Keep Your Blogging Secure

Blogging is an important outlet for many people. Whether they do it for business, for school, or simply as a way to fill their free time, the number of people who write blogs for one reason or another increases every day, and as the years go by, blogs will only become an even more central part of our culture and how we communicate.

But when writing a blog, it is important to keep your information secure. Surfing the internet is fraught with danger, and the process of publishing a blog only compounds the risks that the internet involves. So for bloggers who are interested in keep their online activity safe, here are a couple tips on how to manage risk and stay secure.

Keep Private Information Private

Remember, the information that goes on a blog is going to be forever public. Even if you delete your blog, there are websites like Google and Archive.com that scrape everything that is published on the internet and store it on their servers permanently. So consider what you want to be public, and what might better be kept private. There are no doubt many young people who are blogging today who will wish they had been more circumspect when the information they publish comes back to haunt them in the future.

But this isn’t only about the future. Being too forthcoming now can expose you to online predators who want to use your information against. The amount of information necessary to commit cyber fraud or identity theft can be surprisingly small. Be careful that you are not disclosing too much on your blog. If you do, strangers who come across that information can use it in all sorts of ways that can wreak havoc on your personal and financial dealings.

Protect Your Site from Viruses

Many people host their own blogs, either on servers they administer or with cloud-hosting companies. In these cases, their blogs can become vectors of online viruses without them even realizing it. They can inadvertently transmit viruses to their servers and websites without intending to. Those viruses are then passed along to their visitors. The best way to avoid this is to conduct all blogging activities over a VPN service , which will stop the transmission of viruses and prevent third-parties from injecting viruses into your online data. This not only protects you, the author of the blog, but it also protects all your readers from all potential harm.

Veronica Clyde is a dedicated writer at VPNServices.net – a website where you can read about VPN services and Online Security. She also loves to share VPN technology, Wordpress and Blogging tips.

How to Make Older Browsers Compatible with HTML5

In the past couple of years the web industry has seen a sudden boom in regards to HTML5. Although technically for the full specification to get approved we'll have to wait till the end of 2014, this is not stopping developers from writing codes in HTML5. Most, if not all, modern browsers have done a more or less good job in implementing the features of HTML5 (we all know which one doesn't!).

Unfortunately not all browsers have been able to implement all the new features that HTML5 is offering. So the developers often have to pay some extra care to make their code compatible with older browsers. In this article I'll try to point out some ways by which we can make older browsers compatible with HTML5. A little heads up though, this is about making browsers compatible with HTML5, not CSS3 (actually some aspects described are related to both, but our target is HTML5).

Getting to Know the Browsers

Before we get into making our code compatible and all that, we first need to have a clear idea on what actually the browsers can do. After all, what's the point of trying to teach someone what he/she already knows, right? Much to our advantage, there are some great sites which offer us considerable insight on browser features.

• FindMeByIP
  On this site you'll find several charts where you can see a list of HTML5 features (and also CSS3) and info about which browser supports what feature. You can actually do it two ways, you can go to fmbip.com, in which case you'll get the info on the browser you are visiting the url by; or you can go to findmebyip.com/litmus, in which case you'll get a list of info on opera, chrome, mozilla, safari and IE versions 6, 7, 8, 9.
• CanIUse
  This site also has a comprehensive listing of compatibility info (color coded, always helps). You can search for a particular feature or just skim through all that are listed. This is actually one of the sites I have been frequently visiting since I first started coding in HTML5 and CSS3.
• HTML5Please
  This site is a bit different than the previous two. It does not contain a pin pointed list of what each browser can do, rather it gives us suggestions about what measures we should take regarding various features: whether we should totally avoid, use backup (i.e. polyfills, more on this later), use with caution or freely use a particular feature. According to the front page of this site, the recommendations are based on the experience of web developers. So it can turn out to be really handy in practical usage.
• Browsershots
  Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers. Not really informative, but to have a quick glimpse of what our page will look in different browsers, quite an impressive site.
• Spoon.net
  I personally think this is an awesome site. The Spoon.net Browser Sandbox provides us a method of cross-browser testing. All we have to do is just click run for any browser from the given list to launch it instantly. By the way you have to have an account to use its feature, and guess what, account creation is free!

Now that we know we can thoroughly investigate abilities of various browsers, let's get them compatible with HTML5. One thing that you'll see in common in most of these methods is the use of JavaScript. Let's list our options first and then we'll start cracking them one by one.

Ways to Make Older Browsers HTML5 Compatible

• Pure ol' JavaScript
• html5shiv (also known as html5shim)
• modernizr
• HTML5 Boilerplate
• Google Chrome Frame (especially for IE)

Before I proceed further, I'd like to make one thing very clear: using the above mentioned ways does not make our browser all of a sudden capable of implementing all the features that HTML5 offers, in most cases it just makes the browser recognize that there is a tag with a specified name. For example, using the first 3 ways you can make older browsers know that there is a tag named 'canvas', but you can't really perform actions which canvas really offers (note: I am saying HTML5 Boilerplate supports canvas because it actually makes IE render web pages using Google Chrome Frame, which happens to support canvas).

Custom JavaScript

This is the elementary way of letting the browser know what new tags we are going to use if it is not familiar with them already. Say for example we want to use the tag "header". This is a tag which IE versions prior to 9 don't understand. So here's what we can do:

   <!--[if lt IE 9]>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      document.createElement("header");
    </script>
   <![endif]-->
  

It goes without saying that we have to place the piece of code between the "head" tags. The code snippet is quite self explanatory; even then, let's have a quick look at it. At the very first line we are starting a commented section, which basically says if the browser is less than IE version 9, interpret the following code; otherwise ignore what's in between the "if - endif" tags. Inside the script tags, we just have to call the createElement() function with the appropriate parameter. As an instance, if we also wanted to use "nav" tag we would have added the statement document.createElement("nav") in between script tags.

html5shiv

As stated before, it's also known as html5shim. So what is a shim? It is an application compatibility workaround (for those of you who have already googled it, yup, I took it from wikipedia). html5shim is one of the most popular polyfills (remember I stated the term "polyfill" previously? here it comes!). Paul Irish gave a simple definition of polyfills. If you are wondering who is Paul Irish, just know that he is sort of a front-end wizard in web industry. According to him polyfill is “a shim that mimics a future API, providing fallback functionality to older browsers”. You can download html5shiv here.

In case you are interested in technicalities, html5shiv sort of works by following the first method described i.e. creating element through JavaScript. After you download it, all you need to do is include the following snippet inside "head" tag:

   <!--[if lt IE 9]>
    <script src="dist/html5shiv.js"></script>
   <![endif]-->
  

modernizr

A really worthy name, it does make us modern (at least in regards to front-end development, that's for sure!). The best place to learn about modernizr is its official site. But don't worry; I'm not leaving you empty-handed. In short, what modernizr does is perform feature detection first. Note that I said "feature" detection, not "browser" detection. That basically means it finds out what our browser can do, not what browsers we are using. It then attaches necessary classes to our "html" tag. Say for example our browser does not support "canvas" tag, so a class named "no-canvas" will be added to our "html" tag. In the opposite case the class added would have been "canvas". So what do we do to use modernizr? Same as before, we download a copy of modernizr.js (you can find a link in the official site) and add the following code inside "head" tag:

   <script src="js/modernizr.js"></script>
  

It's worth noting that we can use modernizr to detect feature within our JavaScript, such as:

   if(Modernizr.geolocation){
    
   }
  

HTML5 Boilerplate

This is what I'd like to say is the ultimate blueprint. The package contains modernizr and jquery library. It also has normalize.css (I left out normalize from previous descriptions as it is related to CSS). You can find a link to download html5boilerplate from its website. Once downloaded, if you explore the folder you'll find all the files I've previously mentioned. The index.html is where your html goes. To simply define, this is a template for implementing HTML5.

Google Chrome Frame (Abbreviated as GCF)

For those of you who are really frustrated with IE, I saved the best for the last. Google Chrome Frame is simply a plug-in for IE which lets it render a webpage the same way google chrome would. Of course the downside is you can't use the features not supported by google chrome, but trust me, the amount of such features is negligible compared to IE. As far as I know, chrome ranks the second in regards to adopting HTML5 features (Maxthon being first). You can check the current standings from the site html5test. We basically have to do two things to make a page be displayed using Google Chrome Frame in IE.

Firstly, we have to make sure that the viewer's IE already has the plug-in installed. Frankly speaking, there is no way to force the user to install GCF, but at least we can prompt the user to install it. The developer's site chromium.org gives a way to use a JavaScript file named "CFInstall.js" which exactly does that. You can find an example of using "CFInstall.js" here. For your convenience I'm presenting the code below:

<html>

<body>
 <script type="text/javascript" 
 src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/chrome-frame/1/CFInstall.min.js"></script>

  <style>
  /* 
  CSS rules to use for styling the overlay:
   .chromeFrameOverlayContent
   .chromeFrameOverlayContent iframe
   .chromeFrameOverlayCloseBar
   .chromeFrameOverlayUnderlay
   */
   </style> 

   <script>

   // You may want to place these lines inside an onload handler
   CFInstall.check({
       mode: "overlay",
       destination: "http://www.waikiki.com"
            });
   </script>
   </body>
   </html>
  

Secondly, we have to give instructions to our page to use GCF. We do this by adding the following simple meta inside "head" tag:

   <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="chrome=1">
  

HTML5 Cross Browser Polyfills

Remember I said taking certain measures as stated above will not actually make our browser able to use all the features provided by HTML5, but rather make our browser knowledgeable on the fact that there are certain tags? For those of you who became heartbroken, take a look at this site.. It provides a list of fallback options for HTML5 features.

Before I conclude I'd like to mention one thing. HTML5 is gaining popularity at a very high rate, and the browsers are also catching up nicely. After a few years I think there won't be the concept of making browsers "compatible with HTML5" (and sadly my so thoughtful article will become obsolete). But till then, we certainly have to keep our eyes open and take necessary measures.

Using Images to Make Your Pages Pop

So, you've set up a blog, invested in some quality WordPress premium themes to make it look amazing, and now you're ready to add some images. Adding images to a blog post is quite simple; adding quality images, however, is something else altogether.

Cell Phone Cameras

With the advent of cell phone cameras, suddenly everyone's a photographer. Whether it's blogs or social media pages, tweets or whatever, you can't swing a run-on sentence without hitting a camera-phone pic. What's wrong with that? A picture paints a thousand words, doesn't it? Exactly! And if you post a fuzzy, poor quality cell phone picture, the word that's going to come across loud and clear is amateur!

Poor Resolution

Cell phone cameras are great; you can take candid shots and send them out to friends and family almost instantly. These images are great for viewing in the window of a cell phone, but probably won't look as good blown up on a large computer screen. Technology is improving all the time, but by and large, most cell phone cameras have poor resolution and not a lot of great features.

Why More Resolution is Better

Your photos should have at least 5 megapixels of resolution, and 10 is even better. While some will argue that you don't need so much resolution unless you intend to blow your photos up into posters, the added resolution allows you to crop to your heart's desire. If you start with a 10 megapixel photo and crop out 50 percent of it, what remains is a basically a 5 megapixel photo. You might decide you only want one face out of a whole crowd, and starting with higher resolution will allow you to crop it out and enlarge it and still have a decent photo.

Crop, Crop, Crop Your Photos

Cropping sets the professional apart from the amateur. In professional artwork, photos are seldom used as they are taken. Don't be afraid to crop out the extraneous detail. Cropping a photo puts more emphasis on the subject, and allows you to frame it more clearly. Cropping also allows you to get rid of that extra arm, shoulder, or half a person on the edge of the photo. Done artistically, cropping can also make your photos look more edgy and modern. Another consideration is cropping to fit the layout of your WordPress theme where you want to post the image.

Adjust the Lighting

Whether you use a professional program or simply the software that came with your camera, you should always adjust lighting levels, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation. Even in "auto" mode, most point and shoot camera photos will need light and color adjustments for optimal image results. Take some time and play with the results. Changing the hue can give your image a cooler or warmer look, and increasing the saturation can make the colors pop.

Bag the Flash

Use flash sparingly. A good camera will take photos quite well without a flash. Using flash tends to white out the picture. Dark photos can be lightened; the information is still there in the darkness. Black is rarely truly black. The reverse is not true for white, however. White in a photo means lost information. Even the best editing tools cannot bring it back.

Image Stabilization

Sometimes referred to as "anti-shake" or "blur reduction," this feature is a must if you're not using your camera on a tripod. Even the steadiest of hands can shake imperceptibly, and most photos are taken "on the fly" with subjects and cameras all moving at once. Since you're not a professional shooting dozens of shots every few seconds, this will guarantee that your "money" shot doesn't end up blurry.

Rename Your Image File

Give your image file a descriptive name to help it pop up on Internet image searches. WordPress themes usually allows you to input a description when you upload an image, but including a keyword in the file name itself is a sure sign of a pro.

About author:
Olga Ionel is a creative writer at ThemeFuse – a top provider of WordPress themes. She is passionate about studying online marketing industry and sharing informative tips.

Submit guest post guidelines

Here are some basic guidelines for submitting guest post on this blog.

First let's list few reasons why you should guest post:

• by posting on other’s blog, you are gaining exposure and publicity


• get more backlinks


• immediately increase traffic if you guest post on popular blogs

Rules for guest posting on this blog

Choose a topic

• suggest a few titles with two or three keywords - e.g. Title: "How to increase web traffic" Keywords: "increase traffic"
  
  
  • I will decide if I am satisfied with suggested titles, topic and keywords, optionally you can make keyword research
  
  
  • you can send me your suggestion on this mail with a subject "Guest post"



• Choose a topic which is related with this blog. Topics could be:
  
  
  • HTML, CSS...
  
  
  • javascript, jQuery
  
  
  • tips for blogspot blog
  
  
  • tips for general blogging
  
  
  • how to increase web traffic, monetization and SEO


• guest post should have some useful information, answer on some question or give some step by step instructions how to do something, for example: Adding categories to blogspot (blogger)

Post rules

• article must be original, it shouldn't be published anywhere on web


• use paragraph tags (<p></p>)


• paragraphs should not be too long, so text should be easy to read


• you shuold pay attention on keywords in text:
  
  
  • Keyword position on web page
  
  
  • Keyword density
  
  
  • Keyword proximity


• using unordered list is a good idea, example:
  <ul>
  <li>first line</li>
  <li>second line</li>
  </ul>

Writing code inside guest post

• if you want to have some code in guest post put it inside <pre> tags for example: <pre>Some code</pre>


• don't forget to replace code characters and symbols into character entities, find more in How to display HTML code in blog or web

Images

If you have some screenshots you could send me images in mail (not more then 3 per post) and type image file name inside text where image should be. .jpg format is recommended.

Example of well formated text

At the end here is HTML for this post. When you send me guest post it should be formated similar to this example:

<p>Here are some basic guidelines for submitting guest post on this blog.</p>
<p>First let's list few reasons why you should guest post:
<ul><li>by posting on other%u2019s blog, you are gaining exposure and publicity</li>
<br />
<li>get more backlinks</li>
<br />
<li>immediately increase traffic if you guest post on popular blogs</li>
</ul></p>
<br /><br />
<h3>Rules for guest posting on this blog</h3>
<h4>Choose a topic</h4>
<ul>
<li>suggest a few titles with two or three keywords - e.g. Title: "How to increse web traffic" Keywords: "increase traffic"
<br /><br />
<ul><li>I will decide if I am satisfied with suggested titles, topic and keywords, optionally you can make <a href="http://interestingwebs.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-keyword-research.html">keyword research</a></li>
<br />
<li>you can send me your suggestion on this <a href="mailto:blogsrec@gmail.com?subject=Guest post">mail</a> with a subject "Guest post"</li>
</ul>
</li>
<br /><br />
<li>Choose  a topic which is related with this blog. Topics could be:
<ul><br />
<li>HTML, CSS...</li>
<br />
<li>javascript, jQuery</li>
<br />
<li>tips for blogspot blog</li>
<br />
<li>tips for general blogging</li>
<br />
<li>how to increase web traffic, monetization and SEO</li>
</ul>
</li>
<br />
<li>guest post should have some useful information, answer on some question or give some step by step instructions how to do something, for example: <a href="">Adding categories to blogspot (blogger)</a> </li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Post rules</b>
<ul><li>article must be original, it <b>shouldn't be published anywhere on web</b></li>
<br />
<li>use paragraph tags (&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;)</li>
<br />
<li>paragraphs should not be too long, so text should be easy to read</li>
<br />
<li>you shuold pay attention on <a href="http://interestingwebs.blogspot.com/2011/12/web-page-optimization-techniques.html">keywords in text</a>:
<br /> <br /> 
<ul><li>Keyword position on web page</li>
<br /> 
<li>Keyword density</li>
<br /> 
<li>Keyword proximity</li>
</ul></li>
<br />
<li>using unordered list is a good idea, example:
<br />
&lt;ul&gt;
<br />
&lt;li&gt;first line&lt;/li&gt;
<br />
&lt;li&gt;second line&lt;/li&gt;
<br />
&lt;/ul&gt;</li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Writing code inside guest post</b>
<ul>
<li>if you want to have some code in guest post put it inside &lt;pre&gt; tags for example: &lt;pre&gt;Some code&lt;/pre&gt;</li>
<br />
<li>don't forget to replace code characters and symbols into character entities, find more in <a href="http://interestingwebs.blogspot.com/2008/12/easy-way-to-put-code-snippets-in-blog.html">How to display HTML code in blog or web</a></li>
</ul>

What Is Direct Email Marketing?

Direct Email marketing is when a company sends a profitable message to a group of people by the use of electronic email. The emails generally consist of advertisements, business requests or donation and sales solicitation. It is considered email marketing if it helps to build a company’s reputation, trust in a product and/or customer loyalty. A direct email marketing solution is believed to be an excellent and resourceful way of keeping in constant contact with clients and potential business associates while promoting your business at the same time.

An online marketing company can help businesses greatly benefit from this sort of advertising as it is enables you to reach out to your target audience without a huge amount of expense. Television advertisements, radio air play and leaflet drops are time-consuming and costly, not only that, there is the issue of not reaching a wide enough audience. A direct email marketing solution is worldwide and free. You can also tailor your email lists to meet several criteria’s such as customer’s likes and dislikes, spending habits and how long certain addresses have been on the list. Emails are created and sent out to specific members of your email list personalised to provide the information they have requested or are interested in. This not only increases your sales but also makes your customers value you.

There are a few different ways of developing an email marketing campaign. An online marketing company would advise you to start off by sending a welcome email to thank the new client for expressing interest in your company. Welcome letters notify the public about the company and help to give you information about the customer so that they can be put into the correct categories for the specific information they need.

Other email campaigns can include special announcements on products or services, a monthly newsletter concerning your company and/or products, money off coupons for future purchases etc. each email you send out needs to have company information towards the bottom of the page, enabling potential clients to learn more about your company and to ‘opt-in’ to receiving any upcoming emails. An online marketing company may advise you to offer your clients an incentive program by giving out a ‘promo’ code so that they can collect discounts on future purchases. This is a simple way of monitoring the worth of your campaign as well as what your contacts are interested in.

With the additional help of marketing software, a direct email marketing solution is a fantastic way of reaching your target markets but also staying connected to your purchasing base. When used efficiently, this form of marketing can keep hold of older clients and get new ones as satisfied customers will recommend your services to their friends and family and it could not be simpler, with the touch of a button you can forward an email. Your profit on investment is substantially higher than with the more traditional ways of marketing. With the help of an online marketing company to ensure these methods of advertising are correctly employed, your company will go from strength to strength.

This post was written by Crispin Jones on behalf of Boom Online Marketing. Crispin writes on marketing subjects including direct email marketing.

5 SEO Tips for Blogs

Everyone wants to be recognized for the hard work they put into writing for their blog each day. However, is you blog getting the recognition it deserves? Are you easily found on Google? Here are 5 quick tips that can greatly improve your SEO, and readership, without much effort.

1. 1. Blog Titles: Make sure that the (title) portion of your blog page has the title of the article contained therein. Meaning, your main blog page will naturally have a generic title, but does your comment page? Make sure your comment page ALWAYS includes the title of the particular article. You already have the code for the title in your blog section template, just copy and paste between your title tags. This could be the difference between being on page 1 or page 40 in Google.



2. 2. Email Field: Every blog should have an Icon to subscribe to RSS feeds. Although, most people won’t subscribe until they know you, you should allow them an easy way to simply add their email address and press subscribe. Super simple and sends your new posts straight to their inbox. There are lots of websites to help you will this. I use Feedburner.com because it is free, and will also ping your blog automatically to other media sites.



3. 3. Plug It: After you press submit, you should spend the next 10 minutes plugging your new post. There are several free sites out there to help you achieve instant search engine results. Technorati, Digg, Twitter, Buzzit.com are just a few of the networks that will get you onto Google almost instantly. Plus with all the link traffic and building your SEO, this is one of the biggest, and easiest ways to get your blog to the top.



4. 4. Tell a Story and Respond to Comments: Engage your readers. They will want to “check in” with you everyday and see how things are going. Make them hang on to every word you write as you interestingly tell them about how you were just on a flight with Patrick Dempsey. (Which you might have been!) And when they comment, respond! Blogging is about making friends and relationships. Instant readership when you become a relatable friend.



5. 5. Analytics: Pay attention to your blog stats. Which posts were popular? Which posts didn’t work as well? When you focus on what your readers want to hear, incorporate those search terms into your posts and link them to past articles you have written.

These are simple tips, so there is no reason not to implement these tools and watch your blog increase SEO and readership. What is your favorite SEO tip for your blog? Leave it in the comments!

Caitlin is currently a writer for Amazing News, which is a website updated daily with heartwarming and cheerful news stories. Caitlin graduated from the University of Kansas with a journalism degree specializing in advertising and marketing.

Is Your SEO Agency Doing It’s Job?

The practice of getting your website to appear in the search engines at the right time generally falls under the category of SEM (search engine marketing) and this term can include everything from paid search (PPC), organic search (SEO) or social tools like Twitter and Face Book. Smaller businesses will usually outsource this service to an agency or someone they know who understands this ‘internet stuff’ but the reality is this can be a huge expense so you need to make sure your money is being well spent.

The first thing you need to look at is the report your agency is sending through, if they’re not sending any reports through it’s definitely time to take the business away from them. A reputable SEO agency will have no qualms in sending through reports each month documenting what they’re doing with your hard earned cash, the results these efforts are generating and where they’re planning on taking the campaign. A common excuse you’ll hear from shady SEO agencies is that they don’t do reports because they don’t like to give away their trade secrets. In all fairness this is rubbish, any reputable SEO worth their salt will have nothing to hide and will gladly explain how they’re building links, what they’re planning on changing on the site and where they’re finding you new traffic. These reports can appear long and tedious but you still need to go through them, if you don’t understand anything that’s being reported its imperative you ask your agency to explain it. If you’re really stuck it might prove prudent to have a face to face meeting so they can explain everything to you. At the end of the day, you’re spending money with them so if this is too much to ask you need to be shopping for another agency.

Once you understand the reports you need to make sure the data they’re sending you is actually beneficial. There’s no point them simply sending you snap shots of your Google Analytics account or any other reporting tool. After all you can just log into this yourself and, to be honest, because so much data is available through tools like Analytics it’s not hard to find something that at least looks impressive. They need to explain what they’re showing you and why it backs up what they’re doing. If you’re paying someone to do your SEO then there’s no point them sending you data about your over all traffic levels, you want to know how your organic traffic levels are looking, you want to know what key words people are typing in to get to your site, is there a healthy mix of branded and non branded terms? Are the key terms they’re so happy they’ve got to the top position really sending you that traffic through?

Most importantly you need to make sure that traffic is doing something once it reaches your site. Whilst technically conversion doesn’t fall into the remit of straight SEO, there’s no point letting them spend all that time if it’s not going to ultimately result in revenue for you. This is where you need to work with your agency and make sure you’re communicating. If the traffic they’re sending through isn’t spending money with you, or contacting you or downloading your PDF or signing up or what ever your idea of a conversion is you need to make sure you’re targeting the right traffic. That the traffic is landing on the right page and the site in general hasn’t been redesigned for the search engines to the point where it makes no sense to the end user.

Jessica does SEO for asset tracking specialists Real Asset Management International

Top Seven Tools For Budding Webmasters

You’ve finally finished building your very first website and whether you built it from scratch or used a template from Wordpress or Joomla or some other CMS source, unfortunately your work is still not complete. Even if you’ve packed the site with thrilling content and wonderful writing and the design is impeccable, you’re still going to have to wade into the somewhat murky world of search engine optimisation if you want people to actually read it. This article will look at the very best tools to help you tweak your site for the search engines.

Before you do anything however, you’ll need to look into what keywords you should be targeting to get your site to rank well in the search engines. Whether you intend to run your own organic SEO campaign or go for Pay Per Click advertising you’ll still need to choose the right keywords before you do anything else and this is best done, initially at least with a pen and paper. Take half an hour to quickly note down all the search phrases you would use and the words you would type in if you were searching for a site like your own. Repeat the process for your competitor’s site and you’ll very soon have a decent list of search terms that will bring the right kind of traffic to your site.

 
Now you’re ready to start working on search engine optimization you’ll need to get to grips with some of the tools that will make your day to day work a bit easier. Here are seven which are popular with webmasters:

Google Analytics – Google provide Google Analytics for free, allowing site owners and webmasters to track the activity on their website and to study certain categories such as average time spent on the site, bounce rate, pages viewed per visit, page views and page hits. Google Analytics is invaluable in helping you to make sense of your site’s search traffic, the value of your keywords and the performance of your content.

Link Diagnosis – A popular tool for analysing links and link competition. Link analysis reports on link competition by giving you details of a competitor’s links. Link Diagnosis lists page rank and anchor text amongst other things, but is limited to use with the Firefox browser.

 
SEO Logs – SEO Logs offers a wide range of tools such as Keyword difficulty check, SEO optimizer, on-page SEO and Google tools for detecting any fake PR results. Also useful are the included HTTP headers and status check features, the back link analyser, the domain age checker, Adsense profit calculator and the ability to compare Alexa rankings.

Alexa – Alexa is another tool you should get to grips with. Alexa is used as a way of measuring websites’ popularity by using browsers toolbars. 

 

Key Complete – Key Complete is best used for working out a competitor’s keywords when conducting a PPC campaign. A useful online tool.

 

SEO Moz – One of the main tasks performed by SEOmoz is to detect any errors on your site, monitor and track your traffic and research keywords. Receives reports from search engines including Yahoo, Google and Alexa.

Widexl – Widexl is useful to help you understand link popularity and the pages that link to your website. In addition there is a Meta tag analyser which looks at keyword density, meta tags, page loading time and other similar SEO related details.

Alex is a blogger and seo consultant. He currently writes for the Bedouin Group on finance and the contracting sector, covering everything from mortgages to umbrella companies.

 

Read And Make The Right Choice!

Web designing industry is faced with numerous changes on daily basis. The trends in the web designing change over the night. Currently website redesigning becomes the most valuable activity to increase more and more visitors to your website. For this, you have to update your website designing by taking the help of any professional web designer or web design company, if you wish to survive in the market.

If you want to keep yourself updated with the current trends, following links are worthy of being visited.

Design Meltdown

If you are looking for the latest and updated design elements, and if you wish to learn the latest trends in the market or you have some problems to be solved, simply log on to Design Meltdown. This is a tutorial specially designed to cater such issues with lot of chapters on design principles and the styling, plus the other elements like color or themes as well.

Red Acorn

This is the place where you can get maximum help in web designing. If you wish to learn how to plan or market out any website or even how to publish your website, there is no better option than Red Acorn.

Boogie Jack

It features tutorials to help you out with CSS and other resources with an HTML format. You can also get few tips for hosting and if you are looking for tips for SEO and easy website money, there is no better option than Boogie Jack.

Alertbox

Learn more about the top mistakes that web designers make from Alertbox. You will get many tips to improve your work here. This is being hosted by Jakob Neilsen.

Save The Pixel

This is a complete book for web designers and it is available now to be downloaded. The whole book might turn out to be costy, however, you can download the first chapter for free. The first chapter includes information on the designing, pixel usage and many more.

Network For Good

You can view different campaigns here for free. If you are looking for online tips and tricks of marketing, log onto it and get started with it instantly.

Designer Talk

This is the leading forum of web designers. You can get a lot of information on designing, advertising and marketing here.

Web Developer’s Handbook 2.0

If you enjoy designing and you have free time to experience with your designing tactics, this place is a paradise for you. Articles here range from quality and creativity to accessibility and CSS tools.

Web Design Trends for 2009

Find out more on the popular trends of the market through Web Design Trends for 2009.

Reasons The Web Designers Are Preferring CMS Over Other Options

The way web sites are designed has undergone significant changes in recent times, with the trend leaning towards more user friendly, interactive sites with social media integration. The web users now prefer the websites that offer them enhanced interaction facilities and are intuitive in nature. This trend has contributed in a way behind the rise of the CMS based websites. Using a CMS application to design a website helps the website design professionals to create websites that are user friendly, useful and presentable. That explains why CMS apps like WordPress and Joomla have become popular with website design companies.

There are various benefits of using a CMS based app to design a website. First of all, CMS apps make administering and maintaining a web site easier than ever before. Earlier, the web site developers had to spend a lot of time updating and maintaining website designed in conventional method. However, with CMS site administration and maintenance woes have become a thing of the past, literally. In fact, web developers with little HTML expertise can easily make professional looking websites using the CMS apps.

In a CMS based website, the website design professionals can change the template without bothering about the content. This is because content and template updating are two separate processes under CMS. This makes site updating a hassle free affair. Apart from that, website administration is very much flexible with CMS. From anywhere the developers can log in the web and make the modifications in the website. It also saves the developers a lot of time in the process. A number of developers can work on the same website running on CMS from various places which is a significant advantage.

CMS Web design is also ideal for making a website search engine friendly efficiently. It makes generating RSS feeds easier and the users can access these feeds according to their convenience.

For making a CMS based site, a website design company is not likely to run short on creative designs. The top CMS apps come with a huge number of layouts and templates meant for making various types of websites. These layouts can be heavily customized which reduces the chances of a site looking like a replica of another. The CMS apps also have a number of extensions and plug-in which come for free. These can be used by website developers to extend the capabilities significantly and offer more features to the users.

Pankaj has been working as an internet marketing expert in a leading website design company, for the past 2 years. He has also written articles on different topics such as website design, Search Engine Optimization, logo design, graphic design etc.

Make Your Website a Magnet for Search Engine Spiders

After setting up your website, your next goal is to make it visible in search engines so that more people could visit it. But this cannot happen until you have made some modifications to make your website search engine friendly. If no search engine optimization strategies are applied in your site, you have poor chances of getting found on Google, MSN or Bing.

It is however not advisable to design the website based on search engine friendliness. You want it to be friendly both to users and search engines. Putting too much emphasis on search engine optimization could hurt your page rank later on.

Put it in Text

Websites pages need to be in HTML text format so the search engines can index them. Flash files, images and other non-text contents will not be visible to search engine spiders unless they are indexed within the content. So, when using images, be sure to include a written transcript or description so they can be picked up by search engines easily.

Creating Smart Link Structure

When it comes to website pages, it is important to put links within them so search engines can easily navigate on them. When picking a keyword for your links, be sure to use a user friendly description. Aside from benefits of getting indexed quickly, creating quality links also ensure good experience for users.

The Power of ‘alt’ Tags

An image alt tag is basically a keyword or description attached to an image. It is mainly used to tell users as well as the spiders to identify what the image is. While a complete description is not feasible, it will be best to have something in there. It is not necessary to put alt tags in all images but be sure to put one on your primary image such as your logo.

The Role of Keywords in Page Rank

Appropriate usage and placement of keywords in content is the key to effective search engine optimization. Since search engine spiders index and rank pages through keywords, it is important to use the right keywords in the description, URL and content.

It is best to use keywords at least three times on every page. Underlining or bolding of keywords will give spiders hints on which words to attach more importance to. If possible, include keywords on the title as well. Be careful however, not to overuse keywords as this may also have negative effects on your site. Search engine algorithms might identify your site as a spammer and ban you from search engines for good.

Watch Out for Black Hat Search Engine Optimization

Another practice you might want to avoid in search engine optimization is content duplication. Copying the contents of other sites could get your website penalized. Search engines don’t usually show duplicate content anyway. So, why bother taking risks?

Search engines also warn against doorway pages, shadow domains, scumware and spyware. These are not the way to go if you want to reach page one of Google. They may work for awhile but you will eventually get caught and disappear in the face of Google earth.

Making your site accessible for the major search engines is one of the basics of any search engine optimizaton strategy (interesting to know is that the Danish term is søgemaskineoptimering). You can read more useful SEO tips, from this great article.

Give New Heights To Your Web Designing Creativity – Useful Guide For Web Designers

Are you looking for some superb designs or just an inspiration to work on your own design? In this article you will come to know some best creativity works to serve as fuel for your website. In this collection you will come across some excellent work regarding logo designing, web designing, and some useful designing tips. These collections are from different galleries and also the best available over World Wide Web. Have a look and fine one best inspiration for your web designing effort.

Carbon Made Design Stock

This website is an excellent stock for web designers with its more than 174,00 master pieces specifically carrying web designing, and 3D animation background. You will get better insight after visiting this website.

Lemon Flip

This website is carries Slovakian collection of web designing to inspire designers who are involved in making posters, printed material, website designs, and logos.

CSS Mania

This gallery is more inspirational compared to previous one of CSS. This Drive equips designers with amazing color schemes along with a hover box. Designers can also get useful tips and tools for working in CSS environment.

CSS Elite

This gallery also contains CSS work. Designers can explore through different designs in accordance with their own preferences. They will get a variety of designs carrying features of

• • Uniqueness
• • Colorfulness
• • Dark layouts
• • Clean clutter free
• • For blogging websites

Minimalsites

This again is a CSS gallery of designs. These designs are excellent for designers who want to make simple websites with minimal use of CSS.

CSS Remix

Designers will find this website great while looking for best designs obtained after mixing different designs and them reaching the one they were dreaming.

Link Crème

This website has earned a good repute among others providing good websites portfolio. Here designers can find web design made by using Flash technology or CSS.

Design Snack

Here at this website, users categorize web designs of their choice. Therefore, this site provides good collection of best designs as preferred by users. Designers are provided with facility of sorting out web design depending on Flash, HTML, CSS, or by the design category they are looking for like they want to work for music website or for some charity based websites.

Logo Pond

This website provides superb logo designs made by professionally expert web designs. These designs are provided by users that may inspire you if you are looking for something unique.

Logo Sauce

This is another website that displays logo designs. Here the amazing thing is the competition held for users who come up with unique logo designs. There is also prize money for the winner of competition that has a minimal worth of $200. Competitions are held under strict control of site editors.

Logo Design Love

This website carries lots of logo designs to inspire designers for their own work. This website will actually increase your love for logo designing.

Get inspiration from these websites and give a new direction to your creative skills. Your clients will really love your work.

SEO Advice: Effective Site Structure & Content Building

In this article, we discuss two basic issues that effect many websites around the world; website structure and content building.

With more websites on the planet than ever before, finding the right website structure and having an appropriate architecture is paramount to a websites continual success. While it may seem like a common sense issue to have an easy navigation system and good interlinking in a website, many webmasters unfortunately fail to hit the target and although create beautifully well designed websites; these websites can be hard to navigate and hard to serve their given purpose

From Boutique (template) websites to large online databases and commerce sites, having an effective structure and navigation system is imperative.

In the case of small template websites (Boutique Sites) they are typically designed for displaying a companies business details and their core services. Simple in design and functionality, the idea is to direct users to a contact form, subscription page or services listed page by the company straight away.

The focus is on providing a direct targeted approach for the user, in terms of what they are looking to obtain. Each user should be able to find out exactly what there are searching for within one or two clicks.

As most website visitors browse a website homepage quite quickly, there should to be an immediate USP for them to dig deeper into your website. Generally, users will want to find information quickly and clearly without being confused by irrelevant distractions.

When a website visitor has progressed from the homepage, they need to be led to the next page that will either interest them or lead towards a point of action. If there is no such structure or focus, the chances are that the visitor will leave the website shortly after a couple of page views.

Overall, the following tips are recommended for small business websites:


• Ensure that the website is fresh and simple
• Use a standardised set of colours
• Keep the overall style and font standardised
• Try not to over complicate the site with too many graphics

Adding Extra Content to Websites

In general terms of SEO, with one of the core principles being that “content is King,” an average rule of thumb would indicate that the more relevant content you have on your site and the greater number of relevant pages indexed would therefore lead to a greater web presence.

Given the nature of which each company website is made, there are certain limitations to the choice of pages created, the topics / themes of discussion and the amount of content that can be made.

For new and developing websites, it is wise to consider how you could develop your website to x3 its current size. If you have plenty of content, design ideas on hand then you are heading in the right direction. If you are struggling with ways to increase your website size you should re-consider your site structure and its associated content and navigation system.

One simple tip if you are struggling with the current amount of space on your site is to set up sub categories, folders and sub domains as this will allow you as a webmaster to create more defined, targeted content pages to attract particular niches to your website.

5 easy website content building techniques


• Set up a blog
• Have testimonials / Reviews section
• Case studies / Application Stories
• Online Newsletter
• Online Press Releases

Overall, in terms of content building and effective website structure, the core principle of keeping user interest and leading users to a point of action should always be a priority.

By-line: Stephen McAllister is the Marketing Manager at More Control Ltd who specialise in bespoke Automation Solutions and Automation products.

A Writer's Guide to Formatting Blog Posts

Guest post by: Tavis J. Hampton

There is a certain art to writing for the web, and anyone who does it has developed a skill that took time to learn. From mastering search engine optimization (SEO) to understanding image copyright restrictions, one could probably develop an entire course on web writing. Formatting is unfortunately one that sometimes gets overlooked. How you format your blog posts or online articles can affect everything else: SEO, presentation, clarity, and ultimately your reputation as a professional.

The good news is that it is far easier to format web articles now than it was five, ten, or even fifteen years ago. With dynamic websites and content management systems, publishing is a cinch, but there are still possible hiccups along the way that can cost you. This quick guide should help you learn or remember some of the more critical aspects of web formatting.

1. Avoid the direct Microsoft Word copy and paste. If you must use something like Word, turn off your blog's WYSIWYG editor (select HTML in WordPress), and paste directly into the plain text box. Then, switch back to rich text and format the document. Pasting from Google Docs is also much cleaner than pasting from Word, but it does put a DIV tag around the text and also does not preserve bold and italics in the paste, meaning you will still need to do some formatting within your blog's backend.

2. Use an HTML Editor. A simple way to ensure you provide the clearest, unmolested text to your readers is to use an HTML editor from the beginning. Wordpress and other content management systems tend to use XHTML 1.0 or higher for formatting. That means that old HTML 4.0 editors will use deprecated tags for line breaks, images, and other tags. You can avoid this by using an HTML editor like Amaya. As HTML 5 becomes more prevalent, blogging tools may soon adapt.

3. Avoid inline styles and extra code. This point relates to the previous two. Many word processors can format HTML, but they often leave inline styles within paragraph and span tags. First of all, these make the document unnecessarily long, and secondly, they cause problems when you try to edit them within the content management system. If you absolutely cannot use an HTML editor before pasting text into your blog, paste plain text and do all of your formatting within the blog's editor.

4. Include alt attributes for images. For both SEO and accessibility, alt attributes in image tags are important. They describe images to non-visual browsers, both search engines and visually impaired humans. Wordpress and other blogging software include title and alternate text entries. Make them clear and descriptive but not too wordy.

5. Resize images to fit your blog. Some blogging systems will automatically resize to the dimensions you specify, but older systems may only set dimensions in HTML, leaving the actual file size larger than it should be. Furthermore, by resizing in your own image editing program, you can control the amount of compression and also tweak and crop the image. If you intend to show detailed screenshots, consider using thumbnails that will display larger versions of the images upon clicking.

6. Use CSS styles for frequent formatting. If you have a little knowledge of CSS, you can add styles that you know you will use frequently to your WordPress or other blogging CMS template. That way, whenever you need to apply a style, you can use a quick CSS class. many web hosts, such as dedicated hosting provider 34SP.com, will install WordPress for you, but you can still edit the theme's CSS file within the backend's theme editor.

7. Preview before posting. You may think your post is formatted correctly, but it is always better to double check to make sure it looks the way you expect. This is particularly important if you pasted from another editor. Wordpress, for example, removes some code and modifies others, which can sometimes lead to formatting problems.

Formatting your blog can often make or break your article. Text or images that are malformed or incorrectly displayed often turn readers off before they even start to read your work. No matter how good your writing skills are, it is the presentation and appearance that will make the first and often lasting impression.

Tavis J. Hampton is a seasoned writer with a decade of experience in IT, web publishing, and free and open source software. Some of his services include writing, web design, electronic publishing, and information management.

Website Structure Advice

Guest post

There are several types of websites on the internet. Some websites are selling a product or service while others are more informational. Whichever type you are creating, the text should be concise, short, and to the point, and the website itself should be well structured.

No matter what type of website you are creating, know your target audience (a stay-at-home mom, business community, sports fans, artists, etc.) and adapt your website as specifically as possible to the audience you desire to reach. Knowing your audience makes it easier to write text for your website that is effective, appropriate, and interesting.

Before creating your website there are various questions you need to ask yourself. Why is this website being created? What do I plan to accomplish with the creation of this website? Who is my target audience? How do I communicate most effectively, with words, graphics, video, audio? How do I capture my audience?

A website is composed of a series of individual pages. No matter what type of website you are creating, your site should be well organized. Before creating your site, decide on the how it should be structured.

A website structure is basically made of first page (referred to as the home page and/or index page), the next level down known as the "main sections", and the third level down referred to as subsections and/or content pages. Try to imagine your website as a hierarchy of pages, with your home page located at the top.

The home page should be short and to the point. This is the front door of your presence online, the first impression of your site to the majority of your website's visitors. This is the page that will capture the reader’s interest and give them reason to go deeper into your website.

The main section pages should contain the overview of the general topics your website covers. For example, if you own a website that is selling doors, this would be where you would list the various types of doors that you are selling but not yet sharing the details of a specific model of door.

The subsection pages are where you offer the specific details. Using the same example as above, if you own a website that is selling doors this is the level where you list the detail description of each door, a picture of the door, the cost of the door, etc.

Some people sketch out a diagram of what they want their website structure to look like on a piece of paper. I prefer to use index cards to get an idea of how the website structure will look since they can more easily be moved around. Once you have the index cards in the structure fashion that you want, sketch the diagram on a sheet of paper to capture the layout of the index cards. Then, you can get work!

Bio: Kate Forester writes about web hosting providers, web design tools and other online products and services for Consumer-Rankings.com.

Does content really make you money?

Guest post by: Paul

Everyone’s gone marketing crazy lately and I suppose I don’t blame them either. With more competition than ever you really have to work to get your site noticed online. For many webmasters this involves many hours/days of link begging until some blogger eventually gives in and links to you from their resources page (which is buried 10 levels deep from the homepage).

So the marketing side of being a webmaster is un-avoidable but I’ve noticed that many forget you need great content on your site if you expect visitors to convert into sales, either for yourself or your advertisers. How many times have you been to an ecommerce site that’s just had a bunch of technical info on each product that they got free from the manufacturer? I’m not sure why people think boring content increases sales but they seem too.

How about instead of some forgettable technical specs you shot a video of yourself using the product and explaining the features and benefits of it? People love to watch video online because it requires even less effort than reading, people are lazy and I include myself in that bracket. I know some webmasters are worried about how to put a video into web format and maybe also bandwidth costs. However this is no longer a realistic excuse because Youtube will now do it all for you including converting the video. All you have to do embed the video code on your site, plus you will attract visitors from people viewing it on Youtube too!

It’s not just video that can increase sales on your site, info-graphics are also great for explaining something complex quickly. If you’re not sure what an info-graphic is it’s just an image with lots of labels explaining a process, the key is to keep it light-hearted with cartoon characters and fun colours. Try not to let it become a power point slide, otherwise people will feel like they are at work!

The best reason to create useful content though is because long term it’s really the only strategy. Untimely at some point someone at Google may review your site and if you have a 1000 pages of junk you can’t really complain if your site disappears the next day. When it comes to quality creating something worthwhile is the best bet you can make.

I have more articles like this on my blog at earning money online which has lots of marketing advice for webmasters.

The Art of Forum Marketing

Guest post by: Neil Jones

Forums are an asset to every serious marketer as they attract people from all walks of life and all parts of the world who have a common interest on a specific subject. A forum usually evolves into a community of friends who share their knowledge, expertise and experiences. It becomes an interactive society of people in a virtual setting.

Each forum adopts it own unique character that is often influenced by the members themselves and of course there are rules and regulations than have to be upheld to maintain order within this virtual community. One of the biggest obstacles faced by forum owners is the fight against spam: people and automated software that register with the sole purpose of obtaining a backlink to a site to drive traffic or for SEO purposes.

These members do not last long on the forums as they are usually banned before they turn the forum into a spam jungle. But spammers do not understand the value that a forum can inject in their marketing efforts if they actually approached forum marketing in an ethical manner. The amount of traffic that can be directed to a site from a relevant forum is incredible.

The Right Approach to Forum Marketing

Your first approach as a forum marketer will be to establish an element of rep power. Your credibility is what will essentially embolden your signature link within each of your posts. How to establish credibility?

• Do not post replies or begin threads and ask people to visit your site
• Offer valuable replies that will be remembered and will stand out
• Treat people with respect and do not use your knowledge to criticize, but rather, use it to help people
• Build relationships with long standing forum members to further establish yourself

Once you are comfortable in the forum environment and you feel a sense of belonging you can approach your marketing by replying to threads that are relevant to your niche. Again, add value by answering the questions posed with tact and ensure you provide information that is practical and can be applied in real life. This approach in itself will attract people to you and you will find the traffic gained from the forum will begin to increase.

Next, you should begin your own threads that directly relate to your personal experiences, and offer a detailed exposition on your problems and the solutions you have found. For example: if you are part of an internet marketing forum, and you have found success as an internet marketer, you can begin a thread entitled, “How I made my first $100 online”. You can subsequently provide step-by-step instructions on the process you followed and you can highlight the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.

People will begin to respect you even more and of course they will begin to visit your sites from you signature link.

This is all you need to do to gain exposure from the forum environment. The one common denominator is offering value. Value will help increase your credibility, it will gain you the trust of other members and it will position you as an authority in your niche. If you embrace this approach your member status will appreciate and so will the traffic to your website and there will be absolutely no need for you to tell people to click on the link in your signature. 

 

This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers like the Datalogic Memor and the Symbol MC70. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.

Beginners - Link Building Explained

Guest post by: AlexSimmonds

So, you’ve spent the last few weeks building your first website, either from scratch or using a Wordpress template. You’ve even gone so far as to have done some work on keyword research and optimized your site for certain phrases you know are relevant. Yet you’re still not showing up on the search engines. Your site is optimized, your keywords are correct and in the right place, you’ve organized your headers and tags, and you’re writing some awesome content. But no one is reading it. What now?

The next step on your SEO journey is to delve into the murky world of link building. For those of you who have been reading up on search engine optimization you will almost certainly have come across the term ‘backlink’ but might have wondered what exactly it meant. Well now is the time to roll your sleeves up and get to grips with backlinks, because when it comes to SEO the backlink is king.

Backlinks are essentially like friends. The more of them you have, the more popular you are (although some of them are actually no good for you and can get you in trouble.)  Also referred to as inbound links (IBL’s) they refer to other websites that link to your site. They are crucial for SEO purposes because many search engines, including Google, will allocate more credit to a site when indexing if it has a decent number of quality (the important word here) backlinks and therefore place it higher up the search engine results. However, the days when you could simply farm out link building to a link farm or link building company are over. As with all things SEO, too much abuse by webmasters has made it far harder to game the system now. Google has only recently adjusted their algorithm to ensure that link building and backlinks are about quality and not quantity. With this in mind, for those just starting out, here are a few tips on correctly building links to your site:

(1) Do Your Research – If you’re putting together a backlink strategy the first thing you should do is head to the sites of your competitors to see where their backlinks are coming from. If someone is willing to link to your competitors then their site will probably be of relevance to yours too, so they will probably be open to linking to you. Once you have established this, it is simply a case of offering better content than your competitor and approaching their website for a link. An easy way to do this back link research is to get hold of one of the many free tools out there such as SEO Spyglass or SEO Back Link Analyzer.

(2) Guest Posting – The easiest way to get quality back links. Find sites with a good reputation and high PR and who are open to guest posting. Then write an article which is of relevance and interest to their readers and submit it. In return they will normally give you a brief ‘author’s box’ in which you can have one link. Link to your site.

(3) Use Only Quality Backlinks – Quality not quantity is your mantra. Try to only go for quality backlinks, as they will bring much better link value to your site. If possible, stick to sites with a PR rating of 2+, that are a few years old and are genuine sites, not link farms, article farms or any other kind of farm. Similarly, make sure you link on a search phrase that is relevant to your site rather than having your anchor text as something like ‘click here.’ If possible, pick sites where they have very few other links on the page as these can dilute the strength of your ‘link juice.’

(4) Submit Your Site to Directories – less important than in previous years but there are still advantages to be had from submitting your site to as many directories as you can get your hands on. With many directory submission services out there you can delegate this job to someone else, although if you want to get in the highest quality and most reputable directories you’ll need to do it yourself – they don’t accept automatic submissions.

(5) Write Quality Content – This is along the lines of ‘build it and they will come.’ Google are changing their algorithm every few months to push higher quality content further up the search results. Good quality writing should always be the first aim of any site. Not only will it rank better, it will also attract people who actually want to read the stuff. They will recommend it to other people and hey presto, you’ve got natural links and some buzz about your article and site.

Alex Simmonds is a freelance journalist and copywriter. He currently writes a blog for the Bedouin Group on freelancing and the contracting sector, covering everything from taxation to umbrella companies.

SEO For

The Benefits of Keyword-Rich URLs for SEO

Guest post by Darenet

Something related to SEO practices is being studied and reported on every day. The term “Best SEO Practices” is thrown around with reckless abandon, and everyone thinks they know what the correct answer is. The latest tactic being considered is the benefit of having a keyword-rich URL.

Google has recently announced that they may focus on and penalize companies which do this, but that’s a debate for another occasion. It is a delicate balance between trying to create a keyword-rich URL and picking a domain name that best represents your particular brand or includes the name of your company, and there are arguments for each.

Why would you want to include your brand directly in your URL?

•The first reason is obvious; it’s as easy as heck to remember.
•Your brand would be staring customers right in the face at all times.
•It will reflect better on your professionalism than if you had www.imadentist.com.

What are the reasons for wanting keywords in your URL?

•It gives potential customers their first glimpse into exactly what you offer.
•This is rather simple; if you have that URL, your competitors don’t have it. If your goal is to utilize your brand for your domain name, just purchase that keyword-rich URL, and then send it to your own domain name.
•The most obvious reason is that it will help you rank higher with the search engines.

What are some tips to help me select a great domain name?

•Your domain should have a minimum of one keyword: A website with a keyword in the URL gets an extra point from Google. This is a perfectly ethical tactic, and can greatly affect your organic SEO results. If your desired URL isn’t available, try adding a word before or after the keyword.
•Try to avoid hyphens whenever possible: A URL containing a hyphen is easy for the search engines to figure out, but what about regular surfers? Try to avoid the possibility that they forget the hyphen or add it in the wrong location. The same often goes for the underscore character.

For example, a website built to help people find the best background check services in a given area would be pretty hard to remember by most people if it had all these words in its URL, plus hyphens, plus area name, wouldn’t it? So, keep it simple.

•Choose common words: Certain words in our language are more prone to being misspelled than others, try to avoid those. Some people try to be creative and use odd or slang words. All that will accomplish is making your site invisible.
•Promote a single domain: If you have multiple domains registered, try to promote just one and redirect the others. Search engines are even known to fine companies that engage in marketing their brand with multiple domains.

For guide on chose blogger post title check article: Increase blogger traffic - change title

Hope this has enlightented you.

Top 3 things to look out for when hiring a SEO company

Guest post by: Lyuben Georgiev

So you have a business and you want to develop it further by hiring a SEO agency to take care of your website’s performance. This is great but choosing the best company can be a little bit hard nowadays. I have heard complaints from different people saying they have a lot of bad memories from the last company they hired and they will never try SEO again. It is a shame that these companies give the whole industry such a bad name.

When hiring a company to handle SEO for you, beware of those things:

1. Splogging – In an attempt to generate more links for you so you can sign a long term contract, many companies use splogging. This is the kind of spam that usually affects blogs. An example of splogging is putting your website’s name and link on various useless pages that have absolutely no value, page rank or domain authority all over the web. Most of the times these companies would use programs to automatically make blogs and post your link somewhere surrounded with a bunch of words that don’t even make sense. That can not only bring no value to your website but it can also be pretty bad for your reputation.


2. Short term links – That definition comes from the companies that would link to your website from site they have created and own. This is generally not a bad idea if the website is one that has high authority. The problem comes when you are no longer happy with their services and want to end the contract. Then these companies will take your links off their websites. This can be very bad depending on how many links they have put there. What if it is a blog and they have posted a lot of articles with links to your website and they delete them all when you no longer have a contract? Beware of those situations as they can be very dangerous.


3. Comment spamming – Another form of spamming is comment spamming. A company that uses that method would go on different blogs and post useless comments (you will be lucky if the comment even says something that makes sense like “Thanks for the post”) and put your link there. These comments can be very bad for your reputation and you should avoid companies that spam in any way at all costs.

So, the only way to find out what these companies are up to on time is to ask for reports. Tell them that you want to see what they have been doing for your business and see where the links are coming from. It is your right as their client to know what they are doing for you and end the contract if you are not happy. You should take control and be on top of things because once it is too late you will regret it very much.

For more information about mistakes to avoid when choose SEO firm follow link.

Lyuben Georgiev works for one of the largest SEO companies in Europe - Outrider. He also blogs at popular blogs like Search Engine Journal and RINF.