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• OnPage Factors (Title Tags, Meta Tags, Alt Tags)

  2008-08-18T21:59:00.000-07:00
  On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website.
  This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density.
  
  What is Meta Tags:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  An element of HTML Coding on a website that is used by Search Engines to index a website. Most meta-tags are included within the 'Header Code' of a website and the most important tags are the Title, Description and keyword tags. Rules used by different search engines govern how such tags are used, how many characters they should contain, and how they should be formatted.
  
  What is Title Tag?
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  The Title Tag is one of the most important components as far as search engines are concerned. Because the site's Title tag as the link and main Title of the site's listing on the search engine result page.
  
  Following are some rules about the Title tags:
  1. Place your Title tags immediately below the tag.
  2. Place 40 to 65 characters between the tags, including spaces.
  3. Put the keyword phrase you want to focus on for this page at a very beginning of the Title.
  
  What is Description Meta Tag:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  An HTML tag that gives a general Description of the contents of the page. This Description is not displayed on the page itself, but is largely intended to help the search engines index the page correctly.
  
  The Description Meta tag describes the web page to the search engines.
  1. They read and index the text in the tag.
  2. Some search engines grabs the text form of the Description tag and places it under the text form of Title tag so searcher can read your Description.
  3. Some times search engines may not use the Description you provide. However, it uses the Description with the keyword from the body text of that page or it may use the Description of some standard web directories.
  4. Some smaller search engine uses the Description tag in the results.
  
  Following are some rules about the Description tags.
  1. The Description Meta tag is very important so you should use it in your site.
  2. Place your Description tag immediately below the Title tags.
  3. Create a nice keyworded Description of up to 250 characters, including spaces.
  4. Duplicate your important Keywords once in the Description but not more than that.
  
  What Is Keyword Meta Tag:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  This was important many years past, but this Meta tag is not so important these days. Some search engines may use it, but many don't.
  
  Following are some rules about the Keywords tag:
  1. Limit the tag up to 300 characters, including spaces.
  2. You can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Don't use both but use either a comma or no space or use a space and no comma.
  3. Make sure that most of the Keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
  4. Don't use a lot of repetition.
  5. Don't use the same Keywords tag in all your pages.
  
  Using Other Meta tags:
  There are many other Meta tags but that not all are important but some of them are useful and that are as following:
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days"
  meta name="robots" content="index, follow"
  Or
  meta name="robots" content="all"
  Or
  meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"
  -----------------------------------------------------------
  
  Including image ALT text:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  When you are using tag to insert images on the web pages. This tag can include the AltLT= attribute, which means attribute text. Search engines also read ALT texts.
  e.g.
  img src="http://www.nextstudent.com/images/logo.gif" width="398" height="59" border="0" alt="Student Loans by NextStudent"
  
  Anchor Text:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Anchor text is the hyperlink words on a web page - the words you click on when you click a link. Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you're linking to. It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.
  
  You can use anchor text in:
  1. External links - links from other sites
  2. Internal links - links on your pages
  3. Navigation maps
  4. Links on your main page. A very important spot.
  
  H1 Tag:
  ~~~~~~~~
  Title /heading of the page should be mentioned in H1 tag, the length of title should be limited to 60-80 characters. The standard usage of H1 tag is 3 times for the home page and once in the inner pages
  
  Internal Links & Sitemap page Optimization
  ====================================
  Creating Sitemap Page:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  A sitemap is a web page that lists all the web pages on a website, typically organized in hierarchical way. Sitemap helps visitors and search engine bots to find pages on the site. It provides quick finding for search engine robot. Depending on the size of your website, it may actually link to all of your pages.
  
  Creating Navigation Structure:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Creating navigation structure, that search engine can read:
  Your navigation structure needs to be visible to the search engines. A navigation structure created with JavaScript will not work for the search engines.
  
  1) Add a site map page and link to it from your main navigation. It provides another way for search engines to find out all pages.
  2) Whenever possible, provide keywords in text links as part of the navigation structure.
  3) Even if your navigation structure is visible to search engines, you may want to have these bottom-of-page links as well. They are convenient for site visitors and provide another chance for the search engines to find your other pages. Another reason of that is basic text navigation.
  
  Creating a good and proper directory structure is also very important. Keep your pages as close to the root domain as possible, rather than have a complicated multilevel directory structure. Create a directory for each navigation tab and keep all the files in that directory.
  
  e.g.
  http://www.nextstudent.com/consolidation_loans/consolidation_loans.asp
  
  Naming Files:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~
  Giving the proper keyword or product related names to all the images, pages etc… and the page names should be in lowercase.
  
  e.g.
  http://www.nextstudent.com/plus_loans/plus_loans.asp
  
  Avoiding Flash Animation:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  You should avoid using Flash Animations in the site because search engines cannot read the Flash Animations.
  
  However, if it is necessary to use Flash Animations in the site then there are a few things you can do to help with indexing:
  1. Make sure you use your TITLE tags and DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS Meta tag.
  2. Put text between NOSCRIPT and /NOSCRIPT tags. You could use text; you can separate each keyword with comma and a space. Do not use both but use both a comma and no space or use a space and no comma.
  3. Make sure that most of the keywords in the tag are also in the body text.
  4. Don't use a lot of repetition.
  5. Don't use the same KEYWORD tag in all your pages.
  
  Avoiding Embedded Text In Images:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  You should avoid using the embedded text in images means you should use text base information in place of images which displays the information of content in it. And also use of large images should be avoided in the home page.
  
  Adding Body Text:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  You need text in the page but it should not be more than 100 to 250 words. If you are putting article in the page and the article is of 1000 words, then it is ok. However, the 100-250 word range is good. That amount of content allows you to really define, what the page is about and will help the search engine understand what the page is about.
  
  1. Home page must contain the short information about all the facilities and products.
  2. Other pages should contain the information regarding that page with the important keywords related to that page.
  3. Keywords should used and repeated in content of all pages.
  
  Creating Headers:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  HTML has several tags that define headers: H1, H2, H3 and so on. These headers are useful in search engine optimization, because when you put keywords into a heading, you are saying to search engine, "These keywords are so important that they appear in heading text" and search engine pays more attention to them. Weighing them more heavily than keywords in body text.
  
  Formatting Text:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  You can also tell the search engines that a particular word might be significant several other ways. If the text is displayed in some different way in the page means the search engine may assume that it is been set off for some reason.
  
  Following are few things you can set your keywords apart from the other words on the page:
  
  1. Make the text bold.
  2. Make the text italic.
  3. Uppercase the first letter in Each Word, and lowercase the other letters in the word.
  
  Creating Links:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Links in your pages serve several purposes:
  1. They help searchbots find other pages in your site.
  2. Keywords in links tell search engines about the pages that the links are pointing at.
  3. Keywords in links also tell the search engines about the page containing the links.
  4. All the links must be text based hyperlinks.
  
  URL Rewriting:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  URL rewriting takes the variables out of a dynamic site URL and remaps them into a shorter version. For example:
  
  1. OldURL:
  http://www.example.com/index.php?this=1234&that=5678
  
  2. Shorter, rewritten URL
  http://www.example.com/1234/5678
  
  When a user request a URL such as http://www.example.com/1234/5678, that URL is rewritten by the server behind the scenes so that the scripts receives the variables this =1234 and that =5678. The scripts that drive the site must be written so that they create the shorter URL for links.
  
  The server translates the requested URLs internally without showing the translated version to the visitors.
  
  404 Not Found:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  The 404 code tell the user agent that there is no content for the URL. This response will be sent by default whenever a nonexistent URL is requested. There is also a 410 gone response that can be sent if a URL has been removed permanently, and has not been relocated.
  
  301 Moved Permanently:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  The 301 code indicates that a URL has been permanently relocated. The user agent will usually fetch the resource from the new URL immediately-in most Web browsers, you won't even realize it's happening. Spiders might store the new URL and fetch it later. This status code can be set as part of the Web server's configuration, or it can be returned as a response by a server-side script (using PHP, ASP ext.)
  
  Robots.txt :
  ~~~~~~~~
  Spiders and Robots Exclusion : Web Robots are programs that automatically traverse the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced. This page explains how you can control what these robots do when visiting your site.
  
  What is Robots.txt?
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  The Robots Exclusion Protocol is a method that allows Web site administrators to indicate to visiting robots which parts of their site should not be visited by the robot. When a Robot visits a web site, it first checks for the file robots.txt in the root directory.
  
  e.g. http://Stars.com/robots.txt
  
  If it can find this file, it will analyze its contents to see if it may retrieve further documents (files). You can customize the robots.txt file to apply only to specific robots, and to disallow access to specific directories or files.
  
  Here is a sample robots.txt file that prevents all robots from visiting the entire site:-
  
  # Tells Scanning Robots Where They Are and Are Not Welcome
  # User-agent : can also specify by name; "*" is for everyone
  # Disallow : if this matches first part of requested path,
  # forget it
  
  User-agent : * # applies to all robots
  Disallow : / # disallow indexing of all pages
  
  The record starts with one or more User-agent lines, specifying which robots the record applies to, followed by "Disallow" and "Allow" instructions to that robot. To evaluate if access to a URL is allowed, a robot must attempt to match the paths in Allow and Disallow lines against the URL, in the order they occur in the record. The first match found is used. If no match is found, the default assumption is that the URL is allowed.
  
  For example:
  User-agent: webcrawler
  User-agent: infoseek
  Allow: /tmp/ok.html
  Disallow: /tmp
  
  WebCrawler and InfoSeek are not allowed access to the /tmp/ directory, except to access ok. html. All other robots are allowed unrestricted access.
  
  Sometimes robots get stuck in CGI programs, trying to evoke all possible outputs. This keeps robots out of the cgi-bin directory, and disallows execution of a specific CGI program in the
  /Ads/ directory:-
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /cgi-bin/
  Disallow: /Ads/banner.cgi
  
  Robots.txt is a simple text file that's uploaded to the root directory of a website. Spirders request this file first, and process it before they crawl the site. The simplest robots.txt file possible is this:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow:
  
  That's it, The first line identifies the user agent; an asterisk means that the following lines apply to all agents. The blank after Disallow: means that no part of the site is off limits.
  
  This robots.txt file doesn't do anything: all user agents are able to see everything on the site. It's worth putting a robots.txt file on every website, even it it doesn't restrict the content that spiders may access. Doing so will prevent the server from returning (and logging) a 404 Not Found error every time a spider requests robots.txt Although a missing robots.txt file foes no real harm from an SEO perspective, the 404 errors can be annoying to webmasters who are examining log files in an attempt to identify real problems.
  
  What is Google Sitemap.xml?
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
  
  Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can't reach all areas of a website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.
  
  This document describes the formats for Sitemap files and also explains where you should post your Sitemap files so that search engines can retrieve them.
  
  Please note that the Sitemap Protocol supplements, but does not replace, the crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap (or Sitemaps) to a search engine, you will help that engine's crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.
  
  Using this protocol does not guarantee that your webpages will be included in search indexes. (Note that using this protocol will not influence the way your pages are ranked by Google.)
  
  The Sitemap Must:
  1. Begin with an opening tag and end with a closing tag.
  2. Include a entry for each URL as a parent XML tag.
  3. Include a child entry for each parent tag.
  
  XML Sitemap Format:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  1. Indexed pages in your site.
  site:www.xyz.com
  
  2.Pages that link to your site.
  link:www.xyz.com
  
  3. The current cache of your site.
  catch:www.xyz.com
  
  4. Information we have about your site.
  info:www.xyz.com
  
  5. Pages that are similar to your site.
  related:www.xyz.com
  
  AVOID THINGS THAT SEARCH ENGINES HATES
  
  Dealing With Frames:
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  A framed site is one in which the browser window is broken in to two or more parts, each of which holds a Web Page. Frames cause a number of problems as following:
  1. Some search engines have trouble getting through the frame-definition or frameset page to the actual web pages.
  2. If the search engine gets through, it indexes individual pages, not frame sets. Each page is indexed separately.
  3. You cannot point to a particular page in your site.
  
  This may be a problem in the following situations:
  1. Linking campaigns. Other sites can link to only the front of your site; they can't link to specific pages during link campaign.
  2. Pay-per-click campaigns. If you are running a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, you cannot link directly to a page related to a particular product.
  3. Placing your products in the shopping directories. In this case, you need to link to a particular product page.
  
  Search Engine Spamming Techniques that should be avoided
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Use Of Invisible Text:
  Using invisible text is an extremely common search spamming practice in which a spammer uses a similar color for fonts as well as the background. Invisible text is used to stuff pages with keywords that are visible to search engines, but invisible to the viewers. All major search engines today can identify this kind of spamming easily and can penalize the site.
  
  Stuffing Keywords:
  Keyword stuffing can be done in many ways. One most common way of doing this is by using invisible text. Other methods involve using keywords in very small fonts at the bottom of pages, using keywords in hidden tags (like no frames tag, alt tags, hidden value tags, option tags etc.) or stuffing the main content with repetitive keywords. Keyword stuffing is a trick that most search engines today are able to sniff out.
  
  Link Spamming:
  Link Spamming is the process of spamming search engines by getting thousands of inbound links from link farms, forums, blogs, free to all pages, unrelated websites or even by registering hundreds of domains and getting links from all of them generating a link empire. To put it in simple words link spamming is the process of getting inbound links through unethical practices solely for the purpose of ranking higher in search engines.
  
  Most search engines give high level of importance to in-bound links and consider them as an indication that the site is credible. Participating in free for all and linking farms can get any site thousands of in-bound links, which can make them look important in the eyes of the search engines when they actually aren't. Most search engines today have come up with strict measures to deal with such kind of spamming and can even ban an involved website completely from their search listings.
  
  Cloaking:
  Simply put, cloaking is any process that involves presenting search engines with one set of information and the visitors with another. The copy presented to the search engines is highly optimized and hence the search but may rank it higher.
  
  Creating Doorway Pages:
  Doorway pages are pages that are highly optimized for search engines. They are similar to junk pages and contain nothing but keywords and irrelevant content. When a visitor enters such a page, his is either automatically redirected or asked to click on a JavaScript link.
  
  It is not necessary that all doorway pages should always look this way. There are ways in which good and related information can be provided making the doorway pages an informative page instead of a page that contains nothing but junk. Only when one tries to take shortcuts does he relent to creating junk pages instead of offering informational content.
  
  Page Redirects:
  Often people create spam filled Web pages intended for the eyes of search engines only. When someone visits those pages, they are redirected to the real page by META refresh tags, CGI, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. There are legitimate reasons for cloaking and similar techniques, but don't use them unless you know exactly what you are doing.
  
  Duplicate Content:
  Its Possible that content duplication is the single biggest SEO problem faced by websites today. Whether the duplication is interntional or not, presenting the same content to search engines under multiple URLs can cause a site to be ranked poorly or penalized. In some cases, it prevents indexing entirely.
  
  My World

• 5 Tips to Boost Your Adsense Revenue

  2008-07-30T04:10:00.000-07:00
  Google AdSense program has made it easier for webmasters to make money through a website. Webmasters who run an AdSense campaign will display Google's contextual Ads relevant to the content of their sites and thus encouraging visitors to click the ads and earn money for each ad click.
  
  However you will earn very little AdSense revenue if you don't know how to optimize your AdSense ads on your website. Here are some tips to increase your AdSense earning:
  
  [1] Focus on one Adsense ad format. The Large Rectangle (336X280) ad format seems to work better than other ad formats because this format tends to result in higher click through rates (CTR). Another reason is that the ads will look like normal web links that visitors use to click on them. It doesn't matter whether the visitors know that they are clicking AdSense ads or not, as long as there are clicking, you earn AdSense commission.
  
  [2] Create a custom palette for your ads. Select a color that matches your website's background. If your site's background is white both, the color of ad border and background should set to be white too. Also the color of the ad title should be similar to coloe of the links in your website. This is to make your AdSense ads look like it is part of the web pages. Again, this will boost AdSense CTR.
  
  [3] Don't place your AdSense ads at the bottom of your webpages because it is proven to be less effective. Displaying your AdSense ads at the bottom is like hiding your AdSense and thus leads to low CTR and AdSense revenue. Try to put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between AdSense locations can make when you see your earnings.
  
  [4] Try to place your AdSense ads near rich content as visitors main focus usually are your content. There are several ways to insert AdSense ads into your content and one of the ways is place your AdSense just after the end of your content.
  
  [5] Try to automate the insertion of your AdSense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your AdSense code in a text file, name it as “AdSense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then use SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.
  
  These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. There are other ways to optimize your AdSense that produce high CTR also. You can learn more tricks by reading in AdSense and webmaster forums.
  My World

• SEO 5 Minute Guide

  2008-07-30T03:32:00.000-07:00
  This is a 5 minute SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guide to help your site get indexed and listed in the major search engines.
  
  We will only discuss the most importance areas to get your website properly indexed by the search engines. The areas that we are going through are the :
  1. Title Tag
  
  2. Meta (Description and Keywords) Tags
  
  3. Body Tag
  
  A brief description of what you should write in the body text of your main (index) page.
  
  This is just a very brief description, but it will however be very useful to the beginner web designer to get a better understanding of the basics on how to get your website indexed and listed at the search engines.
  
  Title Tag:
  The first thing you need to do is identify the keyword phrases that are relevant to your company, products and services, when you have decided on your "Keyword Phrases" you need to put then in tour page's title tag.
  
  The title tag is definitely the most important tag in the header section of your web page. The title tag is displayed in the blue bar at the top of your browser (SEO - Basic search engine tips - How to get indexed and listed at search engines). The title tag is a one-line describing your business, and it includes the most keywords. The search engines place a lot of relevance on the words contained within the tag, so be sure to include your targeted keyword phrases.
  
  Tip: - The title tag should not exceed 60 characters.
  
  Description Tag:
  The description tag is used to describe your web page/ Business. Some search engines will use this information to summarize your website in their search listings. It is again of utmost importance that you also include your keyword phrases in the description tag.
  
  Tip: - The description tag should provide a 25-30 word description of your website.
  
  Keyword Tag:
  The keyword tag should of course include the "Keyword Parses "That you are targeting in order of importance. Start with the most important and then proceed to less important but still relevant keywords. Do not include keywords that are not relevant to them of your site.
  
  Tip: -Don't repeat any word more then 3 times within the keyword tag
  
  Body Tag
  In the body tag section of your website, you should describe and explain the nature of your business, products, scope of the website, etc.
  
  You should generally include around 500-600 words in this area.
  
  Make Sure to repeat your "keyword phrases" a few times so that search engines will consider these to be very important and relevant to your website. For nearly all search engines content is still king, and having lots of quality content will help you to increase your ranking with the major search engines.
  
  Submitting To The Search Engines:
  Once your web page is fully optimized, it is time to submit it to the major search engines. Although there are hundreds of search engines on the Internet, only a handful are truly important.
  
  The top three search engines are:
  Google.com
  Yahoo.com
  MSN.com
  
  Note:
  It's recommended that you submit your website to the search engines manually instead of using any automated submission tool, because some search engines regard (View) those as spam, and won't list your site. Keep in mind that it can take months before you get listed, so be patient.
  
  Submitting To Directories:
  Search engines need a starting point. That's why human edited directories are important to be listed in. There are 3 major web directories at this moment:
  
  DMOZ - Free listings.
  
  The Yahoo directory - Free listings for non-commercial sites.
  
  Look smart (Zeal directory) - Free listings for non-commercial sites.
  My World

• Improve Link Popularity

  2008-07-30T03:09:00.000-07:00
  Link popularity is the total number of Websites that link to your site. Good link popularity can dramatically increase your Website traffic. Well-placed links are an excellent source of consistent and targeted traffic. And due to recent developments, they can even generate additional search engine traffic to your site.
  Most of the major search engines now factor link popularity into their relevancy algorithms. As a result, increasing the number of quality, relevant sites which link to your site can actually improve your search engine rankings. You cannot get high link popularity by submitting your Website to thousands of FFA (Free For All) link pages. Improve link popularity of your website by adding links from important Websites. This have a greater effect on your link popularity and your search engine rankings.
  
  Successful link exchange tips:
  [1]. Search engines value links to and from sites that offer quality information on pages that are not overloaded with advertisements and pop-ups. If you link to a high-traffic volume site that is poor on relevant content, it is unlikely you will see an improvement in your search engine ranking.
  
  [2]. Link to sites that compliment the topic or category of your site, thereby offering the web visitor more information on a relevant topic. This is sure to boost your search engine ranking and pull in more qualified visitors to your site from those that link to you.
  
  [3]. The more quality links to relevant sites that you have, then the better your search engine ranking and traffic volume will be.
  
  [4]. A consistent ongoing campaign of link exchanging is vital to your success. Not only should you look to build link volume, but you should also look to constantly review the links you have in place to keep them fresh and up to date.
  
  [5]. Use keyword phrases in the link text. Links to your site with 'click here', 'please visit our sponsor', 'check this out' or similar phrases can lower your ranking.
  
  [6]. Do not get links from link exchange sites and link farms. Link farms are networks of heavily cross-linked pages on one or more sites, with the sole intention of improving the link popularity of those pages and sites. All of the major search engines consider such links as Spam, so stay clear of these types of links.
  
  [7]. Before approving a link exchange partner, consider where your link will be posted on their site. If it's posted on some obscure page that no human could possibly ever find, then you may want to reconsider accepting his or her link.
  
  [8]. You should not go overboard in the quest of getting more and more links. Quality should not be sacrificed at the cost of quantity.
  My World

• Social Networking

  2008-07-30T00:19:00.000-07:00
  Social networking is obviously very popular online today.
  
  Unlike general networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, there are a number of smaller networks that focus on professionals and businesses. These sites can be an excellent place to gain some exposure and to communicate with other entrepreneurs.
  
  Here is a quick look at 10 networking sites that should be considered by Entrepreneurs.
  
  LinkedIn.com
  LinkedIn has quickly become the leading social network that specializes in professionals. Many users have their resume posted on their profile and a growing number of employers are using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool. Entrepreneurs who are not looking for jobs can still use LinkedIn as a great resource for meeting other professionals and gaining some exposure for their own work.
  
  PartnerUp.com
  PartnerUp is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs find joint venture partners, co-founders, executives, and board members. You can either post your opportunity or search the listings placed by other entrepreneurs. There are networking capabilities through forums and an Ask a Question feature.
  
  Konnects.com
  Konnects focuses on professional networking by giving each member their own profile page. You can join communities, get to know other members, and just generally network with other like-minded professionals.
  
  Ryze.com
  Ryze has been around for a while but isn’t as well known as some other networking sites. On Ryze you’ll get your own profile page that can be customized, you can add friends, leave messages for others, and join groups.
  
  Biznik's.com
  Biznik’s tagline is “Business networking that doesn’t suck.” Their approach is aimed more at entrepreneurs and business owners than employees looking for a job. There are a number of different communities for major cities in the U.S.
  
  Cofoundr.com
  Cofoundr is a private community for entrepreneurs. It obviously intends to help members find co-founders, as well as to build teams and network with other entrepreneurs.
  
  StartupNation.com
  StartupNation is a community site for entrepreneurs that includes networking aspects. The forums are very active with a wide range of topics being discussed. StartupNation also includes a number of articles relevant to entrepreneurs.
  
  Upspring.com
  Upspring aims to provide businesses with an opportunity to increase exposure and attract more customers. Members can register for free to get a profile page, join groups, and network with others. There are also premium options for a monthly fee.
  
  FastPitch.com
  Fast Pitch claims to be the fastest growing social network for professionals. You can set up your own profile page and network with other professionals.
  
  Xing.com
  Xing has a large and active community of professionals. You can network in many of the same ways as you can with the other sites listed here.
  My World

• Dynamic URLs vs. Static URLs

  2008-06-29T21:38:00.000-07:00
  Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a web page by way of a dynamic script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is considered dynamic. Many websites choose dynamic content over Static content. This is because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating each static by hand is a Huge task.
  
  There are two types of URLs: Dynamic & Static
  
  Dynamic URLs:
  
  A dynamic URL is a page address that results from the search of a Database-Driven Website or the URL of a web site that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of the web page stay the same unless the changes are hard-coded into the HTML, Dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database. The Dynamic page is basically only a template in which to display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in the HTML code, the data is changed in the database.
  
  Disadvantages of using Dynamic URLs:
  
  Search Engines don't like Dynamic URLs. For those at most risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are e-commerce stores, forums, sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or WordPress, or any other database-driven website.
  
  Many times the URL that is generated for the content in a Dynamic site looks something like this:
  
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date
  
  A Static URL on the other hand, is a URL that doesn't change, and doesn't have variable strings. It looks like this:
  
  http://www.seo.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.htm
  
  Static URLs are typically ranked better in search engine results pages, and they are indexed more quickly than dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also easier for the end-user to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a search engine query that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that URL than one that doesn't make sense to them.
  
  A search engine wants to only list pages its index that are unique. Search engines decide to combat this issue by cutting off the URLs after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).
  
  For example, let's look at three URLs:
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=date
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=67890&sort=date
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=date
  
  All three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search engine purges the information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all three pages look the same:
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php
  
  Now, you don't have unique pages, and consequently, the duplicate URLs won't be indexed.
  
  Another issue is that dynamic pages generally do not have any keywords in the URL. It is very important to have keyword rich URLs. Highly relevant keywords should appear in the domain name or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, rank websites.
  
  The study involved taking hundreds of highly competitive keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software, and comparing factors involving the top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 40-50% of those with the keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and MSN has an astonishing 85%! What that means is that to these search engines, having your keywords in your URL or domain name could mean the difference between a top ten ranking, and a ranking far down in the results pages.
  
  The Solution
  So what can you do about this difficult problem? You certainly don't want to have to go back and recode every single dynamic URL into a static URL. This would be too much work for any website owner.
  
  If you are hosted on a Linux server, then you will want to make the most of the Apache Mod Rewrite Rule, which is gives you the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another, without the user's (or a search engine's) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache; for more information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This module saves you from having to rewrite your static URLs manually.
  
  How does this module work? When a request comes in to a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL internally to the old, dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server compares the URL requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules.
  
  For example, when someone requests this URL:
  http://www.seo.com/forums/the-challenges-of-dynamic-urls.html
  
  The server looks for and compares this static-looking URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:
  
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule thread-threadid-(.*)\.htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1
  
  It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this, with no one the wiser:
  http://www.seo.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345
  
  You now have a URL that only will rank better in the search engines, but your end-users can definitely understand by glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache's Mod Rewrite Rule to handle to conversion for you, and still keeping the dynamic URL.
  
  If you are not particularly technical, you may not wish to attempt to figure out the complex Mod Rewrite code and how to use it, or you simply may not have the time to embark upon a new learning curve. Therefore, it would be extremely beneficial to have something to do it for you. This URL Rewriting Tool can definitely help you. What this tool does is implement the Mod Rewrite Rule in your .htaccess file to secretly convert a URL to another, such as with dynamic and static ones.
  
  With the URL Rewriting Tool, you can opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into the box, press submit, and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of your website. You must remember to place any additional rewrite commands in your .htaccess file for each dynamic URL you want Apache to rewrite. Now, you can give out the static URL links on your website without having to alter all of your dynamic URLs manually because you are letting the Mod Rewrite Rule do the conversion for you, without JavaScript, cloaking, or any sneaky tactics.
  
  Another thing you must remember to do is to change all of your links in your website to the static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search engines due to having duplicate URLs. You could even add your dynamic URLs to your Robots Exclusion Standard File (robots.txt) to keep the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of your methods, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, you should ideally have no links pointing to any of your old dynamic URLs.
  
  You have multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in your website whenever possible. When it's not possible, and you need to keep your database-driven content as those old dynamic URLs, you can still give end-users and search engine a static URL to navigate, and all the while, they are still your dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if this method was considered "cloaking", he responded that it indeed was not, and that in fact, search engines prefer you do it this way. The URL Rewrite Tool not only saves you time and energy by helping you use static URLs by converting them transparently to your dynamic URLs, but it will also save your rankings in the search engines.
  My World

• What is Web 2.0?

  2008-06-27T20:27:00.001-07:00
  Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design, that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.
  
  These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.
  
  Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any
  technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web.
  
  "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."
  My World

• Affiliate Marketing

  2008-06-27T20:16:00.000-07:00
  Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
  
  Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.
  
  Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques like publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.
  
  Affiliate marketing — using one site to drive traffic to another — is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.
  My World

• Email Marketing

  2008-06-27T20:15:00.000-07:00
  Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:
  
  (1) Sending emails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
  (2) Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
  (3) Adding advertisements in emails sent by other companies to their customers.
  (4) Emails that are being sent on the Internet (Email did and does exist outside the Internet, Network Email, FIDO etc.)
  
  Researchers estimate that US firms alone spent $400 million on email marketing in 2006.
  My World

• Google AdSense

  2008-06-26T22:20:00.000-07:00
  
  Google AdSense is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can Register in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a Per-Click Or Per-Thousand-Impressions basis. Google is also currently beta-testing a cost-per-action based service.
  My World

• Google AdWords

  2008-06-26T22:14:00.000-07:00
  
  Google AdWords is Google's advertising product and its main source of Generate revenue. AdWords offers Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both Text & Banner Ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution.
  
  Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes.
  My World

• What constitutes search engine Spam?

  2008-06-20T20:52:00.000-07:00
  Any optimization method or practice employed solely to deceive the search engines for the purpose of increasing rankings is considered Spam. Some techniques are clearly considered as an attempt to Spam the engines. Where possible, you should avoid these:
  
  1.) Keyword stuffing: This is the repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Search engines now have the ability to analyze a page and determine whether the frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to the rest of the words in the document.
  
  2.) Invisible text: Some webmasters stuff keywords at the bottom of a page and make their text color the same as that of the page background. This is also detectable by the engines.
  
  3.) Tiny text: Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.
  
  4.) Page redirects: Some engines, especially Infoseek, do not like pages that take the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, Cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques.
  
  5.) Meta tags stuffing: Do not repeat your keywords in the Meta tags more than once, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to your site's content.
  
  6.) Do not create doorways.
  
  7.) Do not submit the same page more than once on the same day to the same search engine.
  
  8.) Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a web page, give the copies different file names, and submit them all. That will be interpreted as an attempt to flood the engine.
  
  9.) Do not submit more than the allowed number of pages per engine per day or week. Each engine has a limit on how many pages you can manually submit to it using its online forms.
  
  10.) Do not participate in link farms or link exchange programs. Search engines consider link farms and link exchange programs as spam, as they have only one purpose - to artificially inflate a site's link popularity, by exchanging links with other participants.
  My World

• Glossary Collection

  2008-06-20T20:08:00.000-07:00
  (B)
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Back Link: Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.
  
  Bot: Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
  
  Bidding Engine: Search engines that operate a bid-listing model, such as Overture of Espotting.
  
  Bid Listing: The use of Pay Per Click (PPC) models by search engines in a dynamic, real time auction for search listings. As the auction is never-ending and real time, your listings will change as the bidding level changes. Bids drop of as budgets run dry, or are cancelled, and new bids are added. This makes monitoring and changing of bids essential.
  
  Bid-Listing Monitoring: The act of monitoring activity in bid engines in order to keep a bid listing campaign as competitive as possible.
  
  Bookmarking: The action of marking a webpage in your browser, to make it easy to return to later. Most statistics packages will measure this a a new visitor, even though a loyalty relationship has been established.
  
  Brand Infringement: The act of using another company's brand in a non-ethical way, such as inclusion in meta tags, claiming to be that company, or making false statements about that company.
  
  Brand Intelligence: Bigmouthmedia's brand infringement detection and investigation service.
  BMM: Bigmouthmedia
  
  
  (C)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  Cloaking: Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
  
  Conversion: Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.
  
  Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Files that instruct browsers on how to format a document (which fonts to use, how links should behave etc.) Some browsers treat CSS in different ways.
  
  Click: Term used to describe when a user selects a link or search engine listing by pressing the mouse button while holding the pointer over the link
  
  Client-Side: Web-coding that instructs the browser to undertake a task. Opposite to server-side
  
  CTA: Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad (vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
  
  CTR: Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
  
  CPC - Cost per Click: The actual average cost incurred by the advertiser by the action of a potential customer following a link found on, for instance, a SERP.
  
  CPM - Cost per Impression: (1, 000 page views)
  
  Cost Per Thousand (CPT)
  
  CPM is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand (where M is the roman numeral of 1000). When used in advertising it relates to the cost per thousand page impressions.
  It is important to remember that when someone says something like, "our CPM is $5, " this means that the Cost Per Impression is $0.005
  
  Creative: Titles and Descriptions as they are submitted to directory editors
  
  
  (D)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Data gathering: The process of building profiles of customers by collecting data by their activity.
  Knowing your customers better will allow you to provide better products and customer service.
  
  Database Presence: The inclusion of database driven content within a site
  
  Design Technology: Technology used in the design process
  
  Directory Creative: Text written by BMM and submitted to editors
  
  Directory Search: A search made by clicking through directory categories without use of keywords or phrases.
  
  Domain: All devices connected to the internet are referenced by their IP address. To make using the internet easier, most will have IP addresses have names associated with them - for instance .com. a domain can have any number of sub-domains prefixed before it, to create a complete domain name.
  
  Domain Mapping: The server administration required to 'point' a domain at a specific location or "IP Address"
  
  Doorway Page: Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
  
  
  (E)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  E-Commerce: The processes of selling online, via a website
  
  Editorial Search Engine: Engines that rank sites using human editors and not by reading meta tags
  
  Emergency Alerts: To signal that an event that is being monitored has occured, for instance, by email or SMS.
  
  
  (F)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Featured Site: The term used by many portals, and other search properties, that incorporate some element of bid-listing results in their normal search results.
  
  Feed: A file listing a large number of pages to be indexed or items for sale which spiders can download and read automatically from a website. Some feeds can be created easily using a spreadsheet. Others, such as RSS and Google SiteMaps may require some XML expertise.
  
  Flash: Macromedia Flash Technology
  
  
  (G)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Generic Keywords: General terms relating to subject matter, e.g. marketing (generic) search engine optimisation(specific) Goofle's own system for ranking web pages.
  
  
  Gateway Page: Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
  
  
  (H)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Hit: An often mis-used word that refers to any file download from a website, including one hit for the HTML page, and one for each embedded file such as graphics, Flash movies, WAV files etc. Consequently, one page view can generate several hits. Often, the word hit is mis-used where the phrase "visitor session" would be more appropriate.
  
  HTML Coding: HyperText Markup Language is a coding Language used to make HyperText documents for use on the Web.
  
  
  (I)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  IP Address: A four-byte numeral (bytes have a value between 0 and 255), which represents an exact address of an internet location, eg. 255.0.192.47. There are almost 4, 300 million unique IP addresses, however this is currently not enough for global use, and often users share IP addresses through a proxy server.
  
  IP Delivery (Cloaking): A technique whereby false content is presented to search engine spiders in an attempt to gain ranking points. Search engine spiders are recognised by their IP Address.
  
  
  (J)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Javascript: A web coding language with different capabilities to HTML. Not recognised by Search Engine Spiders. Can be client-side, and sometimes server-side.
  
  JHTML: Normal HTML that includes "server-side" JavaScript instructions.
  
  
  (K)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Keyword Search: A search made by keying a keyword, or combination of words into a search box on a search engine, directory or portal.
  
  Key Phrases: Combinations of keywords, also called "search terms".
  
  Keyword Search Frequency: Number of search requests for particular keyword.
  
  Keywords: The actual words used to describe the site in meta tags and creatives and to find the site using "searches".
  
  Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
  
  (L)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Links: An electronic connection between two Web sites (also called "hyper-link").
  
  Link Farm: A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
  
  Link Popularity: A method used by search engines to determine the importance of a listed site. Based on the idea that sites with many inbound links is more credible than one without
  
  
  (M)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Message Boards: Websites that allow visitors to post messages, and for others to reply to them. Unlike email, all discussions take place in public, any anyone can join in. Usually, such discussions are themed by subject matter.
  
  Meta Search Engine: A search Engine that simultaneously refers to several other search properties to retrieve search results. Copernic and Vivisimo are examples.
  
  Meta Tag: HTML coding embedded in the site, to provide spiders with keyword information
  
  
  (N)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Newsletter Marketing: The process of building relationships with existing customers and gaining new ones by publishing and mass distributing an email containing features and articles of interest to them.
  
  
  (P)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  PR: Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.
  
  Paid Linking: The act of paying for another site to link to your own.
  
  Page View (Impression): One view of a web page (or banner ad) by a user.
  Partner Sites (Bid Engines Terminology): Relates to bid engines. Partner sites are sites that also display some or all of the bid listing results from that bid engine.
  
  Pay Per Click: A charging model for search engine listings based on a set charge for users clicking on that search engine listing. This model is used by Overture and Espotting in the UK, in a bidding fashion (see bid listing)
  
  Permission Based Email: Since late 2003, to email individuals in Europe as part of a mass distribution, the express, unequivocal permission of the recipient must be obtained first, and this should form basis of an ethical, permission based campaign.
  
  Portals: Web sites which offer some or all of the following - search, email, news, weather, shopping
  
  PR: Public Relations - the process of maintaining and controlling your relationship with the public and your public persona.
  
  PFI: Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
  
  
  (R)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Rank: The position attained on the Search Engines, Directories and Searchable Portals
  
  Rebrand: The process of changing the form of an established brand and managing that change effectively to avoid losing brand recognition.
  
  Reciprocal Linking: The act of two sites linking to each other, for mutual benefit, and with no cost incurred by either site.
  
  Robots: Programme which meta search engines send out to read the metas and/or body html of a submitted site.
  
  Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP): Text file placed under e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt Used to prevent spider trawls of private or sensitive areas and image folders/stats files etc.
  
  ROI: Return On Investment - A measure of the success of a marketing campaign in comparison to the money spent on that campaign.
  
  
  (S)
  
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  
  Search Engine: A website that provides a list of useful links (SERP's) in response to a text query. Many Search engines have gradually evolved from pure search engines, such as Google, into portals, such as Yahoo!
  
  Search Engine Optimisation: A crucial element of search engine marketing - the process of adapting web pages to maximize their effectiveness at matching (and occurring highly in the results pages for) common search phrases on search engines.
  
  Search Engine Log Data: Actual search engine logs, from which BMM retrieve data on search frequency of particular keywords.
  
  Search Engine Results Page: The page on which search results are displayed in response to a query submitted by the user.
  
  Search Term Evolution: New words or phrases which are relevant to your industry.
  
  SEO: Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
  making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
  making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
  
  SEM: Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
  
  SERP: Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
  
  Semantic Web: Sometimes called Web2.0. This refers to the goal to make the information in world-wide-web understandable to computers, using technology such as XML and SOAP. Basically, web pages include information not only explaining how pages look, but what they actually mean. Search engines already make use of this in the form of information feeds, such as RSS and XML site maps
  
  Server-Side: Web coding that instructs a server to undertake a task. Opposite to client-side
  
  SHTML: Normal HTML that includes "server-side" instructions
  
  Slang: The use of alternative or colloquial phrases. In terms of SEM, slang is important to take into consideration when formulating an optimisation strategy.
  
  Spam/Spammed: General term relating to practices not approved by the engines and editors
  
  Spiders: See Robots
  
  Style Sheet Errors: Incompatibilities between Cascading Style Sheets designed for one browser, when viewed through another.
  
  Submission: The act of making search engines aware of new web pages and sites. Each search engine will have its own individual process for doing this.
  
  Spam: In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning.
  
  Spamdexing: Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
  
  Spider: also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
  
  Spider Trap: A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.
  
  Stop Word: Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as "the".
  My World

• What is Robots Text File?

  2008-06-20T03:17:00.000-07:00
  The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. For those spiders that obey the file, it provides a map for what they can, and cannot index. The file must reside in the root directory of your web. The URL path (web address) of your robots.txt file should look like this.
  
  http://www.seoconsultants.com/robots.txt
  
  The Robots text file open in Notepad might look like this:
  This is a screen shot of an empty (not recommended) robots.txt file
  
  Definition of the above robots.txt file:
  
  User-agent: *
  The asterisk (*) or wildcard represents a special value and means any robot.
  
  Disallow:
  The Disallow: line without a / (forward slash) tells the robots that they can index the entire site. Any empty value indicates that all URLs can be retrieved. At least one Disallow field needs to be present in a record without the / (forward slash) as shown above.
  
  
  The presence of an empty "/robots.txt" file has no explicit associated semantics, it will be treated as if it was not present, i.e. all robots will consider themselves welcome.
  
  The Disallow: line without the trailing slash (/) tells all robots to index everything. If you have a line that looks like this:
  
  Disallow: /private/
  
  It tells the robot that it cannot index the contents of that /private/ directory.
  
  Summarizing the Robots Exclusion Protocol - robots.txt file
  
  To allow all robots complete access:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow:
  
  Important Note:
  The above format is the common and acceptable standard for allowing all spiders' access to the site. We've recently learned (2002-06-09), that the practice of having just a User-agent: * and Disallow: without a trailing forward slash (empty robots.txt file) may not be recommended. Some spiders may incorrectly interpret this as blocking all content. You'll notice that we disallow the _private, css, and JavaScript folders in the below example and do not recommend an empty file.
  
  2003-05-13 - Do not disallow your /css/ directory. Recent issues with Google may suggest that disallowing your css directory could be a flag for a manual review to see if you are using css to deceive the indexing robots (spiders).
  This is a screen shot of a robots.txt file
  To exclude all robots from the server:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /
  
  To exclude all robots from parts of a server:
  
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /private/
  Disallow: /images-saved/
  Disallow: /images-working/
  
  To exclude a single robot from the server:
  
  User-agent: Named Bot
  Disallow: /
  
  To exclude a single robot from parts of a server:
  
  User-agent: Named Bot
  Disallow: /private/
  Disallow: /images-saved/
  Disallow: /images-working/
  
  Note:
  The asterisk (*) or wildcard in the User-agent field is a special value meaning "any Robot" and therefore is the only one needed until you fully understand how to set up different User-agents.
  
  If you want to Disallow: a particular file within the directory, your Disallow: line might look like this one:
  
  Disallow: /private/top-secret-stuff.htm
  
  Keep in mind that using the above example excludes that specified page (top-secret-stuff.htm) but will not exclude the entire /private/ directory. If you have files that you do not want indexed, then you should put them in a private folder and Disallow: the entire directory, or put them in a password protected directory, or don't put them on the web at all!
  
  You should validate your robots.txt file. Enter the full URI to the robots.txt file on your server. The robots.txt file always resides at the root level of your web.
  My World

• Supplemental Results

  2008-06-20T03:13:00.000-07:00
  Top 5 issues you need to be aware of to keep your website out of the Supplemental Results:
  
  Not Enough Content:
  If you are serious about your rankings and facing stiff competition the first thing you need to do is evaluate how much content is available for indexing. Although many are still achieving top rankings with tricks, it won't be long before their competition will out rank them just because they have better content.
  
  Duplicate Content Trap:
  If your website is an E-commerce with thousands of pages presenting your products, chances are many of your pages may go supplemental, because the amount of "good content" is watered down by your template menus and complementary information. You can run a quick check following my advice in this post on testing your website against Google Supplemental Results.
  
  Unique TITLES and META TAGS:
  Put all your efforts into creating tailored to fit titles and descriptions for your pages - without them you are at great risk to go supplemental. It sounds pretty obvious but there are still countless websites out there all making the same mistake. Your title tag is very very important: If you cannot find the time to create title tags, don't expect the search engines to go an extra length to figure out what your page is about …
  
  Hard to read URLs:
  What do your URLs look like ?Are they easily read by a person ?Do they have session IDs in them ?Are they all looking very similar to each other ?How many pages are showing up in the site command ?You might be having problems with your content management system (CMS). Review your CMS back end to determine how you can implement a re-write strategy, possibly to make you URLs keyword rich.
  
  Content without incoming links:
  If you are running a blog you know how important it is to offer new and interesting information. What's just as important is to have people link and comment. The more your incoming links are sparse throughout your website, the better your deep linking ratio. If you create new content and there are no incoming links, it will go supplemental.
  My World

• Where you must use keyword phrases

  2008-06-19T23:44:00.001-07:00
  A. Title Tag :
  The title is particularly important and should include your primary keyword phrase and if possible your secondary phrase
  
  B. Description Tag :
  If your description contains the search term people enter, and it is the first text that Googlebot comes across, then you've a good chance that Google will display your description in the results
  
  C. Headings & Subheadings :
  The tags that are used throughout an article should contain keywords. So a heading of "Our new product range" is poor; "Our new range of vegetarian dog food" is better
  
  D. Body Copy :
  The writer should understand what the keyword phrases are and use them in natural language on the page.
  
  E. Links on The Page:
  The words used in live links tell the search engine what "this page" is about and also what the "linked-to page" is about.
  
  F. Alt text :
  For every image, write an alt attribute tag, good for both accessibility and optimization
  Additional areas/places
  
  G. References at the bottom of the article.
  
  H. Add a takeaway box.
  
  I. Link title.
  
  J. Testimonials from satisfied customers.
  
  K. Signature box at the end of the article.
  
  Reference : Click here.
  
  
  My World

• Tips for Effective Keyword Research

  2008-06-19T23:36:00.001-07:00
  (A) Start with a goal in mind
  As with all marketing efforts you should have a goal for what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is to increase sales, gain newsletter subscribers, or get new prospect leads, this goal will help to set priorities keyword phrase selection and impact the overall success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts. Take the time to discuss and establish goals and priorities at the start.
  
  (B) Think like a Prospective Customer
  When it comes to search sites, it is the prospective customer who initiates the dialog (query) so it is important that you select keyword phrases that reflect what a prospective customer will enter in at the search site. Users often enter phrases are the legal or proper terms for a product or service, and sometimes the phrases they enter may be totally outside industry jargon. In either case, be sure to select keywords that are naturally intuitive to the customer.
  
  (C) Brainstorm
  Brainstorming is a great way to start generating a list of possible keyword phrases. The brainstorming group should include those with direct customer access (sales reps, customer support representatives, product/content experts, and marketing - don't forget to review your own log files for additional data). Try to generate as many words as possible and then narrow your list quantitatively using industry tools and qualitatively using your industry knowledge. When you brainstorm, remember to step out of yourself and into the mindset of the prospective customer.
  
  (D) Check your Content for Keywords
  If the Keywords you optimize for are not used within the copy of your site, you will not be able to get rankings for those terms. Once you have established a list of keywords, review your site. Be prepared to add new content to your site that can be optimized to support the new mix of Keywords.
  
  (E) Goal is Conversions not Traffic
  The goal of Search Engine Optimization, and your keyword research, is not to just get traffic, but to get valuable, 'qualified' traffic that can lead to actual conversions. You will find the different keyword phrases have a large difference in conversion rates and value for your site. Don't forget that increased revenues will be the ultimate measure of your success.
  
  (F) Avoid short, common phrases
  Short phrases (1 or 2 words) that are also common phrases can be too general and are not the best to optimize for. Common phrases can lead to a large portion of the traffic that is searching on similar terms but not looking for your product or service. The amount of time and effort needed to gain valuable rankings and traffic for those phrases will also be much greater than the time required for more targeted keyword phrases. Targeted keyword phrases may generate slightly less overall traffic, but with targeted keywords you will achieve 'qualified' traffic - leading to increased revenues.
  
  (G) Keyword Research is an ongoing process
  Keyword research is a continuous process. Whatever you do, don't stop. As your SEO program progresses, examine what words perform best, enhance your keyword list based on what you learn, go back and review old keyword ideas against current data and usage trends, and continue to review your site content for synergy with your keyword list. Ongoing keyword/Keyword research will uncover new keyword phrases, while keeping you abreast of your competition, and shifts in the search site industry.
  My World

• Advantages of Keyword Research

  2008-06-19T23:33:00.000-07:00
  a. Drive traffic to your site by using the words people use when they're searching
  b. Write great website copy by incorporating terms that people immediately identify with
  c. Plan profitable pay-per-click campaigns by building up a broad range of keyword phrases that will capture your market
  d. Develop great content ideas that directly address your customers' needs
  e. Understand your customers' behavior and concerns by analyzing the words that they use
  f. Measure the size of a potential online market by the number of searches conducted, and
  g. Develop new revenue streams by using popular keywords to inspire new product and service ideas.
  My World

• What is Keyword Research?

  2008-06-19T23:32:00.000-07:00
  Keyword Research can be defined as choosing the words, which describe your product or service as, seen from the viewpoint of your target market is the most important step in the optimization process.
  
  Keyword Research is the process of defining the right mix of keywords, which are most likely to be used by potential customers at search engines and directories.
  
  This Keyword research consists of a variety of inputs, both qualitative and quantitative, both creative and analytical.
  
  Keyword Research plays a Crucial Role in assuring that your prospective customers will find you when they are looking for your specific products and services.
  
  Following are Most Useful Tools for Keyword Analysis:
  Wordtracker
  
  Overture
  
  Google Adwords
  
  Digital Point
  
  Ranks.nl
  My World

• Web Site Design Guidelines

  2008-06-19T23:20:00.000-07:00
  1. Your main page should specifically let your visitors know exactly what you're offering. If your potential customer can't find your product or service, they definitely won't waste a lot of time looking for it. They'll go on to the next site and probably never return. They're visiting your site for a specific purpose. They want something your site offers.
  
  2. Create a page to display your "Privacy Policy" in regard to the personal information you collect from your visitors such as, email address, Internet Service Provider, etc.. Explain your reasons for collecting the information and let them know how the information will be used.
  
  3. Create a page about you and/or your company. Include your name, company name, photograph, biography, address, phone number and email contact information.
  
  4. Display your copyright information at the bottom of each page.
  
  5. Keep in mind, your visitors may enter your site from pages other than your main, so make sure you include good navigational links on every page. Place your navigation links together at the top, bottom, left or right side of the page. Use tables to neatly align your links and maintain a nicely organized and uniform appearance throughout. Try to keep the number of clicks required to get from your main page to any other page on your site down to four and place your company logo on each page.
  
  6. Use caution when selecting your background and text colors. Busy backgrounds make text difficult to read and draw the attention away from the text. In addition, always be consistent with your background theme on each page of your site. Keep in mind, colors affect your mood and will have an affect on your visitors as well. Bright colors such as yellow and orange, cause you to become more cheerful or happy, while colors such as blue and purple have a calming effect. Dark colors such as brown and black have a depressing effect. A good rule of thumb is to use colors based upon the type of effect you're trying to achieve.
  
  7. ALWAYS check and double-check your site for spelling errors and make sure your images and links are all working properly. If you have several errors, this will make your site appear to be unprofessional. If you are designing your site using an HTML editor, use spell check. Proper grammar is also very important.
  
  8. If you must use frames, use them sparingly. Frames, if not used properly, can make your site look unprofessional. Avoid making your visitors have to scroll from side to side to view your content. This can be very irritating and cause your visitors to leave.
  
  9. If you must use Java on your site, use it sparingly. Java can be slow and has a tendency to crash browsers.
  
  10. If you're using pop-up windows to display special offers or ezine subscription information, try to use a JavaScript that utilizes cookies. This way, the window will only be displayed to your visitors the first time they visit your web site.
  
  11. View your web site through different browsers and screen resolutions so you will see how your visitors will view your site.
  
  Visit:
  SiteOwner- Check your web pages for HTML validity and browser compatibility.
  
  Siteinspector Site
  
  NetMechanic - Provides a variety of free services for your web site including; browser compatibility testing, graphic file size reduction, link check, HTML check, load time check, spell check and more.
  
  Net Mechanic Site
  
  11. Continually add new content to your site. Give your visitors a reason to keep coming back.
  
  Web Design Mistakes to Avoid:
  1. Large fonts
  2. Large scrolling text across the page
  3. Large slow loading graphics
  4. Large Welcome banners
  5. Multiple banners and buttons
  6. Multiple colored text
  7. Multiple use of animated graphics
  8. Multiple use of different fonts
  9. No contact information
  10. No Meta tags
  11. Over powering music set to AutoPlay
  12. Over use of Java
  13. Pages scrolling to oblivion
  14. Poor browser compatibility
  15. Poor content
  16. Poor load time
  17. Poor navigation
  18. Poor organization
  19. Poor overall appearance
  20. Poor use of frames
  21. Poor use of mouse over effect
  22. Poor use of tables
  23. Pop up messages
  24. Scrolling text in the status bar
  25. Spelling/Grammar mistakes
  26. Text difficult to read
  27. Too many graphic and/or line dividers
  28. Too many graphics
  29. Too much advertising
  30. Under construction signs
  31. Animated bullets
  32. Broken links and graphics
  33. Busy, distracting backgrounds
  34. Confusing
  35. Different backgrounds on each page
  
  If you've never designed a web page, it would be wise to become familiar with HTML. (Hypertext Markup Language.)
  
  A great place to start is NCSA Beginner's Guide to HTML: HTML Premier
  
  Take some time to research and plan your web site. Your success depends upon it. The simple, well-designed sites make the sales.
  My World

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