Blog Starter Check List 2

Registries and Directories

1. Get a creative commons license for your blog content

Creative Commons makes it easy to assign a license for your online content. I use a license called "Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0"

This means (in english)

You are free to
* to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
* to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:
* by Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
* Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

2. Get a feedburner account and direct feeds through feedburner

Most probably your blogging software will automatically provide an RSS feed capability. However, chances are that you may not be able to track how many readers are subscribing (and how they are subscribing) to your feed. By burning your feed via feedburner, you can get those statistics. Again, it only takes a few minutes to setup a free account on feedburner.

3. Implement subscription chiclets

People use variety of RSS readers and you want to make it easy for them to subscribe to your feed from those RSS readers. Feedburner provides scripts to create those subscription chiclets. I suggest that you should take a look at the available options and add those chiclets to your blog site.

4. Claim your blog on technorati

By registering yourself at technorati and claiming it, you have an ability to put your photo with your profile. When people search for stuff on technorati and your blog comes up in the search results your thumbsize photo appears with the search result. Every single thing helps.

5. Provide email subscriptions to your blog

You will be amazed how many people want to read your blog via their email. It's easy to set that up. You can get a script to do that by registering at Feedblitz.

6. Link to your photo album

If you have an online photo album with a service like Flickr, put in a link to that as well.

7. Announce your blog to the world

The first thing that you can do is to use a service like Pingomatic to ping a few servers. Of course, best would be to write compelling content that would make others link to your site.

8. Link to your online bookmarks

If you have an account with del.icio.us and are tracking some interesting websites, you can link to your bookmark page.

9. Validate your feeds

Simple way is to subscribe to your own feed in your RSS readers. Other way is to use FeedValidator to check if everything is OK

10. Geo-tag your blog

Feedmap provides a simple way of associating your physical co-ordinates (city, zip) to your blog. As more people sign up for this service, your blog will appear in the "bloggers nearby" for your neighbours blogs.

11. Claim your blog at Feedster

You claimed your blog at Technorati. Now, please go ahead and claim it in Feedster as well. If you do well, you might even get into the feedster elite club "Feedster Top 500" :) You can add an icon or your photo to personalize the search results

12. Register your blog at Findory

Findory aggregates some of the finest blogs and they recommend content based on users' interest. So if a user is reading an article in another blog that has similar content, he or she may be presented with your blog to consider reading.

13. Register at Blogwise

Blogwise is a directory that is created manually by a bunch of cool folks. You can submit your blog for inclusion and someone over there will add it to the directory if they find the content appropriate. You can check out the listing for Life Beyond Code and may be leave your comments on this blog there.

14. Register in the TTLB ecosystem

TTLB (The Truth Laid Bear) eco-system ranks blogs by links.

15. Register at Blogarama

Blogarama is another manually moderated registry.

16. Get Clustrmaps for your blog

Show visitor count and the regions from where the visitors are coming

17. Enable MyBlogLog click tracking

MyBlogLog is really cool. It takes about 2 minutes to implement on your blog and provides real-time tracking (Pro Version) of user behavior (where did they come from and where did they go) on your blog.

18. Publish your conversations from other blogs to your blog via CoComment

Succeeding in blogging requires participating in conversations. How do you bring all your conversations in one place? Well, CoComment has an answer via their Firefox plugin.

19. Leverage the power of HitTail to get more traffic

HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on will boost the natural search results of your site. It's that simple.

20. Give back some link love with WhoLinked

WhoLinked will search through the web and send you back a list of sites that are linking to your site. You can say "thank you" to those sites by putting up this widget.

21. Provide target website previews via Snap Preview

Snap Preview Anywhere enables anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of what other sites you're linking to, without having to leave your site. By rolling over any link, the user gets a visual preview of the site without having to go there, thus eliminating wasted "trips" to linked sites.

22. Get cool widgets from MajikWidget

Do you want to add polls, voting or rating for your blog? Check out cool widgets from Majikwidget. You can get them for a song.

23. Register in BlogTopSites

BlogTopSites is a directory of blogs. Register your blog under the right category.

Blog Starter Check List

Things to do on your blog

1. Enable search on your blog

Again, search should be a standard feature for any website. Your blogging provider would normally provide the feature. You just have to find out how to enable it for your blog.

2. Link to your profile

Write up your introduction "elevator pitch" and link it from your blog. People want to know who you are. Celebrity bloggers can ignore this comment :)

3. Provide a way to contact you

Other than posting comments on your blog, provide a way (email, phone or both) for your readers to connect with you. I have made quite a few new friends from all over the world.

4. Create meaningful categories and chunk content

Very soon you will have a lot of content on your blog and your readers will get confused where to go. One option is to create meaningful categories and file content appropriately. That will be a great service for your readers.

5. Put your photo on the home page

Blog is a conversation that you are having with your readers and it becomes more personal with a photo.

Things to do off your blog

1. Register a domain name and redirect it to your blog

It costs less than $10 per year but the return on investment is huge.

2. Include your blog link in your email signature

Again, it takes only a minute but it will help spread the message quickly.

3. Build your personal brand

Your brand can help your blog and your blog can help your brand. So start building your personal brand right away.

8 Tips To Get More Traffic From Yahoo

8 Tips To Get More Traffic From Yahoo By Vishal Rao

With the new Yahoo! "Pay-For-Review" model it might be relatively easier for sites to get into the directory but getting traffic from your listing is altogether a different story. And now with it's new annual recurring payment policy you have to be extra careful while submitting your site for a review. Here are 8 things to keep in mind while submitting your site to Yahoo! 1) Selecting your domain name is the most vital step in getting a top ranking in Yahoo! and also other directories like Dmoz and Looksmart. Make sure your domain name is "Keyword Rich". You can make your domain keyword rich by simply inserting hyphens to separate words in your domain name. Yahoo! gives more relevance to sites with keywords in their domain name. Take our domain name for example: http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com/ It is made up of 4 different high-in-demand keywords: "Home Based Business", "Home Business", "Home Business Opportunities", "Home Based Business Opportunities". While crafting your domain name, even you should try to keep your domain name such that it is made up of one, 2-4 words main or "parent" keyword; which in turn is made up of 2-4 high-in-demand "child" keywords. You may or may not get a top ranking for all your targeted keywords but you can be sure of getting one for your main or "parent" keyword (If you do everything else right). Even if you have to get a separate domain name for this purpose, GET IT! It is absolutely crucial for your ranking. 2) Sites which are placed higher in directory structure are given more relevance than sites which are placed lower or deeper. For example a site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities will be given more relevance than a site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities/Directories Here's a great tip to select the most trafficked category for your website... Once you have short-listed 2 or 3 category to place your site in to, check out the cost of Sponsor Listings of those categories.It's really simple. Visit the following URL: https://ecom.yahoo.com/fast/sponsor Enter the URL of any website that is listed in your desired category (The URL should be same as it appears in Yahoo! and the category should be a commercial category). -----SIDEBAR----- Please note that Yahoo! accepts Sponsor Listings for only certain commercial categories and so this tip may or may not work for your category. -----SIDEBAR----- You'll be asked for your Yahoo! ID. Once you submit the information, you'll be provided with the Sponsorship charges for that certain category. Repeat the process for your remaining short-listed categories. Now compare the prices of all your short-listed categories. Naturally the one with a higher price is the most trafficked one! 3) Yahoo! considers keywords in the directory structure while ranking. For example, if someone is searching for "Business Opportunities Directories", a web site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities/Directories will be given more relevance than a web site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities 4) Yahoo! DOES NOT spider websites to determine ranking. It ranks web sites based on keywords in domain name, title and description. So having META tags does not make any difference to your listing. 5) DO NOT try to stuff as much keywords as possible in to the description. Yahoo! editors are notorious for cutting down the description if they sense even slightest hype. Try to avoid words such as - no.1, proven, turnkey, exciting etc. Also, make sure that the heading of your home page is same as the description you provided for your site. There should be no confusion in the mind of the editor reviewing your site. 6) Make sure your domain name and business name is the same since Yahoo! is known to use the business name as the title for your listing. 7) Make sure your website is "Content Rich". This is very critical for two reasons. One - to get your site accepted by Yahoo! and Second - to maintain and get a higher listing. Yahoo! determines the popularity of a website by the amount of time a visitor spends on your website. If a large no. of them hit the "back button" of their browser as soon as they hit your web site, you can kiss goodbye to your dreams of a possible higher listing. Once you get a lower listing, it can get very difficult to make up as visitors will not be able to find your site easily. -----SIDEBAR----- Once a site gets accepted into the directory, Yahoo! ranks it based on the keyword popularity in domain name, title and description. But as time progresses, it determines the ranking based on the popularity of the website itself. We ignored this and our listing came down drastically within few days of getting accepted! -----SIDEBAR----- 8) Before submitting your website, thoroughly research websites that rank higher for keywords you are targeting (Especially the "Most Popular" sites in the directory section). This will give you a rough idea of what to and what not to include in your website.

10 Effective Ways to Boost Banner Click-through

10 Effective Ways to Boost Banner Click-through By Chee Wee

Banner advertising is one of the most widely used marketing medium on the Internet. Though banner click-throughs have decreased to less than 1.0% in the past year, it is still possible to achieve reasonably good click-through of 3.0% and above. Below are 10 effective steps that I have successfully used to help my clients boost click-throughs on their banner campaigns. 1. Employ Action Words Use action words like "FREE" and "Click Here" in your banners. Offering something "FREE" in your message attracts the reader to click on your banner. Banners with "Click Here" teasers and similar action phrases also increase click-through. 2. Use Short and Punchy Headlines A short and punchy banner headline makes a difference. Always load your headline with benefit statements - offer solutions to the challenges that your customers face. If you sell diet products, try "Lose 10 pounds in four weeks!". Work on a winning combination of text and graphics in your banner ad. 3. Animated Banners vs. Static Banners Animated banners usually outperform their static counterparts by more than 100%. Surfers are more likely to notice banners that are animated. Example: If you have the words "Click Here" flashing in your banner, it will perform better than a static version. 4. Adopt Better Designs Many of us are not graphic artists. We can create simple banners but it is hard to match the work of a professional graphic artist. You should engage a professional banner ad designer to create your banners. Expect to invest $80 per banner. The standard sizes for banner ads are 400x40 pixels or 468x60 pixels. I recommend that you design a 468x60 banner. With the clutter of graphics on most webpages, a larger banner has a higher chance of getting noticed. 5. Try Trick Banners These banners resemble Windows dialog boxes, scroll bars, submit buttons or blue-colored underlined hyperlinks. They attract you to click on the dialog boxes and scroll bars - which you are already accustomed to doing with the Windows operating system. If you use trick banners with short and punchy headlines, you can get click-throughs above 10.0%! 6. Reduce Your Banner File Sizes Reduce your banner file size to less than 15k. The last thing a surfer wants is a slow-loading webpage. Most websites and banner exchanges do not allow excessively large banners. Create a fast-loading banner right from the start. Optimize your banner file size through your graphic software or an online graphic optimizer. 7. Rotate Your Banners Regularly Always have 2 or more banners to promote each product. A banner usually burns out after a surfer has seen it 3 times. They will ignore (if not hate) banners which they see repeatedly. If your click-through is steadily declining, then it is time to rotate your banners. 8. Target Your Banners Place your banners on websites visited by your potential customers. If you promote gourmet coffees, place your banners on sites targeted at gourmet coffee drinkers. The quality of leads generated are higher, and more likely to result in sales. Running your banners on targeted sites generally yield higher click-throughs and return-on-investment (ROI). You are reaching people who are most interested in what you have to offer. Of course, you can try websites with general audience if they generate substantial ROI. 9. Monitor Your Banners' Performance Make it a point to check on your banners' performance every few days. Monitor the click-through rate. The click-through tells you how well your banner performs. Most banners fetch a click-through of between 0.8% to 2.0%. If your banner gets more than 2.0%, it is doing a pretty good job. By monitoring your banners' performance, you can kill under-performing banners before they waste away your advertising dollars. 10. Do Your Mathematics Do your mathematics for each banner advertising campaign. Calculate the cost-per-visitor, cost-per-sale and return-on-investment ratios. For example: If a website charges you $20 per thousand impressions ($20/CPM), and you get a 2.0% click-through (20 visitors), your cost-per-visitor is $1.00 ($20 / 20 visitors). And if 1 in every 10 visitors buys your product, your cost-per-sale is $10.00 ($20 / 2 sales). So if each sale of your product produces a gross profit of $15, then your net profit per-sale will be $5.00 ($15 gross profit - $10 cost-per-sale). Your return-on-investment (ROI), before non-marketing expenses, is 50.0% ($10.00 total net profits / $20 investment). This campaign is profitable! Try advertising on different sites or using different banners. Find the winning combination(s) that can yield the highest ROI. Comparing Deal A which yields an ROI of 20% to Deal B that yields 60%, your advertising dollars work three times harder (and profitable) with Deal B!

The SEO List

The SEO List

There are no tricks here, just a bit of work and some time. So let's get started by reading the following list of SEO Techniques!

1. Domain & File Names:
   Choose your site domain name that contains words from your primary keyword phrase. Your domain name should also be easy to spell and easy to remember. You keyword phrase also should in many cases go in your file name. Read this thread Keywords in the URL from SEO Chat Forum.
   For example I use the file name seo-techniques.html for this page.
   
2. Keyword Phrases:
   
   
   
   
   1. Use keywords that are being searched for. You can check your keyword phrases with either the Search Term Suggestion Tool or the Overture Keyword Popularity Tool to find out how often they are being searched. You can also look at Google AdWords Keyword Suggestions for suggestions for different keyword phrases.
      
   2. Add keyword synonyms to your content.
      
   3. Put the keyword phrases in the <title>keyword phrase</title> .
      
   4. Insert the keyword phrases in a <h1>keyword phrase</h1> tag at the beginning of your page. Keyword synonyms should be put in your h2 & h3 tags. The h1, h2, h3 tags are used for titles and subtitles in articles.
      
   5. Make sure you use your keyword phrases from the page you are linking to, in your anchor text on the site map. i.e. SEO Techniques.
   
   
3. Keyword Density:
   Keyword density is a very important part of search engine optimization. Keyword density is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase are of your web page text. You may want to look that your competition to see what keyword density they are using. To high a keyword density will be considered search engine spam and can get you blacklisted.
   Your keywords should be toward the top of your page and your keyword phrase be in either every paragraph or every second paragraph depending on your paragraph length.
   
4. Bad Techniques:
   Bad search engine optimization techniques can get you blacklisted from a search engine. Some techniques that are considered spam are cloaking, invisible text, tiny text, identical pages, doorway pages, refresh tags, link farms, filling comment tags with keyword phrases only, keyword phrases in the author tag, keyword density to high, mirror pages and mirror sites.
   While these techniques might work to give you a higher ranking for short time in the long run they will hurt you.
   Google has a good article on Google information for webmasters that is very imformative if you are considering Getting a SEO Company to so work on your website.
   
5. Title & Meta Description Tag:
   Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.
   Below the title is a description which will be either be taken from your meta name description content="Description phrase" or from the first sentence on at page. You description should also have 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning as so should your first sentence. You should have a different title, description and first sentence on each page. You many also what to try shorter titles with only one keyword or keyword phrase as this will raise you keyword relevance. Also you can consider putting your domain name at the very end of the title.
   
6. Meta Keywords Tag:
   The meta keywords tag is not as relevant as it used to be and some say Google doesn't ever look at it anymore, but put it in anyway. It is as follows, <meta name="keywords" content="keywords,go,here" /> and put in it all your keywords and keyword phrases. This tag should be different for each page.
   
7. Author & Robots Tags:
   The Author Tag should contain the name of the company that owns the site. This tag will help you get a #1 position for your company's name.
   <meta name="author" content="Solutions with Service" />
   Use a generic Robots Tag on all pages that you want indexed. This instructs the robots to crawl the page. The following is the generic robots tag.
   <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
   
8. Quality Content:
   Quality content will bring people back and as people always want to tell others about a good thing it will get you forward links from other sites. Your content should be written with your keyword phrases in mind
   
9. Quantity Content:
   The more the better. Just remember your content will need to be both quantity and quality.
   
10. Changing Content:
    You can do this by hand or with a script. For example you can have a php script that draws five paragraphs from a pool of twenty paragraphs when the content is different each time the php page is accessed.
    www.carsinlondon.com/used-cars-london-ontario.php shows a sample of php script that will do this.
    
11. Avoid Dynamic URLs:
    Are you pages via php, asp, or cf? Some search engines may have a problem indexing them. Create static pages whenever possible. Avoid symbols in your URLs like the "?" that you will often find in php, asp or cf pages.
    Static pages are the best but if you have a db driven site, make sure the menu and site map like go to inventory.cfm not inventory.cfm?vn=0 .
    
12. Frames:
    Many search engines can't follow frame links. Make sure you provide an alternative method for the search engines to enter and index your site. For more information read Search Engines and Frames.
    
13. Site Map:
    A good menu system is really a site map. A well constructed menu system that is on each page and contains a link to very page on the website is all you need.
    
14. Site Themes:
    All of the top 3 search engines look for site themes or a common topic when they crawl a website. If your site is about one specific topic you will rank better than if you have more than one theme or topic on your site. By using similar keyword phrases in each page the search engines will detect a theme this will be to your advantage.
    
15. Site Design:
    You may think, what does site design have to with search engine optimization. Well if your website has a bad color scheme that is hard to read, is not organized, is a cheesy looking site, then all your site optimization has been a waste of time. Make your site attractive to the viewer, make things easy to find, have you graphic header and menu bar the same place on each page.
    These things will keep your visitors on the site and bring them back. A well optimized site with a high search engine results position that is ugly and is hard find information on, will not keep the visitors your optimization has brought to the site.
    Use W3C Link Checker to make sure all your page links are good. If you have broken links on your site this can effect the ranking you are given.
    Put a proper doctype on each page. If you don't have a proper doctype on each page Internet Exployer will go into quirks mode and display it different.
    Use The W3C Markup Validate Service to verify that your pages are Validate HTML or XHTML code. The W3C validation will verify that your HTML or XHTML is not broken. This validation show you any broken code that could cause your webpages from displaying properly in all the different browsers and browser versions.
    
16. Separate Content & Presentation:
    Put all your presentation code into Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). This separates the presentation from the content and makes your html files up to 50% smaller. It is reported that the search engine bots prefer this and the more content you have compared to presentation in your file, the better you get rated. Read why tables for markup are stupid for an overview.
    
17. Robots.txt File:
    While this file is not really required it should be included so that the search engine bots don't get 404 errors when they look for it. Just include the following 2 lines and drop it in the root.
    User-agent: *
    Disallow:
    

Search Engine Optimization -- What is it?

Search Engine Optimization -- What is it?


Optimizing your website so you will obtain a high search engine results position is what SEO Techniques is all about. It is reported that 65% of all websites visited start with a search from a search engine.

For people to find your site via a search engine, the site will require a high Search Engine Results Position (SERP). This means when they search keywords phrases like SEO techniques, they will find you site page on the first page of the search engine results. Ending up on the 10 page of the search engines results will not get you any traffic.

Getting a high SERP is a combination of a number of things. Leaving out any of the items on the following list of SEO Techniques can result in your page not getting as high a search engine results position as it could.

Comprehensive List of Words Ignored by Search Engines

Stop Words
Most Search Engines do not consider extremely common words in order to save disk space or to speed up search results. These filtered words are known as 'Stop Words'.

Below is a comprehensive list of words Ignored by Search Engines.
a
able
about
above
abroad
according
accordingly
across
actually
adj
after
afterwards
again
against
ago
ahead
ain't
all
allow
allows
almost
alone
along
alongside
already
also
although
always
am
amid
amidst
among
amongst
an
and
another
any
anybody
anyhow
anyone
anything
anyway
anyways
anywhere
apart
appear
appreciate
appropriate
are
aren't
around
as
a's
aside
ask
asking
associated
at
available
away
awfully
b
back
backward
backwards
be
became
because
become
becomes
becoming
been
before
beforehand
begin
behind
being
believe
below
beside
besides
best
better
between
beyond
both
brief
but
by
c
came
can
cannot
cant
can't
caption
cause
causes
certain
certainly
changes
clearly
c'mon
co
co.
com
come
comes
concerning
consequently
consider
considering
contain
containing
contains
corresponding
could
couldn't
course
c's
currently
d
dare
daren't
definitely
described
despite
did
didn't
different
directly
do
does
doesn't
doing
done
don't
down
downwards
during
e
each
edu
eg
eight
eighty
either
else
elsewhere
end
ending
enough
entirely
especially
et
etc
even
ever
evermore
every
everybody
everyone
everything
everywhere
ex
exactly
example
except
f
fairly
far
farther
few
fewer
fifth
first
five
followed
following
follows
for
forever
former
formerly
forth
forward
found
four
from
further
furthermore
g
get
gets
getting
given
gives
go
goes
going
gone
got
gotten
greetings
h
had
hadn't
half
happens
hardly
has
hasn't
have
haven't
having
he
he'd
he'll
hello
help
hence
her
here
hereafter
hereby
herein
here's
hereupon
hers
herself
he's
hi
him
himself
his
hither
hopefully
how
howbeit
however
hundred
i
i'd
ie
if
ignored
i'll
i'm
immediate
in
inasmuch
inc
inc.
indeed
indicate
indicated
indicates
inner
inside
insofar
instead
into
inward
is
isn't
it
it'd
it'll
its
it's
itself
i've
j
just
k
keep
keeps
kept
know
known
knows
l
last
lately
later
latter
latterly
least
less
lest
let
let's
like
liked
likely
likewise
little
look
looking
looks
low
lower
ltd
m
made
mainly
make
makes
many
may
maybe
mayn't
me
mean
meantime
meanwhile
merely
might
mightn't
mine
minus
miss
more
moreover
most
mostly
mr
mrs
much
must
mustn't
my
myself
n
name
namely
nd
near
nearly
necessary
need
needn't
needs
neither
never
neverf
neverless
nevertheless
new
next
nine
ninety
no
nobody
non
none
nonetheless
noone
no-one
nor
normally
not
nothing
notwithstanding
novel
now
nowhere
o
obviously
of
off
often
oh
ok
okay
old
on
once
one
ones
one's
only
onto
opposite
or
other
others
otherwise
ought
oughtn't
our
ours
ourselves
out
outside
over
overall
own
p
particular
particularly
past
per
perhaps
placed
please
plus
possible
presumably
probably
provided
provides
q
que
quite
qv
r
rather
rd
re
really
reasonably
recent
recently
regarding
regardless
regards
relatively
respectively
right
round
s
said
same
saw
say
saying
says
second
secondly
see
seeing
seem
seemed
seeming
seems
seen
self
selves
sensible
sent
serious
seriously
seven
several
shall
shan't
she
she'd
she'll
she's
should
shouldn't
since
six
so
some
somebody
someday
somehow
someone
something
sometime
sometimes
somewhat
somewhere
soon
sorry
specified
specify
specifying
still
sub
such
sup
sure
t
take
taken
taking
tell
tends
th
than
thank
thanks
thanx
that
that'll
thats
that's
that've
the
their
theirs
them
themselves
then
thence
there
thereafter
thereby
there'd
therefore
therein
there'll
there're
theres
there's
thereupon
there've
these
they
they'd
they'll
they're
they've
thing
things
think
third
thirty
this
thorough
thoroughly
those
though
three
through
throughout
thru
thus
till
to
together
too
took
toward
towards
tried
tries
truly
try
trying
t's
twice
two
u
un
under
underneath
undoing
unfortunately
unless
unlike
unlikely
until
unto
up
upon
upwards
us
use
used
useful
uses
using
usually
v
value
various
versus
very
via
viz
vs
w
want
wants
was
wasn't
way
we
we'd
welcome
well
we'll
went
were
we're
weren't
we've
what
whatever
what'll
what's
what've
when
whence
whenever
where
whereafter
whereas
whereby
wherein
where's
whereupon
wherever
whether
which
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Importance of Sitemaps

There are many SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site but one of those, the importance of which is sometimes underestimated is sitemaps. Sitemaps, as the name implies, are just a map of your site - i.e. on one single page you show the structure of your site, its sections, the links between them, etc. Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines. Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines. While in robots.txt you tell search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, in your site map you tell search engines where you'd like them to go.

Sitemaps are not a novelty. They have always been part of best Web design practices but with the adoption of sitemaps by search engines, now they become even more important. However, it is necessary to make a clarification that if you are interested in sitemaps mainly from a SEO point of view, you can't go on with the conventional sitemap only (though currently Yahoo! and MSN still keep to the standard html format). For instance, Google Sitemaps uses a special (XML) format that is different from the ordinary html sitemap for human visitors.

One might ask why two sitemaps are necessary. The answer is obvious - one is for humans, the other is for spiders (for now mainly Googlebot but it is reasonable to expect that other crawlers will join the club shortly). In that relation it is necessary to clarify that having two sitemaps is not regarded as duplicate content. In 'Introduction to Sitemaps', Google explicitly states that using a sitemap will never lead to penalty for your site.

Why Use a Sitemap
Using sitemaps has many benefits, not only easier navigation and better visibility by search engines. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. Of course, you cannot expect that search engines will rush right away to index your changed pages but certainly the changes will be indexed faster, compared to when you don't have a sitemap.

Also, when you have a sitemap and submit it to the search engines, you rely less on external links that will bring search engines to your site. Sitemaps can even help with messy internal links - for instance if you by accident have broken internal links or orphaned pages that cannot be reached in other way (though there is no doubt that it is much better to fix your errors than rely on a sitemap).

If your site is new, or if you have a significant number of new (or recently updated pages), then using a sitemap can be vital to your success. Although you can still go without a sitemap, it is likely that soon sitemaps will become the standard way of submitting a site to search engines. Though it is certain that spiders will continue to index the Web and sitemaps will not make the standard crawling procedures obsolete, it is logical to say that the importance of sitemaps will continue to increase.

Sitemaps also help in classifying your site content, though search engines are by no means obliged to classify a page as belonging to a particular category or as matching a particular keyword only because you have told them so.

Having in mind that the sitemap programs of major search engines (and especially Google) are still in beta, using a sitemap might not generate huge advantages right away but as search engines improve their sitemap indexing algorithms, it is expected that more and more sites will be indexed fast via sitemaps.

Generating and Submitting the Sitemap
The steps you need to perform in order to have a sitemap for your site are simple. First, you need to generate it, then you upload it to your site, and finally you notify Google about it.

Depending on your technical skills, there are two ways to generate a sitemap - to download and install a sitemap generator or to use an online sitemap generation tool. The first is more difficult but you have more control over the output. You can download the Google sitemap generator from here. After you download the package, follow the installation and configuration instructions in it. This generator is a Python script, so your Web server must have Python 2.2 or later installed, in order to run it.

The second way to generate a sitemap is easier. There are many free online tools that can do the job for you. For instance, have a look at this collection of Third-party Sitemap tools. Although Google says explicitly that it has neither tested, nor verified them, this list will be useful because it includes links to online generators, downloadable sitemap generators, sitemap plugins for popular content-management systems, etc., so you will be able to find exactly what you need.

After you have created the sitemap, you need to upload it to your site (if it is not already there) and notify Google about its existence. Notifying Google includes adding the site to your Google Sitemaps account, so if you do not have an account with Google, it is high time to open one. Another detail that is useful to know in advance is that in order to add the sitemap to your account, you need to verify that you are the legitimate owner of the site.

Currently Yahoo! and MSN do not support sitemaps, or at least not in the XML format, used by Google. Yahoo! allows webmasters to submit “a text file with a list of URLs” (which can actually be a stripped-down version of a site map), while MSN does not offer even that but there are rumors that it is indexing sitemaps when they are available onsite. Most likely this situation will change in the near future and both Yahoo! and MSN will catch with Google because user-submitted site maps are just a too powerful SEO tool and cannot be ignored.

The Importance of Backlinks

If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO. In this article, we will explain to you what a backlink is, why they are important, and what you can do to help gain them while avoiding getting into trouble with the Search Engines.

What are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.
A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

For example, if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then that would be more relevant in a search engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.

Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason why backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's algorithm. Lately, however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as with hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to provide inbound links to websites. These pages are called link farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm could get your site banned entirely.

Another reason to achieve quality backlinks is to entice visitors to come to your website. You can't build a website, and then expect that people will find your website without pointing the way. You will probably have to get the word out there about your site. One way webmasters got the word out used to be through reciprocal linking. Let's talk about reciprocal linking for a moment.

There is much discussion in these last few months about reciprocal linking. In the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search engine's latest filter. Many webmasters had agreed upon reciprocal link exchanges, in order to boost their site's rankings with the sheer number of inbound links. In a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website that points to another webmasters website, and vice versa. Many of these links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the irrelevant inbound link was ignored, the outbound links still got counted, diluting the relevancy score of many websites. This caused a great many websites to drop off the Google map.

We must be careful with our reciprocal links. There is a Google patent in the works that will deal with not only the popularity of the sites being linked to, but also how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own website. This will mean that you could get into trouble with the search engine just for linking to a bad apple. We could begin preparing for this future change in the search engine algorithm by being choosier with which we exchange links right now. By choosing only relevant sites to link with, and sites that don't have tons of outbound links on a page, or sites that don't practice black-hat SEO techniques, we will have a better chance that our reciprocal links won't be discounted.

Many webmasters have more than one website. Sometimes these websites are related, sometimes they are not. You have to also be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you own seven related websites, then a link to each of those websites on a page could hurt you, as it may look like to a search engine that you are trying to do something fishy. Many webmasters have tried to manipulate backlinks in this way; and too many links to sites with the same IP address is referred to as backlink bombing.

One thing is certain: interlinking sites doesn't help you from a search engine standpoint. The only reason you may want to interlink your sites in the first place might be to provide your visitors with extra resources to visit. In this case, it would probably be okay to provide visitors with a link to another of your websites, but try to keep many instances of linking to the same IP address to a bare minimum. One or two links on a page here and there probably won't hurt you.

10 SEO Tips

10 SEO Tips

It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.
Not only is there out of date or invalid SEO advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.
The SEO tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.
Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.
Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.


Basic SEO
1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.
Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.
Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.
Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.
I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.

5. Do not spam the descript-xion or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and descript-xion tags.

6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. The links are keywords. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.
Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more that one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.
My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.


More SEO Tips
Get the facts here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/. This page will explain most of what you should focus on along with what you should forget about.
If you have been thinking about handing over the task of SEO to someone outside of yourself, you should read some warnings before you part with any money. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html


SEO Discussion
Most SEO Professionals will not tell you about the goose that laid the golden egg. The following link will take you to a jealously guarded FREE SEO discussion.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general
You can search the forum for specific questions you may have. I like to just lurk around and read the messages.

Permanent Redirect with HTTP 301

Permanent Redirect with HTTP 301

Building Google PageRank

Building Google PageRank

What is PageRank?

Once upon a time, Google came along and changed search forever. They assumed:
A link in page A to page B is a recommendation of page B by the author of A
The 'quality' of a page is related to the number of links that point to it
Applied across the whole web (recursively):
The quality of a page is related to the number of links that point to it, and the quality of pages linking to it.
Thus, the Google founders set out to create an algorithm to reflect these assumptions in search rankings, and PageRank was born. The idealized PageRank formula is actually quite simple:
For each page i pointing to p (the page we're calculating for):
j = i's PageRank divided by the number of pages it points to. This is the PageRank it propagates to p.
b = the sum of all j's (juice received by p).
Just one more minor tweak, and we'll have a formula that's pretty close to what we actually see in the wild: Each page does not actually pass its full PageRank. The published paper on PageRank uses 85%, so that's what we'll use.
PageRank FAQ
Does PageRank Really Matter?
PageRank is less important now than it originally was, primarily because spammers abused the PageRank algorithm, but it's still a factor in how well your page ranks. Nobody can really say for certain why one page ranks higher than the next. It could be good keyword density for the search term, or, perhaps the keyword was used in linktext from another website. All these factors come together into a single ranking score. Asking which factor caused a page to rank is like asking which stone tipped a scale.
PageRank is cool because it's one stone that all the pages on your site can share, and PageRank applies not to a single search term, but to every search term that a page could possibly rank for. A lot of people in the SEO community have been knocking PageRank lately, but in my opinion, the factors that contribute to PageRank are of critical importance to your over-all search engine visibility -- especially for dominating The Long Tail of Search.
How Many Links Does it Take to Reach PRx?
Because link quality is a major factor along with link quantity, there's no single answer. A single PR7 link can give you PR5, while it would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 17,000 PR1 links to accomplish the same feat.
The following table is often quoted in PageRank explanations. I do not know its original source, but it rings true from my own experience.
Number of links required to reach a target PageRank Approximations, only.


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Cure Your Poor Engine Placement

Cure Your Poor Engine Placement
Got ranking woes? Don't use search engine submission forms. Get ranking the right way. Here's a brief overview of steps you can take right now that could solve your problems.

Get More Links
You can't be listed if the search engines don't know you're there. The fastest way to get added to the index is to get links from already established websites. Here are my favorite methods:

Post Blog Comments
My favorite way to build inbound links is to comment intelligently on related blog posts. Most blog comment forms allow you to enter a URL. Enter yours, and then say something witty or insightful about the blog post. Don't re-post your link, or include any spammy promotional messages.

Give yourself plenty of time, and try to post at least ten comments per week. Some blogs use the nofollow attribute, so some comments won't be counted -- but if you post something intelligent, the blogger might just blog about you in their next post.

Participate in Message Boards
Most message forums allow you to include links in your signature that appear below every post. As with blog comments, don't post promotional messages. Just participate in the community and be a positive and helpful voice.

Use Better Page Titles
Got a term you're trying to rank for? Make sure it's in your page title. In most keyword spaces, this step alone will get you ranking within three or four months. For competitive terms, you'll need to do more.

Add More Content
Do you sell blue widgets and red widgets? Rather than have a color selector, why not create two different product pages (linked to each other, of course). Use customized titles and text for each. For example, you could use the following page titles:

Blue Widget - XYZ Corp.
Red Widget - XYZ Corp.
Doing so will help you rank better for both specific terms, rather than a single, more general term. Specific terms tend to convert to sales better than more general terms. (see The Long Tail: SEO Tips for more detail).

You're also more likely to rank in the critical top three positions if you target more specific terms. According to a recent eyetracking study from Eyetools, visibility declines rapidly beyond beyond the top three listings. The number 10 spot, for instance, is only seen 20% of the time.

In other words, if your keyword is searched 100 times, and you're in position 10 in the SERP, your link is only seen 20 times.

Use Cleaner Code
Do you have HTML tables, CSS, or JavaScript in your pages?

HTML tables can be removed in favor of lighter-weight CSS-P.
CSS can be stored in a separate file and linked with the link element.
JavaScript can be stored in a separate file and linked with the script element.
Fix Common Mistakes
Be sure you're not making any of the most common SEO mistakes. In particular, make sure you have text navigation (you can overlay graphics for style-aware browsers), and that your critical keyword-loaded content isn't buried in flash objects that search engines might struggle to digest.

There are good reasons to use flash in some cases, but most of the flash I see is not necessary, and hurts both rankings and usability.

DON'T
Assume that you've been banned, or that Google doesn't like you. Chances are, it's not true.
Use automated site submit services. This can actually get your site red flagged, and delay your rankings.
Spam -- people, blogs, forums, or search engines.
Follow this advice today, and you could be ranking tomorrow.

PageRank Mysteries and the 301 Redirect

PageRank Mysteries and the 301 Redirect
The problem: Your content is at http://www.yoursite.com/, but some people have been linking to http://yoursite.com/. You've noticed that http://www.yoursite.com/ is PR5, but http://yoursite.com/ is only PR3, even though it's the same site.

The trouble is, the search engines don't realise that the site is identical. They're confused, but you can help them sort it out with a 301 (permanent) redirect. If your site runs on the Apache webserver, you're in luck. It's easy to implement a 301, just by adding to (or creating) your .htaccess file, located in your web root directory.

Why it's important: You need to get the situation sorted out, because you're not getting proper credit for links to http://yoursite.com/. Those links could help you rank better on certain keywords. In other words, you're not getting all the traffic you could be getting.

If you want to redirect http://yoursite.com/ to http://www.yoursite.com/, your .htaccess file needs to contain these lines:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yoursite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
If you want to redirect http://www.yoursite.com/ to http://yoursite.com/ it should contain these lines, instead:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^yoursite\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://yoursite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
If you want to know more about what's going on, you'll need to learn about regular expressions, and mod_rewrite. Both are beyond the scope of this article.

A similar problem can develop if you move files around on your website. For example, if you have a file located at http://www.yoursite.com/about/, and you move it to http://www.yoursite.com/about-us/, you can set up the following 301 redirect:

Redirect permanent /about http://www.yoursite.com/about-us/
The "permanent" argument tells Apache to issue a 301 code, meaning that the change is permanent, users should update their bookmarks, and search engines should update their listings accordingly. This is almost always what you want. The full path is required for the new destination URL. To learn more, read up on the Redirect directive in the Apache mod_alias documentation.