Alexa Traffic Rank: What It is and Why You Should Care (or not)

Posted by Peter E

Alexa is an Amazon owned company that is famous for its public traffic ranking service via its alexa.com website. Website promotion guides often make a big deal about how to improve your Alexa ranking because a top position is often associated with high profits. As a new webmaster, you must understand a few very important points about Alexa’s service. This article will explain what the data collected by Alexa mean and then describe why you should care or not.

There are three numbers that Alexa reports, reach, page views and overall rank. Reach refers to the percentage of all web users that visited your site. Alexa reports this number as “reach per million users.” For example if Alexa reports a reach of one, it means that on average out of one million web surfers one visits your site. Page views simply measures the average number of pages a surfer examines when at your website. Those sites with a lot of content and targeted visitors tend to generate a larger number of page views. The overall Alexa rank is a combination of the reach and page views numbers such that the larger both of them are the lower the site’s rank will be; for Alexa, a smaller rank indicates a more important website. Alexa reports these numbers for each day, one week and three month averages and the overall change over a three month period. So, how does Alexa gather these data?

On a daily basis, Alexa collects statistics about the number of visitors and page views for every website on the Internet. Actually, it does not have data for all the sites. You see, data collection happens via web surfers that have downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar for their Internet Explorer browser. When one of these users visits and explores a site, the toolbar sends this information to Alexa’s servers. What this means for webmasters is that only those sites visited by users that have decided to install the toolbar will actually have data collected for them. In addition, since only a rather small subset of all possible Web surfers actually uses the toolbar, the ranking is a statistical average that is not necessarily a true indication of the quality and number of a site’s readers. In fact, the number is really inaccurate for sites with a small number of visitors and Alexa admits that this is true for those sites not in the top 100,000.

To make matters worse, the toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer. Of course, IE is the browser used by the majority of Internet users with data showing that it is used by about 83% of them (onestat.com). This is not a problem unless your audience is more likely to be in the other 17% of surfers, i.e., those that prefer to use Firefox, Safari, Opera or another alternative browser. For example, slashdot.org is a technology news site with an audience that is known to be very anti-Microsoft; Slashdot’s motto is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.” One expects that most of its users would use any browser other than IE and in fact it was recently posted that an estimated 65% of Slashdot’s readers use a browser other than IE. As of this writing (July 12, 2006), Slashdot’s ranking was 176 with a reach of 5450 per million surfers. Slashdot is known for something called the “Slashdot effect” that is when a story on the front page links to a site, it receives so many visitors that the servers often are not able to handle the sudden increase in traffic. In other words, I would expect that Alexa’s rank is actually an underestimate of Slashdot’s true rank.

From a statistics point of view, Alexa’s rank cannot be thought of as an unbiased statistical measure. The sample of people used by Alexa for collecting data is not a randomly selected set but rather it is biased towards users of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer as well as those who are willing to install the toolbar and submit to Alexa information about their browsing behavior. If your audience is similar to Slashdot’s then don’t expect accurate results. Anticipate the same if your audience includes people who are pro-privacy and would never install a toolbar that calls home making their browsing behavior known to a large corporation.

So, if you really want accuracy in terms of your site’s number of users and page views then you are better off using analytics software, for example Google Analytics, rather than Alexa. However, many advertisers use Alexa’s ranking as a neutral third party estimate of a site’s popularity; they consult Alexa in order to determine how much advertising space is worth on your site. This is the reason why many webmasters display their Alexa rank on the front page. If you happen to be on the upper end of Alexa’s ranking then you should be able to benefit from it; if you are not then you probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. Focus on adding fresh content to your site; this way you will be able to drive more traffic to your site via the major search engines and also keep your visitors coming back.

Peter E. is the creator of The Dollar Factory, a portal for webmasters with articles, news items, website spotlight and forum. If you are a new or old webmaster, join our growing community at The Dollar Factory (http://www.TheDollarFactory.com)

The Real Outlook For Ping

Posted by Danny Wirken

A Ping is a basic Internet program that allows for verification of the existence of a particular IP address. This is used to ensure that the host computer intended to be reached is actually operating. Recent developments have caused people to abandon their existing Ping community and standards which threaten to alter the positive outlook for Ping.

What is Ping All About?

In December 1983, Mike Muuss wrote a program used as a tool to troubleshoot peculiar behavior on an IP network. He named it “ping” after the pulses of sound made by a sonar. Its operation is considered analogous to active sonar in submarines wherein an operator issues a pulse of energy at the target which would then bounce back and be received by the operator. An acronym was provided by David Mills to mean “Packet Internet Grouper” and by other people as “Packed Internet Gopher”.

Its usefulness in terms of assisting the diagnosis of connectivity issue in the Internet was undermined when several Internet service providers filtered out echo request messages at their network boundaries. The use of Ping for target reconnaissance by Internet worms in locating new hosts to infect is partly to be blamed. Another factor that might have contributed to the situation is the resulting over all load on networks due to the wide availability of Ping responses.

The Ping utility has its unique use being essentially a system administrator’s tool to determine if a computer is working or if network connections are intact. Ping uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo function to send a small packet through the network to a particular IP address. The computer that sent the packet waits for a return packet. A good return packet will be received if the connections are good and the target computer is up. However, it is indicative of a problem with the matching of the name and the IP address when a packet bounces back. An extended period of time used up for the round trip is likewise indicative of a problem. Ping can also determine the number of hops that lie between two computers and the amount of time it takes for a packet to make a complete trip.

There are some things that Ping cannot tell. Ping may not be able to always provide the reasons why packets go unanswered. Neither can it tell why or where a packet was damaged, delayed or duplicated. A detailed description of every host that handled the packet and the details that happened along the way cannot be provided by Ping.

Dropped packets are usually detected through a skip in the sequence numbers and such number does not appear again. The probable causes for this are a queue that grew too large and link-level failures. Fluctuating round trip times are caused by the same things responsible for packet loss. Connectivity that comes and goes may be caused by problems in the router.

The negative creation of the Ping is the so-called Ping of Death that essentially crashes a system by sending a Ping packet larger than 65,536 bytes. An IP datagram of this size usually cannot be sent but perpetrators apparently chop the packet into small pieces when it is sent down the line and have it rebuilt at its destination. The sheer size of the packet causes the buffer to overflow and results to a reboot or a hang among others.

The Ping Outlook

Ping-O-Matic is the only remaining large-scale and independent Ping relay service left with the purchase of http://Weblogs.com by Verisign. The purchase has been received by some quarters with skepticism due to Verisign’s supposedly checkered history in the blogosphere. All major content producers and companies relying on this specific Ping stream are considerably wary of this move.

Weblogs.com was widely perceived to be a service that has stagnated and a business that has declined. It is believed to have attempted to monetize what should otherwise be a public service. Users who got frustrated with the situation have chosen to abandon their existing Ping community and opted to produce their own feeds. There is a need to get competing services to work together so that no one gets to successfully exploit the situation.

There are those that believe that http://Weblogs.com under Verisign may not be the solution to the existing problem in the Ping community but views it as a start of better things to come. However, there should be an entity having the resources and the ability to command respect among the tech companies being served that would run it. The cooperation of those that have extensive experience with it can only work to benefit the community as a whole.

The bleak outlook of Ping persisting at this time can be attributed to the fact that it is impossible to leave doors open on the web and not have it abused. The traffic gained by blog searches can all expect the same spam problems being experienced by other areas of the web. The problem will only worsen unless some barriers are put into place. It is also very difficult to come up with an algorithmic way to stop Ping spam. Clearly, the problem is not only about one entity purchasing a particular service.

Major search players such as Google and Yahoo! are expected to move to a combination of rapid crawling, trusted Pings and open Pings as a back up. Since they are able to get news content very fast, they can concentrate on spidering and hammering their trusted sites. They know the major blogs that really matter and be able to discover links from blogs as quickly as possible.

Another way is to have people enroll to come up with trusted Pings. Proper identification through signing up can be used to determine whose Pings are to be taken in and penalize those who abuse it. A redistribution of trusted Ping feeds by major players would be ideal but is almost next to impossible since they don’t share web crawling data. Major blog services will most probably continue to be trusted while others might take Pings for third party servers.

Some aver that the real surprise is seeing how open pinging has managed to survive this long. There are ways to be done to tackle spam such as through the machine learning algorithm and the like. It would probably be best to open the Pings up to the community and let them fix it.

Technorati, Bloglines and Feedster are all closed systems and Pings sent to them are only available to their service. Some are hoping to see an open system of notification and proposes Feedmaster to achieve it. It hopes to allow a wide variety of new services to be able to focus on getting into the stream of updates. At present, the various players are still actively participating but whether or not there is indeed a future for Ping would depend on how they act individually as competitors and as common participants in one community.

About The Author:
http://www.theinternetone.net

Death Of The Internet: The Duplicate Content Glut

Posted by Virginia Bola

An often repeated mantra of the Internet is that “Content is king.” Whether your goal is to lure the search spiders, achieve an enviable page rank for your site, or simply to attract visitors to purchase your offerings or click on your Adsense listings, the key is to offer valuable information. Web surfers are hungry for help with their problems, seek to find a new perspective on their lives, or simply crave the enjoyment of reading about their area of passionate interest.

The thousands of websites developed within the past ten years, consisting primarily of links to other sites and very little copy, have fallen by the wayside. The FFA sites are generally disregarded, their thousands of daily postings relegated to spam filters and junk mail folders. The traffic exchanges, under pressure, are moving away from cash payments for referrals to what they always were: free but untargeted traffic generators. The payment processors are cracking down on systems that are little more than electronic pyramid schemes and dropping MLM programs like hot potatoes.

So what will be left? The corporate, government, and news agency sites continue to provide information and services. Online gambling proliferates internationally as does all kinds of entertainment: games, music, videos, television show insider information. Blogs, ranging from outstanding to appalling, have mushroomed into the millions and hobbyists, collectors, sports fans and various enthusiasts maintain websites catering to their niche audiences.

And then there are the “new” content sites - millions of web pages with recycled content from software generators existing only to spew out “content” that can be claimed as a Web Master’s own creation.

Ever watchful, the search engines detected the duplicate content choking their spiders and started to ban such listings. Ever alert, the software designers figures out how to tweak each article so that it was not 100% identical with the thousands of copies of the same article residing on other web pages.

What have we created? Billions of pages that contain no significant information, no new perspective, no original thought, no innovative ideas, and offer absolutely no redeeming social value. A majority of the free (and even the expensive) repetitive content material is poorly written, more concerned with keyword stuffing than making any kind of salient point. The sole purpose of the content is to make money through ad clicks or affiliate links.

Those who know how to write, and want to share their ideas in this fantastically rich environment, are lost in the mulch piles of the wanna-be marketing gurus. Where once a search for particular information turned up a page or two of relevant, worthwhile resources, it may now take a determined surfer hours to find the needed information, ploughing through endless pages of nonsensical articles related only to the search through manipulative keywords strewn throughout otherwise irrelevant material.

The Internet is a boon for all of us. No longer do we have to pore through encyclopedias or run down to the library to seek out wanted information. A five second search can give us that name on the tip of our tongue or the date of some event that has been eluding us. We can shop online, review menus before we commit to going out, find forms for every purpose, and obtain legal and health information that saves us the money and time required to consult a professional. We can get our questions answered, our problems addressed, and our loneliness assuaged in forums, chat rooms, and message boards.

None of want to see the Net regulated. It still has a frontier spirit about it: no fences, no rules, no red tape, no social hierarchy. We can become whatever we want in its virtual anonymity. We can grow and learn and develop ourselves in ways that never existed before the advent of the personal computer. We can reach across the world as quickly as across the room, touching lives and interacting with others as never before possible.

All that being said, doesn’t such freedom also carry basic responsibilities? To embrace the positives and avoid a threatened overdoes of uselessness, we need to be what the Existentialists call “authentic.” We can be whoever and whatever we please, as long as we are ourselves. Such a powerful force for the growth of humanity demands that we approach it honestly and respectfully.

On an even playing field, unencumbered with cultural, social, or religious restrictions, we can communicate with each other at an hitherto impossible individual and intimate level. To continue to develop these incredibly exciting opportunities, we need to be wary of the scam sharks that circle our every click.

Scams are not just the phishing sites, the strident letters from African widows, or the non-existent lottery winnings, they are also the shysters and cheaters who pass off the creations of others as their own and go into a feeding frenzy whenever a new piece of software appears that promises, for a substantial fee, to develop thousands of pages overnight that will generate income without effort and create experts out of neophytes.

The search engine monitors are very good at their job. We can only hope that they can stay one step ahead of the glut now gushing forth. If not, we may eventually crush the electronic goose, and its golden eggs will become only a fading memory of what might have been.

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of two interactive workbooks: The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual and Diet With An Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook, she also issues a monthly ezine, The Worker’s Edge, and various mini-courses on weight control, she can be reached at her Social Psych Blog drvirginiabola.blogspot.com as well as at her weight control information site www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html

Tag and Ping - Social Bookmarking Secrets

Posted by Mikel Freije

Tag and Ping, these three words have suddenly become the mantra that every body seems to be chanting. Its almost reminiscent of the days when Blog and Ping was being sold as the sole panacea for indexing and getting traffic to your sites.

The “Tag And Ping” method that every body is talking about is nothing but taking social bookmarking and leveraging it for SEO.

While social bookmarking has been around for quite some time and was originally intended to help users categorize and store their favorite links online, SEO professionals soon saw the potential for utilizing this to get their sites to rank high.

Tag And Ping can be used to promote any type of website, whether its a website monetized with Google Adsense, your Blog, Your sales page or even a site promoting affiliate products.

You know, luckily not many people know that Social Bookmarking can be used as a link building methodology and this presents you a great opportunity, as a Tag Automator subscriber, to stay one step ahead of the competition.

The strategies explained over the next few emails will help you get an unbelievable avalanche of traffic to your sites and the Tag Automator software suite will multiply that many times more.

So stay tuned and make the most of this strategy.

So, What Is Social Bookmarking ?

Social bookmarking is utilizing a web service, where users create a public repository of bookmarks pertaining to sites that they like.

The concept of social bookmarking dates back to 1996 with the launch of itList.com, followed by services like Blink and Hotlinks and many more. But, the popularity of Social Bookmarking increased with the advent of the most popular bookmarking site till date, del.icio.us.

Social bookmarking sites organize their content using tags. Social bookmarking sites are an increasingly popular way to locate, classify, rank, and share Internet resources through the practice of tagging and inferences drawn from grouping and analysis of tags.

And What is a Tag?

A tag is basically a keyword. It is a label that you categorize a website under. For example if I was tagging this website, I would tag it under “tag and ping”, “tag”, “ping” etc.

Tagging is simply a way to find a website that I bookmark without remembering where you put it. You can just enter a tag to find websites that you have marked with certain tags.

The tags act as a way to quickly find your bookmarks without remembering where you put them. This is why the bookmark sites allow you to assign more than one tag.

These bookmark sites allow you to share your personal bookmarks with the public. This is where the term “social” comes into play. When you bookmark a site other people can also find the site that you bookmarked if they enter the same tag that you classified the site under.

Not only can you find the sites that you tagged under certain keywords but so can everyone else.

These bookmarks and tags may seem like geekspeak, but from an SEO standpoint these can build you a massive amount of backlinks which seem to originate from authority sites.

Author, Mike Freije, contributes articles on Internet Marketing for www.articlemarketinghome.com . For more information on Tag and Ping, visit www.batpay.com or www.moneyblaster.biz

Keyword Meta Tags - SEO Bloggers & Search Engines Say … Ding! Pointless!

Posted by Mike Valentine

First, a quote “… implementing meta tags - more specifically the keyword meta tag - is not going to have any affect on your rankings.” - SEO Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com said recently in LED discussion list.

Two list members then (who claim to be SEO’s) quoted Jill Whalen’s above comment suggesting they believe that keyword meta tags still have an effect on ranking. Can keyword meta tags possibly still matter? Title tags still matter - critically, description tags may, sometimes matter … a little, but keyword meta tags? Uh-uh.

It’s long past time to stop wasting energy on that tag and I hope those two SEO’s who both claimed they found meta tags useful will spend their energies elsewhere in the future. It’s old news that keyword tags are worthless.

I wrote an article in 1999 or 2000 titled “Keyword Meta Tags Search Phrase Tutorial” listing the top 8 ingredients to ranking well in the search engines.

I went back today to review it and found that remarkably few things have changed. So I massaged and edited a few things, added a small type disclaimer and linked to some online tools from that page, including a “Search engine simulator tool” and an “HTML source code viewer” and a also linked to a previous article I’d written in 2002 called “SEO Keyword Voodoo: Invisible Meta Tag Mumbo Jumbo” because, as you might guess from the title, I am 100% with Jill Whalen on the futility of mucking around with keyword meta tags.

Keyword Meta tags went south in about 1998-99 or so when webmasters began keyword stuffing and the search engines stopped paying attention to them. They are not used, nor are they trusted at all by any search engines. If they are not purposely abused, they are completely misunderstood by webmasters still. Don’t waste your time fussing with them or tweaking them. They’re an old and badly abused element of HTML code that no longer does a thing for ranking.

To further prove my point, I’ve created a Rollyo search tool, available from a link in my resource box below, which allows you to search only the top 25 SEO bloggers and the Official Search Engine Blogs for the search phrase “keyword meta tags.”

At the time of this writing, only 9 results came back on that search. Nine. Keyword meta tags are no longer being discussed by anyone, let alone being used in SEO. After visiting each of the nine search results from that searchroll, I discovered that most of those results are either derisive comments about “keyword meta tags” from the SEO blogger or are derisive comments left by visitors about the folly of meta tag massaging!

My favorite blog post from among the results of that SearchRoll are from Aaron Wall of SEObook when he said,

“… an old client wants me to rewrite their meta tags. A total waste of time, but if it makes them happy, oh well … Meta tags? … hehehe”

Convinced yet that keyword meta tags are pointless? SEO bloggers say … Ding! “hehehe!”

Copyright © September 20, 2006 by Mike Banks Valentine

Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house content managers http://seoptimism.com/SEO_Staff_Training.htm The SearchRoll on SEO bloggers and Search Engine Blogs mentioned in this article can be found at http://WebSite101.com/metatags.html and at http://website101.com/Search_Engine_Positioning/keyword-voodoo.html

Keywords - A Guide To Discover A Profitable Web Site Within You

Posted by Vishy Dadsetan

These series of articles address 33 ways you can use these keywords to the best of your advantage.

The use of keywords are ordered to begin with you and your interests, then your Web site html source codes and tags, then creating highly optimized Web page and targeted content for higher search engine ranking and ends with marketing of Web pages based on your keywords and phrases.

The first use of keywords that I have rarely seen done is to correlate your passions and expertise with marketable products, services and niche Web sites.

Let’s begin there and in the future article address the other 32 uses of keywords and phrases.

Single Most Important Web site Ingredient

What is the single most important ingredient of a successful Web site? Is it Web Design? Web content? Products and prices?

You cannot find the answer in any of those.

The answer is you. You bring life, vibrancy and success to your Web site and not the other way around. Show me any successful Web site and I will show you dozens of failures just like it with better design, more content and cheaper products.

What makes one Web site successful and an identical one a failure? It is the owner, her creativity, hard work, diligence and passion.

That is why the single most important contribution of keywords is to help you explore your experiences and discover your marketable niche.

When we hear that doctors and lawyers are making a ton of money, we don’t pretend to be one, do we? Why not? Besides the legal issues, everyone knows it takes 6-10 years of intense study after high school and to become a doctor or a lawyer and don’t forget the cost and competition.

Only after all this enormous expenditure of resources, these individuals will be able to help anyone with their health or legal matters. Sometimes even years of training is not enough if the fire of healing is not burning in a doctor’s heart or thirst for justice in not in a lawyer’s mind. I have to admit that today’s society has changed drastically from Dr. Marcus Welby to Nip/Tuck. As a consumer which type of doctor do you prefer?

Keep your answer in mind when you read the next segment.

When it comes to the Internet, as soon as a catchy advertising is shown or a persuasive email is received with couple of snap shots of huge income earned, many jump aboard. They start a Web site and begin the attempt of selling these “wonderful” products or services they really know nothing about.

Their Web sites reflect this lack of knowledge and passion. Consumers deserve our best if we want them as our clients. And with the tremendous exposure they have to thousands of Web sites they are highly educated in what they want. But they are also overwhelmed and they are looking for something that stands out.

We as Web site owners need to understand the same challenges that a brick and mortar business faces and a large part of that is understanding consumers and really taking care of them. If we don’t, we are left with the question of what went wrong? Where are the fortunes promised?

Nothing went wrong and the fortunes are there. The harsh reality is that in most cases we chose the products and services to sell without a single thought to our qualification to sell them or our passion to sustain our efforts to make a Web site a success.

Use Keywords To Qualify Yourself And Serve Your Customers

Let’s go back to the role of Keywords in this process.

I believe you should begin by qualifying yourself, discover your expertise and uncover your marketable experiences. The process takes a little time but it is fairly simple and it will serve you as the unique corner stone of your success, which no one else can imitate. This is about finding your path, your keyword and your niche.

To begin, write down your educational experience, your hobbies and most important what you are passionate about.

Then, write down what you have done in the last ten years.

Can you condense what you have done in each of the last ten years in one line? This is not to diminish the value of each year but it is to crystallize the lessons learned.

One line for each year for a total of ten lines. Then take the first line and write down what you had done each month, one line per month for a total of twelve months. Don’t worry if you don’t remember every little detail. You want to keep it general.

Remember that you are not writing a resume and you are not trying to convince anyone that what you had done is valuable. You as a spiritual being, have an intrinsic value beyond your activities and relationships. This is a process of self-exploration to look at the past and find seeds of success that lay there dormant.

Once the list is done, expand each line to include details of the experience. You will soon find out you have expertise in so many areas you did not even think about. Most people tend to neglect their expertise in an area simply because they have done it so long that it is second nature to them and they do not put value on it.

To help you get started let me give you an example from my own list a few years ago.

Short Version - November 2003 - Replaced the old lawn.

Expanded Version - I live on about an acre of land and this process, replacing the old lawn, took about a month and I hired five people to do the job. My main function was research, since by nature, I needed to know how things worked and I wanted to make sure that I received high quality workmanship.

Over the course of the month, I spent over 40 hours in hands-on training. Many people don’t know that a regular college course on a quarterly system is ten weeks and three hours per week for a total of 30 hours and it is not hands-on. Remember that anytime you complete a project that requires more than 40 hours to complete, it is equivalent to taking a college course.

For me, definition of a project is something that you plan, research, act upon and complete.

By the time we were done, I had both more knowledge and practical experience than most people about soil condition, types of lawn, self repairing lawn, over-seeding lawns, the proper irrigation distance, correct drop angle for drainage, trenching equipment, lawn lighting and a dozen other things.

Now that I had my “one liners”, let’s look at the words I used to describe the action. In this case the most common word was “lawn.” So I check the demand for that keyword and this is what I found.

The marketable demand for many of these items is huge. For example, just the keyword lawn has the following consumer keywords and related demands, 27467 lawn care, 4709 lawn ornament, 4456 lawn equipment, 3685 Christmas decoration lawn, 3455 lawn maintenance, 2488 lawn sprinkler, 2046 lawn decoration, 1583 lawn fertilizer, 1372 lawn aerator, 1000 lawn mowing, 952 lawn sprinkler system, 757 lawn irrigation, 666 lawn roller.

Now, because of my personal experience, I could provide real help and practical advice for most people with their problems in many of these areas and I have for my friends. I could write content, start a blog, point to solutions and products. In simple terms, I am now partially qualified to sell products related to the above terms. But by the same token, I still don’t know anything about lawn mowers, or lawn tractors and I am not qualified to offer advice about these.

When looking at keywords, I ask myself, am I really qualified to help anyone by giving them advise about lawn tractors or lawn mowers. If the answer is no, then I move to the next keyword or if I am passionate about it I spend the time to acquire the expertise.

No Heart - No Web site

Will I now rush to create a lawn Web site? Of course not. That is not my passion. I am not even remotely interested in the subject. I may at some point write an article about Bermuda grass and lawn fungus that has cost me more money and effort than any other thing related to lawns. I just mentioned this so that you know each experience has a tangible marketable value if you really look at it.

When you plan to spend a few hours a day on a Web site, you should do something that you are passionate about. I emphasize passion because expertise can be obtained but passion has to be there.

Above was an example of what is possible when you can really look at one experience from a marketing point of view and I hope it can help you crystallize the past and begin harvesting the fruits that it has brought you.

When I look at my list, writing in all its variations is a huge part of my activities. Every month I spend money on books to read, books on how to write, books on grammar, dictation, origin of words. Writing and writing related activities occupy a third of my daily activities and of course it shows up on every list I make for every month of the year going back more years than I like to count.

Now, if you were me and had to choose between a Web site that has to do with lawns and a Web site that has to do with writing, which will you start?

Alas, I am still far from the writer I want to be so I do not even pretend to be a writer or give advice on it. Instead I use my passion for writing to create content for Web sites. I have found my niche and I hope these ideas can help you find your niche as well.

I want to leave you with a quote from Malcolm S. Forbes who once said, “The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living at doing what they most enjoy.”

To see real life examples on how others have turned their passion into profitable Internet business, check out http://www.askdomain.com/web-hosting/business-web-hosting.html

About The Author:
For additional information visit: http://www.just-search-engines.com, http://www.just-web-marketing.com, and http://www.askdomain.com.

Hijacked! What To Do When Your Website is Stolen

Posted by Sherry Holub

Recently while checking the usage statistics for our company website I saw over 2000 “referrals” coming from a particular company. I usually investigate any links with such high numbers (often, it’s as simple an article of ours that someone has placed on their website). What I was shocked to find when viewing this link, was that basically our entire website was duplicated on this site. Our copyrights were removed and replaced with this company’s, and even our logo had changed to this company’s name.

For those who have not experienced such a thing, consider yourself lucky. It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but usually, when you discover something like this, all you can think about is the hours and hard work you and your team have put into your website and the audacity of someone to come along and call it their own.

The internet, being the free and open place that it is, makes it easy for would-be thieves and not-so-savory companies to lift anything and everything from another website. It is important to take a stand when infringing material is found. Consequences of another individual or company using your written material, graphics, or even logo can damage your reputation, get you blacklisted by search engines, and more.

So how does one find out if this is happening and what can one do about it?

Stay Alert

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the way this incident was discovered was by checking for unusual traffic in our usage statistics program. This is a bit of software that most hosts provide with your website hosting package. Look for unusually high “hits” or traffic coming or going from any link. The culprit link on our statistics was found under the Total Referrers heading.

Some of the large corporations write special spider programs into their code to specifically seek out things such as: same names of images, same names of files, etc. Once these are found and flagged, they are investigated for any infringement.

Sadly, most infringements are never found, or are found completely by accident (such as typing something into a Google search or being alerted to it by someone you know). However, if you have a popular site, it is a good idea to regularly check statistics, have a spider created to protect your copy written material, or routinely do web searches containing some of your copy written material to make sure it doesn’t show up anywhere you wouldn’t want it to.

Busted

So what do you do when you find your material (text or graphics) on another website?

The first course of action is to perform your own research. Go through the website you find your material on and note which pages your content or graphics are being used on. Pay attention to any copyright statements that are on the website (for example, a website claiming your content as its own). In the case of articles note if the website mentions you/your company as the author. As you find violations, make screen captures or print outs of the offending material. Another very cool tool that you can use to help prove that you are indeed the owner of material is to try typing in your website address at the Internet Archive Way Back Machine (http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html). This website archives other websites over the years.

The next step is to find the contact information for the individual or company who operates the website. Most often, sites will have a contact page or at least an email written somewhere within the site. If you can’t find anything, check the whois (http://www.whois.net) directory for who owns the site.

Once you have this information, you will need to compose a Cease and Desist letter to the individual or company. You can find samples of such a letter on the web by searching “cease and desist letter” in any of the search engines. If you or your company has access to the services of a lawyer, you can have them write and send the letter, but it is not required.

This is usually enough to have the individual or company remove your material.

If you receive no response from a company, you should perform at least 3 attempts to contact them, including physically mailing your letter before taking additional steps. Those additional steps can include contacting the hosting company (which can also be found through the whois directory) and explaining the situation. Usually a hosting company will also contact the offending website owner, and if they fail to hear from them, will delete the files from their server.

Your final option would be to peruse full prosecution of the individual or company, in which case you would need to consult with a lawyer who is familiar with general as well as internet copyright laws.

Quick Facts About Copyright and the Web

Even if a document or image on the Web does not have a copyright notice, it is still protected by copyright laws. No copyright statement or registration is required, although having the statement can only benefit you. With websites, a copyright can appear at the bottom of each web page, or even placed into your meta tags.

U.S. Copyright law is explicit that the making of what are called “derivative works” - works based or derived from another copyrighted work - is the exclusive province of the owner of the original work.

There is no “sure-fire” way to protect your website from being stolen, but by following the tips above, you can defend yourself if it is.

Useful Websites on Internet Copyright and Other Legal Issues

http://www.copyright.com/
http://www.copyright.gov/resces.html
http://www.hwg.org/services/classes/legalissue.html
http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/copynet.htm
Sherry Holub received her degree in design from UCLA in 1995. She is now the Lead Designer and Creative Director at Southern California firm, JV Media Design. Sherry is also a member of the NAPP, the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), and Cambridge Who’s Who.

Google and eBay alliance for advertising

The two prominent Internet companies announced an advertising partnership Monday that aims to put buyers in touch with a wider variety of sellers, such as the neighborhood exterminator, math tutor or roofer.

Google Inc. will begin selling advertising on Web auction leader eBay and help buyers quickly ring an online merchant to do business.

• The arrangement announced Monday promises to introduce “clickto-call” Web site technology to a broader audience and potentially speed its adoption as a means to more quickly connect online consumers with advertisers.

• Under the arrangement, Google would provide search results whenever an eBay member typed in a search term that failed to find any matches on eBay’s vast auction site.

• Although eBay lists millions of physical, shippable goods, such as antique airplanes and used cloth diapers, the company has long struggled to sign up service providers people who sell their labor or intellect, not their physical wares.

• Nikesh Arora, head of Google’s European operations, said: “We believe the future of the whole internet space is going to hinge on great partnerships formed between like-minded companies.”

• He said Google was keen to develop different forms of communication with its customers and to find new ways to “monetise” advertising in cyberspace.

• Whenever a potential bidder seeks a product on eBay, Google will use its search expertise to come up with relevant promotional links. To make the links more lucrative, the two companies will collaborate on so-called “click-to-call” advertising, which allows shoppers to talk to vendors at the touch of a button.

• The deal involves an undisclosed element of revenue sharing. The “click-to-call” element pools the resources of eBay’s online phone service, Skype, with rival Google Talk. Low-cost internet calling is rapidly taking off. Skype says it has 100m accounts worldwide and is adding 200,000 a day.

• Alex Kazim, Skype chief executive, said: “We’ve had a long-standing relationship with Google and we’re excited about the prospects for extending it. It’s really common on net space to have companies collaborate in areas in which they overlap.”

• “We have a chance to create a whole new way for buyers and sellers to connect online and to create what we hope will be a significant revenue stream for both eBay and Google,” eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman said.

• Google is widely viewed as the most successful advertising-funded internet company. Its US rival Yahoo suffered a significant setback last month when a new advertising technology platform was delayed, sending its shares into freefall. Yahoo hoped its new system would more accurately match advertising links to customers’ searches and queries, winning back ground in its tussle with Google.

For more details on advertising visit our www.halfvalue.com and www.halfvalue.co.uk web sites.

Ineffective DMOZ

Ineffective DMOZ

Webmasters who have tried getting sites listed in the free directory DMOZ have found it be a hit and miss attempt. Attempts to expedite the process make it worse, attempts to obtain acceptance status may make it worse, and in an industry only a few years old, many years can elapse before any inclusion is experienced, if at all. If DMOZ is the directory it believes itself to be, it should behave like that directory. As virtually any webmaster would concur – the chances of getting into DMOZ even with the best site in the genre, with original content, with a site that visitors love, with strong and constant traffic, excellent page rank and much more – are patchy, chancy and can even deteriorate a site’s rank if ever included if the editor wants it that way. Good search engine optimisation companies such as ourselves (see author bio) attain good rankings for their clients with or without the open directory. However a listing in the ODP makes this process easier by far, but the arcane and arbitrary behaviour by the open directory makes a submission far from open and unnecessarily frustrating. Here’s why DMOZ has become a liability to good search results on the web.

Submission Process:

To submit to DMOZ – the webmaster will go to DMOZ.org, find the most appropriate category – fill out the fields required and submit. Sometimes there is an automated indication of the success of the submission (not of acceptance, just the submission), and sometimes there isn’t. Did the submission occur? If you attempt to submit again when the submission was accepted – just not indicated – you will harm the chance of being included in the directory. If you submit several times because you’re not getting any indication that the submission was successful – you’ll be seen as a spammer. Sites that may be already accepted in the past may now be in jeopardy – and the one you are now attempting is particularly at risk. Forum postings from DMOZ editors suggest this is completely wrong – that the process works perfectly and submission success is always emailed. We know this to be disingenuous.

Editor Attitude:

DMOZ editors think they are important. It’s true to say that webmasters do need them to perform a responsibility they’ve been entrusted with. Some editors live up to this responsibility with integrity – but most don’t. DMOZ editors will do things in their own way, in their own time, and sadly – most importantly – on their own terms. If you don’t submit a site in exactly in the right way, which is their right way – your site won’t be listed and you‘ll never know whether it’s still in the queue, moved to another editor, or just rejected. As of mid 2005 – there is no status coming out of DMOZ.

DMOZ Prima Donna’s:

Similar to above – Most DMOZ editors think they are a cut above the rest of us. They believe they hold the key to life or death – that for obviously meritocratic reasons they have been selected to wield power over webmasters who need to come crawling to them to plead their case. The problem starts at the top – the senior editors are geeks who’ve been operating in the upper hierarchy of DMOZ since the time that only computer geeks were really interested in the role. Like many geeks, they’re very intelligent but kinda out of touch with aspects of the real world. Aspects of great importance to an individual webmaster are not regarded with due diligence by senior editors and those they loosely oversee further down in the pecking order. Prima Donna’s? Attempt to contact them to find out any information meets with the response similar to some high official you have approached inappropriately. The Prima Donna’s of DMOZ are the only interface between the webmaster and the directory – and if the webmaster treats them wrongly they react with the attitude of some offended film star, and they’re off to their trailer in a huff. How can something so important be so ridiculously managed? It’s only a matter of time until Google, the search engine that uses the repository more than other search engines concludes the same (the others, sensibly, have their own).

Enquiries:

Once submitting a site to DMOZ – you can just check progress along the way – right? Wrong. Enquire at your peril. Prior to early 2005 DMOZ had a forum where progress could be checked – though the forum was subject to the replies of editors with all the characteristics cited in this article. It was a difficult and arcane way of getting information, and marginally better than nothing. Now there is nothing. But there are editors for each section – could you not just contact them and ask for status? No. As previously warned – enquire at your peril. It will almost definitely result in a negative effect for your site’s listing potential. The temptation to plead with one of the DMOZ Prima Donnas is strong. It may be all you have – but we can’t say the result is good – so think carefully about the wording and attitude. It may be difficult to find their email address – if so this is an indication that they don’t want to be contacted. It’s a closed organisation and it’s just so surprising that the heavy-weight search engine Google has such a high regard for a badly operated structure like DMOZ.

Be an Editor?

Since the backlog for editors seems to be so great – the obvious attitude of webmasters is to offer to become an editor. One would imagine that such an organisation would welcome such free assistance. However, if you have submitted a site and declare your situation (if you don’t they’ll do a search), they will block it in the vast majority of cases. The intention any well be to assist and add quality sites to the index – but they’ll assume you just want to get your own site in. Could you blame an ethical webmaster – there’s little other choice as long as Google rewards the directory with such kudos? Sites need to be listed with the directory – and the fact that it’s such a hit and miss pursuit is frustrating and pointless. There are not enough editors, the editors don’t approach their responsibility with due diligence and they don’t easily accept new editors into the organisation. How can it work? It can’t. Google should see the obvious truth in this.

Corruption:

One hesitates to accuse – but the forum postings of so many webmasters complaining of corruption and apparent postings of editors who themselves say they are corrupt cannot but lead one to the conclusion that there is corruption at the MOZ. There are editors that just will not accept sites into a category where the site competes with existing sites they have a financial interest in. There are editors that will do worse than not list a site. They will change the description of the site that appears by default in Google search listings such that surfers will not see the site as appropriate to their search (as of mid 2006 Google have permitted a ‘NOODP’ tag to be used to overcome this – but the knowledge of this mechanism isn’t widespread). There are supposed editors that have posted in forums that themselves say they invite payments to be made to have a site listed – payments to be made to the email address that sometimes appear along with the editor details, and others that can be found through web searches for that editor name. There are editors that will deliberately seek out other editors that have a very high queue of sites to consider and who aren’t doing much about reducing the workload and pass the site over to them –which delays the site consideration for perhaps 2 or 3 years! When it is eventually turned back to the correct editor, the editor may do the same with another over laden editor. One forum posting by a supposed editor said that he combined the above two techniques by finally adding the site in his category after giving it the run-around for some period of years, then changing the description of the site to repel visitors. This is dysfunctional to the point that most objective observers would conclude the existence of corruption. Sites which exist as a small business with one or two hard working employees have this kind of behaviour to grapple with – the webmasters are close to powerless – Google should recognise this and reduce the value they attribute to a DMOZ listing.

So What to Do?

If DMOZ is to continue to be the directory of choice for Google, the solution is obvious. A volunteer group assigned to do something so important is a bad business model. The editors need to be paid employees and the system needs to be fair, instead of arcane and very probably corrupt. We struggle to see how Google don’t appear to already recognise this – it’s blindingly obvious.

Another solution would be a win win for the two parties concerned. The two parties are webmasters and Google linked with DMOZ. Google could either junk DMOZ or buy it. If they junk it – build another directory. Then, with the new directory or with the purchased DMOZ charge webmasters for commercial site consideration just like Yahoo do. Yahoo is far too expensive especially for small businesses, but webmasters of sites representing small businesses would be happy to pay a substantial sum like $100 for listing consideration is such a heavy weight directory. Webmasters would pay with a smile – content that the previous farce of DMOZ is now gone.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that DMOZ is an important directory. But its arcane way of operation makes it a liability as far as appropriate listings are concerned. The submission process doesn’t work properly. Editors have a regal attitude towards their conferred responsibility and act like Prima Donnas in their work. There is no way of getting any status of sites, Sites may have been rejected or may still be in the queue, and any attempt to find out in order to put things right puts the listing at peril if it’s still in the queue. You can’t be an editor if you are attempting to list a site, and reports of corruption are so common that it has to be at the very least probable. When inclusion in the open directory has such an influence on making or breaking a small company, DMOZ is a travesty of justice and an inappropriate influence on ranking of sites by the search behemoth Google. We believe it is only a matter of time before Google recognises this.

By Baron Turner of TurnerDow Premier Search Engine Optimisation, a British Web Optimisation company specialising in SEO, SEM, PPC Management.

The 8 Golden Rules to Web Site Optimization

Posted by Harrold Swalve

There are several reasons why you should make web site optimization one of your main priorities and why you should make sure to take this serious. A web site which takes ages to load for example will make your visitors leave before they even had the change to see what you’ve got to offer.

That’s why I want you to take some of your valuable time and check out the 8 golden rules to web site optimization which I have listed here. I can assure you that it will proof valuable to those of you who want to give their visitors an experience they will remember in the positive sense.

1. Content is King.

You probably have heard this before but I can assure you it is true. The main reasons why you want to offer decent content is to stand out from the rest. People who visit your website will be presently surprised with the quality of your content and will spread the word for you.

2. Load Time of Your Web Pages.

Even though a lot of surfers have access to high speed internet connections you will be surprised what percentage still uses a phone connection and modem to go on line. At least for these people you should make sure your web pages load within 30 sec. using a 56k modem. Don’t forget that most people are impatient and won’t wait for your web pages to load.

3. Create Killer Titles for Every Single Web Page.

Your main web page might be the most visited page of your web site and also the one which comes up in the search results most often but you certainly don’t want to forget your other pages.

Imagine you are lucky enough that several of your other web pages show up in the search results. What good does it do if nobody clicks it because of a lousy title. Make sure to include your main keyword of that particular web page into your title.

4. Create a Description Explaining the Content of the Page.

What goes for the title also goes for the description meta tag. You should make sure that every single page has a clear description through which search engine traffic will immediately understand what the web page will be about. Keep in mind that not all search engines display the description in their listings but you still want to get this right for the ones that do.

5. Make Sure Your Internal Links Work.

Nothing is more annoying when visiting a web site then internal links which don’t work. Download links which are not functioning any more, links to internal pages where you get a 404 error message, these are things you absolutely want to prevent at all times if you want to be taken serious.

6. Refresh Your Content on Regular Bases.

Once you have created a web site which invites people to pay you a return visit because of the quality of your web site, you want to make sure that you refresh (update) your content on regular bases. I don’t mean that you should rewrite your complete web site but for a decent web site optimization you might want to include automatically refreshing content like a guestbook, forum, or an RSS feed with articles.

7. Use Only Two or Three Main Keywords Per Page.

A perfectly optimized web site will have every single page optimized for only two or three main keywords. Use these keywords between h1tags, make sure that the keywords (or similar keywords) appear on every two paragraphs of your web page, and make sure your last line of the body text will have at least one of the two keywords embedded.

8. Get as many One Way Inbound Links as Possible.

Reciprocal linking still works but isn’t as valuable for your search engine ranking anymore as it used to be, If you really want to be found in the search engines you need to take your web site optimization to the next level. You’ll have to become the one way link king.

Write articles and submit them to every single article directory you can find. Make sure to place the article on your web site first and slightly change it before submitting it to the article directories.

Submit your website to every single directory your can find. I would advise only to use the ones which accept free submissions. Keep in mind that this will be an ongoing job and that it might take several weeks before your site gets included.

Be inventive and come up with ideas which will help you to get your web site link on other high traffic web sites within your market. Not everything has to be copied; you are smart enough yourself to come up with ideas.

Well, as you probably realized by now, web site optimization truly is an ongoing job and should be taken extremely serious when you want to get listed on the first pages in the search engines and receive all that free traffic.

As one of the youngest regional managers ever in the U.K. Harrold Swalve already achieved one success story. After a couple of years in the online industry he again achieved great goals and successes. These days he is a well respected and much sought-after online business expert and has already published a online business bestseller Profit Shockdocs. To learn more about how Harrold can help you achieve your goals with your online business, visit him and start your own Profitable Home Based Business.