads to your banner receiving a low CTR.

But don't take my word for it, let's do a little calculating, shall we? If we assume that your site gets 10000 pageviews a day, each page shows one banner from the exchange program and the ratio is 2:1, you'll earn 5000 impressions a day. After creating a killer banner ad, you beat the industry average clickthrough rate of 0.2% and your banner receives a CTR of 1% (a very good achievement, might I add).

For displaying 10000 banner ads on your pages, you get a whopping 50 visitors to your site! If you count the amount of visitors that left your site via the banner and those who got tired of waiting for your page to load because the banner slowed down the process, you should be glad if your net result isn't negative. In the end, you displayed 10000 ads on your site and received nothing in return.

If you want to display a banner ad on your pages, get one that pays you for doing so and invest that money into various promotion methods. Forget about banner exchanges, they just aren't worth it

Search Engine Themes

2006-05-11T11:01:00.000-07:00

The concept of themes was first brought up by Brett Tabke, webmaster of Search Engine World and a search engine optimization expert, in an article discussing search engine themes published in his newsletter. He claimed that search engines are now widely using "themes" as a key part of their ranking system, and that adapting them is an important aspect of search engine optimization.

What exactly does this theme stuff mean? The answer is pretty simple. The common, traditional point of view is that search engines rank pages separately. The theme thinking is that search engines have now begun to rank sites instead of pages, that they combine all the pages in a single site into one big "page". This would mean that optimizing a single page for a single keyword would no longer cut it - you'd have to optimize your whole site instead of just that one page.

To optimize your site for themes, you'll need to weed out content that is not related to your site's main subject. If you have a site about pets, but there's also some pages about Formula 1 driving on the site, you'll need to move the F1 pages elsewhere so that the SE's recognize your site as being highly relevant to the keyword "pets" (and other pet-related keywords) and that the F1 pages don't confuse the ranking system. You'll also need to make sure that your most important keywords appear not just in one highly optimized page, but in all of the pages on your site, in all of your META tags, in your content and often in your headings and titles.

Does this stuff really work? I'm not sure. Brett seems to be serious about this, and he should know what he's talking about when it comes to promotion. Also, some other people have also reportedly been successful by converting their sites into "theme-based". Because of these reports, I decided to try a little experiment of my own.

I added a H2 tag at the top of each page and used CSS to reduce the size of the tags. Each H2 tag was identical, short (ab. four words) and contained the keyword I was hitting at in the beginning of the tag. I had the keyword in every title of every page (the page titles were partly similar to each other, but not completely). I made sure that the keyword appeared in most of the META tags on my pages and at least once or twice in nearly every article. I also used the keyword in the link text of just about every page. The site used in the experiment had around 30 pages, every page was submitted to the engines and verified that it did indeed get into the database.

That, I figured, was the way I should nail the theme algorithm. So I went ahead, submitted and.. got killed. I focused my search engine optimization experiment on Altavista and Google. On Altavista, I did not see any positive effect at all, but since AV has recently been pretty unfriendly towards me, I didn't lose much. On Google, not only did I fail to see any positive results, but I lost some nice rankings that were delivering pretty good traffic. To sum it all up, this experiment left a bad taste in my mouth.

Before anyone starts jumping to any conclusions, I'm not saying Brett and everyone else is wrong and I'm right. I'm saying that my tests failed to show any positive results with the approach I used. My testings weren't very extensive, and it is possible that I misunderstood what Brett was trying to say, or that I just overdid it with the H2's. It's also possible that the engines have dropped or greatly altered their 'theme'-algorithms since Brett first reported about it in the summer. I wish the results of this experiment would have been different, but I feel that I have to 'call 'em as I see 'em', even if I don't like what I see.

But even as the experiment failed, I do think that the principal thinking behind 'themes' is sound, and might well be something that will gain weight in search engine algorithms in the future.

So, my recommendation about the subject would be: If you're going to convert your site into theme-based, don't just jump in head first. Do some experiments, and if you decide to use the 'theme'-approach, don't risk everything on it: In addition to using the theme-approach, optimize every page well for a different keyword.

Building an E-mail Address Database

2006-05-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

E-mail marketing works, there's no denying it. Its key advantage over other Internet marketing methods is that it enables you to contact the customer instead of forcing the customer to contact you. This ability is especially useful when something that your customers need to know as soon as possible has happened. Whether you've just released a new product or decided to cut your prices by 10%, the fastest way to spread the word is via E-mail.

However, unless you want to give your company a bad name, you can't simply start sending E-mails to people that haven't agreed to receive them. The only ethical and reasonable way to advertise via E-mail is to first obtain a permission, or an opt-in request, from the receiver. The trouble is that this can't be done via E-mail, as it would be similar to asking someone whether you can ask them a question. What's the point in doing that, when you've already done what you wanted them to allow you to do?

Getting people to opt-in

Due to the above reasons, creating your own opt-in E-mail database is not an easy task. In addition, because of privacy concerns and the fear of spam, many people are reluctant to give out their E-mail address without a good reason to do so. These fears can be soothed by creating a strict privacy policy and sticking to it, but it's harder to convince your visitors that it would be in their best interest to reveal their E-mail address to you. Fortunately, there are some time-tested solutions available for that problem as well:

Arrange a sweepstakes with an attractive grand prize, for example one of the more expensive products sold on your site. Require everyone who wants to enter the drawing to give out his E-mail address and agree to receive occasional E-mails from you.
To get the best possible results, it is advisable to declare that the winner will be contacted via E-mail and needs to claim the prize within 7 days in order to receive it. By doing so, you'll eliminate the problem of people giving out bogus E-mail addresses in order to avoid receiving advertisements.
Open a discussion forum on your site. By only allowing registered users to post, you can collect E-mail addresses and deter pranksters from writing abusive messages at the same time. However, if you decide to use this method to build your list, be very careful. Sending advertisements too frequently to the regulars of your forum may cause them to move elsewhere and thus reduce the traffic to your site.
Start publishing a newsletter. Although it requires quite a bit of work, an interesting newsletter quickly gathers subscribers and increases the size of your E-mail database. An additional advantage of having a newsletter versus a simple E-mail announcement service is that you'll be able to submit to the multiple newsletter directories on the Internet.
Continue to allow everyone to access most of the content on your site, but also add a "Members only" area that contains articles or other information that is valuable to your visitors. Give out free memberships, but require members to register, reveal their E-mail addresses and allow you to send them an E-mail advertisement every now and then.
This idea is especially suitable if you're eventually planning to charge for some of the content you provide. The step from requiring your visitors to register to requiring them to pay is smaller than moving from giving everything for free to fee-based access.
Whenever you ask your visitors to give out their E-mail address, remember to offer them the possibility to join your opt-in mailing list at the same time. Do you have a form on your site that allows the visitors to contact the webmaster or the sales department? Perhaps you have a Tell-A-Friend script that asks for the sender's E-mail address and name? Both are excellent opportunities to suggest subscribing to your E-mail announcement list or newsletter to your visitors.

If you want to gather a sizeable list of E-mail addresses from your visitors, you shouldn't be afraid of trying hard to get them. Just keep in mind that there is a fine line between being persuasive and being annoying. Don't cross it.

All Search Engines Listing

2006-05-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.allsearchengines.com

Apache Reference: mod_rewrite

2006-05-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

mod_rewrite - Advanced URL Translation And Redirection

Since Apache 1.2, src/modules/standard/mod_rewrite.c Ralf S. Engelschall (1996)

mod_rewrite is the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulations. It provides virtually all of the functions one would ever need to manipulate URLs, and its functionality is highly generalized. Consequently, mod_rewrite can be used to solve all sorts of URL-based problems. The drawback is the high learning curve, because this module is based on a complex rule-based matching engine, which uses regular expressions for its patterns. Although the flexibility of mod_rewrite makes it a very complex tool, once you understand the basic idea you will master all existing and forthcoming URL-based problems in your webmaster's life.

Directives:

RewriteEngine	RewriteOptions
RewriteLog	RewriteLogLevel
RewriteLock	RewriteMap
RewriteBase	RewriteCond
RewriteRule

What it Means To Be a Search Engine Marketing Professional

2006-05-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of stuff posted on search engine forums and newsletters around the world about how companies who spam the search engines are unethical, and that it's important to hire only "ethical SEO consultants" or "ethical search engine marketers."

But, if you think about it, ethics is not something that's quantifiable. What makes any given SEO technique ethical or unethical? Isn't ethics more of a way of life than a method for doing something? Is trying to trick the search engines really unethical? Sure, it's stupid, in my opinion, but is it really unethical? I don't believe that those who practice what I sometimes refer to as "shady SEO techniques" can necessarily be classified as unethical. Just as everyone who follows every search engine rule can't automatically be assumed to be ethical.

What we should instead be discussing is which companies are *professional* and which are just out for a buck. This is true in every industry, not just SEO. If the people in our industry can remember this when trying to create a professional organization of SEOs (and there are many factions trying to do this), it will go a lot smoother. It's really quite simple. My friend Alan Perkins, who is a champion of "professional SEO," pointed out a definition of professional to me recently. It says in part:

"What defines a professional?"

"A professional is a person who, by education, training, and experience, performs work, analyzes and solves problems, makes decisions, and promotes ethics associated with a particular field of study." - A. Carol Rusaw, Learning by Association, HRD Quarterly, Summer 1995."

They go on to list some criteria for defining a professional. The one that really jumped out at me was this:

"[The] Professional assumed to know what is good for the client better than the client."

That really hits the nail on the head. It would be easy for any of us to say, "Sure, why not, I'll take your money and just tweak your Meta tags" when asked to do so by a client. Of course it would be easy money. But would it be right if you knew that doing so probably wouldn't really help their site be found in the search engines? Not in my opinion; nor would it be professional.

So what about when a potential client comes to you saying "we know exactly what we need" because they read somewhere how SEO should be done. They ask you for a proposal to create 10 zebra (doorway) pages for their site. They don't want you to touch the actual pages of their site, they just want pages that live on the "fringes" of the site. You know, the kind that only the search engines will find (because you added a link way down low on the home page to a sitemap of all the zebra pages). Once the user arrives at one of the pages from the search engines, they're basically forced to click an extra time to finally arrive at the *real* site that they wanted to begin with.

Should you give the client a quote for this even though you know in your heart that it's not necessarily the best way to optimize their site? Certainly, creating those pages that way couldn't really be considered unethical or anything. But what if you see that their current site already has tons of great content pages? They really don't need to add zebra pages, they just need to tweak their current content a bit to make sure they're using words that real people use when searching.

Or perhaps they just need to make sure the search engines can easily spider through the site and find all that great content, e.g., turn dynamic URLs into static URLs.

What do you do if when you explain this to the client, they're still set on using those zebra pages? They refuse to make changes to their actual pages (cuz someone told them they shouldn't have to!), and even though the site will be much improved by making these changes, no amount of cajoling will convince them of this. So what do you do then? Do you do things the way they want you to? Do they really know better than you, the SEO professional?

If I were in this situation, and I couldn't persuade them how wrong, unnecessary and shortsighted their preferred technique was, I'd have to turn down the job altogether. Yeah, it's hard to turn down some decent money that a job like that could bring. I mean, you could probably even create those zebra pages using WPG's Page Generator, and give them some fancy new name. They're really not zebra pages...these ones would be giraffe pages! It could be good money for little work. And after all...it IS what the client wants, right?

There are plenty of ways you can justify it to yourself. But the bottom line is that it's your job as a professional to do what you know in your heart is right. If it means you don't get that particular job, then so be it. There will be other jobs. And there will be other clients that appreciate your looking out for their site's long-term well-being. You can bank on that. Seriously. The money you lose from declining that type of work will be made up in so many different ways. You can bank on it!

Why Write for the Search Engines?

2006-05-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

Because it will bring you high rankings, more traffic and tons of sales!

To successfully rank highly in the search engines, the words on your Web pages should never be an afterthought but a major investment in your search engine optimization campaign. After your keyword research, writing search-engine-friendly copy should be the very next step in your optimization campaign. For non-competitive keyword phrases, the writing on the page alone can often bring in High Rankings® without any other special coding and Meta tagging. Once you've become familiar with the ins and outs of SEO writing, you'll be ready to focus on your Title tags, Meta tags and all the other SEO goodies available to you. Armed with this knowledge and a bit of practice, you'll be able to use your new skills in two very powerful ways:

To double-check all newly written, keyword-rich marketing copy (written by you or your copywriters), ensuring that all possible keyword opportunities have been found;
To edit existing copy that wasn't originally written with keywords in mind, ensuring that it keeps the original readability and marketing "flow."

Making sure that your keywords are well represented in your copy without losing its readability isn't difficult; however, if you've never done it or thought about it before it can seem like a daunting task. I suggest you read through this special report once to get the gist of it. Then go through each section again, while at the same time checking your own Web site to see if you can put any of the information to use right away. You may be surprised to find all the keyword opportunities your current copy provides you with.

Learn where to place keyword phrases in your Web copy.

Whether you're writing keyword-rich marketing copy from scratch or simply changing the keyword focus of your existing copy, it's not always easy to know where to place those pesky keywords so that they don't interrupt the flow of your writing. Through my years of teaching copywriters how to write with keywords in mind and my own editing of keyword-rich copy, I've discovered some very simple but effective techniques.

The purpose of this special report is to show you how and where to place your most important keyword phrases within the visible text copy of your Web pages. There are three main groups of people who will greatly benefit from understanding these techniques:

Search engine optimization (SEO) consultants who need to edit the existing copy of their clients' sites as a matter of course.
Webmasters and small business owners who are doing their own site optimization.
Professional copywriters who want to expand their writing services to include search engine optimization copywriting.

AdSense Optimization: Content That Search Engines Love

2006-05-11T09:28:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how to get content that your Visitors love and attract Search engines for your websites? Revenue of your website, Traffic on your website, Popularity of your website, Return ratio of your visitors and credibility of your website - these all largely depend upon the content of your website. Content is the king and Content is the heart of any online business. Google Loves Content, genuine content, in the words of Google AdSense engineers: Content that promotes industry of AdWords advertisers is the ideal content (so that Smart pricing doesn't hits you). Here is how to get quality content for your websites:

#Source #1: Article websites:

This is the fastest, cheapest and the easiest way to get articles you need for your upcoming website. You can get a number of articles from these websites on almost any topic you have in your mind. Many a professional writers have posted these articles on the "Article Websites" which you can host on your website after giving proper credit to these writers. Industry experts post them on these "Article websites" and wait for great links to come in. As these articles are posted directly from the experts, these are technically perfect and are usually very interesting that keep your visitors glued to your website, thereby increasing your page views. One thing to note about articles from "Article Websites" is that these articles are set on Broadcast mode and the duplicate content can be found at many other places on the net. Search engines like good and motivating content, but your visitors may get bored by reading same information again and again. Though, it doesn't means you shouldn't use Article websites - According to me, Article Websites are a cool source of high quality content. Here is a list of 100+ article websites: http://www.KeywordCountry.com/article-websites/ One thing to remember before hosting these articles is: Give proper credit to the original writers. Read the Article website's Terms and Conditions carefully and abide by them.

#Source #2: Write your own content

If you are expert of the industry for which you are searching the content, who else can write it better than you? Articles in your own words are called unique articles. Search engines love Unique articles and you visitors love them too. If you have unique content, it will be easy for you to ask links from some high profile websites, thereby increasing your traffic too. Unique content also gets maximum bookmarks and visitors return to your website again and again for more of such interesting information. Here are a few tips how to write your own unique content:

1 - Surf the forums:

Almost every topic on the web now has forums for the same. People discussing problems, solutions, tips and tricks related to your industry or niche only. This provides enough material for you to write over them. Sometimes you can write a complete article out of only one thread. Locate the problem which most people are facing, search for its solution and write something useful on the topic. This is the best way to do it.

2 - Get inspiration:

Surf the web, dig out your competitors and know what content they are providing that's making their websites so shining and thereby hooking the visitors. Use the same data as inspiration, add your own comments, add negatives or positives (pros and cons), add comments from forums. Ideal strategy is to jot down 5-6 articles around one topic only, and write your own, keeping those 6 articles in front of you. In other words: Re-writing the article in your own words. (no it dosent means stealing) While writing, keep in mind that content of the articles should be easy to understand - avoid lengthy sentences, tough words and unnecessary repetition. Remember, you are not to boast about your mastery over the language - instead you are communicating with your potential customer and trying to make him understand what you want to say.

3 - Get Content from your Visitors:

Let the visitors post articles on your website. They can email you that but for their convenience, put up a "Post Article form" if you can. Let them post comments on your articles - like a small forum thread for each article. This will keep the Search Engines hooked to your page. You are generating content without moving a finger.

#Source #3: Get content written - Paid

If you really feel that you can't write the content yourself, due to time shortage or you are not confident enough, hire a content writer to do it for you. You can get many of them on freelancing websites. Google the word "Content Writing" and look for a content developer. Ask them for unique content related to your industry. If you care, specify him the topics. If you don't, just specify him the number of pages he has to write for your website and there you are. Here is a list of a few websites where you can find the people to write content for you. http://www.elance.com http://www.rentacoder.com Keep posting the content on your website. New content on your website keeps your website fresh and tasty - both for visitors and Search engines too. Keep these guys hooked with you.

#Benefits of unique content

There are numerous benefits of writing eye opening and unique content. - It builds Web presence, people bookmark your website more, and you get more returning visitors. - It gets you links easily. - If these are posted on Article Websites, you get good links. If you have compiled good article website, your potential link partners look at you with respect. I have never seen an email shouting at me while I run my link partnering campaign, even if I drop them 15 continuous emails with same content accidentally, making it a spam I get links from websites who are masters of their industry. - Source of free advertising. - Search Engines look at you with more respect. If you are beginner in this game, article websites way is the best way to give it a kicking start. Unique content may have more respect, but don't try it if you don't have a sound knowledge about the industry you are targeting and for God's sake! Don't create confusion over internet. It's better to have a duplicate content on your website than giving wrong information to your visitors.

#Content with higher AdSense payout:

Content development can be tough and time consuming. For whooping and fast returns, better create websites in a planned way on industries that are more paying or are niche keywords. KeywordCountry.com guides webmasters and tells them exactly the high paying keywords that must be targeted while creating content for a website. For more information, visit KeywordCountry.com. http://www.keywordcountry.com

#Other articles of your interest:

Note: This is not a "Guide to hack the Google AdSense". I respect Google and all other search engines very much. And sole purpose of the article is to benefit the Google Adwords, AdSense and other advertising community. Please, for God's sake! give credit to writers and don't use copyrighted material anywhere which may get you in trouble.

External Optimization Tricks

2006-05-11T09:27:00.000-07:00

External Optimization deals with the points you should remember while promoting your website over web, the External world. This part of optimization effects not only ranking but has a powerful impact over the relevancy of ads too. This part of optimization takes time and your control over it is limited sometimes.

Anchor Text

Keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page with regard to the keywords used. You should build the relevance of each page of your site, through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site. Try to make link partners link you with the anchor text you specify (but please dont force them). The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking as well as relevance of ads on your website. All search engines that matter give significant weight to the anchor text (both on your website as well as external websites linking to your pages). Also, its a good idea to keep changing your Anchor text while running link development campaigns, the more varied options of title and description you have wider the coverage you get from search engines. Again, you can choose the keywords to use in your anchor text according to your choice between Traffic or payouts. It is important to understand that as your Page Rank (PR) increases and resultant traffic increases Google may also increase your payouts. However, if you are getting highly untargeted traffic (or fraud traffic) your payouts automatically decrease with a period of time owing to phenomenon known as SMART PRICING. That is why Anchor Text is so important.

Getting back links

The number of links incoming to your website may dont have direct impact over your Adsense ads relevancy. But The anchor text with which your link partners are linking to you are not only getting you direct traffic but also promoting your website to certain segment of traffic thats surfing on Search Engines. When Targeted with wrong keywords resulting in wrong segment of traffic, it will decrease your CTR as well as your earnings potentially you could earn from that traffic. You can say, it affects the relevancy of your ads. This sounds weird but how do you define Relevancy of ads? Its defined as how much relevant or useful it is to the traffic coming to your webpages. isn't it? When the ads that Google is broadcasting isn't relevant or of interest to your traffic, its irrelevant.

Promotion

To get the most relevant ads it is important that the links which you are getting from other websites should have proper anchor text. Your article gets prominence on the search engine owing to the relevant keyword used as anchor text. Even the links on your own pages should have relevant anchor text. This will help you get more targeted traffic and resultant higher revenue. Other ways to promote your website is by getting inward links from free or paid sources, exchanging links from authority or important websites experiencing high traffic and leading in the Search Engine results (links placed at the top of the page get more importance, try for that) and there are many more things you can do to promote your website and earn more of Adsense money).

How to optimize internal webpages for Maximum Adsense revenue?

2006-05-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

Internal Optimization means on-page optimizations that you should take into consideration while writing your internal web pages. This is one thing on which you have direct control. Also this has major effect on the ads relevancy and CTR.

Meta Tags:

Meta Keywords: They have low impact, BUT - they DO have impact over the ads relevancy. Its advised not to leave this part of your page as blank. Always try to make it as easy as possible for the crawlers to understand your website. And your webpage with Meta keywords. If there is NO CONTENT on your webpage, the Adsense Media bot will pickup Meta Tags and show ads according to that. Search on Google for pages that top the SERPs for the keyword you have in mind. These websites will give you good idea what to include in Meta Tags. Meta Description: Whatever you put in the description meta tag, it will appear as description right after Title Text that links to your page in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). This property of this tag makes it quite important as it has direct impact over the CTR of your link in the SERPs that leads to your website. It eventually decides how much traffic you will get from a Search Engine. Write description that attracts right kindof traffic from Search Engine pages - the one which is most interested in your content.

Title text:

Search Engines give importance to the keywords that appear in the title tag of HTML Source code. Title has a good impact over relevancy of ads too. For higher payouts, choose highest paying keyword of that category for title text. However this depends upon your optimization strategy entirely. If you are more concerned about competition and getting more traffic than payouts, choose a keyword with low competition keyword (competition you can handle) with relatively higher traffic. Though, I will advise to get more traffic first, and become authority page of that keyword. Payouts will increase as traffic does. Tip: Title text generally appears in the SERPs as TITLE link to your page. In other words, You can say, this very line controls the CTR of your website link listed in SERPs. How you design your title is entirely your own decision. If you are optimizing it for more traffic, You will not want your title to read as it was written for Search Engine crawlers. The title has to be concise so much so that even 10 words are considered as too many. If you are optimizing it for more payouts - Go ahead!

However you can try to mix the high paying keywords with traffic attractor keywords too.

Give Headings:

Its quite important to mark the main headline of your webpage with H1 tags and subheadings with H2 and H3 tags and so on. This is so because headings highlight and indicate the most important element of your webpage - the actual content. It is important to use relevant keywords in headings and sub headings as these have good impact on rankings - especially when sorted by relevancy. This has an equally good impact on the ads appearing on your webpage. Headings give prominence to the content on your web pages. Again, you can use these headings either to optimize for traffic, fighting competition or getting more payouts or both too.

Embedding keywords in content:

Besides hosting useful and genuine content on your webpages, its important to include keywords at the beginning and end of the article of web content. This helps Search Engines and Ad bots to determine the theme of the webpage. Its important to include the keywords in the first paragraph of the webpage content atleast. Some people follow a strategy of hosting less content on a webpage. This helps focus ads on specific keywords and avoids dilution of ads by other keywords that you may have mentioned even once in the web content. This works when you are optimizing for Adsense, but has some traffic drawbacks too. Furthermore, Google may consider it as SPAM. So, its never advised to host like 2 or 3 lines and expect good earnings. Chances are that you will be hit by smart pricing. On the other hand, Dont make lengthy webpages as it may misguide Adbots to get some wrong ads resulting in dilution of relevant ads. Ad bots can sometimes end up giving undue importance to certain keywords which might have just a mere mention or usage in the entire page. It is advised that if you are getting irrelevant ads, change Meta Tags and Title text and then move on to making changes in the content.

Internal Linking:

Internal linking of webpages has Traffic as well as Adsense importance. As all your link partners may not link all the pages of your website, its the responsibility of your webpages to hyperlink your other pages and define the crawlers what your pages are about. Speaking in context of Adsense, suggesting related links (related articles) to the visitor will also increase your page views of your website, and your chances that your visitor will click on high paying ads. It is must for websites to interlink their pages. This can be done by displaying related articles or linking to pages with proper anchor text. This helps increase the importance of most web pages. Even a simple navigation bar can achieve that purpose.

Increasing Penetration

Write articles with more heading and subheadings. This not only makes your content more readable and user friendly but also will help the Ad Bots (and Crawlers too) to properly recognize theme of your webpage and serve you most relevant ads. This trick also gives you an another chance to mention more of those keywords in your webpage. Try to include as many instances where you can specify keywords to the bots. This will have impact over your CTR and EPC too and also help you get targeted traffic. Targeted traffic will mean more CTR of your webpage and better performance. Get targeted traffic and follow these guidelines and Smart Pricing cant even touch your webpages.

Adsense Optimization: How to apply Top Paying Keywords?

2006-05-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Applying Top paying keywords in your website is much like Search Engine Optimization but there are many differences. I have done in-depth research and marked the points you need to take care of while optimizing your website for maximum payouts thru highest paying Adsense keywords. We will cover how to Apply Top paying keywords as well as Traffic Attractor keywords to a webpage for maximum payouts and traffic. First of all, we must understand that Google Adsense bot (formally known as Google Mediabot) is a subset of Google's main crawler that detects the theme of the pages and makes an entry in the Google's index (a private index - not shown publically) that records the theme of all the pages which are hosting Adsense script. In other words, Google Mediabot has somewhat same characteristics as Google's main crawler. There are two types of optimizations that you need to follow to make it search engine optimized. Same is the case with Adsense Optimization. - Internal Optimization : Internal Optimization includes Meta tags, Title Text, Optimization of content and internal linking of your website. Here we will learn how to increase relevancy of ads and how to inject keywords which will help you get high paying ads. Internal Optimization has a high impact on relevancy of ads and CTR. - External Optimization : This includes the webpages that are giving links to you (external profile of your website), anchor text they are using to link you and many more variables that Search engines use to evaluate the authoritative importance of a webpage. External Optimization helps you relevant traffic to your website and earn more by getting more CTR (click thru ratio).

How long it takes for your webpage to show high paying ads?

This is a very important question that needs to be addressed. As soon as you apply Adsense script in a webpage, it is visited by Google Mediabot (within 2 hours to 48 hours, if the bot is free - immediately). Google Mediabot's responsibility is to evaluate the webpage's theme and enable ads almost immediately so that your website traffic doesn't see FREE SERVICE ADS. It is established that the relevancy of ads increases as Google's Main crawler visits your website and updates its index. Furthermore, you may observe increase in earnings as the PR of your website/webpage increases. This means in case of Google Adsense, the Internal factors that affect the ads of a particular page are evaluated by Google Mediabot (but Google's main crawler can overwrite them) and External factors are inspected by Google Crawler over a period of time. Said that, there are simply many many factors involved that effect your ads, including those which you cant control. The ones you can control, we are going to discuss all of them in detail. Lets take control!

Remember:

Relevancy of ads may increase as your page is indexed by Google.
EPC (earnings per click) may increase as your PR increases.
In whole, its entirely depends upon you how well you promote your website and get maximum earnings from your website/webpages.
Incase of Google, many many variables are involved.

Blog Promotion Tools

2006-05-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

Chicklet easy subscriptions tool
Pingoat
Add to digg, del.icio.us, and more codes
Subscribe me plugin for wordpress
Mybloglog (still haven’t used yet, but looks cool)
Feedburner - another nice one on my list of to do’s
Promote it on your car
Top blog directories
More blog directories and SE’s
Feedshot blog submission tool
Graywolf’s blog tools
Swipe GW’s “add to” links like I did too
Tracking and feedback loop tools from Aaron
WG’s wordpress downloads
Bookmarklets every blogger should have
Big list of del.icio.us tools
Weblog compodium blog tools
Blog-Maniac ping service list and more
Blog directories
Blogger tools

Weblog promotion Websites:

Blog Marketing Guides and Related Reading:

SEO and Web Development Sales Tools

2006-05-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Format of an SEO proposal
Sample SEO contract
Web design business kit *disclaimer - I’ve never read the full guide myself, but the freebies are excellent, and I have no doubt the entire kit is the same
Sample web design contracts
Format of an SEO activity schedule
The mighty neglected change order
Ideal SEM RFP
Barebones sample website contract agreement
Boilerplate template contracts
Qualifying leads
10 things to ask SEO clients

Resources and top reads on SEO and web development sales

SEO Analytics Tools

2006-05-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

Paid Web Analytics Tools

Clicktracks Demo - Hands down my overall favorite. I am definitely an evangelist for their products. Any areas they COULD have been faulted on they have listened to their customers and improved. Not only a good stats package, but a good example of how to run a business.
Net Tracker - Played with a demo and had a booth next to some of their friendly folks once. Nice product with some handy path analysis. Check out their free lite edition
Visitorville - I haven’t used this extensively, but you gotta give them credit for a fun interface

Free Web Traffic Tools

Webalizer About as basic as it gets, but very free and easy to use
Analog Stats Again very basic but free and easy to use.
Relax - quality referral tracking.

Critical aspects to consider when purchasing Web Analytics Software

Speed of reporting If I have to wait 5 minutes (or even 2 minutes) for my report it is too long. Initial parsing time is fine, but keep it snappy. Most times, statistical data is needed to backup a brainstorm. Waiting is not very conducive to good creative thinking.

Breadth and depth of reporting - Make it scalable but not overwhelming You don’t need to know that record cleaning fluid doesn’t sell to Poland on Canadian leap year if you’re a record shop in NYC. You definitely CAN go overkill with setting up your stats packages. Try to start with a scalable product that will cover lots of areas of your statistical needs. Focus on the statistics that will HELP YOU TO IMPROVE ROI. Try to break out each area of your marketing campaigns when possible to get the best and most accurate return on ad spend for each.

Accuracy of reporting Does the package track visits from your company netowork’s IP address (where everyone’s default start page is your homepage)? How does it determine “unique visitors”? Does it count search spiders and bots as visitors? Every stats package handles things differently, so if you change packages it is important to understand the data interpretation discrepencies, otherwise you might have BIG trouble when going to interpret the data to your BOSS (of course you could look like the HERO if you do it the right way).

Ease of use - Keep the learning curve low Many people may potentially have to use the program. Probably at least several people should. They all need to know how to use and interpret the data. When a program is difficult to use, or difficult to remember it is very frustrating and counterproductive. You have 73 other things to do, pick a package that is going to make your life quicker and easier.

Know what you need Your website technology architecture will play a role in which package you pick. I like LAMP myself because it’s less expensive and reliable. Linux/Apache/MySQL/Pearl - PHP - Python. Find out your web platform and how compatible all your elements are. Strategically reducing retrofittings saves lives.

SEO Project Management Tools

2006-05-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

Project management resources and review

Resources - SEO is project management:

Contextual Advertising Tools

2006-05-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

Digital Point Adsense sandbox tool
Firefox Adsense Notifier
Adsense tools from DWOZ
Using images to increase CTR - random image generator scripts courtesy of Aaron
123promotion adsense example tool

Publisher resources:

Top Discussions and Resources for Contextual Advertising:

Directory Tools

2006-05-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

Directory Quality Control Questions

cache date
inbound links to the page
inbound links to the site
age of the site
theme of the links to the page
other links on the page
title of the page
site or pages are not in the supplemental index
make sure their IP Address is “clean” - DNS Report
submission guidelines and quality level of listings
make sure they are giving static links that pass link popularity and not just some type of redirect

Directory Tools

***NEW TOOL - Bulk Age/Link Checker Note: If you were reading Jim’s Blog you would have seen this by now! Also available is the Phrase based age checker
Top directories
Big 3 directory checker - hopefully will be updated to include more
DirectoryList.org*
Powerful directories list*
Strongest Links*

*Some of these directories listed may not still pass the above mentioned guidelines. Be sure to double check before submitting.

Best Directory Discussions

I think there definitely ARE some good directories left that are well worth the cost involved to be listed. Check out our list of top quality directories. Tips to directory owners to not get “Blue Found” (Blue found definition: To go completely over the radar with tactics that will most likely p*ss off the search engines”)

run of site links for gambling, pills, porn, or other off topic high dollar sponsor
10k empty categories
10k categories with 1 listing
1.7 million BOUGHT backlinks to your site
No content
Poor editorial control
Stuffed title tags
ROS SEO links
Very little user traffic besides SEO’s
No unique value proposition besides selling links for PR

If you don’t want to be kicked, don’t put the kick me sign on your back.

Usability and Accessbility Tools

2006-05-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

Usability and Accessibility Resources

Cre8site Website hospital
Steven Krug’s site - author of “Don’t Make Me Think
Software usability research lab
Dreamweaver accessibility options
MIT usability guidelines
SAMSA Accessibility resources

Sitemap Tools

2006-05-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Google Sitemap Tools

Standalone / downloadable sitemap generators

Online sitemap generators

Audit my PC Online Sitemap Generator **recommended - up to 50k urls
XML Sitemaps Online Generator - up to **recommended - up to 500 urls
Blocklayer generator
Blocklayer sitemap editor
Java sitemaps tool

For websites that update often, the suggested methodology is to find a script that runs off your webserver. The script should batch process on a nightly, weekly, or monthly basis and ping Google sitemaps with the appropriate changes. The scope of installing a script like this is beyond the patience of the author, but if you have a good programmer or web developer they should be able to pull it off fairly easily. Below are a few potential scripts to check out.

Sitemap Webserver Scripts

Wordpress sitemap creator
Wordpress Plugin sitemap creator
A bunch more available via Code.google.com

General Sitemap Tool / Link Checker

Xenu Link Sleuth

Sitemap Submission Resources

Sitemap Discussions

If you’ve had an exceptional experience with a sitemap generator or script, please let me know so I can add it to the list.

Blogger Tools

2006-05-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

Creating a blog

Wordpress - My personal favorite creation software. Provides a ton of functionality through plugins and is free!
Civicspace - a variation of Drupal, which would probably be my favorite if I had any coding skills at all. Awesome features, and combines the best of blogs and forums
Blogger.com - this site was originally created on Blogger’s free service. It’s about as easy as you can get. If you can’t pull off a blogger blog, please don’t bother. WP has some conversion features for if you decide to change later so you retain your content.
MoveableType - Great system that many top bloggers use. It’s a bit more expensive than free, and I don’t know all that much about it. You can get a hosted version setup for you though if your coding skills suck like mine at typepad.
Weblogs.us - Free wordpress hosting
Audioblog.com - shared with me by Amanda Watlington at one of the shows. I signed up, but still haven’t really tried it out much yet. Looks like a cool service.
More blog software - if you really have to be different

Upgrading/Improving a blog

Wordpress Plugins
Meyerweb WP plugins and hacks
WP plugins competition
Mod Rewrite for WP - built into 1.5 to make it super simple. Go to “options” –> “permalinks”, and you can generate the code for you .htaccess file to make pretty urls.
More WP plugins
WP templates
WP Guides
MovableStyle - MT templates
Blogger templates
More Blogger templates
Haloscan - trackback and comments for Blogger

Blog Promotion

Freetag - open source tag generator
Ultimate tag warrior - thanks to Mike the wordpress wizard.
Feedshot - free blog submission service
List of sites to ping with updates
Getting blog traffic w/o the SE’s by Rae **WMW Supporter’s forum
Top blog directories

Sexy Girls Get You Fraudulent Clicks.

2006-05-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

by Pesach Lattin In the never-ending battle of fraudulent clicks, everyone tries about everything to get people to click on ads. As the PPC companies police better, the publishers who are looking to make a few extra bucks get better at raking in the cash by using less-than-ethical means. The days of the outsourcing to an international click team are gone, and are now being replaced by using sexy girls to generate clicks. Our friends at MassDestraction.com, a company that promotes “Violent B*tch Fites”, are running Yahoo PPC ads for products such as “ADD-Camp,” “Credit Line, Sponsored Trade” and “NeuroFeedback Psychiatry.” In order to get more clicks, they’ve placed rotating photos of attractive young ladies that are the same size as the ads, so people who see these vixens click on the ads. It’s innovative, but extremely unethical and seemingly fraudulent. (But it works!) Would love some comments on how one can prevent this, and if you’ve seen any similar tricks. Now here is an example of some smart google ad placements. http://www.massdestraction.com/

Affiliate Manager Tools

2006-05-11T03:15:00.000-07:00

Industry conferences - these are the best tool at your disposal. Create personal relationships with your affiliates, or just learn from other affiliates and managers in other fields
Revenue Magazine - Pay attention to what’s going on, what’s working well for others, and emulate it.
Affiliate Announce - Get your name out there, and let folks know about your program, this is a good way to start doin’ that
Linda’s list o’ links
E-mail and Instant Messenger are your friends. New methods of communicating are nice for new media marketing. New who to call on, how often, and for what. Build your network of trusted folks who can help you get questions answered and problems solved.
Improve your program - If you have an existing program, start another that offers a little higher percentage that passes link popularity
Research the scripts available at the various software directories. Find something that works and get a good programmer to customize for your cause.
Look for “your keywords + forum”, “your keywords + advertising” with the combination tool (yes, I keep plugging this tool because I use it constantly myself)
Affiliate Marketing Today - Haiko De Poel 4 p.m. Tuesdays, or catch the podcasts - Definitely a guy worth listenin’ to in the affiliate space.

Affiliate Networks and Software

Shareasale
Commission Junction
Link Share
ClickBank
More affiliate networks
For finding affiliate merchants, you may also try a combination tool searching for “your keywords + affiliate” or “your keyword 2 + affiliate program”, etc. This is sometimes a way to find those great affiliate programs.
Other program directories
Affiliate Clicks software
Cookieless Affiliate Tracking
FusionQuest Software *thanks Linda

Block Referrer Spam

2006-05-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

Log files are a useful tool for webmasters. It helps to know how people are finding your site, and what software they are using to view it, among other things. A strange decision by a small group of bloggers, though, has given unscrupulous marketers another window of opportunity to manipulate search engines to increase their traffic. The decision made by these short-sighted bloggers was to display, on their site, a list of recent referrers to each page. I can't imagine any reason why a visitor might be in the least bit interested in seeing this, but nevertheless many sites now display referrers on every page. As search engine spiders visit sites, they grab the contents of each page they visit. They use this snapshot in their index - meaning that although a page may change every minute or two, a search engine may be using a single copy of a page for several days, or even weeks. So a referral URL that is on a page when the spiders come to visit can have quite a bit of value, if the search engine visiting uses link popularity in any way (Google uses link popularity, as do many others). So marketers have started to use programs to visit pages using a fake referral header, to get their URLs listed on as many sites as possible, in the hopes that this will increase their traffic. However, this renders log files almost completely useless. These fake visitors usually visit from search engines, having searched for a keyphrase relevant to their own site. They skew statistics relating to number of visitors received, the countries used to visit, the technology used to view the page, how users found the page, how long they spent on the site ... and so on. A webmaster may find their search engine rankings dropping because of this, and they may find search engines have removed them completely. Many sites that use spam techniques are quickly identified and penalised, and penalties will often be applied to sites that link to them as well. There are plenty of techniques available for blocking referrer spam, and everyone has their favourite. Personally, I use a combination of two techniques. The first is fairly simple - my referrer log is not indexable. I don't display referrers on the pages of my site. My referral log is publicly available, but search engines are instructed to ignore it. This removes the main incentive for people to referrer-spam my site (the other reason for this type of spam - the hope that the site owner will themselves visit the spamming URL - is less common, because it has such a low response rate). Second, I use an .htaccess file to block requests from whatever I've managed to identify as either a crawler designed to find URLs to spam or a spamming URL. This is a relatively simple blacklist, and though it cannot work as a long term solution to this problem, it keeps me happy for now. To implement this technique on your own site, first make sure you are running Apache with mod_rewrite. If you are, create a file called ".htaccess" (just that, not .htaccess.txt or anything else) and paste the following into it: Update: 14th September 2005 The list below has been expanded substantially over the last year, and now covers much more spam than before. As stated before, this is not a practical solution to the problem in the long term, as this list can only ever get longer and longer, and may become unmaintainable, or even (eventually) slow a site to a crawl as all the rules are processed. However, as of now, it is still a useful tool. RewriteEngine on # Block Referrer Spam # Drugs / Herbal RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sleep-?deprivation) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sleep-?disorders) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (insomnia) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (phentermine) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (phentemine) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (vicodin) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (hydrocodone) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (levitra) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (hgh-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-hgh) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (ultram-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-ultram) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cialis) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (soma-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-soma) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (diazepam) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (gabapentin) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (celebrex) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (viagra) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (fioricet) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (ambien) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (valium) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (zoloft) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (finasteride) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (lamisil) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (meridia) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (allegra) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (diflucan) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (zovirax) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (valtrex) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (lipitor) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (proscar) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (acyclovir) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sildenafil) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (tadalafil) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (xenical) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (melatonin) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (xanax) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (herbal) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (drugs) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (lortab) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (adipex) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (propecia) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (carisoprodol) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (tramadol) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # Porn RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (porno) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (shemale) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (gangbang) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-cock) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-anal) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-orgy) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cock-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (anal-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (orgy-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (singles-?christian) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (dating-?christian) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumeating) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cream-?pies) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumsucking) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumswapping) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumfilled) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumdripping) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (krankenversicherung) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cumpussy) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (suckingcum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (drippingcum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (pussycum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (swappingcum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (eatingcum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cum-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-cum) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sperm) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (christian-?dating) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (jewish-?singles) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sex-?meetings) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (swinging) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (swingers) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (personals) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sleeping) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (libido) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (grannies) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (mature) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (enhancement) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sexual) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (gay-?teen) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (teen-?chat) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (gay-?chat) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (adult-?finder) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (adult-?friend) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (friend-?finder) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (friend-?adult) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (finder-?adult) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (finder-?friend) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (discrete-?encounters) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cheating-?wives) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (housewives) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (\-sex\.) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (xxx) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (snowballing) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # Weight RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (fat-) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (-fat) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (diet) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (pills) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (weight) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (supplement) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # Gambling RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (texas-?hold-?em) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (poker) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (casino) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (blackjack) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # Loans / Finance RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (mortgage) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (refinancing) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cash-?advance) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (cash-?money) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (pay-?day) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # User Agents RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Program\ Shareware|Fetch\ API\ Request) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Microsoft\ URL\ Control) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] # Misc / Specific Sites RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (netwasgroup\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (nic4u\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (wear4u\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (foxmediasolutions\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (liveplanets\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (aeterna-tech\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (continentaltirebowl\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (chemsymphony\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (infolibria\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (globaleducationeurope\.net) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (soma\.125mb\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (mitglied\.lycos\.de) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (foxmediasolutions\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (jroundup\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (feathersandfurvanlines\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (conecrusher\.org) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (sbj-broadcasting\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (edthompson\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (codychesnutt\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (artsmallforsenate\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (axionfootwear\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (protzonbeer\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (candiria\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (bigsitecity\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (coresat\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (istarthere\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (amateurvoetbal\.net) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (alleghanyeda\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (xadulthosting\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (datashaping\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (zick\.biz) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (newprinceton\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (dvdsqueeze\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (xopy\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (webdevboard\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (devaddict\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (eaton-inc\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (whiteguysgroup\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (guestbookz\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (webdevsquare\.com) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (indfx\.net) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (snap\.to) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (2y\.net) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (astromagia\.info) [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} (free-?sms) [NC] RewriteRule .* - [F] The above will block just about all of the most common referral spam that I've seen so far. I'm adding to the list constantly (last addition: 14th September 2005) so do check back and see if there are updates if you're using it. One potential problem with this technique, other than that it will, in time, become useless as too many URLs are added, is that there is always a possibility authentic visitors will be blocked. So, on this site, instead of the last line above, I've actually used something a little more user-friendly: RewriteRule .* bad_referrer.php [L] Instead of a "Forbidden" message, this displays a quick note explaining why there has been an error and that the user can click on a link to proceed. If you want to check this out for yourself, try visiting http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/swingers/block-referrer-spam/ (note the "swingers" portion of the URL). This page will reload with a new URL. Then try visiting http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/spam/block-referrer-spam/. You should find you get a message explaining what has happened, and a URL to click if you want to proceed. And there we have it. With minimum effort (for now), referral log spamming in my site has been almost entirely removed. Before adding this set of rules and scripts, I was seeing around 200 fake referrals per day in my log files. Now, I see about 3 or 4 a week. Hopefully, this will continue until I can devise a better way of protecting against this kind of problem - before blacklists become an impossibility to manage.

CSS Layouts and free CSS Tools

2006-05-11T03:06:00.000-07:00

Layout Tools

Editing and Validation Tools

Top CSS Learning Tools

CSS Cheat Sheet
Alistapart CSS tutorials
W3Schools CSS
CSS cribsheet at WMW
WMW CSS forum
CSS tips from Websitetips
TheNoodleIncident tutorials
CSS Crash Course…back when Nick_W liked WMW and helping newbs
Designing with Web Standards - Jeffrey Zeldman **highly recommended by Graywolf

Inspiration

Press Release Tools & Services

2006-05-11T03:04:00.000-07:00

Free Press Release Services

Paid Press Release Services

Public Relations and Press Release Tips

To find out where your press release got picked up at, grab about ten words of it and search in quotes on Google. Hopefully you’ll get a bunch of results, and though many may get filtered, you’ll be able to see what kind of distribution you got.

Community Building Tools

2006-05-11T02:57:00.000-07:00

Easy tools for helping to build an online community or dialogue

More challenging tools with more flexibility and functionality

Community Building Discussions

PPC Tools

2006-05-11T02:56:00.000-07:00

Keyword Generation

Keyword Research

Search Volume Research

Search Term Pricing

Overture bid tool

Other PPC Tools

Click Fraud Discussion

Click Fraud Tools

*These tools have not been fully researched

Conversion Tracking Tools

PPC Tips and Tricks

Landing Page Optimization Guides

RSS Syndication Tools

2006-05-11T02:08:00.000-07:00

General RSS Tools

Bloglines - simply the best RSS reader in my mind - you can get my list of feeds here. **Note: Bloglines is by far my favorite feed reader. Put a “bookmarklet” in your browser favorite links and it is SUPER easy to subscribe to feeds
Awasu Feed Reader
Feed Demon
MyYahoo (which includes a RSS reader)
Firefox News reading extensions
Syndic8
Newsisfree.com
Feedster
Feed Validator

RSS Tools that are useful for Web Development

RSS Tools that are useful for search engine optimization

Other RSS Resources

Black Hat SEO Tools

2006-05-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

Content Spam Tools

*Question to self…I wonder where the line for content spam will be drawn…perhaps at a 8th grade reading level?

Content Scrapers

Cloaking Tools

Cloaking Resources

Link Spamming Tools

The Blog Spam Tools Aaron mentioned are both gone, but I’m sure there are plenty more available
Sorry, you’re gonna have to dig for ‘em, I don’t really want to incur the wrath of whitehat bloggers

Other Blackhat Tools

More Resources on Blackhat Tools and Search Engine Spam

IIS and Apache Mod rewrite tools

2006-05-11T02:05:00.000-07:00

IIS and Apache Mod rewrite tools

Mod-rewrite tool from SEO Guy
IIS url rewriter tool
Regex Builder
ISAPI Rewrite for IIS servers - Try ISAPI rewrite light for free
Server Header Checker - be sure the redirects are working properly
IP Address of Search Spiders *for creative uses

Resources and Forums

Keyword Research Tools

2006-05-11T02:03:00.000-07:00

Competive Analysis Tools for SEO’s

2006-05-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

UrlTrends Domain Trend Analysis Tool
Overture Bid Tool - figure out how valuable a phrase is
Googspy - Adwords competition spying
WBP Tool #5
WBP Page Reporter Tool
C Class Backlink Analyzer
CISeek Directory
Internet Business Promoter from Axandra - similar to WPG
Hubfinder -

Link & Content Building Tools

2006-05-11T01:58:00.000-07:00

Link Tools

Backlinks Anchor Text Analyzer
Domain Pop - Link Popularity Backlink Checker
SEOChat Pagerank Search - now if only we could get this to run with Yahoo backlinks.
Link Vault Co-op linking network - untested by Mr. Ploppy, but interesting potential

Content Tools

Lexical Freenet Word Connected Thesaurus
Content Auto Linker - using Yahoo API
Statistically Improbable Phrases from Amazon - **WMW supporters thread.

SEO Tools For Those New Variables

2006-05-11T01:44:00.000-07:00

A few tools to aid with some of the new variables.

Document Inception Date

Tracking Website Changes

-Tip for finding last modified date - would probably make a nice “bookmarklet” if I knew anything about programming
-URLy warning tool *note only briefly tested

Identifying Duplicate content

Domain Tools

-Whois.sc - fast, powerful, and informative.
-IP Blacklist Checker
-Bulk Class C Checker

Rank Trending

-Digital Point Rank Checker - Featuring some very nice recent upgrades

User Data

-Add to Favorites Script - to throw on all your websites now.

Link Analysis

-Hub Finder
-C Class Backlink Analyzer - in case you missed it last week.

SEO Link Development Tools

2006-05-11T01:33:00.000-07:00

Link development is one of the best and worst parts of SEO. When you know you’ve found a killer link for a bargain price (free is always nicest), it is a great achievment. Link development can be quite tedious as well. Techniques and tools are what seperate the best link assassins from link hunters. Here’s a bit of our list:

Linkadage is a great way to learn the fairmarket value of text links

Presell Pages are the favorite link of link assassins everywhere.

“How do you ask for a link? Asking for a link is about asking if you can do business with somebody. Links are much like currency on the web: If you don’t have a value proposition then don’t bother asking for a link. If you do have a value proposition but still don’t know how to ask for a link… you may wish to consider very early retirement"

linkdomain:www.site.com -domain: site.com (on yahoo)
look through “your serps” in the 50 - 1000 range for sites that look old and may offer you some form of advertising (I.E. text link)
We Build Pages query combination tool + a nice list of qualifiers, some more qualifiers, and even more *tip - build your own qualifier list.
DirectoryList.org *tip - don’t go overboard on directory links
Aaron Wall’s Link Harvester
Aaron Wall’s Hub Finder
Tool #9
Examples of good link dialogue and more examples of good link dialogue. Build some different types of templates that can be easily customizable but more personalized than Arelis automated mailings.
Press Release Tools for link building
Google directory - still one of my favorite places to link hunt
Don’t just think backward, think forward links as well.

Link Development Cheater Tools **use at your own risk

Reading Material for Link Hunters

Sites and Articles

Webmaster World Link Development Favorites

Supporter’s forum

Favorite Search Engine Watch Discussions

Blog and Forums

Ten things to ask an seo company

2006-05-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

Don’t shop on price…shop on return on your dollar invested. Here are some questions to ask when doing your research.

What type of risk is involved with this method of SEO?
Can you show me examples of past work?
What was the client’s ROI?
What type of volume increase in traffic is reasonable to expect?
How long until I start to see results?
What would you expect from OUR end to aid your work?
What were some of your top search ranking acheivements?
Do you offer any other internet marketing services to supplement your SEO offerings?
What will happend if our relationship is dissolved?
What type of techniques do you use to acheive rankings?

Look for good return on your dollar, and a company that understands business, marketing, technology, and the internet extensively. There are A LOT of different level SEO’s out there at this point. The biggest companies AREN’T ALWAYS best for the buck, but there is much less risk associated with your investment. Research and find a company that you are comfortable with. If this didn’t help you, here are a whole bunch more questions to ask your potential SEO companies, and what to look for in an SEO company.

SEO Tools 2 Use and Abuse

2006-05-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

So I have a section of this site that is for tools, and I have a ton of tools in my bookmarks. Creative use of tools, afterall, is one of the aspects that makes for a good SEO. I figured I’d make a weekly SEO/ Internet marketing tool post, and list a few of my favorite online tools each week for others to play with. So here goes…volume I of the Monday Tool List.

Ontology Related Keyword Lookup
DaveN’s Synonym Tool
Keyword Map - synonomy is a good thing
Strange Logic Ontology Tool - change words in URL
Google Sets Tool
Readability Analysis at StrangeLogic - use the url again.
Digital Point Toolset - lots of good tools including a rank checker that utilizes the G api
Sandbox detection tool - okay a much more real one this time.

Comments on Google's SEO guidelines

2006-05-11T01:23:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the updates section of this month's issue, Google recently published an outline of what they believe to be good and bad practices relating to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) companies. Their outline is located at http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html In general, we agree with most everything they say – especially on the topics of guaranteed a #1 ranking within their "free" section and erroneously suggesting special relationships that merit preferential treatment. Google suggests, and we concur, that such claims are false bordering on absurd. There are sections within the guidelines, however, that speak of "shadow domains" that "funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects". And we agree that if in fact sinister forces scheme to defraud customers, then by all means they should be ferreted out and fully punished. Fortunately we have laws and a judicial system in place to perform this function. However, if Google is talking about legitimate companies that sell multiple products to a variety of demographically segmented markets doing their best to get appropriately listed so their target audiences can find them, then we see nothing "shadowy" or "deceptive" about such efforts to have ALL of their products and services fully represented. Considering the fact that a "mistake" – real or imagined – can be cause for a site's excommunication, we think it prudent and wise for any given company to own multiple domains, spread out over several web hosts, with a variety of DNS servers on IP blocks that are not closely related – and even list some of them under alternate subsidiaries so if actions are misconstrued, a death sentence doesn't befall an entire online company in one fell swoop. After all, we've seen a bevy of misunderstandings, cases of corporate espionage, and Internet connectivity problems over the years. Any one of which causes calamity and can even be the summary kiss of death unless contingency plans are firmly in place ahead of time. Other points we take exception too... Google suggests that companies should "Talk to many SEOs, and ask other SEOs if they would recommend the firm you're considering." While that may sound fine in theory, think about the actual conversation that Google is (ideally) suggesting should take place... Company: Mr SEO, have you heard of brandX-SEO and would you recommend them? SEO: Why, yes, I have. They are a fine company and we highly recommend them. So, of course, that means that since we are so honest we deserve to land your business. Company: Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your honesty and we'll follow your recommendation by awarding our business to your competitor. SEO: Oh, ...well, what if I hadn't recommended them? Company: Well, that might have meant that you lacked integrity because, after all, what upstanding person would sink so low as to knock their competition? SEO: So, you mean it was a trick question? Company: That's right. ...obviously, whoever made that statement at Google has never gone out into the real world to see how these negotiations are done. Get real... does Ford recommend you buy a Toyota? ...or vice versa? ...are either of those companies disreputable because they neglect to recommend the other? Google also states "You should ask how long a company has been in business and how many full time staffers it employs." ...as if length in business and size of company has anything to do with efficiency and integrity. By following Google's insinuation on this point you may very well have selected the same company that Google, itself, used as the poster-child for deception and corruption when they pointed you to http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/01/spyware_inc/index.html as an attempt to illustrate how far out-of-whack things can get in the SEO business. We knew that company (referred to in the article) during the time in question. We had personal contact with them in their heyday. They were a BIG company, publicly traded, and spoke an impressive story backed-up by what looked like irrefutable proof of their success – the result of many shenanigans. But, if you followed Google's guidelines back then asking for references and judging by size, you would have likely selected this company to do your SEO work. MANY did! ...because they were able to fabricate just about anything within the illusion of success they projected. The simple truth is that some of the most honest, diligent, trustworthy, and capable SEO's we know are one-man-firms! For Google to even suggest they are inadequate or untrustworthy due to lack of size borders on irresponsible generalization. Their statement, "For your own safety, you should insist on a full and unconditional money-back guarantee." ...is another that flies-in-the-face of reality. Again, this just isn't practical for SEO work in the real world. The facts of the matter include the reality there are also unscrupulous businesses who have unrealistic expectations or just flat-out refuse to pay their legitimate bills. We know of no SEO's who can afford to put in hundreds of hours on a SEO project only to be "stiffed" by a company that is disappointed they are #11 for one of their keywords – and we know for a fact that such things (and much worse) happen. Such a recommendation only further illustrates to what degree Google is unaware of how SEO work is really done. Compare for example advertising in the real world. Does IBM, HP, Ford, or United Airlines demand or receive UNCONDITIONAL money back guarantees from their "Madison Avenue" advertising firms if they're dissatisfied with the results of their TV commercials? ...of course not. They set their goals together and both parties live with the results. If they like the outcome, they keep doing business. If not, they part company. They are grown-ups. They make informed decisions and they take chances. One trait of an astute businessperson is the ability to avoid unrealistic expectations. SEO's and companies in need of such services should enter into their agreements with these points in mind. And finally, Google states, "Ethical SEO firms report deceptive sites that violate Google's spam guidelines." Such a statement seems more like wishful thinking on Google's part than a practice steeped in reality. Frankly, some of the shadiest characters we know in the SEO business make it their business to "tattle-tale" on their competitors. We've even heard stories where "violations" have been contrived with the intention to eliminate one's competition. Unfortunately, it's just not that hard to do and the problem is exacerbated by the fact the engines tend to penalize without a hearing – and without notice. Just another reason for a company to intelligently broaden their risk-exposure. Even so, Google has reason to feel as they do... Aside from the points we've made and looking at the situation from Google's perspective, we can understand how they feel. The service they provide is rife with inherent difficulties. Yet, when viewing the issue from the side of the business community we also see how paranoid and vulnerable most online companies have become. We know to what degree they depend on traffic that is generated from the search engines. And, whether we like it or not, we are all subject to the whims and policies of Google – an 800lb Gorilla cast into the role of judge, jury, and executioner while armed with the ability to impose death sentences carried out without notice whenever they feel transgressed. Phew! ...that's a lot of power. Regardless, in concept we agree with Google – claiming relationships that don't exist or making false promises to consumers are not only wrong, they are punishable offenses. No one should get away with cheating or breaking any laws of commerce. Yet it's only fair to point out that Google wields an unregulated "big stick" with a lot of unchecked influence over an online company's fortunes. We can only hope that "stick" is in the hands of people who are understanding, wise and just. Without a doubt Google has a legitimate right (and need) to protect the integrity of their index. We absolutely support them in doing so. And we encourage them to understand that succeeding online is a challenging proposition. Businesses need to use all of the legal and legitimate tools at their disposal in order to prosper – and, they are expected to. More often than not, they're competing against companies that use aggressive marketing tactics while they answer to principals and stockholders that demand profits. Furthermore, just as brick-n-mortar companies often diversify to prosper, online companies likewise must reach demographically diverse audiences and, currently, search engines are about the only way to do that. It is reasonable to expect online companies to spread out over a broad base in the same way that off-line companies do. At the moment, that is best accomplished by diverse representation within the search engines (not to be confused with redundant mirror sites which Google has every right to object too). If such diversity is what Google interprets as "shadow domains" then we take exception to their interpretation as that lumps the legitimate in with the illegitimate. We can only hope that Google realizes to what degree we, the online business community, are in partnership with them. We know there are a LOT of very smart people that comprise Google – we trust they'll see the wisdom in crafting policies with an eye toward supporting us in our efforts to legitimately prosper together. In the final analysis, we need each other – it's a symbiotic relationship. They provide us traffic and we give them their content.