SEO_IMPORTANT

Facebook’s Version of the Retweet Has Arrived

2010-01-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

We’ve long speculated as to when Facebook might get its own version of Twitter’s retweet, and it appears that the time is now. This evening, the site rolled out a “via” feature that lets you repost another user’s shared items, with a “via” link attached for attribution.

It appears the feature is live for everyone. To try it, just go to a friend’s posted item in your news feed, click “share,” and you’ll see a “via [your friend’s name]” (with an option to remove it). Once shared, the item will appear on your profile, with a via link that points to your friend’s profile. Your friends will also see the item in their News Feeds, creating the viral loop that is the Twitter retweet.

Read More
http://mashable.com/2010/01/16/facebook-via/

Apple iPhone is set to debut their iPhone credit card reader

2010-01-01T23:14:00.000-08:00

Mophie, a popular retailer of Apple iPhone and iPod accessories, is set to debut their iPhone credit card reader — said to be named “Credit Card reader” — and complimentary processing application.

We’re just a week away from the annual gadget-lover’s dream event, otherwise known as CES. One company that everyone will have their eyes on this year is Mophie.

This will allow merchants to accept credit card payments by swiping the card through a special iPhone case. While details around the device add-on are slim, interest is already high.

The buzz building around Mophie, the palpable excitement and interest stimulated by Square, and an increasingly competitive mobile payment system market means that 2010 will be the year that consumers will buy and sell from their mobile phones.

Google loses Groovle domain name claim

2009-12-31T01:20:00.000-08:00

In the complaint, Google asked for the judges to rule that 207 Media transfer the domain name over to it. Google said the domain name used by the small business, 207 Media, was too similar to its own, but mediators the National Arbitration Forum disagreed.But three judges appointed by the forum refused the request.They said the name was not similar enough to confuse people and the word 'groovle' was more closely linked to "groovy" or "groove" rather than Google.

The entrepreneurs behind Groovle.com said they had used the site for more than two-and-a-half years without any complaints by Google.The judges also refused to examine other claims made by Google, including that the Canadian business had no "legitimate" interest in the domain name and had registered it in "bad faith".

People can upload personal images onto the site and then go on to search the web from that page. The site is powered by Google but describes itself as a way for users to create a customised internet homepage.

It is only the second time out of 65 that a complaint made by Google against companies about domain names has been rejected. In 2004, Richard Wolfe, the owner of froogles.com managed to persuade an arbitration panel his site could not be confused with Google.com. People can upload personal images onto the site and then go on to search the web from that page.

Dos and Don'ts for Bing Ranking

2009-11-24T21:15:00.000-08:00

It's easy for businesses to get caught up in Google's expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That's certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too.

We don't hear as much about what Bing wants out of a site for rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don'ts of link-building for Bing. Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. "Just don't make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution," says DeJarnette. "You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time."

What To Do:

DeJarnette some tips for getting more quality links. Following are Bing's tips for effective link building :

Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they're aware of your site/content

Publish concise, informative press releases online

Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site's content when applicable

Publish expert articles to online article directories

Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)

Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums

Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site

Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content

What Not To Do:

DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:

Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites

The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time

Using hidden links in your pages

Linking out to known web spam sites

Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known "bad neighborhoods" on the Web

Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any savvy search marketer is not already aware of. That said, there are clearly plenty of online (and offline for that matter) businesses out there that don't have savvy search marketers on the payroll. It can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and what not to do to help webmasters get better rankings.

Tips to Avoid Google Ban

2009-11-03T04:36:00.000-08:00

New internet marketers frequently complain about having no idea why their websites have been banned by Google. The majority of these people claim they have absolutely no idea why they have been banned or penalized. The only thing they are 100 percent sure of is that their website no longer exists in the Google search engine.There are two things usually called ban out there:

When your site has dropped from Google index and does not show anymore for its target keywords.

When your IP has been blocked and you cannot use Google search for some time.

Both issues are rather unwanted. The first one is applied to your site when it doesn't suit Google webmaster guidelines. The second one is applied to your IP address when you perform agressive amount of queries to Google at a time. Fortunately, you can easily avoid both types of Google ban following the below rules. Let's first deal with website ban:

Spam

Never, ever spam. This involves sending a large amount of unsolicited mail via your domain mail server. Although the legality of mass mailing is a grey area, sites which do this deserve to be banned by every search engine.

Make your site available. Always use reliable hosting service with good uptime (no less than 99.5%) and fast response time. If Googlebot comes to your site and cannot access it, your site may drop.

Excessive Links

Now that so many webmasters are more obsessed with their Google Pagerank than the amount of quality traffic they receive, link pages are fuller than ever. You should try not to place too many outbound links on a single page. If you do need to link to 100 or more sites, place the links on separate pages.

Provide unique and relevant content. Fill your website with fresh unique content that is relevant to your website theme and is interesting to your visitors. Write your content for humans, not for search engine bots. If you post a duplicate content on your site, Google may exclude it from its index.

Cloaking

Seen by many SEO specialists as probably the thing most likely to result in a Google ban, cloaking involves creating one page designed specifically for the search engines, and another which will appear for the user. This is search engine manipulation at its worst.

Selling PageRank

Some sites have gone so far as to sell PageRank - i.e. selling links on highly ranked pages. You can sell links (i.e. advertising), but you cannot sell links for the stated purpose of increasing Google Pagerank.

Carefully build links

Not every inbound link is good. Take care of websites linking to you. Don't participate in link farms. Try to get links from relevant or close theme websites. Do not ever spam forums, guest books or comments with your links! Outbound links are important too. Pay a close attention on what sites do you link from your website. Do not link to sites that use spam techniques, because this may result in your site ban.

Make your site crawlable

Provide a way for Googlebot to index the whole your site. Create sitemap, if you use JavaScript or Flash links - duplicate them with plain text ones. Make sure your server correctly handles errors, like 403, 404, redirects and so on. Check for broken links and HTML errors with some HTML validator tool.

Avoid using domains with bad history

Do not use previously black listed domains for your site.

SEO Software

Don't use unauthorised computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate Google's terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

If you follow these guidelines and steer clear of excessive search engine marketing techniques, you should be fine. Just remember to create a site with is faithful to the product or service you are providing information on and you should be fine. Concentrate on exchanging quality links with similar sites and don't get too obsessed with your Google Pagerank. Quality, returning traffic is the goal.

For Google's webmaster guidelines, visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

How to avoid IP ban?

Do not use unauthorized software to check web ranking. Google restricts usage of software that send automated search queries to Google. Actually, to be 100% sure your IP won't be banned - do not check your web rankings at all.

Limit the amount of searches. If the accuracy of Google API search results is not enough for your purposes and using the natural search is crucial for you, try to

limit the amount searches with some reasonable number. If you check web rankings, don't check first 1000 results, reduce the search to first 30-50 results. This will give you an adequate picture of your current standings and won't stress Google much as well.

Use Google for its main purpose. Use Google for search only and you never get your IP banned.

Facebook awarded $711 million in damages by a San Jose

2009-10-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today Facebook reported they’ve been awarded $711 million in damages by a San Jose, CA court against Sanford Wallace, the notorious “Spam King” that MySpace also successfully went after last year to the tune of a $234 million judgment.

Back in March, Facebook won an injunction against three spammers who sent unwanted messages and made abusive wall posts on the site. The temporary restraining order placed criminal consequences on their continuing actions, but the legal battle wasn’t over just yet.

Seven hundred eleven million dollars is a lot of dough. But amazingly, it’s not the highest judgment levied under the CAN-SPAM Act, a piece of legislation that contains tough penalties for violations surrounding commercial email and message sending. That honor also belongs to Facebook (Facebook), who in November of 2008 won an $873 million victory against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital.

More than being about the monetary figure though, especially considering the difficulty of actually extracting the cash from the defendants, is the deterrent effect these judgments will hopefully have on future would-be spammers. Facebook implores its users to help stop the scourge by using the “Report This” links throughout the site when you spot the evil stuff.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point

2009-10-23T03:41:00.000-07:00

"It is possible for the government to screw the Internet up, big-time," he said. Google is strong enough as a company to weather any possible outcome on the issue, he said. But what he worries about "is the next start-up."

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don't steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.

Thursday marked a milestone in the debate over net neutrality, as the Federal Communications Commission voted to move forward on how the government will police access to the Internet, but Schmidt was in town in his role as a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He also sat down for an hour-long conversation with reporters and editors at The Washington Post.

"I spend so much time in Washington now because of the work that I've been doing, I deal with all these people who make assertions without fact," he said. Policy people "will hand me some report that they wrote or they'll make some assertion, and I'll say, 'Well, is that true?' -- and they can't prove it."

With Google's vast power for capturing and remembering data, Schmidt painted a picture in which technology could help quantify and verify the assertions made in policy documents. "Government is highly measurable, most of it," he said. "We can actually see how many people got this shot or read this report or so forth. A government -- a transparent government -- should be able to [measure] that."

As for Google's relationship with Washington's power structure, Schmidt said the tech industry is still not as strong as others in its lobbying representation on Capitol Hill, but that that's fine with him. Google, and the tech industry, does better for itself when it focuses on ideas and innovation -- and not politics, he said.

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-09T05:49:00.000-07:00

US President Barak Obama is awarded for his ‘extraordinary efforts in international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples, said the Nobel Committee at a press conference broadcast through the webcam. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009, announced the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo on Friday.
“The committee has attached importance to his vision for a world without nuclear weapons,” said the Nobel Committee.

The committee argued that Obama contributed a lot in achieving peace by strengthening diplomacy and through negotiations to solve the nuclear issue.

“International diplomacy has regained certain position, the emphasis on the role that the UN and all the international institutions can play, dialogue and negotiations are referred as instrument of solving the most difficult conflict,” said the committee.

“He is awarded for what he is trying to do, and what he is doing,” answered the Nobel Committee facing the question that what Obama has done hasn’t resulted in any concrete achievements.

Facing journalists’ doubtful questions, the Nobel Committee insisted that Obama was awarded for his ‘attitude’, for ‘what he is trying to do’ and ‘what he is doing’.

Analysts hold that such an award is out of a strong wish to get rid of nuclear weapons and threats from the Nobel Peace Committee which puts high expectations from Obama.

48 years old Obama graduated from Harvard University and was senior lecturer in Law at University of Chicago Law School. He became president of the USA in January.

The winners of Nobels for medicine, physics, chemistry and literature have been announced in the previous days and the economic prize will be announced next Monday.

The Nobel prizes have been awarded annually since 1901 to those who "conferred the greatest benefit on mankind during the preceding year."

The prizes are usually announced in October and are handed out on Dec. 10, the death anniversary of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite.

Each prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma and a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (about 1.41 million U.S. dollars).

(refer from:http://english.people.com.cn)

Microsoft Bing Ads Warn About Online Scams

2009-09-30T05:54:00.000-07:00

Microsoft on Tuesday began serving up scam warnings with Bing search results for topics such as fixing credit scores or rescue from home foreclosure that are prime material for online cons.

Microsoft worked with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Postal Inspection Service, and Western Union to provide public service announcements (PSAs) in the form of advertising posted on relevant Bing results pages.

The ads should appear for relevant keywords only; I’ve tried about a dozen different combinations, and haven’t seen them, but it could be because I’m not located in the USA. You should see them if you’re looking for foreclosure rescue, lottery, and fixing credit problems. If you click on one, you’ll land on trade commission or Microsoft Web pages containing advice about avoiding online scams.

The initiative might move to other search engines, too. “We’ll encourage other search engines to follow Microsoft’s lead and use PSAs to help their users avoid scams,” said David Vladeck, director of the FTC bureau of consumer protection. Be that as it may, this is another move by Microsoft that shows they’re serious about grabbing more of that search market share, something they’ve been surprisingly good at so far.

Gooogle Chrome Frame Makes IE Less Secure:Microsoft

2009-09-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

This week Google released the Chrome Frame, which is a plug-in for Microsoft's Internet Explorer that enables the browser to run HTML5, and (probably more importantly to Google) Google Wave.

Google and Microsoft are of course direct competitors in a variety of markets, most notably search, and more recently, web browsers. Google's Chrome hasn't been around that long yet (over a year), but it has already made a fair impression on the market. Microsoft still largely dominates this market though, and the company doesn't appear to be too thrilled with the concept of Google penetrating it right from within, via a plug-in.

Microsoft told Ars Technica that the Google Chrome Frame makes Internet Explorer less safe for users. "With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "Given the security issues with plugins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plugin has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take."

The importance of SEO in business

2009-09-23T02:26:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and link building are basic precepts of online marketing. The two ensure high rankings in popular search engines, like Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

The importance of SEO

On the World Wide Web, nothing is more important than SEO to business sites. Organic optimization is vital for the success of off-page and on-page optimization. SEO components include: keyword building, content writing, link building, HTML code optimization, etc.

In order to get higher rankings, a website needs to have properly-oriented keywords.
After that, it needs the right Meta tags, Alter tags, heading tags, images, and keyword phrases.

Why build Links?

Link building is an effective method to get higher rankings and well-targeted traffic.

Links can be embedded in several content forms, like articles, directories, e-mails, and others.

The more links there are, the higher chances of getting popular rankings. Links should be well-placed in popular affiliate sites. Depending on the budget and the strategy, link building has many options. A site can choose a one-way link, a reciprocal link or a three-way link.

Links are a proven method of attaining higher page rankings. It will also improve online visibility, deliver consistent traffic, attract new contacts, and maximize revenues.

Getting SEO Services

For major online businesses, it is highly recommended to contract the services of a reliable SEO company.

Experienced SEO companies will handle all the necessary SEO components for the site. If done correctly, excellent SEO will guarantee a consistent revenue stream, as well as a consistent number of new clients for the site.

Search Engines Optimizing Factors

2009-08-24T04:19:00.000-07:00

Different search engines have different algorithms and work procedures. Optimizing for Google, MSN and Yahoo! is not easy at all. Doing this at the same time is not a babies tale. It is really needed lots of care and understanding and better expertise. To some extent the both algorithms are same but we have to look at the differences.

The algorithm of Yahoo! was on deliberately just the opposite of the Google algorithm because pages that ranked high in Google did not do so well in Yahoo! and vice versa. Therefore to optimize a site that would appeal to both search engines, Google and yahoo is very tough and a job of research.

There is no room for doubt that the algorithms of the two search engines are different, since both are constantly changing, none of them is made publicly available by its authors and the details about how each of the algorithms function are obtained by speculation based on probe-trial tests for particular keywords, it is not possible to say for certain what exactly is different. What is more, having in mind the frequency with which algorithms are changed, it is not possible to react to every slight change, even if algorithms' details were known officially. But knowing some basic differences between the two does help to get better ranking. A tool that will help you to make this tough job easy is Major Search Engines Rank Checker. This tool produce instant online reports of website rankings in 8-top search engines and web directories, including Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN, AOL, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Directory, and Open Directory (Dmoz).

Yahoo! follows the same thing to produce the pages with the search results. It first spiders the pages on the web, then indexes them in its database and later performs various mathematical operations. The Yahoo! spiderbot is the second most active spider crawler on the web. It can be said that Yahoo! slurp is even more active than Googlebot because it can be seen that there are more pages in the index of yahoo that Google index. The difference of sandbox is there. The changes introduced to your website recently can be watched out by Yahoo! without any delay comparing Google. You might have to wait a month or two (shorter for Yahoo! and longer for Google) till these changes are reflected in the search results. The wait for yahoo is shorter than Google.

Keyword density is also different in both cases. These two search engines follow different keyword density factor. Higher the density higher the position for yahoo but it is not the same for Google. Rich keyword sites can be fell into the keyword stuffed category in Google. Keyword Density Checking Tool will help you in this case. This tool analyzes your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one-, two-, or three-word key terms. It’s useful for helping webmasters and SEO achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms.

Google Launches Google Listen Android App

2009-08-21T03:53:00.000-07:00

Google has quietly released a new Labs project for Android. It's called Google Listen and is described as a personalized audio news-magazine loaded with fresh and interesting content whenever it is turned on.

The experimental app is part iTunes, part audio search engine. It has access to a number of different audio clips, from speeches by Sonia Sotomayor to newscasts by Charles Osgood. Google’s search algorithms find the most relevant audio. You can then subscribe to different audio sources and build a queue, called Listen Queue, which is where Google Listen acts a bit like iTunes.

With this app you can manage and listen to your podcasts on the move, and save time in the process. This is a Google Labs project, and as such is still in beta, whatever that means with Google products. For some reason this is only available in the US currently.For now, Google Listen is only available on Android. This may be because the app is still early in development, but its omission from the iPhone may also stem from the issues Google has recently had getting its applications approved for the App Store — in the last few months, Apple has rejected a native application of Google Latitude, and also banned all Google Voice apps. Even without the recent controversy, Apple may well have smacked the app down for competing with iTunes’ podcasting functionality (other apps have been rejected for this in the past).

Users can keep subscriptions, which allow you to keep up to date on specific programs or search terms. Once a search result is pressed, there is a checkbox in the corner that lets you easily subscribe. The app always shows the latest episode on the programs tab of the My Subscriptions screen. Users can subscribe to search terms by selecting the checkbox while viewing the search results. Users also keep a My Listen queue, which lets you chose specific episodes to hear in the order you want.

Google listen can be downloaded here. There is also a FAQ and more information.

Microsoft Disputes Firefox One Billion Downloads Claim

2009-08-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, Mozilla announced a major milestone for its Firefox (Firefox) web browser: one billion downloads. They even launched OneBillionPlusYou.com to mark the occasion and demonstrate just how large one billion really is.

Not everyone’s in awe of the number, though. A senior executive of Microsoft, the current browser market leader, has made statements today that essentially question the validity of the one billion downloads milestone. Oh, and she talked about how IE6 cannot die as well.

According to The Guardian, Internet Explorer General Manager Amy Barzdukas asked people to be skeptical of “large number claims” and called the Firefox number “interesting math.” Here’s some of what she said:

“As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat sceptical about large number claims. It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.”

Of course, these comments come as Firefox continues to chip away at Microsoft’s browser market share. While Internet Explorer is still the dominant browser, nearly 1/4 of the world’s computers now run the Firefox open-source browser. Perhaps there’s a little browser envy laced into her comments?

Ms. Barzdukas also reiterated a statement from the company earlier this week that it won’t cut off support for IE6 anytime soon, as well as explaining why she thinks IE6 is still used by so many:

“The reason that a consumer would still be on IE6 at this point is a lack of awareness or the ‘good enough’ problem,” she said. “If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and you’re not particularly curious about new technology and don’t really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle. Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser.”

We still want IE6 to die, but her position is understandable and consistent with what we’ve heard from Microsoft. Maybe it’s that they’re scared people will switch from IE6 to Firefox instead of to IE8, or maybe they just don’t want the complaints that would come with cutting off support. Regardless, we’ll leave Mozilla and Microsoft to quarrel over the numbers.

Caffeine Update-Next-generation architecture for Google's web search

2009-08-12T06:01:00.000-07:00

"Next-generation architecture for Google's web search"

Google may have a huge lead over its competitors in terms of market share, but the search giant isn't resting on its laurels. A next-generation infrastructure codenamed "Caffeine" has been unveiled, and it's already available for individuals to test.

Fair warning: don't expect Caffeine to introduce natural language recognition, search results from Twitter, or anything else too fancy. Matt Cutts cautioned, "The Caffeine update isn't about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we're rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure."

Still, he continued, "[S]ome of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback."

Head over to http://www2.sandbox.google.com if you intend to take Cutts and Google up on their invitation. Keep an eye on characteristics including accuracy, comprehensiveness, and - perhaps especially - indexing speed. Then, if you've got anything constructive to say, use the "Dissatisfied? Help us improve" link at the bottom of the page and include the term "Caffeine" in your response.

Initial impressions have, as you can see below, been mostly positive.

Caffeine is likely to hit the mainstream in the near future. Cutts referred to this sneak peek as "a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months."

Swine H1N1 Flu

2009-08-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

What is H1N1 (swine flu)?

Novel H1N1 (referred to as “swine flu” early on) is a new influenza virus causing illness in people. This new virus was first detected in people in the United States in April 2009. This virus is spreading from person-to-person worldwide, probably in much the same way that regular seasonal influenza viruses spread. On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) signaled that a pandemic of novel H1N1 flu was underway.

Why is novel H1N1 virus sometimes called “swine flu”?

This virus was originally referred to as “swine flu” because laboratory testing showed that many of the genes in this new virus were very similar to influenza viruses that normally occur in pigs (swine) in North America. But further study has shown that this new virus is very different from what normally circulates in North American pigs. It has two genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia and bird (avian) genes and human genes. Scientists call this a "quadruple reassortant" virus.

Novel H1N1 Flu in Humans

Are there human infections with novel H1N1 virus in the U.S.?
Yes. Human infections with the new H1N1 virus are ongoing in the United States. Most people who have become ill with this new virus have recovered without requiring medical treatment.
CDC routinely works with states to collect, compile and analyze information about influenza, and has done the same for the new H1N1 virus since the beginning of the outbreak. This information is presented in a weekly report, called FluView.

Is novel H1N1 virus contagious?

CDC has determined that novel H1N1 virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human.

How does novel H1N1 virus spread?

Spread of novel H1N1 virus is thought to occur in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing by people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something – such as a surface or object – with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.
Photo of nurse and child

What are the signs and symptoms of this virus in people?

The symptoms of novel H1N1 flu virus in people include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. A significant number of people who have been infected with this virus also have reported diarrhea and vomiting. Severe illnesses and death has occurred as a result of illness associated with this virus.

How severe is illness associated with novel H1N1 flu virus?

Illness with the new H1N1 virus has ranged from mild to severe. While most people who have been sick have recovered without needing medical treatment, hospitalizations and deaths from infection with this virus have occurred.

In seasonal flu, certain people are at “high risk” of serious complications. This includes people 65 years and older, children younger than five years old, pregnant women, and people of any age with certain chronic medical conditions. About 70 percent of people who have been hospitalized with this novel H1N1 virus have had one or more medical conditions previously recognized as placing people at “high risk” of serious seasonal flu-related complications. This includes pregnancy, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and kidney disease.

One thing that appears to be different from seasonal influenza is that adults older than 64 years do not yet appear to be at increased risk of novel H1N1-related complications thus far. CDC laboratory studies have shown that children and few adults younger than 60 years old do not have existing antibody to novel H1N1 flu virus; however, about one-third of adults older than 60 may have antibodies against this virus. It is unknown how much, if any, protection may be afforded against novel H1N1 flu by any existing antibody.

How does novel H1N1 flu compare to seasonal flu in terms of its severity and infection rates?

With seasonal flu, we know that seasons vary in terms of timing, duration and severity. Seasonal influenza can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death. Each year, in the United States, on average 36,000 people die from flu-related complications and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related causes. Of those hospitalized, 20,000 are children younger than 5 years old. Over 90% of deaths and about 60 percent of hospitalization occur in people older than 65.

When the novel H1N1 outbreak was first detected in mid-April 2009, CDC began working with states to collect, compile and analyze information regarding the novel H1N1 flu outbreak, including the numbers of confirmed and probable cases and the ages of these people. The information analyzed by CDC supports the conclusion that novel H1N1 flu has caused greater disease burden in people younger than 25 years of age than older people. At this time, there are few cases and few deaths reported in people older than 64 years old, which is unusual when compared with seasonal flu. However, pregnancy and other previously recognized high risk medical conditions from seasonal influenza appear to be associated with increased risk of complications from this novel H1N1. These underlying conditions include asthma, diabetes, suppressed immune systems, heart disease, kidney disease, neurocognitive and neuromuscular disorders and pregnancy.

How long can an infected person spread this virus to others?

People infected with seasonal and novel H1N1 flu shed virus and may be able to infect others from 1 day before getting sick to 5 to 7 days after. This can be longer in some people, especially children and people with weakened immune systems and in people infected with the new H1N1 virus.

Prevention & Treatment

What can I do to protect myself from getting sick?
There is no vaccine available right now to protect against novel H1N1 virus. However, a novel H1N1 vaccine is currently in production and may be ready for the public in the fall. As always, a vaccine will be available to protect against seasonal influenza
There are everyday actions that can help prevent the spread of germs that cause respiratory illnesses like influenza.

Take these everyday steps to protect your health:

co your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.

wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners* are also effective.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread this way.

Try to avoid close contact with sick people.

If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) Keep away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick.

Other important actions that you can take are:

Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other social distancing measures.
Be prepared in case you get sick and need to stay home for a week or so; a supply of over-the-counter medicines, alcohol-based hand rubs,* tissues and other related items might could be useful and help avoid the need to make trips out in public while you are sick and contagious

What is the best way to keep from spreading the virus through coughing or sneezing?

If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
Keep away from others as much as possible. Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing. Put your used tissue in the waste basket. Then, clean your hands, and do so every time you cough or sneeze.

If I have a family member at home who is sick with novel H1N1 flu, should I go to work?

Employees who are well but who have an ill family member at home with novel H1N1 flu can go to work as usual. These employees should monitor their health every day, and take everyday precautions including washing their hands often with soap and water, especially after they cough or sneeze. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective.* If they become ill, they should notify their supervisor and stay home. Employees who have an underlying medical condition or who are pregnant should call their health care provider for advice, because they might need to receive influenza antiviral drugs to prevent illness. For more information please see General Business and Workplace Guidance for the Prevention of Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Flu in Workers.

What is the best technique for washing my hands to avoid getting the flu?
Washing your hands often will help protect you from germs. Wash with soap and water or clean with alcohol-based hand cleaner*. CDC recommends that when you wash your hands -- with soap and warm water -- that you wash for 15 to 20 seconds. When soap and water are not available, alcohol-based disposable hand wipes or gel sanitizers may be used. You can find them in most supermarkets and drugstores. If using gel, rub your hands until the gel is dry. The gel doesn't need water to work; the alcohol in it kills the germs on your hands.

What should I do if I get sick?
If you live in areas where people have been identified with novel H1N1 flu and become ill with influenza-like symptoms, including fever, body aches, runny or stuffy nose, sore throat, nausea, or vomiting or diarrhea, you should stay home and avoid contact with other people. CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) Stay away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick.Staying at home means that you should not leave your home except to seek medical care. This means avoiding normal activities, including work, school, travel, shopping, social events, and public gatherings.

If you have severe illness or you are at high risk for flu complications, contact your health care provider or seek medical care. Your health care provider will determine whether flu testing or treatment is needed.

If you become ill and experience any of the following warning signs, seek emergency medical care.

In children, emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include:

Fast breathing or trouble breathing

Bluish or gray skin color

Not drinking enough fluids

Severe or persistent vomiting

Not waking up or not interacting

Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held

Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

In adults, emergency warning signs that need urgent medical attention include:

Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath

Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen

Sudden dizziness

Confusion

Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough

Are there medicines to treat novel H1N1 infection?

Yes. CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with novel H1N1 flu virus. Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body. If you get sick, antiviral drugs can make your illness milder and make you feel better faster. They may also prevent serious flu complications. During the current pandemic, the priority use for influenza antiviral drugs during is to treat severe influenza illness (for example hospitalized patients) and people who are sick who have a condition that places them at high risk for serious flu-related complications.

What is CDC’s recommendation regarding "swine flu parties"?

"Swine flu parties" are gatherings during which people have close contact with a person who has novel H1N1 flu in order to become infected with the virus. The intent of these parties is for a person to become infected with what for many people has been a mild disease, in the hope of having natural immunity novel H1N1 flu virus that might circulate later and cause more severe disease.

CDC does not recommend "swine flu parties" as a way to protect against novel H1N1 flu in the future. While the disease seen in the current novel H1N1 flu outbreak has been mild for many people, it has been severe and even fatal for others. There is no way to predict with certainty what the outcome will be for an individual or, equally important, for others to whom the intentionally infected person may spread the virus.

CDC recommends that people with novel H1N1 flu avoid contact with others as much as possible. If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.) Stay away from others as much as possible to keep from making others sick.

Contamination & Cleaning

How long can influenza virus remain viable on objects (such as books and doorknobs)?

Studies have shown that influenza virus can survive on environmental surfaces and can infect a person for 2 to 8 hours after being deposited on the surface.

What kills influenza virus?

Influenza virus is destroyed by heat (167-212°F [75-100°C]). In addition, several chemical germicides, including chlorine, hydrogen peroxide, detergents (soap), iodophors (iodine-based antiseptics), and alcohols are effective against human influenza viruses if used in proper concentration for a sufficient length of time. For example, wipes or gels with alcohol in them can be used to clean hands. The gels should be rubbed into hands until they are dry.

What if soap and water are not available and alcohol-based products are not allowed in my facility?

Though the scientific evidence is not as extensive as that on hand washing and alcohol-based sanitizers, other hand sanitizers that do not contain alcohol may be useful for killing flu germs on hands.

What surfaces are most likely to be sources of contamination?

Germs can be spread when a person touches something that is contaminated with germs and then touches his or her eyes, nose, or mouth. Droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person move through the air. Germs can be spread when a person touches respiratory droplets from another person on a surface like a desk, for example, and then touches their own eyes, mouth or nose before washing their hands.

How should waste disposal be handled to prevent the spread of influenza virus?
To prevent the spread of influenza virus, it is recommended that tissues and other disposable items used by an infected person be thrown in the trash. Additionally, persons should wash their hands with soap and water after touching used tissues and similar waste.

suppliesWhat household cleaning should be done to prevent the spread of influenza virus?

To prevent the spread of influenza virus it is important to keep surfaces (especially bedside tables, surfaces in the bathroom, kitchen counters and toys for children) clean by wiping them down with a household disinfectant according to directions on the product label.

How should linens, eating utensils and dishes of persons infected with influenza virus be handled?

Linens, eating utensils, and dishes belonging to those who are sick do not need to be cleaned separately, but importantly these items should not be shared without washing thoroughly first.

Linens (such as bed sheets and towels) should be washed by using household laundry soap and tumbled dry on a hot setting. Individuals should avoid “hugging” laundry prior to washing it to prevent contaminating themselves. Individuals should wash their hands with soap and water or alcohol-based hand rub immediately after handling dirty laundry.

Eating utensils should be washed either in a dishwasher or by hand with water and soap.

Exposures Not Thought to Spread Novel H1N1 Flu

Can I get infected with novel H1N1 virus from eating or preparing pork?
No. Novel H1N1 viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get infected with novel HIN1 virus from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork products is safe.

Is there a risk from drinking water?

Tap water that has been treated by conventional disinfection processes does not likely pose a risk for transmission of influenza viruses. Current drinking water treatment regulations provide a high degree of protection from viruses. No research has been completed on the susceptibility of novel H1N1 flu virus to conventional drinking water treatment processes. However, recent studies have demonstrated that free chlorine levels typically used in drinking water treatment are adequate to inactivate highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza. It is likely that other influenza viruses such as novel H1N1 would also be similarly inactivated by chlorination. To date, there have been no documented human cases of influenza caused by exposure to influenza-contaminated drinking water.

Can novel H1N1 flu virus be spread through water in swimming pools, spas, water parks, interactive fountains, and other treated recreational water venues?

Influenza viruses infect the human upper respiratory tract. There has never been a documented case of influenza virus infection associated with water exposure. Recreational water that has been treated at CDC recommended disinfectant levels does not likely pose a risk for transmission of influenza viruses. No research has been completed on the susceptibility of novel H1N1 influenza virus to chlorine and other disinfectants used in swimming pools, spas, water parks, interactive fountains, and other treated recreational venues. However, recent studies have demonstrated that free chlorine levels recommended by CDC (1–3 parts per million [ppm or mg/L] for pools and 2–5 ppm for spas) are adequate to disinfect avian influenza A (H5N1) virus. It is likely that other influenza viruses such as novel H1N1 virus would also be similarly disinfected by chlorine.

Can novel H1N1 influenza virus be spread at recreational water venues outside of the water?

Yes, recreational water venues are no different than any other group setting. The spread of this novel H1N1 flu is thought to be happening in the same way that seasonal flu spreads. Flu viruses are spread mainly from person to person through coughing or sneezing of people with influenza. Sometimes people may become infected by touching something with flu viruses on it and then touching their mouth or nose.

How to Get More Traffic to Your Lens In Squidoo

2009-07-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

Squidoo also has a very high page rank, which in the Internet Marketing world means everything. With high page rank, comes high amounts of traffic. But even submitting to directories with a high page rank and an excellent Alexa ranking won't do it all for you.Squidoo can be a very good place to write an article about a product or something that interests you and others.Techniques that will surely improve your Squidoo SEO if you use them.

Keyword Phrases in the Title

Google uses a very advanced "system" of finding web-pages. In order for them to find your lens easier, it must be "indexed" properly. The way to easily do this is by using your "keyword phrase" in the Title and the Sub-Title.Remember to keep your keyword phrase first in the title. For instance, if your article was about "F5 Fighter Planes", you could write something like this: F5 Fighter Planes - 3 of the Best F5 Fighter Planes That Were Ever Built. This will let the "spiders" know that you have written your lens around F5 Fighter Planes, and therefore will be easier to find.Remember always, more content and more lenses are always better than less. To really learn more about Squidoo SEO and how you can best optimize your lenses you can visit the website.

Building Backlinks

To Internet Marketers, backlinks are like the "lifeblood" of their campaigns. But how do you build backlinks? By writing articles, of course! Write articles around your "long-tailed keyword phrases" and keep a 1-3% density in your articles.Try not to focus strictly on writing around your "keyword phrases" though. Google needs to know where to find your article, but don't over do it.

Readers are looking for "real" content, and Google knows this. By using your keyword phrases too many times you are "stuffing" and therefore possibly sounding "unnatural". This technique may have worked in the past, but it does no longer.You can also get great backlinks by posting comments on other people's relevant blogs. This is a great one for Squidoo SEO, but again don't overdo it.

Always post an informative comment and not a blatant "sales pitch". This will be frowned upon by most administrators and could be looked at as SPAM.

Blogging

Like I mentioned before, writing a blog and posting to it regularly is what the Google "spiders" like. When they are crawling your site on a regular basis, you know that you are going to get a good amount of traffic. Always write blog posts and create pages around your targeted "keyword phrases".

Blogging also allows you to show your own personality, and to create your own targeted "fan" base. Many bloggers have gained that extra "edge" through blogging. Both WordPress and Blogger are great places to start, Google is a big fan of both, so you can't go wrong!

Google Penalty ?

2009-07-21T02:28:00.000-07:00

"a punishment levied by a search engine, normally in response to techniques which violate the ToS, which leaves the punished site ranking below the point at which it would rank were those techniques simply countered and ignored."

This is a very common scenario: You spend time and effort to improve your rankings - perhaps you hire an SEO consultant. You see good results, more traffic, more sales. But suddenly, your rankings drop precipitously along with traffic and sales. You're no longer in the search engines' index and have zero rank for all your important keyword sets. You have the dreaded Google penalty.

What Exactly Triggers A Google Penalty?

If you're trying to avoid a Google penalty, read this is from Google's site guidelines:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Don't send automated queries to Google.

Don't load pages with irrelevant words.

Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

There are other ways to achieve a Google penalty, like buying and inter-linking too many domains, listing your keywords repeatedly, linking to a bad neighborhood, accidentally exposing (through links) parts of your site that should not be live, etc.

In general, anything hidden from the human visitor but visible to the robots is asking for a Google penalty. So don't put colored text or links on backgrounds of the same color - Google penalty. Same for teeny tiny font sizes, especially if they carry links - Google penalty. And offpage content that only a robot sees - Google penalty.

If you're creating content for humans, it is very unlikely that you will trigger a Google penalty. But if you're making an effort to fool the robots, you're messing with the potential for a Google penalty, big time. Read more about researching the causes of getting penalized in Google.

Google Penalty Checklist

Linking to bad neighbourhoods

Check you are not linking to any bad neighbourhoods (neighborhoods - US spelling), link farms or doorway pages. Bad neighbourhoods include spam sites and doorway pages, whilst link farms are just pages of links to other sites, with no original or useful content.

If in doubt, we recommend quality checking all of your outbound links to external sites using the Bad Neighborhood detection tool. Whilst this SEO tool isn't perfect, it may spot "problem sites". Another good tip is to do a Google search for the HTML homepage title of sites that you link to. If the sites don't come up in the top 20 of the Google SERPS, then they are almost certainly low trust domains and linking to them should be avoided.

Automated query penalty

Google penalties can sometimes be caused by using automated query tools which make use of Google's API, particularly when such queries are made from the same IP address that hosts your website. These tools break Google's terms of service (as laid out in their Webmaster Guidelines). Google allows certain automated queries into its database using its analytic tools and when accessing through a registered Google API account. Unauthorised types of automated query can cause problems, particularly when used excessively.

Over optimization penalties

These can be triggered by poor SEO techniques such as aggressive link building using the same keywords in link anchor text. When managing link building campaigns, always vary the link text used and incorporate a variety of different keyword terms. Use a backlink anchor text analyser tool to check backlinks for sufficient keyword spread. Optimising for high paying keywords like "Viagra" can further elevate risk, so mix in some long tail keywords into the equation. For brand new domains, add no more than 5 new one way backlinks a week and use deep linking to website internal pages, rather than just homepage link building.

Website cross linking & link schemes

If you run more than one website and the Google penalty hits all sites at the same time, check the interlinking (cross linking) between those sites. Extensive interlinking of websites, particularly if they are on the same C Class IP address (same ISP) can be viewed as "link schemes" by Google, breaking their terms of service. The risks are even higher where site A site wide links to site B and site B site wide links back to site A. If you must use site wide links, make sure they are not reciprocal links. Link schemes built around links in the footer of each webpage are particularly risky. The reality is that site wide links do little to increase site visibility in the Google SERPS, nor do they improve Page Rank more than a single link, as Google only counts one link from a site to another. KSL Consulting also believe that Yahoo! now applies a similar policy. There is some evidence that the extensive use of site wide links can lower website Google trust value, which can subsequently reduce ranking.

Hidden text or links

Remove any hidden text in your content and remove any hidden keywords. Such content may be hidden from view using CSS or alternatively, text may have been coded to be the same colour as the page background, rendering it invisible. These risky SEO techniques often lead to a Google penalty or web site ban and should be removed immediately. The same applies to hidden links, which Matt Cutts has openly stated break their webmaster guidelines.

Keyword stuffing (spamming)

Remove excessive keyword stuffing in your website content (unnatural repetitions of the same phrase in body text). Always use natural, well written web copywriting techniques.

Automated page redirects

The use of automated browser re-directs in any of your pages. Meta Refresh and JavaScript automated re-directs often result in Google penalties as the pages using them are perceived to be doorway pages. This technique is especially dangerous if the refresh time is less than 5 seconds. To avoid Google penalties, use a 301 re-direct or Mod Rewrite technique instead of these methods. This involves setting up a .htaccess file on your web server.

Link buying or selling

Check for any paid links (I.E. buying text links from known link suppliers / companies). There is some evidence that buying links can hurt rankings and this was implied by comments from Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) on his Google SEO blog. Matt states that Google will also devalue links from companies selling text links, such that they offer zero value to the recipient in terms for improving website rankings or Page Rank. More recently, Google applied a Page Rank penalty to known link sellers and many low quality directories.

Reciprocal link building campaigns

Excessive reciprocal linking may trigger a Google penalty or cause a SERPS filter to be applied when the same or very similar link anchor text is used over and over again and large numbers of reciprocal links are added in a relatively short time.

The dangers are made worse by adding reciprocal links to low quality sites or websites which have an unrelated theme. This can lead to a backlink over optimisation penalty (known as a BLOOP to SEO experts!). a Google Backlink Over Optimisation Penalty causes a sudden drops in SERPS ranking (often severe). To avoid this problem, reciprocal link exchange should only be used as part of a more sustainable SEO strategy which also builds quality one way links to original website content.

Adding reciprocal links to unrelated sites is a risky SEO strategy, as is reciprocal link exchange with low quality websites. To help identify quality link exchange partners we use a simple but effective test - regardless of indicated Page Rank, if you can't find a website's homepage in the top 20 of the Google search results (SERPS) when you search for the first 4 words of a site's full HTML title (shown at the top of the Internet Explorer window) then undertaking reciprocal link exchange with that site may offer few advantages. Don't forget to check that prospective reciprocal link partners have a similar theme as your homepage too.

Feeds and I-Frames

Whilst content feeds (including RSS) are widely used on the web, there is some evidence that pulling in large amounts of duplicate content through such feeds may have an adverse effect on ranking and in extreme cases may trigger a Google penalty. In particular, the use of I-frames to pull in affiliate content should be avoided where possible. Consider the use of banners and text links as an alternative.

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines and check website compliance in all respects. Since early 2007, Google may alert webmasters via the Google Webmaster Console who they feel might have unknowingly broken their guidelines to advise them that their site has been removed from Google for a set period of time due to breaking one or more of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

However, blatant spam or significant breaches of Google's rules will often result in a site being banned, with no Webmaster Console notification. Where notification of a violation of Google's guidelines is received, it usually encourages the webmaster to correct the problem/s and then issue a re-inclusion request to re-include their site. From my experience, after this is done the website will usually regain its original ranking, having lost no trust.

Webmaster Tools

According to Matt Cutts's Blog, Google is improving webmaster communication with respect to banned sites and penalties. Google is now informing some (but not all) webmasters the cause of a website ban or penalty, via their excellent new Webmaster Console. In addition, a Google re-inclusion request can be made from the same interface. For this reason, if you've been hit by a web site ban or penalty, it is worthwhile signing up for Google Webmaster Tools and uploading an XML Sitemap onto your site and then to check site status in the Google Webmaster Console. This is an easy 15 minute job and may help to identify the cause and fix for the problem!

Google Penalty Recovery Strategy

Recovering from a Google penalty normally involves fixing the cause of the problem and then waiting for Google to remove any over optimisation penalties or SERPS filters. To fully recover Google ranking may take around 2-3 months after all website problems are corrected.

The Google algorithm can automatically remove penalties if the affected website is still Google indexed. To check whether a particular website is still Google indexed, refer to our Google indexing page. If your website has been Google de-indexed and lost Page Rank, then you will need to make a Google re-inclusion request. Where the reason for the penalty is clear, it helps to provide details of any changes you've made to correct violations of the Google webmaster guidelines.

The best recovery strategy from any Google penalty is to check the SEO Chat Forum for any recent Google algorithm changes and to evaluate recent changes made to your website prior to the sudden drop in Google ranking. Don't forget to check your link building strategy as poor SEO often causes Google penalties. Start by removing any reciprocal links to low quality websites, or sites having no relevance to your website theme.

Backlinks are Major Website Traffic Stream

2009-07-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

Being on the first page of results on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN for certain keywords is the purpose of every search engine optimization project. Being at the first page, will bring free organic traffic and of course more business and value to the website. When optimizing for search engines, most optimizers concentrate on optimizing the website itself by enhancing titles, keywords, descriptions, image alts, page text and other factors that with no doubt are very important for any search engine optimization project. However, I noticed that webmasters get lazy when it comes to the most important factor that brings websites to the top of the search engine results.When you go to either the adobe flash player page or the quick time player page and take notes from a search engine optimization prospective; "get it here" is not in the domain name, not in the title of the page, not in the keywords, not in the meta description, not in any alt of the images nor anywhere else in the pages text or html source code! Further, you can bet that you will get the same notes if you looked at all the web pages on the first result pages of Google, Yahoo or MSN. The question is: how did these pages get to rank high in search engines in such a way in spite the fact that they are irrelevant and not optimized for that specific keyword?

The domain name, title, meta description, keywords, image alts and page text are all important seo factors but they are obviously not the answer. The major search engine optimization factor is backlinks.

Optimizing your website's elements such as the keywords and your page texts is just the beginning. Those elements are important but they should only be considered as a preparation phase. The real work starts right after finishing this phase.

Adobe flash player and quick time is used by millions of users. You probably have encountered something similar to this sentence "This page requires flash player. If you do not have flash player installed get it here". The "get it here" is a backlink to the flash player page. Millions of websites have a link to the Adobe flash player page with "get it here" for the text of the link and with no doubts that's why adobe flash player is number one for the "get it here" keyword.

An important thing to notice here is that the benefit of having backlinks to a site is not only by bringing the website to the top of search engine results. A backlink also brings even more website traffic from clicks on that link. If you have paid for a pay per click marketing campaign, then you know how much a click is worth! Millions of users click the "get it here" link and go to the Adobe and QuickTime website at no cost to either! You do the math!

Backlinks are with no doubt your primary source of website traffic. Backlinks bring you to the top of search engine results. Backlinks establishes your website popularity. Traffic to your website is the value of your website, backlinks are what creates traffic and therefore, building backlinks should be on the top of your marketing campaign priorities to maximize the traffic and value of your website.

Backlinks are simply the links that you get to your website from other websites. If you do not have sufficient amount of links pointing to your website, you will keep striving and paying money to get a small portion of traffic that probably will not cover your expenses nor will it be worth the time you spend using other search engine optimization methods such as optimizing your website content. Even if you have the best website with the best content, if you do not have backlinks, you will not have any significant website traffic.

Michael Jackson's funeral

2009-07-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES: The website set up for Michael Jackson’s fans to register for the Tuesday memorial service received more than 500 million hits
within an hour of its launch, the organizers said. ( Watch )

The website www.staplescenter.com, which was launched on Friday, received more than 500 million hits as Jackson’s fans rushed to register for the tickets to the July 7 event at Los Angeles Staples Center.

The website was set up to prevent duplicate registrations from being accepted for the massive ceremony, a news release from the Jackson family said. The 17,500 tickets will be distributed for the event and a draw will determine the names of the attendees, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The draw will select 8,750 names, and those people will receive two tickets each and wristbands on Monday. The 11,000 tickets will be for seats at Staples Center and 6,500 for seats at Nokia Theatre, where the live feed will be broadcast.

Meanwhile, the city officials have asked Michael Jackson’s fans to avoid coming to the Staples Centre for Tuesday’s memorial unless they have the tickets. The city officials are bracing up for a major security drive to handle a massive crowd as thousands of Jackson devotees are expected to descend on the Staples Centre despite the organiser’s announcement that only people with a ticket will be allowed inside the venue.

The law enforcement agencies are expecting that anywhere from 250,000 to 700,000 people may try to reach the venue for the Tuesday memorial.

The service will be live-streamed on television and on the Internet, and there will be no funeral procession, AEG, the owner of the Staples Centre said.

Staples Center Michael Jackson Tickets

When the news of Michael Jackson Memorial and Funeral Service plans became public, the website of the venue for the occasion got more than 500 million hits.

Unsurprisingly, the Staples Center website crashed and the organization had to buy a new server to host the website. (I wish that happens to my webhost someday!).

More than a million fans from all corners of the world have applied for 17,500 free tickets to Michael Jackson’s public memorial and funeral service which is happening coming Tuesday at the famous Staples Center in LA. There is going to be paramount security and LAPD have a tough job ahead for them.

The life, times, and music of the personality whom I endearingly call Whacko Jacko died of sudden cardiac arrest last week and his family and friends are going to be in full force to honor his legacy.

Officials unveiled an ambitious online lottery that will allow fans to attend either the televised service at the arena or watch the proceedings on a big screen at the nearby Nokia Theater.

“You might want to consider watching this from the comfort of your own home,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, who is doubling as the city’s acting mayor. That’s a fine advice Sir.

Tips For Google Adwords Success

2009-05-22T05:38:00.000-07:00

Use keywords in ad text
Show the searcher that your ad is relevant. Google will display the search keywords in bold in your ad if they're present. This helps your ad stand out from the crowd.

Use dynamic titles
Dynamic titles are easy, they don't cost anything and they usually have a good effect on CTR and conversion rates. The phrase that the searcher uses in their search will come up as the the title of your AdWord. This saves you having to create an individual ad for each keyword and means that your ad will be more targeted. In the title field of your ad simply put {keyword:your backup title here}. The backup title is in case the search phrase is too long for the title field or if AdWords can't display the search for some other reason.

Bid high initially
Google's ad system determines placement by both bid and CTR (click through rate). To earn a high CTR, you first need to generate some clicks. Bid high initially so your ad is seen early in the search results. Once you have a high CTR, lower your bids. Read this article for more information on bidding strategies.

Set daily budget higher than Google recommends
If you set your daily budget too low, your ad will be displayed intermittently. This is not what you want. You always want your ad to be shown when someone searches for your keywords. Control your ad spend through other means such as employing negative keywords, using exact matches, targeting by region and adjusting keyword bids.

Track conversion and ROI (Return On Investment)

Track everything. Google will track impressions, clicks and click through rate. Just because an ad has a high CTR doesn't mean that it is making you money! You can use Google's own conversion tracking codes, or you can use your own software. If you don't know how each keyword is preforming – then you won't be able to optimise your campaigns, by turning off the keywords that aren't working and investing more in the keywords which are.

Use negative keywords
Your ad will not be displayed if the search includes a negative keyword. Add more negative keywords at regular intervals. As your negative keyword list grows, your ad group's CTR will increase, saving you money and/or improving your ad's position. For example, if you sell products or services at a premium, include negative keywords like:

free

cheap

discount

Use a relevant landing page
For most searches, don't point the ad to your home page. Choose a landing page on your site that includes the keywords from the search. In some cases, it's worth creating a custom page that's not in the normal navigation of your site.

Separate search and content campaigns
Many people lose money using AdWords when their site is swamped with hits from content ads. Most people don't realize that displaying ads on Google's content network is turned on by default. Either turn off the content network or create separate campaigns for search and content ads. Read this article for more information on Google's content ads.

Track your results
Don't rely on Google's reporting tools. They're good, but you need more detail, particularly to see which actual keyword phrases your broad matches are triggering. You'll need this to help build your list of negative keywords for each ad group. Plus, click fraud is a problem and needs to be addressed. If you don't have tracking software in place, use our free web analytics software.

Google Can ban essay-writing adverts

2009-05-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

Google is to ban adverts for essay-writing firms that target university students who are prepared to pay other people to do their coursework.University leaders welcomed the decision and warned that plagiarism devalues the hard work of honest students who write their essays themselves.But one essay-writing company criticised the ban as unfair, arguing that it will penalise legitimate businesses that help students fairly.Google has written to advertisers to tell them that from June this year it will no longer take adverts from firms that sell essays.

A Google spokesperson told the BBC News website that the ban was expected to apply across the company's global network.Professor Drummond Bone, president of vice-chancellors' group Universities UK, welcomed the move.

"Making life harder for these cynical web 'essay mills' is a step in the right direction," he said.

"It also damages the student who commits plagiarism, as they will not benefit from the research and learning experience.

"Tackling plagiarism and cheating is of course an issue for individual higher education institutions.

But one company criticised the ban as unfair. Matthew Wilson, managing director of Essaywriter.co.uk, said legitimate firms would suffer even though they warn students not to use such essays dishonestly.

He criticised Google's "blanket ban" on all services for writing and researching essays - even those such as Essaywriter.co.uk which have strict rules to counter plagiarism.

"We are very angry about this," he said.

"We are a legitimate company. We have got 3,500 researchers, tutors and lecturers and a big customer base."

He said many customers were overseas students.

"They don't understand everything that they are being told because English is their second language.

"They come to us and get an essay answer which they can base their work on."

Mr Wilson said tailor-made essays could be used as a guide for students, rather than simply be passed off as their original work.

A Google spokesperson said: "We review our policies regularly and make changes to keep them current and effective.

"All of Google's policies are developed and evaluated based on multiple factors, including legal and cultural considerations.

"Google is committed to maintaining high standards for the advertising we accept."
(refer from http://www.dailymail.co.uk)

Why are Links so Powerful?

2009-05-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

When we write stuff about ourselves, we have a tendency to lie. It is human nature to boost your own worth. This is why meta tags and page copy are nowhere nearas powerful as they once were. They have been used and abused.

Links from other webmasters are viewed by search engines as unbiased, third party
votes.

While Yahoo! tends to put more weight on page copy than Google does, links are the #1 ranking criteria for competitive phrases in all major search engines.

Many people who look for links just think “link,” but often, this is not the most
effective way to do link building.

If you think of the web as a huge social network and think of links as relationships, you have a huge advantage over your competition.

You can do many manipulative things to make your ideas appear better than they
are, but if you can find more natural ways to embed yourself in the social structure of the web, you will likely become extremely successful.

Some Google Tricks

2009-05-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

Enter just the word http for your search to find the top 1000 PageRanked sites.Enter only www in your search to see how Google ranks the top 1,000 sites.
Manually type the following prefixes and note their utility:

link:url Shows other pages with links to that url.
related:url same as "what's related" on serps.
site:domain restricts search results to the given domain.
inurl: like allinurl, but only for the next query word.
allintitle: shows only results with terms in title.

intitle: similar to allintitle, but only for the next word. "intitle:seoforgoogle google" finds only pages with seoforgoogle in the title, and google anywhere on the page.
cache:url will show the Google version of the passed url.
spell: will spell check your query and search for it.
stocks: will lookup the search query in a stock index.
filetype: will restrict searches to that filetype. "-filetype:pdf" to remove Adobe PDF files.

daterange: is supported in Julian date format only. 2452384 is an example of a Julian date.
maps: If you enter a street address, a link to Yahoo Maps and to MapBlast will be presented.
site:www.somesite.net "+www.somesite.+net" - (tells you how many pages of your site are indexed by google).
allintext: searches only within text of pages, but not in the links or page title
allinlinks: searches only within links, not text or title

Image optimization

2009-04-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

One of the more potentially advantageous yet wholly underused areas for optimization is in image search engines. Yet while site owners and merchants are more often seeing their images show up in the regular search results, few have come to understand the benefits of image search optimization. And for professional optimizers, it requires a much broader understanding and specialization over what traditional search allows.Statistics from Hitwise show it to achieve 90% growth year after year, with over 360,000,000 searches per month across the top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL. All in the "Big 5" have a search vertical dedicated specifically to image results, with 3 of them (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) integrating images into some contextual search results.

"It's a free way of getting even more keyword signals for Google," said Smith. "It may be seen as a fairly authoritative way for image reference and may be ranking well in Google's image search results."

"People love participating in the enhanced image search; we've had great success with it so far," said Vanessa Fox, Product Manager for Google. Smith, however opined that its continued participation may depend on Google's ability to provide added incentives for users."

The panelists offered the following tips for optimizing images for search engines:

Image originality. The panelists agree that there is a special advantage to taking original photos, even if you are a retailer who already receives photos elsewhere such as from a manufacturer. "The more control you have over the images on your site the better." says Evans. "You can brand them with your logo, url or trademark. It also allows you as the retailer to present the product in the best possible way that will convert with your own audience, not to mention allowing you to present the features in a different way than other competitors.

Image quality. Start off with good quality pictures, and make necessary resolution adjustments between your full size images and your thumbnails. Smith mentions that pictures with good contrast tend to work better. "When they're reduced down to the thumbnail size, stronger contrast is needed to better discern image, which will lead to more people clicking and linking to image." he says.

Image naming. "Make the image names of your files match what is actually represented in the file," says Thurow. "The image name will appear beneath the graphic image in search results. It helps to communicate to searchers that they are viewing the desired graphic image. "Do NOT expect your photo editing program's default settings to give you optimized file names," she continued. "Default names communicate nothing to the search engines on their own. Make sure to set up your own file naming structure in advance."

Expand audience base. Be broad in your subject matter. Image search is not just for retailers directly reaching customers. "There are all sorts of innovative ways you can get people interested in your company and hence build up traffic and conversions. For example, factories might show steps in product manufactures, hotels might show furniture & decorative art in addition to details on their rooms, and restaurants might show picturesque views or special event rooms."

Optimize the page with the image. Optimize the page the image appears on can be just as important as optimizing the image itself. "Optimizing the actual page for contextual search improves graphic images search," Thurow added. "Search engines also look at text surrounding a graphic image to determine relevancy." says Thurow. "Text within the anchor tag and next to anchor text is especially going to influence image-search rankings," said Thurow. "If you can reasonably put labels and captions on key graphic images, try and do so."

File organization. Both Evans and Thurow mentioned of crucial importance is creating an image folder on your web server space that's accessible to the search engines. "Do not robots exclude your graphic images directory or limit search engine access to graphic-image files." says Thurow. Another big mistake people make is putting their 'click to see larger image' inside of a JavaScript link. When you do that, you are limiting search engines' access to that image file."

Freshness. Smith recommends that if you're targeting high popularity keywords, try experimenting with re-uploading your pix, since image freshness is a contextual clue for the search engines and might affect relevancy.

Future of image search

Image search optimizers on the panel expressed their desire to see more opportunities for image search optimizers, such as a keyword research tool specific to image search (like the Overture keyword tool) and the ability to submit image/multimedia specific feeds. "That would allow webmasters to have better control over defining what the image was in relation to content," says Evans.

(refer from searchenginewatch.com)

What is success in SEO?

2009-03-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

Kind of a loaded question to ask "what is SEO success" don't you think? I think it's subjective, so you'd have to ask yourself, what are the goals important to you?

In your case, you can say that you've gotten Phase 1 of your SEO goals accomplished - by pushing up SERP positions, indexed pages, etc.

Now you can focus on Phase 2 which is to increase traffic. That can be done in several ways, of which I will name 2: 1- you increase to Page 1 SERP rankings for your keywords and/or 2 - you increase Page 1 SERP rankings for several "longtail" keywords.

By doing it this way, you are thinking like a marketer (business person) where there are certain short-term and long-term goals you want to hit.

But there are some tough questions you have to ask yourself. Are your keywords that you are targeting good at all? Has your market moved or changed the way it searches? Do you need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate your original SEO plan?

Those are tough questions to answer and tougher still if it means you need to redo everything. But do it - so that you don't continue to struggle with your SEO in the wrong direction.

refer from (forums.searchenginewatch.com)

PayPal Offers a Credit Card Reader for Brick and Mortar Businesses

2009-03-13T05:54:00.000-07:00

The first big move, in my opinion, that PayPal made was when they made it possible for non-PayPal members to use a PayPal merchant account on sites.

When I visit new businesses thinking about adding a merchant account and selling online I usually tell them that if they are not selling $2000 a month then it would be best to go with a third party merchant account instead of a merchant account of their own. One, because of the cost savings, and two I would recommend it for businesses just starting out.

Now PayPal is offering credit card readers that posts automatically to your PayPal Virtual Terminal order form. Since this card reader can be plugged into a USB port of a computer it would be handy when you travel to meet customers.You can read more about this credit card reader here.

(refer from rocksolidseo.com)

Benefits of SEO

2009-03-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Marketing helps site owners meet their various online marketing objectives such as generating leads, sales or simply building awareness.There is more to search engine optimisation than just marketing, as companies can derive many business benefits from using SEO. Let’s take a look at a few...

Fixed Costs

The cost of SEO is relatively fixed, independent of click volume. Effectively, the cost per click from SEO declines through time after initial optimisation costs and lower ongoing optimisation costs. Conversely, paid-search is essentially a variable cost.

Visibility
Think about that search on ‘car insurance’. The big insurance companies are all desperate to make it onto the first page of Google. The ones that didn’t make it either need to buy PPC ads to be seen, which is expensive for such a competitive search query.
Cost-effective Customer Acquisition
There is no payment to the search engines for being indexed. This is important for high volume, low intent phrases which can be expensive in paid-search (eg ‘car insurance’).

Focus on Web Standards / AccessibilityDesigning
a website for search is an exercise in designing a best practice website. Search engine crawlers notice errors in your code, so valid code is a must for SEO. And that makes for a healthier, more accessible website. Accessible for Google’s crawlers, and for people.

Business
Customers referred from search engines tend to stick around for longer. Increase customer lifetime revenues via SEO!

Credibility / Brand Perception
“Why aren’t you in Google for ‘car insurance’”? Consumers expect big brand businesses to be prominently placed in Google, so what is the effect if you aren’t on the first page or two?

Findability
Search engines allow you to find relevant web pages even if you only remember snippets of information. A song lyric, a company name, a product review, a person…

Customer Acquisition - Targeted Prospects
Search is demand-driven, so anybody referred from a search engine is hoping that your web page matches their search query. If it does, and you show them all the information they need to see, they may well become your next customer.

Repeat Business
Customers referred from search engines tend to stick around for longer. Increase customer lifetime revenues via SEO!

Focus on Unique Content
We are big believers in quality content. Original content. Google loves it too. And so do many SEO experts – the general advice these days is to create subject-specific content on your website, and to categorise and label that content in a way that will deliver a boost to your keyword strategy. Blogs are good for this. Remember that quality content attracts quality links. And that links are still very important for SEO. So if you invest in unique content you are building a valuable intellectual property asset that will benefit other areas of the business as well as improve your search rankings.

On Page optimization Factors

2009-02-23T02:35:00.000-08:00

The most important On Page optimization techniques include content optimization, the title-tag, several META-Tags, headlines & text decoration, alt- and title-attributes and continuous actualization.

Keyword in URL: The process of identification and giving preference goes in First word is best, second is second best, etc.
Keyword in Domain Name: This is similar to the name of pages that have hyphens, for example: “automobile-truck-one”.
Keyword in Title Tag: Make sure you put your Keyword in Title tag that is close to beginning. This title tag should be between 10 - 60 characters with no special characters.
Keyword in Description Meta Tag: This shows the theme of your site and should be less than 200 characters. Though Google no longer “relies” upon this tag, it may sometimes use it.
Keyword in Keyword Meta Tag: This should be less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.
Keyword density in Body text: The keywords shouldn’t be stuffed into body text. The amount of keywords in the body text should be about 5 - 20% for all types of keywords (total) and 1-6% for one keyword. Too much stuffing would penalize your site under spamming.
Keywords in H1,H2 & H3: Many people ignore this particular aspect. Make sure Hx font is effectively used.
Keyword Font Size: Italics is same as emphasis while strong is same as bold.
Keyword proximity (for 2+ keywords): Placing them directly adjacent to each other is the best.
Keyword prominence: This can be important if its on the top (at the most) and in big fonts.
Domain Name Extension/ Top Level Domain - TL: .gov sites seem to be the highest status, .edu sites seem to be given a high status, .org sites seem to be given a high status, .com sites excel in encompassing all the spam/ crud sites, resulting in the need for the highest scrutiny/ action by Google.
Fresh Pages: search engines love fresh content, fresh pages.
Content: Make sure you put unique and fresh content since search engines feed on it. They simply love it.
Updates periodicity: Search engine give high status to sites that update regularly.
Site Size: Search engines, particularly Google, loves big sites. But it should be unique and fresh site. Any duplicated pages would be discarded by Google.
Domain age: Old is gold, this is the mantra of Google and other search engines.

What Is Blogging and Pinging?

2009-02-16T04:55:00.000-08:00

There is a new partnership in cyber-town called Blogging and Pinging. It is not a new comedy team or even a singing group, but a new way to build links and attract visitors to your website and to make more money. Blogging and Pinging is a marketing tool that can help anyone build their online business.

Let's start with a definition of a blog.

Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author of the Web site.

what about pinging?

Originally, a ping was a program that bounced a request off another computer or server over a network or the Internet to see if the remote computer was responding. That same program is now used as a method of informing others that your blog exists and it also let's them know when a new post has been made.

When you put blogging together with pinging you get a technique that is extremely effective at getting any web site, no matter how big or small, indexed by the major search engines.

Why Is Blogging and Pinging The Newest Marketing Tool?

Most of you are now saying, 'Yeah, so what? I can get my site indexed now. What's the big deal?' The big deal is that blogging and pinging gets your site indexed almost immediately and it is free!

If you have any experience trying to get a site indexed and listed in the major search engines, then you know that it is frustrating and very difficult to get done in a reasonable amount of time. After working hard to get your site together, collecting and writing content, worrying about keywords and keyword densities, you are not even close to being finished. Now comes the even harder part! Now you have to manually submit your site to all the major search engines. And finally, you get to wait.

That's right, you have to wait for the spiders to come to index your site. This could take weeks or it could take months. There are some methods that will help bring along the spiders a bit faster, but these take lots of time and effort and money. And still, you can't be sure that the spiders will come fast more quickly.

Blogging and pinging solves this problem. You can guarantee that spiders will come to your site and that you will get listed in all the major search engines with minimal effort and no money in about 48 hours.

How does it work?

The largest search engine, Google, owns Blogger.com. This is the site that many people use to create their blogs. Google frequently sends their search engine spiders through Blogger.com to find new content.

So, if you have a blogger.com account you can add content from other websites to the content of your blog and when you blog the content of your site the URL of the page you are blogging is automatically attached. That way, when Google's spiders index your blogger.com pages, they see your website URL within the content. If that URL isn't listed in the Google database, the spiders are almost certain to follow the link to index your site!

So, rather than wait for weeks, months, or even up to a year, you can get your site listed virtually immediately! Google themselves will tell you that they would rather discover new URL's by finding links than getting them via submission. So, why not blog and ping and give them what they want!

One critical success factor in boosting your link popularity is to use the blog and ping technique to notify lots of other sites anout new content on your web site. This is achieved by using your blogger.com publishing function to ping the major blog directories such as Technorati and Blo.gs.

Another good piece of news is that once Google has indexed your site, other search engines that use Google's feed will list your site too. And it all happens at lightening speed!

Blogging and pinging is a really effective method to get your site spidered by the major search engines and, more importantly, getting those all important links.

search engine Advice on Duplicate Content

2009-02-09T04:31:00.000-08:00

Google has come up with helpful points on how to tackle internal and 3rd party duplicate content issues. Since a webmaster has no influence on third parties that scrape and redistribute content without the webmaster’s consent, Google has strong technology in place to trace back the source of the original content. The correct identification of the original content source saves webmaster’s the trouble of having negative effects for their site.

Google sees the content source in two ways as below:

Internal - Content pages that has same or almost indentical content that appears within the same website.

External - Content that appears in the 3rd party websites either with permission or without.

Whenever you engage in content syndication services such as articles, press releases, and so on., ensure that the syndication partners link back to the original website.

There has been incidents where the scraped content ranks higher than the original content. In those case, Google recommends following advice:

Check if your content is still accessible to our crawlers. You might unintentionally have blocked access to parts of your content in your robots.txt View definition in a new window file.

You can look in your Sitemap file to see if you made changes for the particular content which has been scraped.

Include the preferred version of your URLs in your Sitemap file.

Check if your site is in line with our webmaster guidelines.

For more detailed informations Google Webmaster Central

Page Rank

2009-01-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank is Google's method of measuring a page's "importance." When all other factors such as Title tag and keywords are taken into account, Google uses Page Rank to adjust results so that sites that are deemed more "important" will move up in the results page of a user's search accordingly.

A basic overview of how Google ranks pages in their search engine results pages (SERPS) follows:

1) Find all pages matching the keywords of the search.
2) Rank accordingly using "on the page factors" such as keywords.
3) Calculate in the inbound anchor text.
4) Adjust the results by Page Rank scores.
It’s worth noting that Page Rank is a multiplier and is not just simply added to the score. Thus, if your
page had a Page Rank of zero, it would rank at the very end of the SERPS.

How is PageRank determined?

The Google theory goes that if Page A links to Page B, then Page A is saying that Page B is an important page. Page Rank also factors in the importance of the links pointing to a page. If a page has important links pointing to it, then its links to other pages also become important. The actual text of the link is irrelevant when discussing Page Rank..

How can you tell what a page’s PageRank is?

To learn what a page’s Page Rank is, you can download a toolbar for Internet Explorer from http://toolbar.google.com. Once installed, there will be a bar graph at the top of the browser showing a version of Page Rank for the page you’re browsing. When you hold the mouse over the bar, you see a number from zero to ten. (If you don’t see the number, you may have an older version of the toolbar installed. You will need to completely uninstall it, reboot your computer and reinstall the latest version. Once this is done, you should be able to see the Page Rank number.)

How accurate is the Google toolbar?

The Google toolbar is not very accurate in showing you the actual PageRank of a site, but it’s the only thing right now that can give you any idea. As long as you know the toolbar’s limitations, then at least you know what you are viewing.
There are two limitations to the Google toolbar:

1. The toolbar sometimes guesses.
If you enter a page, which is not in its index, but where there is a page that is very close to it in Google’s index, then it will provide a guesstimate of the PageRank. This guesstimate is worthless for our purposes because it isn’t featured in any of the PageRank calculations. The only way to tell if the toolbar is a guesstimate is to type the URL into the Google search box and see if the page shows up in the SERPS. If it doesn’t, then the toolbar is guessing!

2. The toolbar is just a representation of actual PageRank.
Whilst PageRank is linear, Google has chosen to use a non-linear graph to portray it. So on the toolbar, of to move from a PageRank 2 to a PageRank of 3 takes less of an increase than to move from a PageRank of 3 to a PageRank of 4. A comparison table best illustrates this phenomenon.

How significant is Page Rank?

The significance of any one factor in search engine algorithms depends on the quality of the information it supplies. A factor’s importance is known as its weight. To demonstrate how weighting is arrived at, it's easiest to move away from Page Rank for a second and look at Meta tags.

In theory, the Meta keyword tag was a very good indicator of what the page was about. However, as most are well aware – the weighting for the keywords tag is fast approaching nothing.

Two things have contributed to this:

1. The ease at which Webmasters can manipulate it.
2. The level of manipulation by Webmasters.

Tips for Creating New Blog

2009-01-12T04:37:00.001-08:00

1. Post early and post often. If it’s a news oriented blog you should be posting 3 to 5 times each day. An authoritative blog can get away with 3 to 5 times per week, but each post should be unique and of high value.

2. Make the blog look and feel like the feeling of the content of the website. Work with a designer if you don’t trust yourself to do a good job.

3. Outbound links should be of web sites and other authoritative blogs. Think quality when you are thinking about your outbound links.

4. Create and distribute a press release. Don’t necessarily concentrate on the main stream press, they have a habit of ignoring blogs and websites. Instead, send the press release to other blogs and websites that would be interested in the kind of content your feature.

5. Thank other bloggers if they mention you on their blog. The best place to thank them is in the comment section of their post that mentions your blog.

6. Use sticky posts for the posts that you really want the readers to see. Sticky posts will stay at the top of the blog rather than letting them fall down as new posts are added.

7. Create unique content. Even though the Internet if full of pages that link to other pages, the best way to get people to link to your page is to give them something new.

8. Optimize the wording in your title. Don’t let a software create the title for you. You should gear your title to the reader and not the search engines, even though the search engines do look at it.

9. Don’t show your Feedburner badge until you have at least 100 subscribers. Keep it a secret a little while, you will look much more professional after you can show 100.

10. Use new technologies on your blog. Posting video from sites like YouTube and audio from audio blogs and radio stations. Post your Twitter link as well as MySpace and Facebook links and post from other users. Google Earth widgets are good content for drawing visitors. Jump on any new technology that comes along, especially if it is a networking technology.

11. Use Full Text in Your RSS. This pulls readers in much easier than just the few words that most people use for their RSS feeds. That is what the competition is doing and you need to beat the competition.

12. If you have the gadgets, create a video blog or audio blog regularly on your site. These bring in different visitors who might not want to read. Video is much more popular than audio, but audio’s popularity is increasig as more iPods are sold and people are looking for stuff to fill them up.

13. Get your own domain. Even if you use blogger to run your blog, get a domain of the name of your blog. It gives a more professional appearance. This is good for possible advertisers who might want to buy ad space on your blog.

14. Be sociable with your visitors. Post links to their websites if the content if of quality and meshes with your blog. Answer questions and email that your readers send your way. This can help turn them into loyal visitors.

15. Get a niche. Blog on a topic that is a little different, a little more specialized than the other blogs in your category.

Pay-per-click

2009-01-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

PPC is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases, and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their website.

How does this work?

Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like ‘DVD players’. When reviewing the results, you'll likely see a set of results labeled as ‘Sponsored Links’ or ‘Sponsor Results’. Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads.

The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. (The ranking order in Google is a combination of the bid amount and the popularity of the ad.) In the example search for ‘DVD players’ the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click, one penny more than the #2 advertiser.

The ads are purchased through PPC advertising suppliers, and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google's program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves and many smaller search engines. Yahoo's program is run by an acquired company called Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other syndication partners.

Why should I pay for traffic?

For businesses that have had success with search engine optimisation, the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However, if you can make more money off a visitor to your website than it costs to get them there, why wouldn't you pay for those visitors? Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on, and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad, so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it's worth doing at all.

How much should I spend?

The main factors influencing how much money can be spent on a PPC campaign are:

* How many searches are conducted per month using phrases relevant to your business?
* How much are you, along with your competitors, willing to pay for those terms?

The average monthly ad spend on PPC advertising is a couple of thousand dollars, but this varies immensely from less than $50/month for regionally targeted and niche businesses to millions a month by large national retailers.

The goal of any advertising campaign should be to bring in more money from the campaign than it costs to run it. PPC is no different, but the level of detail you can measure in PPC is significantly higher than most types of advertising. For example, with relatively inexpensive (some are even free) tools, you can determine which ads are generating sales or leads for your business. Beyond that, you can determine how much money you spent on a specific ad to generate a sale or a lead. By measuring what's working, you can aggressively advertise on terms that prove to be winners for your business while shutting down ads that don't deliver.

Tips for Success

1. Advertise on a large number of relevant search phrases. Brainstorm beyond the first dozen terms that come to mind to describe your business. Advertise on the terms used to describe your products, the product names, product codes, and the questions a prospect might type into a search engine that your services answer, and more. Read our article, How to find good keywords5 for more on this.

2. Build unique ads for each search phrase. It takes a lot more time to write a unique ad for each search phrase relevant to your business rather than creating one ad for all of your search phrases, but the extra work will definitely be rewarded. Ads that are aligned with the corresponding search term receive more clicks, which will mean more targeted traffic, and in some cases paying less per click (on Google Adwords) due to the intricacies of how the advertising is priced.

3. Send visitors to the most appropriate page of your website. If you place an ad for a specific product within your online store, don't send visitors to your homepage and force them to dig for what they just searched. This will frustrate your visitors and increase the chance that they'll hit the dreaded Back button.

4. Track your results. Spending money without measuring the return on your investment is not a good business practice. At the very least, consider installing the free tracking tools available through Google Adwords and Overture to measure which terms are delivering results for your business. Beyond that, consider using a 3rd party statistics tool with conversion analysis to compile the results of your various pay per click programs into one easy to manage interface.

People are searching for what you sell at this very moment! If your site is not showing up near the top of the results, your competition thanks you.

2008-12-30T00:50:00.000-08:00

Webmasters' mistakes are almost always the leading causes of Google banning, the first thing to do is to clean out the cause. If you are not sure, there must be some errors you suspect, clean them all.

Hidden text or hidden links

This is text or a link that is invisible to the naked eye on a Web page, but are seen by spiders. Search engines use to have a hard time spotting this technique, but now days you should avoid doing this because Google and other search engines can spot this easily. Even if a search engine doesn't spot your hidden link, a competitor might find it and report your site. Sometimes this can be done without even knowing, so you better double check each Web page that you have messed with in the past few weeks.

Cloaking

This is Web pages created just for search engines, where it delivers one version of a page to a Internet user and a different version to a search engine. Cloaking Web pages are created to do well for particular keywords. There are various ways to deliver cloaking Web pages. Each search engine's spider has an agent name, the cloaked page is than only delivered to the spider with the user agent name that was chosen.

You can also deliver cloaked pages to the search engines by IP address, but Google and other search engines say they can detect cloaking. There are other reasons to use cloaking, such as custom language delivery and geotargeted advertising.

Code swapping

Optimizing a page for top ranking, then swapping another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.

Duplicate Content

This is when multiple Web pages have the same content. Usually Google will just give a penalty to the Web page for this, where the page won't rank very high for the keywords in that Web page, but there have been cases where complete Web sites were banned because they had to much duplicate content. You should make sure there is no other Web site using your content.

To check for duplicated content simply search with unique phrase on your Web page. If you find a Web site that has stolen your content you should contact the site owner and tell them to take it down or face legal action. Also, for copyright violations visit www.google.com/dmca.html and notify them that someone is infringing on your site's copyright.

Sneaky Redirects

This is a site that redirects a visitor and not the robots to another page.
Google and the other search engine find such code highly suspicious.

Linking to bad neighborhoods

Bad neighborhoods are designed to increase your Web site's ranking or is Web site's using Spam techniques to increase search engine ranking. You should not link to any Web page that uses Spam techniques to increase ranking. You also should not join link exchanges that are designed to improve ranking or Page Rank. If you are not aware of linking to any Web site like this, you should check each outbound link on your Web site.

Buying links for Search engine ranking

This where a Web site owner buys links just to increase his or her ranking. This is also used to increase Page Rank. Google and other search engines still have a hard to detect this, but they are starting to catch on to this technique. If Google is aware of the site, they can just discount the Page Rank, so they can't pass Page Rank on.

Machine Generated Web sites

This is a site that generates hundreds of web pages that are basically the same page repeated hundreds or thousands of times, but with a few unique lines of text and unique title. Often times, search engines can't spot this, if done right by the site owner. However, if a spider doesn't spot your machine generated Web pages, a competitor might find it and report your Web site.

Sending automated queries to Google

This happens when you have data driven website that gives automated queries for more pages to be cached by Google robots. This is a very similar process to Machine Generated Web sites.

Importanant Ways To Link Building -More Traffic

2008-12-22T03:13:00.000-08:00

"I am proving here some of best link building ways that will increase traffic as well as ranking of your site"

Links from Directories: One-Ways & Reciprocal Links:--

One of way to get backlinks is by placing a listing of your sites in Internet Directories. These links vary depending on the directory. Sometimes directories require reciprocals, and sometimes they are one-ways. Of course, you want to get the one-ways as much as possible and the higher ranking directories are best as far as link juice goes. But overall when your site is new getting links in as many good directories is an important part of your Internet Marketing efforts even if they have a lower page rank.

Some of the more popular higher ranking directories, like the king of directories DMOZ, have a long wait so it is important to submit to the less ranking directories to get the links quicker. Also directory listings are in in of themselves a good source of web site traffic since many people use these directories when searching the net.

Link Building with Forums - One-Way Links:--

A great way to get a backlink and also get relevant targeted traffic is joining forums that are relevant to your sites theme and those that allow a backlink in the signature. The key to this technique is having a genuine interest and knowledge within the theme.

But, don’t join a forum just to get sales, with this attitude your posts will quickly translate to SPAM and you will get booted faster than you can say boo. Instead add helpful and meaningful posts, answer other members questions in these forums, participate in a genuine manner and not only will you get a powerful backlink, it will also increase your web site traffic. Traffic that is relevant and will likely convert into sales since the visitors to those forums have a deep interest in the respective theme.

Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange:--

This is where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. Make sure they are relevant sites, links on a computer site to a weight loss site are a useless wastes of time!

You can do a search for “link exchange + your niche” to search for link partners.

Digital Point Forums is a great place to find link partners through the special forum section for link building.

WebConfs Backlink Builder is a great tool that searches for websites of the niche/theme you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add link”, “Add site”, “Add URL”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL”, “Add Article” etc. Then presents them in a list with hyperlinks, no easier way to build backlinks for you websites.

Also you can use a service to find link partners, such as Link Market, this is a site where you can network with other webmasters who have sites relevant to yours and then exchange links. The paid version has some extra features, but I use the free version which is limited 5 link requests per day, but it’s good enough for me.

Unasked- One-Way Links:--

Wiki Answers- Answer questions from lots of categories, leave a backlink to your sites in the question, as well as in your profile. Lots of traffic and lots of profile views daily.

Unasked is a site where you answer people’s questions (like Yahoo Answers) on a variety of topics. When you answer a question with a link to your site, the link is “nofollow” so it doesn’t count as a backlink, but, every time you answer a question, it links to your profile, which contains the “dofollow” link to your website, with the anchor text of your choice. Good method for one-way link and getting traffic to your site for your respective niches.

Comments on Blogs - One-Way Links:--

A great way to build one way links to your sites is by leaving comments on blogs relevant to your sites theme.

Some blogs use a “no-follow” command for links which is a code attribute value used to instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. But, if you visit high traffic blogs that are of interest to you this often becomes a source of traffic to your site from the other readers of those blogs.

Also there are tons of blogs with many topics that offer Do-Follow Links in Comments, like this one, I am not stingy with the link juice.

US Free Classified Ads:--

Get the backlink, it’s marked no-follow so does not count for Google, but Yahoo ignores the no-follow, so counts with them. Also, Google loves USFree Ads and so your ads will rank high for respective KW and they have a lot of traffic, people looking to buy! You can submit several adds for different products/niches within different categories.

Link Building with Social Sites - One-Way Links:--

The social revolution is hot on the web. Social News and Bookmark sites are growing in huge numbers and have tons of traffic and members. Join sites, like Facebook, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Furl It, just to name a few.

There are many of these sites and with specific categories where you can submit your site content and get a backlink. Plus, these sites can be a great source of traffic since several of them have high traffic.

Article Marketing - Best One-Way Links:--

Last but never least, Article Marketing is the BEST way to get quality one way backlinks and at the same time get direct targeted traffic to your sites. There are many benefits to this method, including getting relevant and targeted traffic which converts well into sales if you follow the method of “relevancy” with KW anchor text techniques. I use Article Marketer a service to submit my articles to over 5,000+ sites with one button and I highly recommend that service.

please leave a comment if you like ma post:

list of Important Forums (Do -Follows) for SEO

2008-12-15T04:24:00.000-08:00

Forums are one of the most important factors that are used for Search Engine Optimization.Forum submission is one of the best method of improving your sites rank and increase in links.. here below are some of these try these..... that are of dofollow nature

http://menshealth.forummotion.com/

Increase huge traffice

2008-12-09T01:47:00.000-08:00

This post is an experiment to test the effectiveness of the eclectolink experiment over at Swollen Pickles .

The idea derived from successful Andy Coates Viralink experiment. This post on Andys site explains how Viralink can produce a very high number of links very quickly.

In this variation, instead of using asterisks, Swollen Pickles has chosen words for the links. This will give a better result as blogs will rate higher for their selected keyword as well as getting some page rank from the linking process.

Most of the words chosen will give good traffic volumes if your site rates highly for them.

The words were generated at random using an online random word generator. Hopefully this will encourage a wide range of websites to take part.

Participating is easy. Just follow the instructions below:

———copy and paste the Eclectolink and instructions below this line———

Below is a matrix of 100 randomly generated words, I have already added a link to my blog to one of the random words. All you need to do is copy and paste the matrix into your blog and add your own link to one of the other vacant words, and then tell others to do exactly the same!

ECLECTOLINK

dealt : grants : detected : rotating : finishes : expiring : obscure : films : land : grouped : swallowed : hey : activate : releasing : psychologist : selected : serious : forgiving : pacifier : alarmed : tracking : green : telling : unlimited : fitting : hammer : founds : engage : stretches : psychological : reliable : citizen : should : mileage : inferiority : appalling : midnight : shows : provides : sharing : instruct : waved : ride : migrated : country : drawings : uninteresting : quibble : consecutive : advertises: filming : method : premise : incentive : flips : designers : damned : regretting : coincidence : layers : immense : info : skills : definitions : mum : somewhere : atom : illustration : opened : thought : smoking : compiler : credits : liberties : mail : deductions : integrating : cap : collapse : consuming : dragon : elderly : declared : prohibited : forests : precisely : notifies : weakness : arrogant : difference : heel : everybody : pretty : bundle : accord : writings : wars : verb : factually : participates

note:

no crap url's.
for one person there will be 1 link .
dont try to remove other's url's that are already given otherwise method can't work.
while pasting key words remember other link should be in mind if lost by copying do attach manually.

try this and give me feedback...

more then 1000 dofollow blogs

2008-12-09T01:37:00.000-08:00