Search Engine Optimization

Seo 2012 How To Rank First In Google

2012-03-09T14:47:00.001-08:00

Seo 2012 How To Rank First In Google

The SEO is change after google update there algorithm
to make a site rank 1st now you didnt need lot of backlink as before.
What you need now ??
Here is something you can do
1. Social Impact: It Provide High impact and also Hard to solve
You should try to make your site visible in

Facebook Comments
Twitter Backlinks
Linkedin Shares
Digg Entries
Delicious Bookmarks
Stumbled Upon
Google +

Although Twitter put a low impact but if you have lot of follower and you twit lot of link it will be nice affect in your URL.

2. Mobile Rendering: Your site should be visible well in mobile
to do that you should check out this thing

Your website should optimized for Mobile Visitors
mobile CSS
Meta Viewport Tag
Apple Icon
Mobile Redirection

3. WWW Resolve: Perfect! Your website with and without www redirects to the same page. you can do this from .htaccess

4. Robots.txt : Your site should have robots.txt

5. XML Sitemap : A sitemap lists URLs that are available for crawling and can include additional information like last update, frequency of changes, and importance. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.

6. Site Title : Ideally, your title should contain between 10 and 70 characters (spaces included)

7. Description : Meta descriptions allow you to influence how your web pages are described and displayed in search results.Your meta description contains between 70 and 160 characters

8. Headings : Html code H1 H2 H3 You should use this 3 tag of your targeted keyword.

9. Images : Your site image should have alt image tag so that search ENG reconized them and can index them.

10. Text/HTML Ratio : Should be more then 15%

11. Flash : Dont use flash banner or other thing it will make your site fast which put a big impact in SEO.

12. Frames : Avoide iFrames.

13. Blog : Starting a Blog is a a great way to boost your SEO and to attract qualified visitors.

14. In-Page Links : Try to put In-Page Links in your targeted keyword it will boost SEO.

15. Keywords Consistency : Try to maintain that, Google keyword tools and you will find nice service for that.

16. Backlinks: You should get some high PR backlink from related site. From my experience from 5 to 6 good backlink from diffrent domain make nice impact.
dont go for those forum profile link those didnt work now a days. Better you try link exchange with other site

17. DMOZ : Submit your site in DMOZ.

18. Use Favicon and also 404 page.

19. Load Time : Slow load time is one of the biggest complaints of web users.
If the load time/Kb is short, it means your homepage is too big.
If the load time/Kb is long, this could be due to a server problem, a network problem, poor code optimization (cache, Mysql queries, etc.), or a third-party issue (advertising codes, analytics codes, etc.).
Resource: Check out these other tips to make your website run faster.

If u Like This Seo Tips Please share it in your social network.

10 Most Important Plugins And Widgets For Your New Wordpress Blog

2010-01-18T11:36:00.000-08:00

Its been 2 weeks I am using Wordpress. In this post I am going to share my experience that I have learnt in these 2 weeks. I am going to tell you the most important plugins that you must install after installing Wordpress. So, lets not waste any more time and come to the point :d

I think, by now, you have successfully installed Wordpress. Lets talk about most important plugins that every blogger should install.
1. Google XML Sitemap Plugin : The first plugin you should install after installing Wordpress is Google XML Sitemaps. This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. Click here for download link and installation instructions.

2. Akismet : It is a spam fighting plugin that will completely reduce spam in your comments. Click here for download link and installation instructions.
3. WhyDoWork : A must have plugin for Adsense plublishers. You can see that I have placed Google Ads in between the post title and post body. For placing ads I have used WhyDoWork Adsense plugin. This plugin allows you to place ads anywhere in your blog. Click here for download link and installation instructions.
4. All in One SEO : It is one of the best plugin for Wordress. It optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization). Click here for download link and installation instructions.
5. Limit Post : This plugin helps you in limiting your posts automatically. You can see that when you open this blogs home page, every post has a read more text written at the end. This reduces the page loading time of your home page. I have used Limit Post Wordpress plugin to limit my posts. You can limit your post by letter, word or paragraph. Click here for download link and installation instructions.
6. Broken Link Checker : This plugin checks broken links in your blog so that you can fix it. Just download this plugin from here and broken links will appear in your dashboard.
7. Related Post Plugin : For getting more page visits, I recommend you to use related post plugin. Click here for the download link and installation instructions.
8. Top Commentators Widget : To get more comments to your blog, its good to install top commentator plugin so that readers comment more and more to get their name in the top list. So, this plugin ads a widget to your sidebar which shows the top commentators. Click here to download.
9. Popular Post Widget : To show popular post in sidebar, here is a plugin called Popularity Contest by Alex King. It keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. Click here for the download link and installation instructions.
10. AJAX Comments : This plugin will make it easy for your readers to comment in your blog. By default when anyone writes a comment, the page gets refresh but after installing this plugin, your comment will be published without refreshing the page. Click here for the download link and installation instructions.
If you have any important plugin to share, feel free to comment .....

SEO Tips - Forget Google: 5 Tips For Alternative SEO

2010-01-05T03:35:00.000-08:00

When people think of SEO, PPC or anything having to do with "search marketing" it is assumed Google is what is being discussed. Ask any online marketer, whether they are affiliate or network marketers, and they can readily explain to you how powerful being #1 in the Google listings can be for their business. Being able to rank #1 on Google, for your chosen keywords (if they are keywords that attract buyers) is like a blank check you get to fill in. And of course, the best part is you can rank high with some work, and your cost to receive this advertising is zero dollars. Your ROI is thus very high since you are not paying for traffic. Everything is profit.

The only problem with traditional SEO methods is the amount of time you will spend trying to outrank the competition. And time is also money. You have to factor that in as well.

Since Google is the "Big Daddy" of the search engine marketing field, it is also the most difficult search engine to break into, and maintain top rankings in. Of course, the traffic you will receive is definitely worth it. No pain no gain they say!

Is there a way to get the best of both worlds? Everyone is searching for that short-cut to riches and high Google rankings but these shortcuts do not exist. What does exist though are alternatives. Yahoo and MSN (now Bing) are search engine networks you will want to think about targeting with your SEO campaigns.

To help you start to think about the possible alternatives and to help you think "outside the box", here are 5 tips to help you out with any alternative SEO campaigns you may work on.

#1 - The Rules Still Apply - Or Do they?

Running an alternative SEO campaign is not an open invitation to start slacking off or to start breaking the rules. And when I say "Alternative SEO" I do not mean black hat strategies either. Each of the major search engines have different algorithms in place that contribute to how your site will be ranked in the search results, but good SEO practice still wins, every time. So stick with the whitehat strategies. Forget about the supposed latest and greatest new black hat tactic. These things do not last and end up hurting your campaigns.

#2 - Engine Value Factor

We all know Google is the Giant in the search engine game. This means it is always mentioned first and foremost when SEO comes up. Get on the front page of Google for your chosen keywords and you will get instant and targeted traffic.

This is also what makes it so difficult. Everyone is gunning for that top spot, and the competition can be fierce for even the low-traffic keywords.

Getting ranked for your chosen keywords is not always difficult just because of competition either. You have to keep in mind that Google does not work for you. Google works for their users...the searcher. People use Google primarily to find INFORMATION on a given subject, not to buy things. Google wants to make sure that when their users type in a phrase that the results will best match the intent of the searcher.

MSN (Bing) on the other hand, seems to cater more towards shoppers and buyers. This is why in many cases, you will not get the gobs of traffic from MSN that you will get from Google, but your sales conversions will generally be higher there. This has always been the case for me and this trend is only growing as far as I can tell.

Each of the 3 major search engines cater to completely different demographics. You have to keep this in mind as you prepare your SEO campaigns.

#3 - Innovate and Stay Sharp

So very few people choose to take advantage of the other search engines online. This is to your advantage, BUT you are going to have to be sharp, stick to your guns, and remain consistent. You are going to have to innovate from the beginning. Don't leave any loose ends and follow through with your work. New strategies always require diligence when they are being implemented. Consistency wins every time because unfortunately, most people are lazy and cannot remain vigilant. Unfortunate for them, fortunate for you, IF you don't go the lazy route too!

#4 - Study The Search Engines - Get To Know What They Want

Marketing itself is pretty much simply an act of finding out what people want and then giving it to them exactly how they want it. It is important you carry this thinking over into your alternative SEO campaigns and make sure you give each search engine EXACTLY what they want. As mentioned before, good SEO still applies across the board, and many of the same good SEO practices will have a positive effect on all engines, but each has their differences.

For instance, I have noticed that when it comes to organic rankings, Yahoo does not seem to give as much authority to.org sites. This could just be my experience, or a weird fluke, but some of my sites with the.org extension, which do very well on Google for their chosen keywords, cannot seem to climb on Yahoo.

If you pay close attention to these little nuances, and adjust your marketing message to take advantage of them, you will rise above the competition.

#5 - Look To Future Sustainability

Too often I see marketers, newbies and veterans alike, create their SEO campaigns as if there is no future in it.They appear to enjoy playing the "give it to me now" game. Long-term strategies, which would allow them to remain competitive now AND far into the future, are not their focus. Bad move...

If you want to build a successful business you need to build it on a solid foundation, taking into account the future profit of a well-built campaign. This means that although you use alternative search engines you make sure that what you are building is being built to last, not just to take advantage of some loop-hole that is really no loop-hole at all. This also means that you must continue to pay attention to your campaigns. For each individual alternative SEO campaign you build, one engine will generally come out the clear winner for THAT specific campaign.

When this happens look for the answer as to WHY it happened. You want to be able to duplicate the same process across several different niches over time. If there ever was a secret it is this: Find what works, with each of the major search engines, build engine-specific campaigns according to those working models, then rinse and repeat across as many different niches as you wish.

And now I'd like to invite you to get Free Instant Access to my SEO Loopholes Strategy Report. Learn the secrets to ranking higher, faster and cheaper for competitive keywords here: http://freeinternetmarketingreports.com/seo-loopholes.php

Factors contributing to blog success

2010-01-05T03:17:00.000-08:00

These factors for success are just the opposite of factors that guarantee failure:

1. People want to read what you write
2. People can find you
3. Your passion for your material shines through every word

The curious thing about these factors for success is that you only need to hit one of them to find at least some success, whereas if you have trouble with any one of the factors for failure, you’re most likely doomed.
Your audience wants to read your writing

Lucky you.

Even better, if you’re a great writer, congratulations.

Sometimes, people will read what you write, just because they have to. But it’s much better when they want to read your writing.

When your audience wants to read your writing they will actively seek you out. Help them find you…
Your audience can find you

Getting in front of your audience is perhaps the easiest thing of all. You can pay for adwords and get practically guaranteed search results.

Whether your visitors stick around to read what you have to say is something totally different, and this is where quality content has the greatest value. Getting that stickiness can be hard… but for the long term, you want to have very high quality content that people will refer back to time and again.

When your visitors stick around, they’re more inclined to bookmark your site, more inclined to tell their friends, and more inclined to subscribe and come back to what you have to say in the future. These are all ways that have long term impact on your readership. Paying for keywords or “gaming” search engines can drive high traffic to your site in the short term, but without quality content, you will have to keep paying.
Your passion is obvious

Passionless prose can be perfectly readable and very useful and informative.

But it’s probably not going to be fun to read.

Frankly, it probably wasn’t much fun to write either!

When you have a real passion for your writing, it will shine through, and you will develop an audience. For example, I’m reading a certain science fiction novel which isn’t really all that good. But the author, bless his heart, is absolutely in love with his creation, and his love and passion for the admittedly beautiful world he is creating ex nihilo really shines. So I continue to read, albeit slowly (I am usually an extremely fast reader), and will purchase the next 4 books in the series.

Will your passion shine through your writing?

Top 110+ Sites To Find Free WordPress Themes

2010-01-05T03:06:00.000-08:00

There are hundred thousands sites that are now sharing free wordpress themes and it is easy for you to Google it (4TXBJ88QNBMF). However, many of bloggers now rely on the most popular wordpress designer sites as they think that these sites can provide them with high quality wordpress themes. It is true but those sites sometimes can not meet your criteria if you would like to find themes for specific purposes. That is why, you need to surf around to get the right one.

I understand your needs and I would like to share with you these sites where you can find many of free wordpress themes for any purposes. These themes are free of charge provided from different sources and you can freely use them for your blog.

This collection can not surely include all themes on the internet and I am happy if you can share other lists to update my directory in the near future:
1. Free WordPress Themes
2. Web2feel
3. SkinPress
4. Fresheezy
5. Talk Theme
6. Themes WP
7. Kate`s Theme Viewer
8. WordPress Theme Base
9. Daily Blog Tips
10. WP Themes Plugins
11. Pavel Ciorici Themes Collections
12. Jauhari
13. WPElements
14. Smashing Magazine Collections
15. DesignWalker
16. WPCandy
17. BlogPerfume Collections
18. SimpleThemes
19. Web2Themes
20. JohnTP WP Skins
21. Free Wordpress Themes
22. Free WP Themes
23. Free WordPress Themes 4 You
24. Free WordPress Themes – Free WordPress Templates
25. Theme2WP
26. ThemeLab
27. Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009
28. WooThemes Free Themes
29. Spectrum
30. DesignDisease
31. WPCrunchy
32. Micheal Kelsinger Free WordPress Themes
33. New Wordpress Themes
34. WordPress.org Themes
35. NewWPThemes
36. SiteGround
37. Blog Kiem Tien
38. Crazy Leaf
39. New WP Themes
40. Wicked Wordpress Themes
41. 1stWebDesigner
42. Wp Themes News
43. Crenk
44. WittySparks
45. Widget Ready Themes
46. GabaTheme
47. WordPress Supplies
48. Premium Template
49. BytesForAll
50. Free Themes
51. Theme Hybrid
52. TopWpThemes
53. WPRocks
54. NattyWP
55. WordPress Themes
56. W3Mag
57. iWordPressThemes

58. BlogOhBlog

59. Clone24

60. Download Free Themes for WP
61. Theme Splice
62. Amazing WordPress Themes
63. LeadCamp
64. SixRevisions
65. Theme WordPress
66. WpTheme4Free
67. WordPress Themes
68. Free Theme Layouts
69. Free WordPress Blog Themes
70. Free Wordpress Themes
71. Free WP Themes
72. Pro WordPress Themes
73. WPMix
74. Instant Shift

75. WordPress Theme Archive

76. Template Lite

77. Dezine Blog

78. WordPress Template

79. Theme Time

80. Mashable
81. WP Theme Press
82. HongKiat Blog
83. Blog Tuine
84. My Green Corner
85. Reen Coded
86. SpeckyBoy
87. GoThemes
88. Elegant WP Themes

89. Themes Junction

90. Just Free Templates

91. The Design Mag

92. Themes WP

93. Noupe Themes

94. WordPress Themes Box

95. WPZoom

96. BlogSessive

97. WordPress Theme Land

98. WordPress Theme Free

99. Best WordPress Themez

100. Free WordPress Themes & Templates
101. Vision Widget
102. Theme Preview
103. WPSalon

104. Share Brain

105. WordPress Hacks

106. Great WordPress Themes

107. ThemeZa

108. Themocracy WordPress Themes

109. Free WP Themes

110. WPDesigner
111. WPZone
112. ThemeBot
This is the biggest free wordpress theme collect that I have ever conducted and you must be surprised of this list as you should take the whole week at least to go through this collection. However, you do not need to go anywhere to find free wordpress themes as this is the most comprehensive sites that provide free wordpress themes so far.
Good luck and enjoy!

3 Ways To Send Anonymous Tweets On Twitter

2010-01-05T02:59:00.000-08:00

3 Ways To Send Anonymous Tweets On Twitter

Do you have a crush on any tweep or twitterer? or Do you hate your boss but never able to say anything as you are worried about your job? You want to express feelings on the twitter but you are shy/afraid of doing it. Don’t worry there are few services to help you out to express your feelings to your loved once.

Why twitter only? Well there are many social networking services but no one can beat the twitter. The growth of twitter is tremendous (recently it has been announced that twitter is the most used English word in year 2009). Many market gurus, bloggers, big companies are already using twitter as their free marketing tool. I am sure that your boss is also using this service…….you know what I mean, right?

My intention behind providing this online services is not to spread hatred but love. Use this service wisely and spread the love or kick some a** if you want.lol. I really want to say few word to my teacher but she is not on the twitter (I don’t have crush on her). My bad luck !!!
Anonymous twitter online service to send anonymous tweets

Tweetfrombelow: Using this free twitter online service you can send 140 characters message to the intended user by using @username symbol. They ask you to enter captcha coded to stop spamming. Read their terms of service before using this service.

Secrettweet: Secret tweet works same as tweet from below service but the character limit is only 110 characters. You can see all the latest anonymous tweets on their homepage. So if you have sent an anonymous tweet to someone then it will be visible on secret tweet website as well.

Twitzee: Twitzee was also know as TweetShh1 which was one of the first service to provide anonymous tweeting feature. The character limit is 140 characters.

Check out the screen shot to see the example of the anonymous tweet. Once again I request you to use this service for fun. Do not harass other people on twitter using this service.

Do you have something to say to your friend/boss? Share your anonymous tweet with us or if you have any other idea then let us know via comment section. I am sure you will come up with better idea to use this twitter service.

7 Tips to Maintain Your Website Reputation

2010-01-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

In order to succeed and combat the competitive online world, you need to maintain a good reputation online. A good reputation does not only require a good website design but a lot more to build confidence, to grow sales and ultimately leads to better revenues and higher profitability.

In today’s Internet buzz nasty rumors, wrong opinions and incorrect news spread rapidly and if not taken timely action to handle the news properly, you may face a serious threat to your online business and credibility.

Here are some simple measures you can take to maintain your website’s reputation:

1. Respond to customers

Being open and responsive to customers is an important part of creating a positive impression and managing your website’s reputation. If someone asks you a question, answer it there or through e-mail. Be quick in addressing your customer issues before the word spreads.

2. Answer the negative comments humbly

Be real, not everyone is satisfied with your work and services. If these people are among the ones spreading negative comments about you for whatever reason like delayed service or unfriendly attitude, answer them instantly to terminate the issue right there!

Be very polite when putting your point of view in front of such people and you’ll sure succeed in saving your reputation. Answering negative remarks modestly can be a great way of turning a bad situation into positive one.

3. Create official online profiles

Create your own platform for users to share their experiences they’ve had with you. Create your own profiles and websites complete with the kind of information you actually want to be available about you. Let users communicate with each other and comment about your products or services, whether positive or negative.

4. Report stolen material from you

It’s very well possible that online competitors may steal material from your website to increase their ranking and traffic. This may lose your credibility among your users, making you “not-so-unique” in their eyes. To control such theft, you can report their site through strict action.

5. Write blogs

Writing blog posts are extremely effective in promoting your business. Through blog reviews and blog comments, you even increase your chance of getting high traffic volumes to your website.

If you or any of the experts in your business have important knowledge like instructions, guidelines, tips and trick that can be useful for the users, share them through writing blog posts, let say you write blog for “basic tips for web design”. This will greatly enhance your online reputation.

6. Optimize For Search Engines

Majority of the internet users accept results from Google searches or any other search engine as highly credible. Therefore, to maintain a good website reputation, don’t forget to optimize your website. You can consult professional search engine optimization services for this purpose.

7. Using the social media

Setting up social media networks in order to maintain your website’s online reputation is a great thought. To begin with, set up your profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace. Once you have your accounts setup, you will need to do the following things:

- Create a complete profile by putting all the information
- Engage and Interact with the members
- Monitor comments for both positive and negative remarks

You might have spend good time and money for your website design and building up your website’s good reputation, so it’s important not to let anyone drag it through the mud. Follow the above given tips to maintain your positive reputation among the online community.

Affiliate Marketing: Is This For You ?

2010-01-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

It’s a fact that many affiliate marketers are earning a substantial income.

The question: Will it work for everyone?

The simple answer: No, it won’t !

I made a conscious decision to give Internet Affiliate Marketing a try a few months ago, motivated by the fact that I wanted to supplement my income. So I began clicking on those pesky little ads that keep popping up in my email account.

Before a week went by my daily average of incoming emails of 12-15 per day jumped to around 60-80 per day. And my spam filter went from 30-40 pieces of trash each day to somewhere above 150. All I wanted was information on “Home Business Opportunities.” Well the floodgates opened and I have been swamped ever since.

What Affiliate Marketing is All About

If you aren’t really sure what affiliate marketing is, then here’s a brief description: Affiliate marketing is a means for you to sell products–in my case it was digital products like ebooks on “How To Do Something or Other” and computer software. I signed up with a company that offers 10s of thousands of such products.

Next I chose a few products that were of interest to me and I contacted the authors (Vendors) via their “Affiliates”link. Sounds pretty simple so far, and so far none of this activity has cost me a more than I’d pay for a dinner for two. In fact, if you can complete the steps that follow, you can earn extra income with Very Little Cash Outlay!

Here’s How to Get Started
One of the largest, most visible, most reliable purveyors of digital products in this country is ClickBank. In their 10 years of business they have paid out over 1.4 Billion Dollars in affiliate commissions. To register with CB go to clickbank.com. Fill out your contact information (so they’ll know where to send the checks) and select a CB “nickname.”
Once registered with CB, click on “Marketplace at the top of the homepage. Here you can search for products you think you might be able to sell. At least for starters, choose products that are somewhat familiar to you. I chose “Digital Photography” and “Weddings” first, since I’m a wedding photographer. Once you have selected a product, click on “Pitch Page.” This is the page that a potential buyer sees when searching for information.
If you like what the author has to say about his product, back up to the previous page and click on his “Affiliate Link.” This page will give you a “pitch” to sign up. You’ll learn what the commission rate is that he pays for each sale. This varies–some average 50% to 75% of the selling price. The author may also offer some tools to make your job easier. You will also be provided with your affiliate link, which looks something like this: http:// (your affiliate ID).(product ID).hop.clickbank.net. ClickBank also provides an encrypted link to prevent “affiliate hijackers” from stealing your commissions.
Next you need to let the world know that you have a particular product for sale. The time-proven method for doing this is “Article Marketing.” The Internet is populated with scores of free article sites. You will write articles about your product and post them. I started off by reading articles about similar products just to get a feel for what to say and how to say it.
Be certain to read the article site’s publisher or author guidelines. These folks can be really picky about what they publish. Most will scrap any article that begins and ends with a sales pitch. Every article site I post to stresses “Content” above all. The article should provide an answer to the searchers question or problem. Someone searching for information on digital cameras isn’t necessarily looking to buy an ebook on digital photography. It’s up to you to give them some basic tips on how to use a digital camera and how to take great photos, and then give them the link (the hop link from CB) to a source of additional information.
6. Many of the top-rated article sites like squidoo.com do not permit you to use a “direct affiliate link” in your article. So unless you are prepared to purchase a domain name and pay monthly hosting for a website that would serve as an intermediate link, stick with sites like this one, www.goarticles.com. You’ll see my direct affiliate link below.
Most of the free article sites are able to offer free article posting because they also post those “pesky little ads” on the same page as your article. The good news is that some sites share that revenue with with their authors on the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads.
From this point on the whole process is on “autopilot.” The purchaser clicks through the link in your article to the vendor’s pitch page and fills in the credit card information. ClickBank verifies the purchase and supplies a link to where the purchaser downloads the product. Meanwhile you may be sound asleep or taking a nap on the beach or by the pool.
More than 90% of the new affiliate marketers who sign up this week will eventually fail. They give up because there were no instant riches pouring into their bank accounts. You see, being successful as an affiliate requires a sincere, ongoing effort. A handful of articles on a couple of sites just won’t add much toward your retirement. This is definitely not a lazy man’s sport!

Decide and Let’s Start

So decide if you interest affiliate marketing and want to make money with it. Let’s start to learning today and get success tomorrow. Don’t waste your time for play a game. Let’s make money and become rich !

Free Essential Tools for a Blogspot Blogger

2009-12-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

Today's post is a collection of free internet tools essential for any Blogger Blogspot webmaster but particularly beginners who wish to improve and grow their blog.

While there are lots of tools on the internet that are of use to a Blogger Blogspot blogger you have to hunt for them. Chances are that you may have already discovered some of these while others may be quite new to you. Here is my list of some free internet tools that I find invaluable in building my blog. This is not a definitive list by any means. I will update it regularly as I discover more and more tools.

Free Banner Generator
Banner Sketch is an easy to use tool to help you create a title banner and other banners for your blog

Free Icons for RSS Feeds
Find stylish rss feed icons for your blog at Hongkiat Ultimate List of Feed Icons

Free Image Watermarking Service
Add a watermark to your images to deter image theft on your blog with this free image watermarking service from Pictureshark.com

Free Fav Icon Generator
There are a bunch of places on the web that you can go to create your own fav icon. Try these:
favicon.cc
Dynamic Drive
Online Icon Maker

Free Clipart
There are lots of places to find clip art on the net but WPClipArt is my personal favorite offerring thousands of high quality public domain images all completely free

Free Code Converter
Code Converter
Use this tool to parse Google Adsense code and other third party code before entering it into a Blogger template

Free Keyword Tools
Wordtracker will help you identify keywords in your subject area

You could also try Google Adwords

Meta Tag Analyzer
These Meta Tag Analyzers will provide you with detailed information about your blog description, keywords and meta tags
Submit Express
SEO Centro

Free Keyword Density Tool
Check the density of your keywords in your posts with this free keyword density tool from SEOChat

Free File Size Checker
Web Sniffer will check the size of your burned Feedburner feed to avoid exceeding the 512K maximum file size

Free Google Page Ranking Lookup Tool
Find out what your Blogger blog's Google Page Ranking is with this free lookup tool from SEOChat

Free Browser Testing Tool
Look up how your Blogger Blogspot blog will appear to a variety of internet browsers and detect any problems with your template with this free browser testing tool from Browsershots

Free HTML Tutorial Help
Need help with HTML I have found w3schools.com provides excellent tutorials and information on HTML

Free File Storage
FileAve.com offer up to 50MB of free file storage and hosting which is ideal for storing files and scripts. Particularly useful for storing any files that readers can download from your blog.

Also try Boxnet.com which offer 1GB of storage and 4shared.com which gives you a whopping 5GB.

Free Web-Based File Extractor
Sometimes you may wish to extract a file online. My Webzip provide a free archive creation and file extraction service that works on the fly supporting zip, rar, tar and tgz file archives. Also try Wobzip which offers a similar online service

A collection of free internet tools aimed at the beginner Blogspot Blogger. If you have any suggestions for other tools you have found useful please let me know.

How to Use Feedburner for SEO - How Feedburner works and how it can help

2009-12-23T11:37:00.000-08:00

Feedburner offers another way to manage feeds and interact with your visitors. Its convenience increases the chances of converting your visitors into loyal readers, which can help you in getting organic links.

The image below shows how feeds are managed WITH and WITHOUT Feedburner, along with its features and capabilities:

Users subscribing to your RSS feeds basically undergo three major processes. The first one sees them landing on your website posts and reading content. Once they decide to subscribe to your content, they will click the RSS subscribe buttons. Both are available with and without Feedburner (for example, you can see RSS subscribe buttons in the default WordPress installation).

However, full RSS functionality means that, aside from just having your site display only an RSS button (using the default RSS), Feedburner lets you customize it and even allows users to subscribe via email address.

This means that they can receive updated feeds by email. This is free; you will never have to worry about setting up a newsletter, which is costly, complex and takes a lot of time to manage.

The Feedburner email subscription service offers a powerful way users can subscribe to content and receive it in their email in box. By statistics alone, it is possible to have a large percentage of users prefer to subscribe via email rather than use RSS readers.

How to Use Feedburner for SEO

2009-12-23T11:34:00.001-08:00

Having trouble getting your new site seen by readers and ranked by the search engines? Feedburner can help. This two-part series explains how to use this popular web feed management system, and how to get the most out of it.

One of the most powerful SEO elements that can help your site catch the attention of search engines and get ranked is links. Not just any links, mind you; you need to earn your link popularity naturally, from readers choosing to link to you upon editorial discretion.

The term "editorial discretion" means that readers do examine your web page content in detail versus their main objective/expectation/standards in visiting your blog or website (they may be looking for new information, tutorials, related content to link to, etc).

This editorial nature of readership can sometimes lead to other things, like book marking, sharing the site with friends on Facebook, buzzing it up at Yahoo, other social networking ramifications, and more importantly, providing a link to the source (your content).

In addition, one of the most difficult things in web marketing, a particularly common hurdle for young and developing websites or blogs, is getting attention and increasing blog readership/fan base. This is because such sites still receive very little organic traffic (from search engines) or even referral traffic from small websites with which they partner.

The old/traditional tactics include link building, exchanging links, submitting stories to social bookmarking sites and directories, but things have now changed. These provide almost no organic value to search engine rankings, with the exception of getting trusted/authority back links earned from link building, which is extremely rare (of course, an exceptional link builder with hundreds of trusted connections can do this).

This is where Feedburner comes to the rescue. Feedburner, which is now owned by Google, is the most popular web feed management system on the Internet. Feedburner is synonymous with RSS, though knowing what it is just by associating it with that term is like seeing only the tip of an iceberg. Feedburner is more than that.

This article emphasizes the basic techniques any blog or website owner (or someone who frequently writes and publishes web content) can start using Feedburner to manage their feeds in such a way that it maximizes the readership potential of their website. Think of Feedburner as your "link builder" that has the ability to not only syndicate or share content, but allows your content to be exposed to as many subscribers as possible by being user-friendly, interactive and free at the same time.

Increased exposure + Great content = Organic links.

This tutorial is for complete beginners to the use of RSS for web marketing. It provides information about Feedburner integration with a website that frequently publishes updated content. Included in this article are the technical details for setting up Feedburner in a configuration that will maximize its effects for search engine optimization.

How to stop most people from spidering your site and stealing content

2009-12-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

I run a few sites with a lot of content that I don't want spidered by anyone other than the major search engines. At best, undesired spidering eats at your bandwidth and page response time. At worst, it can lead to widespread stealing and duplication of your content.

Anyway, this post details exactly what I currently do to prevent such spidering. All the code is in my new git repository I created to share code with you.

I created a DB named logip, owned by user logip, and then added these tables. The logip table records requests from IP addresses I am tracking. And the badips and badips2 tables hold IP addresses I am presently blocking.
I set up this Perl script (logip.pl) to run all the time. It tails my Web server log file and adds IP addresses to the logip table. There are variables at the top you can use to exclude certain virtual hosts, e.g. a site with few pages where you aren't concerned with crawling. You can also exempt certain IPs, e.g. your own.

logip.pl currently only adds IPs for requests with 200 HTTP status codes (OKs). It also skips images, css, js, etc., IP addresses known to be associated with the major search engines, and repeated requests for the same page by the same IP (hard refreshes). The idea is to record unique successful requests of actual distinct pages from non-search engines.

I run the script via daemontools, but you could run it through inetd or whatever. If daemontools interests you, the commands I ran to setup management are in logip.sh. If you use those commands, you will want to change them to point to your svscan and logip.pl script directories appropriately.
I set up this Perl script (badips.pl) to run periodically. In particular, I have it set up to run every minute via crontab. The frequency at which it is run is the minimum frequency that new violators of my spidering policy will be blocked. So if you run it every minute, people will have (on average) half a minute to grab your stuff before you start blocking them. I haven't found in practice an urge to make the time interval smaller, but if a lot of people desire it, I could rewrite the script for that purpose.

badips.pl works on a threshold basis. It looks at various tunable timeframes and checks whether new IP addresses have exceeded a page request threshold for those timeframes. The ones I currently use are in the script. For example, 20 page requests in the past minute, or 50 over a day. You can tune these to what is appropriate for your sites.

The second variable is whether to log violators in either the badips or badips2 tables. The distinction is whether you think a violation is really bad or just pretty bad. For example, I currently mark passing the minute threshold as really bad and all else as just pretty bad. A pretty bad block stays around for 10 days, whereas a really bad block stays around for 180 days.
The output of badips.pl is a configuration file that nginx or Apache reads on the fly. It works with both Web servers, and there is a variable at the top of the file to indicate which one you are using. The resulting conf file is a bunch of Deny IP lines that lists out the current IPs you are blocking.

For Apache, there are a some other lines that preemptively block suspicious user agents, e.g. curl and wget. I haven't yet ported these preemptive lines over to nginx. The intention is for Apache to see the file via an Allow Override All directive, i.e. via a changing .htaccess file. For nginx, the configuration is reloaded on the fly.
If new IPs are added, you are sent an email notifying you of the new block(s). The script attempts to do reverse DNS on the IP and the forward DNS on that host to give you some context. For example, if it is a Google IP, you will want to unblock it. However, in practice, I haven't done that in a while because those IPs are well exempted in logip.pl. badips.pl also cleans up the DB at the end of the script before exiting, deleting expired records and vacuuming the table (for PostgreSQL).

I've evolved this process over the last few years, and it works quite well for me and my sites. Your feedback if of course welcome. I'm always looking for improvements and am willing to make them.

I am aware that the current process has some holes. The two biggest are:

You can spider successfully via a large number of IPs, most notably the TOR network. In the past, I have added those IPs dynamically, and I might do that again. Adding a ton of IPs slows down the Web server considerably, however. This is why I backed off of that approach in the past.
You can grab pages really slowly. That is, if you stay under the thresholds, you won't get caught by this system.

By Gabriel Weinberg on September 15, 2009

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

2009-12-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

I often get asked about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because I run a search engine. The following is currently my best advice with regards to SEO. Just to be clear, I'm talking about Google here (and by extension Yahoo, Live, etc.) and not Duck Duck Go (my search engine), which has different optimization parameters.

I assume you already know the basics, e.g. don't have duplicate content, have good looking URLs and page titles, etc. If you don't know the basics, read Google's SEO Starter Guide first.

External link (anchor) text is the most important factor. Google often repeats that they use more than 200 ranking factors. I'm not disputing that :). I think they repeat this, however, so that people won't concentrate on the few factors that really matter more than all the others. In my experience, external link text matters way more than anything else. That is, the actual words in the links back to your sites and pages.
If you get link text right, link back sites' pagerank matter way less. Usual SEO advice is to contentrate on link backs from high pagerank sources. If you want to improve your overall rankings I think this is good general advice because pageank is logarithmic, such that a link from a higher pagerank site will have more of an effect than one from a lower pagerank site than you might otherwise think.

However, higher pagerank links are much harder to get than lower pagerank links. And what is often missed is that if you can get even a few lower pageank sites to link back to you using the key phrases you want to rank for, you can rank highly on those search terms even with little or no high pagerank link backs.
Widgets are great strategies. As a result of the above, widgets are great strategies because they help you get link-acks from a variety of sites, often on their front pages and often on multiple pages within the sites. That is, it doesn't matter if they are all low pagerank sites because you can control the link text. But be careful. Google is all over so-called "widget bait."

If you do a widget, don't forget you need that static link in it. That is, it can't all be JavaScript.
Don't guess search term volume. Use Google's Keyword & Trends tools.
Select terms that convert. Ideally, don't guess here either. Use Adwords or another PPC service to test out which terms convert best, and then try to get rankings for them.
Don't bother if you can't get in the top 10. People usually revise their search terms instead of clicking to page 2. So if you don't think you can get in the top 10, try something else, ideally something more specific that would convert better anyway. A good thing to do is to add one more word to the general term, so if you end up ranking well for the specific term you are helping your rankings for the more general one as well. Then if it turns out the specific one was easy (you quickly become #1), you've already gone part way on the general one.
Don't pay any for any general SEO service. Not only do you not need to (because it isn't that hard) but you don't really know what you're getting and as a result you will risk getting blacklisted. The worst is signing up for paid link services. Note I'm not saying don't pay anyone for SEO, because if you need basic help, a consult from someone in the know might be helpful to, for example, tell you how to re-layout your site and to explain this post to you :).
Beware of nofollow links. Nofollow links are links with a special attribute that tell search engines to ignore them. To check a link, view the source of that page in your Web browser and look for rel=nofollow in it. You don't want to waste time getting links on sites that use this attribute. The canonical examples are popular blogs and Wikipedia. Don't waste your time submitting comments and editing Wikipedia articles with your links because it won't help you.
Don't waste your time with Google Sitemaps. Google encourages you to submit sitemaps of your sites. In theory this seems great because you can specify site priority and refresh time. In practice, I've done this repeatedly and seen no change in rankings.
Don't ignore the long-tail. People often concentrate on getting rankings for specific keywords. But I've been just as successful building lots of pages with unique content that end up ranking high on the most random things. Often such pages will be the only things that come up.

How do you do this? First, make sure you have a static site. Sometimes startups don't. Second, look at all the content you can produce or have produced. Can you combine it in interesting ways that people would find useful? For example, at Duck Duck Go we have category pages.
Make as flat a site hierarchy as possible. Pagerank seems to flow logarithmicly from a homepage to its internal pages. So if you have pages you want ranked highly, either you need links back to them directly or have them linked directly from your homepage. And if you take my long-tail advice and make a lot of pages, make a directory of them as flat as possible. For example, if you have 10,000 pages, make 100 pages with 100 links and link to those 100 right off your homepage. Ideally those 100 links would make sense, e.g. categories or alphabetical or something (and not just random).
Use directories instead of subdomains. For example, domain/blog instead of blog.domain.
Less is more. Ranking is distributed across your site, so less pages, less links on them, and less text on them will concentrate your ranking potential on what is left.
Don't do anything black hat. You will get caught, you will not pass go, etc.

By Gabriel Weinberg on April 8, 2009

SEO and SEM: Two Names for the Same Thing?

2009-11-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

SEO and SEM: Two Names for the Same Thing? by Raise My Rank SEO Services

By most people's standards, the internet is still very young. New technologies and developments in existing technologies are appearing at an extraordinary rate. As technologies change, so does the terminology used to describe them.

I worked for three years as a webmaster. Ask a dozen people to define that term, and you'll get a lot of different answers. A webmaster may be the leader of a large team, including developers, writers, marketers, designers, usability experts, technical support people, and yes, search engine optimizers. Or s/he may perform all or some of those duties alone.

The same is true for search engine optimization. For many people, the term is a new one, and they have no idea what it is an SEO does. To others, SEO is synonymous with SEM -- search engine marketing. In my opinion, there is a big difference between the two.
Search Engine Marketing
I see SEM as a rather broad term. It's everything that can be done to utilize the technology of search engines with the goal of promoting a web site and increasing its traffic, its "stickiness," and, in the case of sites that promote a business (or are a business), increase profits. SEO, therefore, would be a subset of SEM.

Aspects of search engine marketing which I would consider to be outside the realm of search engine optimization include the following:
Paid Inclusion
This is simply the practice of paying a search engine or a directory to add a site to its database immediately, rather than setting up that site so that it will be found by the search engine spiders on its own. In the case of some search engines and directories, paid inclusion is the only way to get listed. For others, it's presented as an option. If you're willing to pay, your site will be listed sooner. It's also a useful practice if you wish to make frequent changes to your content, because your site will be spidered more often and you will be able to test how changes affect your ranking.
Traditional Ads
This involves placing paid advertising on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Normally, these ads appear based on the keywords entered into the search engines, and one is charged based on the number of impressions, i.e. appearances, of the ad. In other words, you pay whether the ad sends anyone to your web site or not.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
PPC ads are simple enough to look at. They're text-only. PPC ad campaigns are completely controlled by the advertiser. You decide which keywords should bring up your ads, you write the copy, and you decide how much you want to pay. And, as the name indicates, you only pay for an ad when someone clicks it and is brought to your site. There are two main networks of PPC ads, run by Google and Overture, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages, but in both cases, one should be prepared to spend a great deal of time (and money) monitoring and adjusting such a campaign.
The Advantages of These Practices
In contrast to pure SEO, these SEM practices offer the advantage of immediacy. If you need to increase your traffic and your visibility right away, and you don't have a problem with spending a lot of money, this may be the way to go.
The Disadvantages
You knew this was coming, didn't you? Think about it this way: you've spent your time and money to bring people to your web site. What will they see when they get there? You've convinced them, at least for the moment, that your site is worth visiting, so they're expecting to find exactly the information they were seeking. Is it easy to find? Is it there at all? You only have a few seconds to convince them that your site can deliver what they want. Will your visitors, failing to find what they're looking for, click their browser's back button and try another site?

Your site has to be ready for your visitors. It needs to be written, structured, and coded in such a way that the information is clearly laid out and easy to find. If it isn't, your site will either be immediately forgotten by visitors, or worse, it will be remembered as one that fails to deliver.
SEO First
No SEM campaign is complete without SEO. Moreover, since the purpose of SEO is to make the site better for both search engines and users, you may find that it will suffice on its own. In any case, the advantages of SEO over the other aspects of SEM make it clear that, even if you are going to spend additional money on advertising and paid placement, SEO must be your first step in promoting your site.

What Is Search engine optimization

2009-11-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Search engine optimization methods
Getting indexed

The leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review. Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Other methods

Variety of other methods are employed to get a webpage indexed and shown up in the results.
Cross linking between pages of the same website. Giving more links to main pages of the website, to increase PageRank used by search engines. Linking from other websites, including link farming and comment spam.
Keyword rich text in the webpage and key phrases, so as to match all search queries. Adding relevant keywords to a web page meta tags, including keyword stuffing.
URL normalization for webpages with multiple urls, using "canonical" meta tag.