May 31, 2008

More traffic with Google Friend Connect

Social networks become more and more part of an everyday life. People are making valuable friends in networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn. Social networks communities also are great way for advertising a site. It is natural to share your favorite websites with your best friends.
Google are launching new service that will allows people to be more social. Here is an announcement titled Becoming Social. If it is not clear enough you can visit Google Code Blog post about Friend Connect.

May 28, 2008

How to choose the right SEO expert or company?

Choosing the right search engine optimization consultant is a hard and responsible task for your business. Be careful to provide enough time and effort for it. If you are not familiar with the SEO theory consider reading the basics.

Why SEO
Your page maybe great in its niche but no one would know that without proper marketing. People must discover your existence. The role of SEO service is to promote your website through search engines. There is no big profit from ranking last at the search pages. Contrary everyone wants to rank on the top for a given set of keywords.

In other hand choosing an inappropriate SEO service can lead to many problems. One of the worst from them is dropping from the biggest search engines results page and lots of time and efforts are needed to return back.

Rules
First thing to keep in mind is that ranking in search engines is not certain thing. No one can guarantee ranking on the top on search engines like Google and Yahoo. And don’t trust people that promise to do that.

Be aware if an expert or company refuses to explain what they are going to do. You must have clear idea what are they doing and where your money go. If they don't explain every step in details to you, it is most likely that they are going to use shady methods for promotions.

Also keep in mind that link popularity schemes don’t work. The search engines have approved a lot and this kind of activity can even harm your ranking in the most popular search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Know the search engine optimization services market. Research large number of experts and companies and choose careful. A trustful SEO company must have good references.

A reliable SEO firm won’t try to exploit search engine algorithm vulnerabilities to get easy ranking, because this can lead to fast drop or even ban from the SERP. The best way for one SEO campaign is to target the long term results and use only white hat SEO methodology.

Be careful with SEO experts that promise to submit your page to thousands of search engines. You don't need this service, there are not so much search engines.

Don’t trust SEO firms that send you spam emails, this is most likely a scam.

SEO is a large and dynamic field. SEO expert from few years ago is not necessary an expert now. Search engines are constantly developing and improving for a better service and search engine optimization services must go with them. Old fashioned methods like repeating the keywords with invisible font won't work and can even harm a lot. Make sure that your expert is up to date with the theory.

May 25, 2008

Free directories list

List of relatively good free directories with easy submission and high accept rate. I personally don’t like registration or reciprocals. If you want your directory here just leave a comment with url. Also if some of these directories change the rules and don’t accept free submission, please leave a comment and I’ll check it. Thanks!

The list:

  • info-listings.com
  • londovor.com
  • miriblack.com
  • prolinkdirectory.com
  • squidlink.com
  • cgbee.com
  • soveb.org
  • cafioca.com
  • esearchresearch.info
  • abc-directory.com
  • artmam.net
  • creativeagency.eu
  • turnpike.net
  • oswd.us
  • nonar.com
  • a1webdirectory.org
  • linkaddurl.com
  • 000directory.com.ar
  • addsitelink.com
  • directory.allaboutadtips.com
  • achx.com
  • bluepearl-links.com/
  • joopita.com/
  • blfree.com/
  • west2002.org
  • sanewebdirectory.com
  • ondir.com/
  • xdstl.net
  • t3b.net
  • valioso.biz
  • cmsweblinks.com
  • newdesignworld.com
  • instantadsenseempire.org
  • biowatchmed.net
  • abcdirectory.org

May 24, 2008

SEO campaign

First thing to do is to clearly define your business goals. Why are you doing a SEO campaign? What do you want to achieve? How to do it? What tools or services to use? Isn’t it better to hire a specialist or a company?
Try to write down these questions and expand them in a way that is most relevant to your web site or service. This article will try to clear the overall concept of a SEO campaign and find some answers.

Steps in doing our campaign:
First and one of the most important: keyword research.
The basic of all search engines are the keywords. Also main part in target advertising and Pay-per-click campaigns are the keywords. People enter keywords in search engines in order to get necessary information. Choose the keywords that will bring the right type of visitors in your website. There are two methods of approach in selecting keywords. First one is a broad approach. Imagine that you run an e-commerce web site. Here the most obvious keyword is “buy online”. Disadvantages of this keyword are apparent – very high competition and not targeting at all. Google will return millions results for this term. The effort for rank good for this keyword would be enormous and don’t worth it at all.
In other hand you can choose more relevant and describing term for your service or website. It will bring more exactly targeted traffic to your site and eventually more customers.
The basic tool to consider in this part of the campaign is Google keyword tool. Be careful to balance well between the popularity, relevance and competitiveness of your keywords.

On-Site optimization
Carefully review your site and map out a simple plan for basic changes. The first thing to consider here is the question - is the site search engine friendly? Avoid flash website without any html content. It may look cool but search engine crawlers are not friendly with the flash content. Also avoid using flash or javascript for web site navigation. Anchor is the best choice for a menu.
Website usability – consider that the main part in all this is the visitor. Make sure that every necessary part is easy to reach. Ensure enough time for planning site navigation and modules. Read different search engine guidelines and make your plans according to them. Pay special attention to the images – well described images can drive a lot new traffic through image searches.
Content
Content is the part that needs great attention. First thing is to check for and remove duplicate content. Avoid using duplicate content. Make a plan for regular updating and basic content suggestions.
Users Involvement
Plan a way to involve the visitors in your site growth. Polls, Competitions, Comments, Forum, User-created-content, Awards, Voting system can be weapons for this cause.

Off-Site optimization
Link building
Link building is the basic part of the off-site optimization. Search engines prefer and give more value to a natural linking. So give a reason to your visitors to link and promote your site.
Directory submission is a valuable way for link building, but using blindly won’t be in much use. Make a list of the best directories and plan dates for submitting. Consider to grow your links gradually, avoid automatic submissions and pay special attention to directories related to the search engines. Good thing to keep in mind that geographically related directories and listings can get you more targeted traffic than global services.
Article submission also deserves its time (but not much). Choosing few of the best article directories will add more value rather than spamming all the article directories over and over again.
Social bookmark and network services also need careful planning. Choose few more relevant to your niche and go for good rating in them. Selecting good content to share is very hard task. Ever wonder why some articles gets thousands votes and other hardly get less than ten? Good and spicy page can bring in a lot of visitors.

Search Engine Optimization campaign planning and realization is a time and effort consuming process but don’t forget that it is not the only way for promoting your site. Internet marketing is a lot broader field and the successful profit sits on the top of a selection of SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Affiliate and many other campaigns.

May 19, 2008

List of top Webmaster, SEO and Blogging forums

Participating in forums can contribute great to a SEO campaign both with backlinks from signatures and mainly with knowledge about latest trends in online advertising and promotion.
I decided to share my list of top Webmaster, Search Engine Optimization, Blogging or related forums. Here it is:

Webmasters, combined
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ - Great forum with a lot of information for search engines, marketing, business, design, development and more.

http://www.v7n.com/forums/index.php also great forum.

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/

http://www.webmasters.am/forum/

http://www.webcosmoforums.com/ - promising forum

http://www.geekpoint.net/

SEO centered forums
http://forums.seochat.com/

http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/

http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/

Affiliate forums
http://forum.abestweb.com/ - affiliate centered forum, great knowledge for making money online

Blogging centered forums
http://www.bloggeries.com/forum/ - my favorite blogging forum

http://forum.authorityblogger.com/


http://www.theblogexperiment.com/blog-forum/

http://www.blogcrowds.com/forum/

May 13, 2008

How to get indexed fast in Google, Yahoo, Live Search and more

If you want to get indexed fast in the search engines, the first thing you must do is to submit your site to their relevant submit page. Also don't forget to submit your site map to Google.
Register to Google Webmaster Tools and keep an eye on their statistics. Check regularly for problems, broken links and so on.
The fastest way to get your changes indexed is to submit your site link to web pages that are crawled fast and have a high page rank. Social bookmarking comes in help in this case. Here is a list of social bookmark sites that are crawled and indexed very fast.
Other group of sites that are indexed and crawled often and are easy accessible are the big web forums. Using links in the forum signature can help great in improving a site visibility an indexing. It is a n easy and fast way to get a lot of high quality backlinks.

Some practices in the Search Engine Optimization are labeled "Black Hat SEO". They can cause a lot of harm and even drop from the SERP. Be careful that the techniques you use are compliant with the relevant search engine guidelines. For Google you can start your reading from here.
Also poor server uptime can cause harm and eventually will be the reason for not being indexed.

May 11, 2008

Nofollow - what does it mean?

Have you ever asked your self if submitting to web directories hour after hour every day have any meaning? And why, if you have many backlinks, the search engines still don't pay you much attention? Here is the secret - the "nofollow" on the links.
So what nofollow mean? Nofollow is a value that instructs some search engines that the link should not boost the link's target site rank. The main idea is a spam prevention as google people said in their blog - preventing comment spam. But like anything it can be used with evil intentions.
So what do you think happens when you submit a link to a web directory and it is tagged as nofollow? It doesn't deserve the time for doing it. There are thousands web directories that are not user or search engines friendly, they exist solely for the purpose to lure people to submit pages and don't give anything back.

Nofollow is not always a bad thing. Google recommends that paid link should have nofollow. But use it careful, and don't forget that people usually get frustrated from needless stuff.

Recommended reading for the nofollow attribute - wikipedia

May 6, 2008

Ethical SEO (from an user point of view)

To be an ethical SEO and Webmaster is easy. Just observe some simple rules. First and most important: don't spam. Don't spam people with low quality content and pages purely for the idea of advertisement. Those sites are so annoying that almost all the visitors will close the window right away. Provide people with useful and interesting content. If they like your site they will stay longer.

Also don't spam the social bookmark sites and forums solely for the purpose of traffic and link building. Share high quality articles and make people enjoy reading them.

Captcha ... Have you tried to register on a page full of advertisement, with an annoying, unreadable captcha? Most of the seo directories are made this way. Submit form spread all over the page, with an advertisement with the same font between, and a captcha that fails two-three times. Don't do this. Even if it makes few impressions people will not ever return to you.

All this is not for a bad or good practice in search engine optimization. It is for pure human behavior. And looking from a distance, all the web sites and services that have succeeded in making really good money have granted the public something useful.

Top social bookmarking list

A useful list of the top bookmarking services:

May 5, 2008

Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Marketing (SMM) or how to get even more traffic?

First of all what is Social Media Optimization?
Social Media Optimization is a way to generate publicity through social websites and communities. SMO includes:
  • Blogging
  • RSS Feeds
  • Social Networks
  • Social Bookmarking (SB)
  • Video and Photo public sharing
What are the good points of the Social Media Optimization:
  • Increase your in-links
  • Facilitates tagging, bookmarking, voting
  • Makes easier the content sharing
All of this can help you drive more traffic to your site. For example a good video on you tube can redirect to you millions of visitors.
Social Media Optimization parts in depth:
Social Blogging. You can host your blog alone or use a service like blogger. In either way it can contribute great to increasing your traffic. First blogs attracts great number of readers, and thus engages readers to your site or product. Also good blogs have regular updated content and are indexed faster from the search engines, which helps to rang better on SERP.
RSS Feeds. Publishing your RSS Feeds can help you get even more fans.
Social Networks are a great way to popularize your web site, service or product.
Social Bookmarking is a way people to bookmark, share and vote something that they like in internet. Also it is an effective way for website or blog promotion. In a SEO aspect it is a way to get more quality backlinks.
Video and Photo public sharing is a fast way to spread your ads.

Don't forget that in the social media field users a the contributors of the content. Encourage the other people to contribute to your idea and goal. Be social! Just advertising won't help you much so be creative!

Worst blog niches for making money with pay per click programs – be careful

I decide to make clear something that cased me some problems when I start blogging. In the matter of facts it almost drive me to despair.
Worst blog niches for making money through pay per click advertisement – they can make you suffer, believe me. Of course – if you get enough traffic on your web site you will make some money. In any case consider to try some other form of making money.

Gaming – especially gaming, maybe the worst niche for making money ever. My first blog was in this niche - very low revenue.

Entertainment – most global thing, music, video and of course all forms of gaming – low paid in pay-per-click programs. Advertisers don’t want to pay much and there are not many of them. Of course there are other ways for monetizing your blog that would work for them very well.

May 4, 2008

Link building strategy

When your site is ready and on-site optimized it is a time for link building. It is one of the most important parts of one Search Engine Optimization campaign. Making an error here can slow down your success a lot.

So what are the basic steps to advertise your web site?

1. First and most important add it to the search engines:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

2. Submit your site to dmoz.org

3. Start submitting your site url to the web directories. Prefer directories with high PageRank. Always have in mind that few quality links can rank you higher than tons of low rate ones. Also pay special attention to directories that allow deep link submission.

4. Submit your RSS Feed to Feed directories.

5. If your site is with static content start a blog for it. Search Engines prefer fresh content and blogging is the ideal way to ensure it.

6. Add your content to social bookmark services like digg, stumbleupon, etc. Prefer links to articles or categories rather than just adding the whole site once. Consider some of the digg clones - there are some that perform very well for me.

7. Create accounts on social networks like myspace, facebook and so on. Careful friend network management can contribute great to your goal. Make friends and start marketing.

8. Add your site to your forum signatures. Choose your anchor text to be related to your keywords, not just “click here”.

9. Start to post comments on popular blogs. Just say your opinion and leave your link there. It is a good way to create fast contacts. Be careful and think what you are posting. High quality comments tend to bring more traffic than spammy ones.

10. Start submitting articles to article directories. Select several article directories with high page rank and post your information there.

Create a habit to work on your web site daily. After some time it will pay you well!

Is it true that JavaScript is not SEO friendly?

OK, is it true that JavaScript is not SEO friendly? No, not exactly, but if you use JavaScript to redirect page or add new content the web site will not be indexed correctly by the search engines. What to do in this case? Be sure to have good navigation – the good old anchor tag with the relevant text in it. Even if you animate it later with JavaScript, it won’t be a problem. After that you can check your site navigation through text browsers like Lynx. Also create Google Site Map, it is a good practice even if you don’t have JavaScript content.

May 3, 2008

Project Wonderful - are they having problems?

I think that there is some fall off in the popularity of project wonderful. And some decrease in the member advertisers activity. One of my other blogs has project wonderful add box and the profit of it dropped down. Also this week I saw a lot of empty ads with relatively good prices. Even now the price for advertising is very law for a lot of good sites and places. And the idea of managing your own adds is something that I like. The internet advertising market place is quite interesting show and I wonder how all this will develop.

May 1, 2008

FAST SEO TIPS: 10 easy ways to improve your traffic

Just some basic tips for a good results in SEO.

1. Create Google Sitemaps – that will help Google to index your pages better.
2. Add your site to DMOZ.ORG
3. Add your site to free search engines.
4. Publish your RSS Feeds
5. Add your site to free web directories with good pagerank
6. Add your site to Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon
7. Use social networks to advertise your site
8. Create account in Technorati
9. Take participation in SEO Forums
10. Add your site with a relevant text to your forums’ signature.