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Is Cloaking Still Legal?

Leif — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:19:26 +0000

The exercise of “cloaking” consists of writing a server-side script that identifies the IP address of the incoming search engine and serves it a Web page that is dissimilar from the one displayed to the common public. The indexed Web page is veiled behind a stealth script, and when the user clicks on the listing in the search engine, he or she is automatically redirected to a client’s site.

People or companies that employ cloaking scripts will frequently rail against the evils of page-jackers and protest against others pinching their HTML codes to reach a improved ranking. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and it rarely happens in any case. There are lot’s of off-the-page ranking factors in most search engines today that this is barely a realistic justification.

There are very few, legitimate uses of cloaking technology…on the other hand they are not at all employed by the kind of SEP companies who charge clients by the click-through. The only time a cloaking script can be legitimately employed is if the user gets the very same content presented to the search engines.

The only time that a cloaking script can legitimately be employed to show a user a changed Web page than the one indexed is if both the user and the search engine view the exact content but not the same graphical content. Search engines don’t make any relevancy judgment about a Web page based on its visual appeal. Their spiders have no way of interpreting the contents of a graphic or any text contained in a graphic. They basically don’t optically identify text.

Here are details why cloaking would not benefit you:

1. If a search engine identifies that you have hired the services of a cloaking provider, you are on the risk of having your site banned or blacklisted. Keep in mind, a search engine has no way of knowing what you have employed a vendor. All they understand is you submitted a “hidden” page for indexing and then redirected the search engine’s end user. So what if you used a provider to help you? Search engines are not interested in exploring each violation case by case to resolve which company hired which supplier. They are only concerned in cleaning their index of hidden pages and penalizing companies that employ this method. If you take advantage of cloaking, you are a legitimate target.

2. All cloaking companies work outside of their clients’ Web sites. No one of them will help you write one META tag or arrange one directory submission. All together, a right ranking listed in a directory or attained by your site itself will navigate visitors to the genuine client site…not to the cloaker’s intermediate page where supplementary traffic can be connected, referred, and at last billed to you. there is no inceptive for the cloaking provider to help you attain rankings in these directories or for your actual Web pages.

In the end, SEP improved throughout the practice of cloaking is, quite possibly, fraud. If you have a realistic company, don’t play with the fire of cloaking. If you wish to manipulate how high your Web pages rank.

SEO Tips for Google

Leif — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:04:00 +0000

Getting a high ranking on Google is a big success. There are a lot of factors that go into pulling a high page rank. I have composed a small list of things that should not be ignored when optimizing your site. Let’s begin from the top:

META Tags- Sorry to say but Google doesn’t read META tags. That includes the KEYWORD tag. Some search engines, however, still use them.

URL- Having a keyword or words in URL will help you to some extent. Having a key word in your URL is not by any means a assurance, but it never hurts.

TITLE Tag- This is an most important step, make use of this tag wisely. Place your top keywords here. Keep in mind, your page is indexed starting from the top of the page. Make this one count.

Site Content- The first section of your site is a important part of your optimization. This will also be used as your site’s description. Be cautious not to exceed on the keywords. Make sure your content makes logic. Your keywords should make up a total of 6% to 8% of your page content. A standard of three hundred words is a excellent rule of thumb.

Header Tags- Header tag < H1 > must be considered important. Make headers uniform on your site. I like using them on the top of my page just before the first paragraph.

ALT Tags- These tags are great for adding up keywords to images, so take benefit of them. I also use mouse over text with linked text.

Links- Any links you have on your site should cover key terms in them. Never use “Click Here” or other unrelated words when creating links.

Bonus tip: When exchanging text links, make use of key phrases as the actual links. This will positively help you out.

Links exchange- This will help to increase your overall ranking. It’s actually better to be linked from another site (one way) than reciprocal (both sites linking to each other). Being linked one way is a huge bonus. Though, the following should be kept in mind.

A: The site you are linking to needs to be related to your site.
B: Google’s page rank of the site should be higher than yours; the higher the better.
C: Stay away from linking to sites that have too many links. A site that has forty or more links will only hurt you.

Bonus Tip: See where you rank on Google by using this free tool. http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php

This Google ranking tool will give you an idea about what keywords you are found on. Use this to help change the keywords you want to be found under. Be sure to check your ranking before you start any optimization. Then do it again 3, 4 weeks after you have completed your adjustments. See if your ranking has gone up.

What to Know Before Submitting an Article

Leif — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:18:56 +0000

One of the most ordinary ways in generating backlinks for a website is by submitting articles to directories. Each successful submission assures a author of a reliable link back to the promoted website. Yet, submitting an article increases links what an author targets is the traffic that visitors of the article directory might go to the website and the reference they can make to the website. Link from the directory is not enough to promote a website, but the traffic generated from the directory will positively raise the status of the website.

To reach the target of article submission, articles must be submitted to the correct directory under the correct category. What good is an article if not submitted under the correct category? It do not end there. Writings must be published on a appropriate directory. There are thousands of directories existing, but only some can give the correct and steady traffic you want for your website.

There are two types of directories, paid and free article directories and an writer must be aware of this prior to submitting an article. Paid directories suggest author’s quick approval and simple access of articles. Ordinary submission can take at least four (4) days to a maximum of two (2) weeks prior to getting an article approved. However free article directories are just right choice. An writer does not require to spend a single cent and there is an guarantee that more authors are accessing it since it’s free.

Directories are managed by different organizations contributing the similar service. It is understood that they will positively apply different set of rules. They have their own authors who will review each entry to the directory. This is to make sure that entries submitted are in consistency with the rules and will protect the honesty of the site. For quick approval of articles, punctuation, grammar, and spelling mistakes must be avoided.

Content of the article should be weighed before submitting it to any directory. Factors such as keyword density, choice of words, reputation of the topic, and accurateness of information provided are key components to the success of a submitted entry. Directories do not permit entries with too much keyword causing it to lose the most important point of the article. An article containing 1-3 percent keyword will most possibly make it to the directory rather than an entry with 5-6 percent keyword though loaded with information.

For articles that need to be submitted to various directories, it is very essential to recognize the importance of the author’s name and bio-box. Articles submitted to many directories must have identical author’s name. Using a different author’s name on different directories may effect to issues that could direct to deletion of account. Publishing an article under a different author’s name may break the anti-plagiarism rule an article directory implements.

Outsourcing of Inbound Link Building and SEO

Leif — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:24:42 +0000

Search Engine Optimization currently has a lot to do with building inbound links to your website. Building inbound links is a manageable tasks and webmasters have always been looking for shortcuts to do this. Webmasters buy links (as advertising as an example) or contact other webmasters to exchange links with them. The need for inbound links has shaped a new business opening in the search engine optimization industry. The outsourcing of link building emerged from the reality that many inbound links mean a high search engine ranking and/or a high Google PageRank.

There are various ways of building inbound links. Outsourcing this job can save webmasters valuable time however it comes with a price tag. Businesses offering to capture the link building method frequently maintain and control a large network of domains and websites and just add ‘your’ link to their sites. These sites are often referred to as link farms.

Others purchase links on 3rd party websites for you. They often have build up a group of websites/webmasters they work with. The worth of these links is often doubtful and a long-term profit does not exist. It either continues to cost the webmaster funds to keep the links active or his website might get punished by Google and other search engines if the linking websites are known as part of commercial search engine spamming. Punished means that either the link to a site does not have any worth at all or depending on the condition the site linked to gets removed from the search engine index (worse case scenario) if other factors are concerned that lead to the conclusion that search engine spamming is going on.

Outsourcing of link building also takes away the control of who is linking to a website from the webmaster. The webmaster typically just pays for X number of links but there is no choice to have industry associated websites link to his site (= increased value of a link). It is also complicated to verify how many links to a website have truly been recognized from the service provider. One more trouble is to confirm how long the established links are staying in place. The risk of being over-charged is extremely high.

While link building has turn into a money-making business opportunity search engines are aware of what is going on and are putting countermeasures in place. These are not things visible to the webmaster or explained on the search engines website. These are factors that are worked into the algorithm. Search engines use the human control factor more and more often to increase the value of the search index. Chances are that if a webmaster uses an outsourced link building strategy that at one point the campaign value goes south (turns sour).

Inbound link building must be an organic technique that shows a slowly growing number of links pointing to a certain website. Getting a high amount of inbound links within a very short time will lift a warning flag at search engines. Sincere webmasters will stay away from these tactics to avoid putting the success of a website at risk when there are superior ways of building inbound links.

Why Manual Web Directory Submissions are ideal then Automated Submissions?

Leif — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:56:44 +0000

The community of webmaster for all time prefer manual directory submission than automated submitting. In addition it is very much favorable. A directory anticipates all main information of your website for resourceful inclusion.

To acquire top search engine positions in result pages and to get a bunch of one-way quality links most of the seo experts submit their site to web directories. Lots of directories considered the automated submission as a spam. For this reason it is very much suitable to opt the manual directory submission.

In current times many of the directories use image conformation to avoid the spamming ways of directory submission. Capctha code consist an image with numeric and alphabets that have to be entered by hand. Thus automated directory submitters experience difficulties to handle such situation.

Editors of the web directories have their own policy to accept or refuse the websites.

Some of the reasons for rejecting sites are given below-

• Ad sense scrapper sites
• Sites that redirect to a new website
• Broken links in the sites
• Needless ads and pop ups
• Each page of the website unwrap in a new window
• Takes time to load
• Having unsound description

The manual directory submission has additional returns over the automated submissions. Automated submission just posts a set of predefined data that may lead to incomplete submission and to end with elimination of your site. In manual directory submission process, you will be able to advise the site to many directories according to the particular input schemes. Even though submitting manually, if the site submission is not through or directory is down, you can submit your site later than never during software submission.

An additional bonus point of manual submission is that an e-mail confirmation is necessary and also image authentication is made instantly however such things never happen with automatic submission. Numerous famous directories do entails registering as member prior to select for submission. Such directories reject semi automated and automated styles of submissions. Such information will help you to opt for manual one.

If you are submitting to directories to the most important search engines like google and yahoo then manual submission is the only way to submit. Sure, it will take more of your time but it is important because you can get optimum traffic from these sites once you are approved. Apart from this, many websites are discarded by these sites mostly because their content is not good and sufficient or their topic is unrelated.

Disk Full = No Email (Sometimes No Website)

Leif — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:49:22 +0000

If you run out of disk space, your site is going to have problems either with email, your website or both. Here are the main causes:

1. Inbox is filled. This happens when you don’t delete old mail or you deleted old mail online AND didn’t purge the trash folder.
2. You have spam filtering enabled and your spam goes to a folder (usually called SPAM) that has accumulated. If this mail is not deleted, it can have the same impact as a filled inbox, even though you have no mail waiting for you.

3. You (or someone) uploaded too many files to your website. This happens most often when an image gallery is installed and you allow others to upload to your site.
4. Your log files are configured to never delete. (Log files are usually configured to “roll-over” every month so this doesn’t happen.)

Here are a few areas where you might want to look for the above

TIP
At the top of cPanel there is a line that looks like this:

First, make sure you have this configured!
Second, you should NOT put your normal domain-based email address** in this contact setting as that will do you little good if your email is down … and it sends the alert to your dead email.

Best advice: Use a secondary email address that you monitor or even better, the address to your cell phone. e.g., 7345551212@vtext.com (this is what it might look like for a Verizon phone) That way when something goes wrong, you’ll know about the moment the server knows.
** If your domain is contactdubai.com, do not put admin@ contactdubai.com here!

How to update a static content item

Leif — Sat, 02 May 2009 19:38:27 +0000

Log in as admin

Go to Static Content Manager to list all items

Click on the item you want to update

Make your changes, then hit SAVE (never the BACK button!)

Logout… It’s done

How to Upload Images to Joomla

Leif — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:16:32 +0000

In a Joomla site, we should keep a standard regarding how things should look. Standards imply that someone has taken the time to write something like what you’re reading. Reason for this: Good looking stuff doesn’t just happen. It takes some planning and time.

Anatomy of a Joomla Story

First, all stories (same thing as what others call a “post”) have at least four elements.
1.) A descriptive title 2.) Some intro copy 3.) A thumbnail image and 4.) The rest of the story

The Thumbnail

All stories should have an intro thumbnail. Why? Because people relate to images, not text, and it looks better. So decide on a size and stick to it for all stories. Suggested size is something about 150 or less in width. You can vary the height based on the amount of intro text. (It’s more important to lock the width than trying to do both)

Intro Text

Every story should have about the same amount of intro text.You do this because at some point, you’re going to display multiple stories on the same page. This is especially important when you’re displaying in more than one column. Look at any newspaper. The front page is always the same. The story begins, but then has you flipping back to page 8 to read the rest. Same concept applies here.

Above is an example of how a 2 column layout might appear with similar sized thumbnails and intro text.

Read More vs Page Break

You use Read More when there’s just one more page to view. If however you have 10 pages that make up a story, it’s better to use the Page Break function so that readers can jump to any page within.

Uploading Images with Media Manager

You have two ways to do this. FTP or the Joomla Media Manager. As we have already written one of these for FTP, this time we’ll cover the Media Manager. Both Joomla 1.0.x and 1.5, to get to the Media Manager, log into the backend and look for the button:

Find The Image

For a story, you will need to upload two (or more) images. The thumbnail and the other one(s).

When you’re done finding the image, then click …

Where are my images?

It’s important to remember where you upload your images. Therefore, this too should be included as part of your documented process. e.g., All images that you plan to use within stories, should be in the /stories directory. If you have lots of categories, then it’s a good idea to have category directories within. e.g., stories/cat1

If you don’t remember where you uploaded images, it will be tough to insert them into the actual stories later.

Inserting the Thumbnail

Remember where you put that image?

You must indicate the location of the image, usually starting with images.

Align Thumbnails LEFT

Thumbnails should be aligned left, generally speaking. (sometimes people like to align right)
If you are a lefty, then do this:

How to save your backup file while using FTP

Leif — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 16:10:40 +0000

Download and install a copy of FileZilla

Select the Site Manager to add a new site

Fill in the fields that pertain to your domain

Your website is in the public_html directory (but the backup is not)

If you’re running Joomla, this is what your Joomla directories look like

The backup files will be in the root directory (never in public_html)

When you finish downloading the backup file, delete it from the web server

REMEMBER THIS

Be very careful with FTP It’s very easy to delete an entire directory with a few clicks. Also, never leave the backup file only on your local hard drive. Burn it to a CD and tuck it away in a safe place in a location other than where your hard drive is. If the backup was for a client, mail them a copy of the CD.

Points on Monitoring Your Website

Leif — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:22:38 +0000

Every business needs to be monitored for how it is fairing. Monitoring is the main concept behind every suggestion boxes, exit surveys, customer feedback forms and many other devise. Without feedback form from the customer, revenue, monitoring inventory, expenses and other benchmarks, a quick slide down or a slippery slope can be taken by a business, without the owner ever seeing it coming or being able to stop the slide.

Webmasters should also be monitoring on their websites. Most of the points can be classified as traffic related or server performance related. Here is the list of my points, which will be helpful to monitor your website.

Monitoring website traffic

Traffic totals. You want to know how much traffic you are generating. If the line on the graph is heading down, you know you have to find out why.

Referrers. It’s not enough just to know how many visitors you are getting. You need to know where they are coming from. I discovered I was getting a lot of visitors from Linkedin. They were all being funneled into my Article on “Free Internet Marketing Methods That is Blogging”. Suddenly I knew I should get more links from other social bookmarking sites. Valuable information.

Searches: Much to my surprise, my site started getting a ridiculous number of hits from the search for ” Blogging “. It just so happens I wrote a humor column on free Internet marketing methods . I was surprised to see it getting so much traffic for such a generic, competitive search term. If that had been a term of a little more relevance for me, this information would have lead me to properly optimize the page and get even more traffic.

Pages viewed per visit: If people visit only one page per visit, you have some work to convince them to visit more pages, like those that make you money.

Pages visited: So you threw up on your site something cool as an add-on. How were you to know that other webmasters would link to it and send a whole bunch of traffic your way? Well, now you know, so add some copy to the page to pull visitors into the rest of your site.

Monitoring website performance

Forms: Are they all functioning? A good website monitoring service can keep tabs on them for you. The last thing you want is to have lost hundreds or thousands of subscribers because a sign-up form stopped functioning

Shopping carts: Slow and complicated shopping carts are responsible for an estimated $25 billion in lost sales. Make sure yours is functioning properly. A good website monitoring service can watch this for you, too.

Download speed: Clear your cache and test your pages. Hmm. Maybe those images are a bit large. Time to compress them, or even remove some. Remember that some people are on a much slower connection than you are. I use a satellite connection sometimes, but when I don’t, my connection speed is 28K.

Server speed: Are there problems with server speed? Maybe not where you are, but on the other side of the world. Global website monitoring can alert you to a transatlantic connection problem, so you can take it up with your web hosting service.

Server accessibility: All the web hosts promise 99% accessibility. But is that for real? Who monitors them? By one estimate, 75% of inaccessibility is not on the hosting server, but rather on the Internet’s backbone network and in global routing. A global website monitoring service can help identify the problem, so that you can work with your web hosting company to resolve it before too many sales are lost.

Fun: If you are not having fun, audition for that drummer position in the local band. There is no point spending your life doing something that bores you. Webmastering should be fun.