Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

Back in November 2004 I discovered a way to get a top 10 ranking in Google. I tested the technique for 3 months before I shared my findings with the world.

Some people worked my technique and are still holding on to their top Google rankings. Others criticized it, and decided not to give it a go.

Since November 2004 my targeted keywords have gotten more competitive. Webmasters have gotten swifter and saavier with their techniques. New tactics for gaining top 10 listings have emerged, and are enjoying their place in the spotlight.

And here I am still sitting blissfully with the same top 10 Google rankings that I had nine months ago. In fact, I’ve added several more in July 2005, just to make sure my rankings weren’t maintaining because of some seniority algorithm. (Hey, you never know with Google!)

Here’s what I’ve discovered in that time frame.

While Google still hesitates for weeks (but more often for months) to list new sites in their ranking structure, optimized pages from sites that alaready have a good Google ranking get spidered and listed much faster.

How fast?

Using this precise theory I got a #1 rank for a targeted keyphrase within 3 days.

Sounds exciting.

But unfortunately it’s not easy to find sites that have great Google rank, and will permit you to freely promote your product, service or web site.

Here are two such sites that’ll give you an easy in to a possible top Google ranking–

1) EzineArticles.com

EzineArticles.com is one of the best kept secrets for getting top Google rankings.

Articles submitted there are often spidered within 1-3 days. A well optimized article can easily land in a top 10 slot.

Take for example the keyphrase- “ingrown pubic hair”

An article featured at EzineArticles.com holds the #1 position at Google for this targeted keyphrase.

How popular is such a keyphrase?

Well according to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, 975 searches were done in June 2005 for that very phrase. And in my personal experience, Google almost always yields more searches than Overture.

The author of the article is promoting an ingrown hair treatment spray, within the resource box of the article.

So he’s receiving a boatload of free traffic to his site, because of this particular article.

Still not convinced? Here’s another…

2) Epage.com

Epage.com is a popular classified ad site, with a wide variety of categories.

Often times if you optimize an ad for a specific keyphrase the ad will get picked up by Google, and placed in the top 10.

For instance, the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool says that “hammer strength exercise equipment” receives 60 searches per month.

A search for hammer strength exercise equipment at Google places an epage.com ad for in the #4 slot.

Pretty neat.

Now some of you are probably thinking that’s a nice trick for keyphrase’s that target small niches. But does it work for competitive keyphrases like “fix bad credit” or something along those lines?

No… it doesn’t.

This technique only works with smaller, niche targeted keyphrases.

But if you’re an online entrepreneur who develops specialty sites, centered around niche topics, this is one technique you can use to bring an ongoing flow of traffic to your site.

I run a sinus infection information web site, and for the past 6 months this is the only tactic I’ve used to generate traffic. In fact, it took me exactly two days to get a #1 position for an ad using my targeted keyphrase. (Today that same ad hovers around #3-#6, depending on the dance Google is doing.)

The great thing is I earn AdSense revenue from that particular site almost every single day.

The other point you should keep in mind is that this tactic doesn’t work with all classified ad web sites.

There are literally only a handful classified ad sites that get spidered by Google on a regular basis, AND have ad’s consistently showing up in the top 10.

So don’t go blasting your ad to 50,000 different sites, cause it’s not going to work. There’s an art to doing it the right way.

Either way, it’s definitely worth trying the two sites listed in this article. Targeted traffic is always good traffic, no matter how much it is.

Alexis Dawes is the author of “Taking The Back Road To Get On Google’s Front Page.” Her report highlights additional sites and insider knowledge she has used to obtain several top 10 listings in Google. You can get more info at: http://www.Get-In-Google-Now.com

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of before creating a site. Make sure you’ve done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

This keyword-tweaking game for a site is often called OnPage Optimization. In order to rank high in search engines, make sure you execute these tasks:

1. Include your keywords in the domain name
2. Include them also in the page title
3. Use “h1″ and “h2″ header tags
4. Type some keywords in bold, italic and underline
5. Put your keywords at the beginning and end of your webpage
6. Named all the images or graphics after your keywords

A wrong thing to do is performing unnecessary keyword-filling! This could make your site banned by search engines. An example of unnecessary keyword-filling is by putting hidden texts all over your webpage. Did it ever cross your mind? Well don’t do that silly thing!

Also don’t fill your meta tag, alt image tag, or title tag with keywords. You will get caught and your site will be banned for this!

After all, there is another important factor that has a huge impact on your site’s ranking in search engines. It’s the OffPage Optimization. I’ll write about it in another article!

Copyright 2005 Farid Aziz.

Farid Aziz is the author of “How to Make Money Onine with Your Hobby”. Visit http://Internet-Marketer.blogspot.com to grab your FREE copy of “Internet-Business-In-A-Box”, a kit worth US$ 497.00.

Shopping and the Web. They go together like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Well, maybe not quite, but Internet shopping is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.

It’s fairly easy to set up shop and sell almost anything from bananas to banana boats on the Internet. Browse through the shopping section of Google (Froogle) or Yahoo and you can see the amazing variety of products that are available.

Click on a few of those links and take a look at the address bar on your browser. Many online stores use some kind of dynamic system for generating their pages. This means their product information is drawn from a database and dynamically displayed.

Dynamically displayed pages look something like this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=shopping+cart&btnG=Search

You will notice that there is no extension which would indicate a static page.

Is there a problem with dynamic pages? From SEO perspective there is a real problem. Search engines have trouble indexing dynamic pages, especially with multiple variables.

Here is what Google has to say about dynamic pages:

“If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few”.

Shopping carts that use a lot of parameters will have trouble getting indexed by search engines.

The Solution?

A client recently approached me to provide a shopping cart that would allow his products to be indexed properly. In addition, he had special requirements for the size and the cost of the shopping cart. The cart needed to be as inexpensive and as small as possible.

My client had previously been using PayPal “Buy it Now” buttons but disliked the way the customer was immediately taken to the PayPal site. He felt that would discourage people from making additional purchases before checking out.

I investigated the various free shopping carts like Zen Cart, osCommerce, and AgoraCart. They all offered some sort of SEO modifications, but they were too large to fit in my client’s limited hosting account.

Digging a little further, I came across Commerce.cgi — a compact, fully customizable shopping cart. But free version did not offer the features that my client desired. The pages are dynamically generated, and there is no support for PayPal.

However, for a $50 lifetime membership, he had access to the member’s area which provided extra scripts for PayPal integration. There is also a very interesting script for making dynamic pages appear static.

This script, called Search Engine Advanced, uses the Apache mod_rewrite function to change requested URLs. I checked with my client to see if his Apache server supported mod_rewrite, and that was in luck. All systems go!

Installing the Commerce.cgi script was quite straightforward, and I could easily adapt the templates to match the style of my client’s existing web site. Once the cart was installed and running, I tried adding the Search Engine Advanced hack. There were a few complications, but the support staff at Commerce.cgi helped me sort it all out.

The results are very pleasing indeed. All the dynamic pages appear as static, and Google, Yahoo and MSN have started to index the site.

You can see the site up and running at Tea From Taiwan - specializing in hand processed oolong tea.

I would highly recommend Commerce.cgi for anyone looking for a highly configurable shopping cart. It is suitable for small to medium sites and offers great support through their BBS.

Copyright 2005 by Ross MacIver

This article may be redistributed freely on the Internet or in ezines as long as the resource box and hyperlinks remain intact.

Ross MacIver is the director of Best Online Content. We provide quality content for your web site and offer a full range of design and SEO services.

Getting SEO right is an art and it’s based on theory and best practice. The search engines don’t publish their algorithms so getting it right is like finding the exact formula for Coca Cola.

SEO is about getting free TARGETED traffic. That is folks who are looking for what you’ve got and finding your site (or eBay store) high in the SE listings, ideally in the top 10.

Here are some basic principles that apply today (they might not apply tomorrow because the SE’s don’t announce what algorithm they are currently using).

TARGET

Choose it wisely. Think this through before doing anything else. There are 4.7 million results delivered by Google for the word “scrapbook” but only 1.7 million for “scrapbooking” so the latter term has less competition. It’s tempting to try to optimise for the big one, “scrapbook” but there are two good reasons not to. Firstly, if you do work hard on that word against fierce competition for some years you might get to the top (might). But how many customers do you want? You might create a monster that you can’t handle. Secondly all those currently targeting that word haven’t done their homework. “Scrapbooking” has fewer results (less competition) but is searched on more than “scrapbook”. The smart operators are targeting “scrapbooking”.

That’s just an example. Consider too that many people search with phrases, not just single words, so you might target “scrapbooking tutorials”. You might get into the top 10 for such a phrase and get solid, targeted traffic that wants what you’ve got. How about getting to the top for the term “post extenders” or “Sue Dreamer”? Your traffic will be buyers and you want sales, not just traffic for the sake of traffic.
So where to get the best keyword data. Thankfully there is one simple answer, www.wordtracker.com. Best in the world and a must when choosing keywords.

PAGES NOT SITES

Search engines index web pages, not web sites. You might like to think that your visitors will all come through your home page. This is not the case. Every single page of your site is an SEO opportunity. You can, and should, therefore have a different title, description, keywords and target content for every page to maximise your traffic. Optimise every page of your site where possible. Some dynamic sites make it impossible so if this is the case add standard pages that you can optimise.

SEARCH ENGINE SPAMMING

Don’t. You can get penalised or banned by the SE’s. Things like keyword stuffing, white on white text, doorway pages etc., otherwise known as “Black Hat” techniques are for the highly skilled and dodgy operators only. Some make it work short term and usually have multiple sites so when one gets dropped they have others. Unless you want to build and run 10 or 20 sites and work 25 hours a day on them stay away from black hat techniques.
All the search engines want to do is deliver the best and most relevant sites to their users. Be the best and most relevant and you’ll crack it.

META TAGS

If you don’t know what meta tags are click view >> source on any site and you’ll see the meta tags near the top of the site code.

TITLE

The most important thing you do is the page title. Similar principle to titles when selling on eBay, your title is critical to your search relevance. It must also be attractive to your audience. It should be between 6 and 12 words. Don’t simply repeat your keyword 12 times, it doesn’t work and can get you penalised.

DESCRIPTION

I believe this is almost as important as you title. Google uses it. It must contain your keyword(s) or phrases and it must read well and be attractive to users. Optimum length is between 12 and 24 words. It should contain the keyword or phrase that you have targeted in the title.

KEYWORDS

Of little use these days but do it anyway. There should be 7 to 48 words and again included the keyword(s) or phrases that you have in title and description.

HEADER TAGS

In page content coding tags are used to create larger, bolder headings. These are in the form

<H1>Header Text</H1> They are numbered 1 to 4 usually and H1 tags carry the most weight. These tags help the SE spiders to further determine relevance so should include your target keyword(s) or phrases for that page corresponding to title, description, keyword meta tags above. Bold text also carries weight but don’t overdo it. Your site still has to attractive to visitors.

CONTENT

This should be good, honest, relevant content, well written. There are many theories about keyword density percentages etc. but the fact is if you write good relevant content about say, post extenders then you will be using those words and phrases and if you are writing well for the human user that will be good enough. Make sure that there is plenty of it too. For content pages around 500 to 600 words is good. If you have more than that break it down into more pages and more SE opportunities.

VALID CODE

Search engines like well built sites that are easy to navigate. The SE spiders will be using your internal links to get around your site so simple and easy navigation is important. Also check your code is good by going here http://validator.w3.org/ and here http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

BACKLINKS

I wish this wasn’t important but it is. I’ve seen some very poor sites do very, very well by virtue of the number of backlinks that they have. So, what is a backlink, what makes a good one and how do you get them?
A backlink is when another site links to you. Google sees this as a “vote” for your site, it counts these votes and this figure forms an important part of your search engine ranking.

A link for the sake of a link is of little value. A link from a relevant and highly ranked site however is gold dust. A link from www.ampalian.com to a scrapbooking site is of little value but a link from www.scrapbookstashers.com to a scrapbooking site is fantastic. A good reason to be a sponsor on such a site!

Getting links from relevant sites is often a case of just asking nicely. If you’re serious about seo you need to be asking 5 or 10 relevant sites per day to link to you. They’ll no doubt want a link from you in return, that’s OK. I can’t emphasise too much how important this is. Backlinks are a must.
In addition you need to be listed in as many directories as you can find. Then you must submit your site to the open directory project. Follow the instructions to the letter, submit and forget it. It can take many months to get approved and listed. http://dmoz.org/

There are lots of other directories to submit your site to. Here’s another:

http://www.greatstuff.co.uk

Submit articles and tutorials etc. containing your web address to sites that will take them. Lots of content hungry sites will. Start off with these:

http://ezinearticles.com/
http://www.buzzle.com/

And remember. Ask other relevant sites to exchange links with you. IT’S CRITICAL.

If you don’t already use the Google Toolbar you should. This will tell you how many backlinks Google sees to you. There may well be more than it says at any given time because it only updates every six weeks or so but it is an essential guide to how you are doing with your linking campaign. Click the “I” button on the toolbar. Make sure the page rank indicator is enabled too. This will give you some idea who you want to get links from, the longer the green bar shows on relevant sites the better. It’s not perfect and it’s always way out of date so just use as an indication.

http://toolbar.google.com/

DOMAIN

When choosing a domain it’s worth trying to get your main keyword in it. It’s not the be all and end all but it helps a little so you may as well if you can.

For domain purchase I strongly recommend

http://www.123-reg.co.uk/affiliate.cgi?id=AF109422

If you have an eBay shop you can buy a nice and simple domain name here and direct it to your eBay store. This will make link building and directory submission easier as well as passing the name around verbally and in advertising and on stationery.

Don’t submit your site to the search engines, it’s a pointless waste of time. If you do everything else here they’ll all find you very quickly anyway.

Do however use Google Site Maps here https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login
and do use Froogle:
https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/uk/

PATIENCE

Keep doing all of the above. It’s a continuous process. Then apply the one element of SEO that can’t be influenced. PATIENCE. It will all take time and it will take longer than you want it to but it will work. Just keep at it.

TOOLS

http://www.instantposition.com/seodoctor/home.cfm
http://sitereportcard.com/

I hope this all help and wish you success.

Malcolm Cooper is a UK web designer based in Gloucestershire. Malcolm also owns and operates one of the largest online jewellry stores in the UK and applies that knowledge and experience in providing web services to other small and medium sized businesses.

malcolmcooper.com
ampalian.com

In recent times, I have been closely studying keywords that have famous city names at the end of them and what I have discovered is nothing short of amazing. My research started off with pay-per-click ads. With Google Adsense the same keyword with only a city inserted at the end can attract substantially higher paying adsense ads to your site. That really surprised me and I went further and researched the kind of traffic the same keywords get for different well know American cities. Again I was in for a shock. Some cities have very high traffic for a certain keyword when you compare them to others for the same keyword.

What all this means is that you can target certain high traffic niches by simply adding the names of cities to the end of your keywords. On your site you can go further and do a little research about a certain keyword subject in the city or cities that you are targeting and have a page for that city. The effect is that your site will end up being ranked very high in certain cities. This should automatically drive more traffic to your site. In fact you will be able to reach traffic that you would not have otherwise been able to reach.

The really amazing and attractive thing about this strategy is the fact that you only need to make very minor adjustments in your existing content, maybe even only create city pages with exactly the same content adjusted. What’s more, with some subjects you only need to plant the name of the city in the article a few times and you will have started targeting popular searches that include the names of popular cities.

It really is amazing that such a simple thing as inserting the name of famous American cities can make such a huge difference in the traffic and earnings of a website or blog.

Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com with experience in the website hosting industry.

When people look to submit their sites to the major search engines, there are some key mistakes that should be avoided for successful promotion.

Spam

The surefire way of getting your site blacklisted from the major search engines. Many people see creating thousands of cloaked or doorway pages with hidden text as the quick route to ranking success. It isn’t.

Untargeted Traffic

It’s one thing to generate lots of new traffic to your site, but is it the right traffic? If you’re selling DVD’s for example, you want potential buyers to visit, not people who are searching for pictures of a certain movie star. Best to make it clear in your meta information exactly what your site does, then you’ll get the type of clientele you’re after!

Single Keywords

Unless you’re in some incredible niche marketplace where a single word can only be identified with your product with few competitors, single keywords aren’t going to hit the bullseye in a traffic sense. Multiple word keyword phrases are the key to traffic success. Instead of going for “books”, go for “thai recipe books” or whatever your target market is. You’ll have far less competition for that keyword phrase than just a single word. Believe us, we’ve worked on a bookseller’s site.

Poor Design

There’s no way around this one. You can have the best rankings in the world, but if your site looks bad, you’ll lose that traffic as soon as it arrives. Good, simple, clean design always wins - sloppy design and gimmicks don’t!

I Don’t Need Links

Oh yes you do. Links are crucial to the traffic building game. Without links to your site from others (if they’re competitors, even better), good meta information won’t be enough. Most search engines will rank your webpage according to its popularity with its peers. if a lot of sites link to yours, it must be good, so Google & Co. will boost your rating (link popularity algorithms). Read our dedicated article here.

Messy Meta Tags

It’s worth spending a bit of time getting your meta tags in order - they tell search engines what your site’s about, and act as a basic marketing tool to attract visitors to your site. Check the spelling and make them relevant and you’ll be off to a flyer. Read our dedicated article here.

Stickiness

Page design and marketing are inseperable. Once you’ve attracted your visitors, your traffic building exercise has gone well and your site looks good, what are you offering which will encourage return visits? Regular site updates are very useful since your site will appear active and worth revisiting. The most successful sites we’ve worked on have been regularly updated. After all the effort you’ve gone to in gaining traffic, it’s worth considering how to hang on to it.

Messy Code

After the search engine robots have visited your site, they’ll see the meta information first, then they’ll scan your page for the first chunk of relevant text. A large number of sites have cluttered code (Javascript usually) after the meta tags. This will not help your search engine ranking since the relevant text will be too far down the page. Try hiving the Javascript code (or similar) into another file and refer to it from the HTML.

Beware of Rogue “Experts”

Before handing your hard earned money over to “Site Submission Experts”, be sure to find out exactly what you’re getting. They may claim to be able to submit your site to “30,000 engines”, but let’s be honest, there’s only a handful which create almost all the search traffic on the web, so you can submit yourself. Some firms claim to guarantee you a Top 20 ranked page - yes, if your search phrase is 8 words long. It’s not that easy in reality. Reputable firms can help you optimize your pages, and advise you on how best to market your site to your target audience, so best to do some homework first.

Patience

Building traffic is an ongoing activity. After your initial hard work, you should check your pages on the engines and “tweak” them if the results aren’t as you expected. Traffic is the oxygen of the Internet and your site is dead without it, so regularly give your code a tune-up and resubmit if necessary. Don’t oversubmit though. If you look at your server logs, you’ll see the major engine robots visiting on a regular basis, they’ll pick up your changes soon enough if you can afford to wait a week or so.

All the best with your traffic building efforts!

About The Author

James Leckie is editor of http://www.bytestart.co.uk - the small business portal and http://www.trafficgeneration.com - the web promotion portal.

Lately, there have been a lot of heated discussions regarding link building. Is it ethical to create a link building campaign? Does Google or any other search engine penalize for “link farms” (a bunch of non-related links created for the SOLE purpose of increasing search engine ratings)? Is the “link building era” over?

Link Farms

Many webmasters claim that Google penalizes websites for link farms. If this is so, why are a link farm sites that have a page rank of 5 on their link farm page? Let me give you an example, go to Google.com, type in any popular keyword(s) and append the word “links” to it. For example, “ABCD Links.” Notice you’ll get tones of websites that are linking to unrelated sites, but still have a great PR. I do not encourage link farming in any way or form, but building valuable partnerships is something I do encourage. If you’re a jewelry site and you’re exchanging links with an antiques site, I think this is a great thing. It’s very possible that someone searching for jewelry may have an interest in antiques. I own a few sites and the hits I receive from partially related sites are phenomenal. Most of my websites are targeted towards webmasters so I receive hits from all sorts of sites. Remember, many webmasters claim to know the truth regarding search engine algorithms, but no one knows the EXACT TRUTH except the programmers at the search engines. Webmasters may have been penalized in the past for link farms and doorway pages (pages created around certain keywords for the sole purpose of redirecting surfers to the main page), but who’s to say why some HAVEN’T been penalized.

Who Should I Create Link Partnerships With?

1. Create link partnerships with sites related to your site.

2. Create link partnerships with sites that have an audience that may be interested in your products

3. Exchange homepage links with websites that fit in your genre. You’ll receive a link on a page with a good ranking and you’ll get quality, targeted hits.

How Do You Find Link Partners?

1. Signup with an automated links management provider that organizes your links and helps find link partners. Automated tools are the best because they help you save time. Uploading and downloading your pages for every link exchange can be a huge pain and very time consuming. Automated tools are NOT link farms because they give you complete control of who you exchange links with. If a member exchanges links with every website, he/she might be abusing the tool. If a member uses the tool responsibly, it can be very effective.

2. This is a great little exercise I would recommend to anyone.

a. Write down 20 search terms pertaining to your website

b. Go to http://www.google.com and type in a search term written in step A

c. Contact as many websites as possible listed under that search term and ask them to exchange inner page or homepage links with you. If they’re NOT interested, ask whether they would be interested in selling advertising space. If your website is fairly new, you may want to ask sites for advertising prices. Free hits are the best hits but sometimes you might have to go the extra lap and pay for service. I wouldn’t recommend spending over $100 / month for advertising UNLESS it’s a high traffic site with your site audience. The best deals are the ones that offer $10-25 / month. There are sites out there that will sell SUPER cheap advertising, and others that charge an arm and a leg.

EVERYONE gets rejected sometime or another so keep your head up and keep moving along! The internet is comprised of Billions of websites. If you’re rejected 500 times, you still have MANY business opportunities left! This is a continuous job so set aside time every week to do this. If you don’t have time for this, then you don’t have time to make money.

3. Hire a link building firm (this can be quite expensive but if you have money, its minimal work for you)

PageRank

Pagerank is a great tool but don’t use it as your ONLY measurement for success. I can’t explain everything about pagerank but a good explanation is given at http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html.

Conclusion

In conclusion, link building is not only for increasing link partners and search engine rankings, it’s also used to create partnerships and establish profitable relationships with other webmasters. Link building is a tedious process, but one of the best for getting free (sometimes not), targeted hits from other websites.

Vik Tailor is the owner of http://www.linkexchanged.com and http://www.buyadvertisingonline.com. He has been in the online advertising industry for over 4-5 years and has extensive online marketing knowledge.

Google is currently one of the dominant entities on the net period. The question is - is it really that omnipotent, is it really that advantageous. The question is – IS IT REALLY “ALL THAT”.

To understand role of Google in the modern net society we need to go deep into its roots. Google was born at hands of Larry Page (rich boy) and perfected by Sergey Brin (russian rich boy) at Stanford University. The idea was to rank internet pages based on number of other pages linking back. For Brin it was sort of academic approach to web page ranking where web page would model for academic paper and back links it receives would model for number of citations that academic paper accounts for. Very interesting model indeed and in a sense is very useful in the academics; bus is this model as useful in the world of internet information ranking? Does this formula objectively represent the way any given website or webpage should be ranked among other competitors? Let me be the first one to disagree.

The Google that we are all using now is a very different Google that it used to be. Thanks to brains of Brin it has evolved from simply counting backward links to an algorithm that is protected better than our troops on a foreign soil. However, the basic idea is still the same and ranking is given based on number of links your site receives from other relevant sources. So what is the problem, you might ask. Lets imagine that you have created a brand new website that centers on certain topic of interest. Lets imagine that you are an expert in that topic and you have created the best website ever on that particular topic: it covers more information than any other source on the net, it offers simplicity in navigation, it offers largest and well organized library of sources on that particular topic, it complies with w3 standards, and it even can be seen in any browser in the world including all the hand held devices. That perfect site which would be very useful to many individuals around the world would end up at the bottom of the Google ranking system unless you spend countless hours trying to get links from relevant sites, trying to pay for fraudulent looking link services, getting frustrated, and still ending up at the bottom of the Google ranking system because some of your competitors have figure out a way to create numerous doorway pages, link scams, and so on. Just because your perfect site does not account for a large number of backwards links will bring your ranking down and will bring down with it all your hard work and desire to share your expertise with others. Some day you Google up that perfect site’s key word, that common sensed key word that should bring your perfect site at the top of the search results. You look at the results and you realize that there is nothing but bunch of irrelevant pages full of advertising and its all due to the fact that some geeks know how to beat the system. Now you tell me – is that a fare way of ranking pages?

Google and its strategy brought plenty of hardship to ordinary website owners. Instead of updating and perfecting their sites owners have to hunt for links using all available means. Most of the time site owners are getting trapped into services that are questionable in nature. This environment creates numerous pitfalls for web surfers as well. Web surfers become victims of doorway pages with meaningless and countless key word links, smart redirect pages that throw you to places full of ads, and bad websites that managed to get gazillions links using their questionable techniques. All that commotion creates nothing but bad experience for anyone who is in search of information on the internet. Is that how the search engine should work, is that how omnipotent search engine should work, is that how billions making search engine should work?

Controversial Active Blogger http://www.theartofad.com

Google shows you visitor stats .

As strange it may sound but google is now showing you stats for
your site .

These include :

Terms for which your site shows in search results ,

Terms for which people clicked and actually visited your site ,

Number of times google visited your site ,

The information google has about your site ,

Number of pages it has indexed ,

If you have a site map ,
then when was it last downloaded .

Pages which google was not able to crawl ,

Why google was not able to crawl .

How to see these stats ?

Create a free google account . If you have a gmail account ,
you can use that email ID and password to login . Login at

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Once you are there , you will be shown the sites which you have
added in your account . If you have not added any sites yet ,
then click “ADD” and enter the URl of your site . To see stats
you will have to verify that you are the site owner . Click the
verify site link next to the URL . Google will askyou to upload
a blank html file to your root directory . Then click verify
button . If google finds that file in your root , then your site
is verified .

Now you can see all the stats for that site of yours. Click the
link of the site in your google account . The next page has
links to the following .

Sitemap ,

Crawl ,

index,

errors,

In addition there are also the terms listed for which your site
is included in search results.

To see information about your site you can choose the
appropriate link . Clicking crawl will show you how many times
google has crawled your site etc. If you want to get your site
indexed faster , submit a sitemap from the same google account .
A sitemap looks like the one at
http://www.ad4business.com/sitemap.html .

That one is for human visitors . Google wants a XML version
something like

http://www.ad4business.com/sitemap.xml .

The html version is created using the free html sitemap generater
at http://www.ad4business.com . It takes just three steps to
create an html sitemap and you have the freedom of adding your
own templet to the map also.

Submitting a sitemap will help google crawl your site faster
and get it indexed faster.

Keep checking your google account to see the terms for which
your site is ranking in search results.

Best of luck for your site.

Is building a Human-Edited Fully “Democratic” Search Directory Possible?

The independent creators of the non-profit “BuildtheHive” (www.BuildtheHive.com) think so, and I think they’re on to something. Here’s why:

As a webmaster, I’ve long been frustrated by a certain human-edited directory (and you know who I mean) that has inexplicably refused entry of some of my clients, while accepting others without a second glance.

The problem (as I see it) is the same thing that makes these resource potentially great – human editors.

Let’s face it…for some people, the power of being an editor of their very own category in a major search directory is simply too much for their character. Many a webmaster (myself included) has complained of the abusiveness of some of the editors, both in the way they perform their duties, and (at times) how they interact with the public.

To be sure…being a volunteer editor can be a thankless job, with the number of “Spam” submissions (i.e. those outside the guidelines) far outweighing the legitimate ones.

What’s worse, and far more disturbing, are the “rogue” editors of certain categories that are abusing their “power” by adding their own commercial sites, and excluding their “competition”. Think that’s an isolated case? Think again. This writer found instances of this type of abuse in over 2 dozen different commercial categories. In fact, some editor’s were so blatant about it as to add dozens of “mirrors” of the same exact site, essentially “taking over” the category with their own content.

After essentially ignoring this abuse for years, the editors (in a nod to the fact that it DOES exist) independently setup an abuse reporting system for users. However, the fact that they need such a system (in my opinion) just exemplifies the weakness in the current system of human-edited directories. What about the abuse that goes un-reported? The fact that you even need a abuse-reporting system to me says that you’ve already lost the battle. To be truly fair, a volunteer directory editing system needs to be IMPOSSIBLE to abuse. Unfortunately, no such system currently exists.

But one IS being built, and it looks like it may just revolutionize the world of human-edited directories.

Using a proprietary “voting” system, BuildtheHive will be (according to it’s creators) a “directory built the democratic way”. No one single editor can add, delete, or change a submitted website. All submissions & changes are voted on by multiple editors with the decision as to whether a site “makes it in” based on a simple premise of “majority rules”. This removes the ability of a single editor to deny ANY site, as it takes several editors to either approve or deny a site.

This democratic system has even been extended to the acceptance/denial of new editors. Anyone will be able to apply to become a BuildtheHive editor. Once submitted, an editor’s application is voted on, and acceptance/rejection is once again determined by majority rule.

The BuildtheHive creators have even solved the “expired domain” problem (i.e. sites that remain in a directory after being picked-up by domain speculators after their previous owners failed to renew the domain with their registrar) . Any site that gets accepted is automatically placed in a queue to be re-reviewed (and voted on again) after a specified period of time. This cool feature not only cures the expired domain problem, but it also eliminates the need for a category editor to manually monitor all the sites in their category (a HUGE plus for editor’s of very large categories).

At this point, if you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself “Why didn’t I think of that!”

The good news is, you can still be a part of it.

In an effort to remain completely independent, the creators of BuildtheHive have avoided seeking venture capital, and have been funding this project out of their own pockets. For a limited time, they will be accepting a very small number of editor’s who will not have to go through the “voting process” to be accepted, in return for a small donation of only $19.

For a chance to be part of what could conceivably become the “buzz word” in human-edited search, take it from me…it’s a bargain. If the creators of BuildtheHive only accomplish half of what they set out to do, it will turn the world of human-edited search on it’s ear!

About The Author

Amber Snow is an independent freelance web designer and search engine optimization expert.

To read more, go to http://www.BuildtheHive.com.