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Free online Seo Tools - best backlink tools list - backlink checker
Sunday, August 26, 2007
                                  

Here is a list of free SEO back-link tools (also known as backlink checkers) every webmaster should try. All the tools listed here are free, can be used online and don’t need a registration. A good back-link tool has to be fast, reliable, show all back-links to your site and retrieve as many information as possible from that back-links (tools showing only the number of backlinks can’t be considered real backlink checkers). The retrieved information should also be clear and easy to read, that’s why I included also the ”graphics” in the score of each. I gave a score from 1 to 10 to the speed, reliability, graphics of each tool and to the useful information you can get by using them . Let’s see who is first IMHO.

1) Rankalert Backlink tool

1. Speed: 10/10
2. Reliability: 8/10
3. Graphics: 9/10
4. Information: 7/10

SCORE: 34/40

some more information:

* very fast
* shows PageRank of backlinks
* backlink count (very precise)
* nice graphics
* showing detaild information about 1.000 of your backlinks

2) Build Reciprocal links - Backlink Checker Tool

1. Speed: 5/10
2. Reliability: 9/10
3. Graphics: 10/10
4. Information: 9/10

SCORE: 33/40

some more information:

* not very fast
* shows PageRank of backlinks
* shows only information about the backlinks you can get using “link:” function in Google
* awesome graphics
* shows Alexa rank for each backlink
* generates a report with number of backlinks and their PageRank (example: 100 PR0, 50 PR1, 30PR2 and so on)

3) Iwebtool Back-link checker

1. Speed: 9/10
2. Reliability: 3/10
3. Graphics: 8/10
4. Information: 7/10

SCORE: 27/40

some more information:

* fast
* shows PageRank of backlinks
* backlink count (not very precise)
* nice graphics
* showing detailed information only on some of your back-links

This tool is ranked 2° in my list ONLY when it’s working. Iwebtool is recieving a huge amount of traffic ever day and the tools are not working well most of the times you try them. Backlink count is not as precise as the one of the Rankalert tool and often it’s not working. Anyway it’s a great tool

4) Seo-consulting backlink checker

1. Speed: 2/10
2. Reliability: 6/10
3. Graphics: 6/10
4. Information: 9/10

SCORE: 23/40

some more information:

* slow
* shows PageRank of backlinks
* backlink count (not precise and tool won’t show more than 2.000 backlinks)
* generates a report with number of backlinks and their PageRank (example: 100 PR0, 50 PR1, 30PR2 and so on…awesome feature)
* Shows unique Ip’s of backlinks
* always working

5) Webuildpages backlink tool

1. Speed: 1/10
2. Reliability: 5/10
3. Graphics: 4/10
4. Information: 5/10

SCORE: 15/40

some more information:

* very slow
* no PageRank shown for found backlinks
* shows anchor text of the backlinks
* Not working perfectly (when it searches for the anchor text it will often display “TIME OUT”

More tools will be added as soon as I find tools that deserve to be listed here. Of course don’t forget to use the Yahoo Site Explorer and the Google Webmaster Tools to check your backlinks.

If you have a Backlink Checker and you want to get listed here, send me an email with the URL so that I can review it or comment this post with your URL.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 6:19 PM   1 comments
Web site Buying Tips
Friday, August 24, 2007
                                  

There has been a lot of talk recently on the merits of buying a website, particularly an old established site. It is generally accepted that because of Google’s age effect, it is ‘easier’ to simply buy into a market rather than starting from square one. I would agree with that. So if you are out there actively hunting for sites to acquire, here are a few tips that will help you avoid the pitfalls.

Domain Background
When you are looking into a site, one of the first, if not the first, thing that you should look into is the history of the domain. First of all you need to find out what age the site is, keeping in mind the general rule of thumb that the older the site is, the better it should perform. Check the status of the domain and whether it has ever been blacklisted or expired. If you find that the domain has expired in the past and was picked up after deletion, then think carefully on whether you want to proceed with the sale or not. A domain that has expired can be tricky to work with as Google seem to wind back the clock and dump it back in the sandbox. While checking the background of the domain, check whether the owner / administrator address matches the details of who is selling and if not, ask the seller a few questions.

The best place to run a background check on a top level domain is at Whois.sc. For the more obscure UK domains use Nominet.

Check Existing Search Engine Placement
Assuming that the site passes your domain background checks, you will want to find out what it ranks for. The easiest way to do this is to request access to stat programs. Look out for the number of referrals from Google, Yahoo and MSN. Ideally the site will be getting steady traffic from all 3 top search engines, with Google sending the most. If you find that most of the traffic comes from Yahoo and MSN, then it is fairly safe to assume that it is still sandboxed in Google. If there is very little traffic coming from the top 3 search engines then the site may be penalized, or it is so badly optimized that it simply isn’t ranking well.

Aside from the amount of traffic coming into the site, check out how many pages have been spidered and indexed by the main search engines. Typically you will find that an established site will have most, if not all, of it’s pages in Google. Yahoo and MSN will have most, and possibly all the pages. However, do not be surprised if Yahoo and MSN have failed to pick up as many pages as Google. Using the site:www.example.com command will show you all the pages indexed in te engines.

Use WeBuildPages’s Cool Seo Tool/ to find out exactly how the site ranks in Google, Yahoo and MSN for it’s targeted phrase.

Linkage Data

Before you buy a site you will need to find out exactly what is happening in terms of who links to the site, and who the site links out to. Use Aaron Wall’s excellent LinkHounds or WeBuildPages’s Neat-O backlink tool to find out who is linking to the site. LinkHounds uses Yahoo and MSN to find who links to your site, or to an individual page within your site. Do not rely on Google to find inbound links for a site, they only show a sample of links that they know of.

Here’s a few things to look out for with regards inbound links.

* Ask the seller if they currently have any paid backlinks.
o If so, how much do they cost?
o How long have they been up?
o Where are they linking from?
* Is the site linked from DMOZ or the Yahoo directory?
o A link from either, or both is desirable.
o
o If linked from Yahoo, was it included before the subscription model was introduced? If not, when is the due date for the next payment?
* Is it linked from other good directories?
o Has it been added to GoGuides, JoeAnt, Skaffe, BOTW?
* Does the site have any backlinks from authorities?
o Look for .edu / .gov / . ac.uk links.
* How many reciprocal links does the site have?
o Will they will stay up after the sale (if from the seller’s network)?
o Do the reciprocals come from highly relevant sites?
o Does the seller have a monthly arrangement with a link builder?
o Is the site a member of any link networks?
o If so, how would leaving the network affect ranking?

The linkage data is one of the most critical elements of a site because this is what will make you the money in the month’s ahead - without a good foundation of links a site cannot rank well for competitive terms. You will also want to carefully weigh up the site’s linkage data. What we have seen with the Google Jagger Update is many sites vanishing because of a reliance on reciprocal links. Ideally the site you wish to purchase has an established network of links to both the home page and deep pages from topic hubs, directories, blogs and authorities.

Alternative Traffic Sources
Aside from getting organic traffic from search engines, directories and links from individual sites you will need to find out if the seller uses PPC campaigns to drive traffic. You will find that many affiliates drive traffic to their sites by paying for cheap clicks using AdWords or Overture Yahoo Search Marketing. If the site does get a proportion of traffic from PPC, then there are a few questions you need to find answers to.

* What is the monthly spend on PPC?
* What is the ROI on PPC traffic?
* Did / could the site perform well without PPC traffic?
* If the site only gets paid traffic, is it worth the asking price?

While many sites are highly profitable even after paying for their traffic, you will need to ask yourself if this fits with your current financial situation. Would you be prepared to pay for your traffic? While this sounds crazy to some, there are significant benefits to this model.

* Much less reliance on organic search ranking - the site is less affected by index updates.
* You can control exactly what you want to spend and model targets around that.
* By not relying on free organic search traffic you can plan ahead with confidence.
* When your site does rank for it’s targeted phrases, the extra traffic will be a bonus.

Establishing Proof Of Revenue

If the site makes money you will want proof of how much it actually makes. This is specially important given the fact that most sellers base their asking price on how much the site makes per month. Typically a site will sell for between 10 - 12 times it’s monthly net profit. In an ideal world you could get access to the seller’s AdSense or Chitika account, but as this would give away what other niches they are playing in this practice tends to rarely occur.

The best way to ascertain the nt profit is to have the seller take screenshots of his AdSense / Chitika / affiliate account. Make sure that you are supplied with the channel stats for at least the last few months. If you are involved in a large sale, then you may be asked to sign an NDA in order to view more sensitive data pertaining to the website.

Why Is The Site For Sale?
Ask the seller exactly why the site is for sale and make sure you get a clear and unequivocal answer. If there is any hint of something being hidden then take a step back and keep asking questions until you are either satisfied with the truth or are no longer interested. Make sure you find out exactly why the site is for sale so that you don’t get caught up in an existing argument, such as a legal issue regarding content copyright. It also helps to search for posts by the sellers user name on forums such as Digital Point, SitePoint, WebmasterWorld or SearchEngineWatch.

Payment
Once you have been satisfied that the site is legitimate then you need to agree on payment terms. Many sellers will be happy to take PayPal on smaller sales, but larger transactions are probably best dealt through a third party escrow service. The usual timeline for the transaction itself looks something like this, but of course is subject to flexibility depending on your circumstances.

1. Price agreed.
2. Seller tranfers the domain.
3. Buyer sends payment.
4. Seller receives payment.
5. Seller emails buyer a zipped archive of files, or;
6. Sets up the database on your server.
7. New owner updates the nameservers.

After The Sale

It is very easy to just buy a site, transfer it to your server and let it sit for a while without doing anything to it. Just do not forget to change your affiliate id or AdSense publisher id, otherwise you could have paid for the site but the ex-owner is still making the money from it!

It is debatable whether you should update your whois information because some say that changing the whois may possibly result in the site being sandboxed. In the past I have had no problem changing the whois but I have always been careful about changing the site’s content, as should you. Do not think that you can buy an established site on baby food, then whack up a lot of AdSense optimized articles on debt consolidation and credit problems without running the gauntlet.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 6:22 PM   0 comments
35 Tips for Online Success
Saturday, August 18, 2007
                                  

1. Don't overload your site with flashing lights and slow loading graphics. Keep it simple and to the point.

2. Put a little of yourself into your site and make it unique.

3. Have your contact information listed on every page.

4. Make every page of your site consistent. You want your site to be easy to understand and navigate.

5. Provide a lot of useful content and resources. Don't just make your site one big ad.

6. Make yourself available to answer questions and to help your visitors when needed. 7. Answer all email inquiries in a timely and courteous manner.

8. Make it very easy for people to order your products. The easier to order, the more orders you'll get. http://www.paypal.com http://www.clickbank.com

9. Publish an ezine. This will enable you to keep in contact with your readers and form a a very important relationship.


* http://www.myownezine.com/tutorial/index.shtml

* http://www.ezine-z.com

* http://www.ezineuniversity.com


10. Use an autoresponder for follow-ups.


* http://www.getresponse.com/?34218

* http://www.sendfree.com

* http://www.aweber.com


11. Write and submit articles for publication in other ezines.


* http://www.MakingProfit.com

* http://www.vectorcentral.com/articles-form.html

* mailto:ArticleReview-subscribe@topica.com

* mailto:aabusiness-subscribe@egroups.com

* mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com


12. Participate in ad swaps with other publishers.


* http://www.freezineweb.com/ad-swaps1.html

* http://www.yoursalesoffice.com/Ezine_Joint_Ventures.html


13. Set up a links page and exchange links with other websites.


* http://www.reciprocallink.com

* http://folksites.com/linkconnector/reciprocal.html


14. Build your reputation and yourself as a foundationfor your online success.

15. Follow-up on all sales and inquiries.

16. Develop contacts and relationships with other publishers and netpreneurs.

17. Learn how to write your own ebook to sell or give away.

18. Join discussion lists and message boards and network, network, and network. Enjoy some new friendships along the way.


* mailto:ideasbypost-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

* mailto:hbj_chat-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

* mailto:digital-women-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

* http://theebookcatalog.com/forum


19. Find and join some good affiliate programs to help you learn marketing and selling and to add to your income.


* http://www.associateprograms.com

* http://www.affiliatebroadcast.com


20. Do not spam! If you are unsure if something is spam, find out before you proceed.

21. Purchase your own domain name.

22. List your ezine in several popular directories.


* http://www.ezinelocater.com

* http://www.atozines.com

* http://www.bluechiptraffic.com/ezines/

* http://www.worldmegastore.com/newsletters.php


23. Be true to yourself and your customers. This will establish trust which is essential to your success.

24. Include some original material in your ezine. If you are not yet writing articles, write an editorial for each issue. Let your readers get to know you.

25. Do not insult other people. ALWAYS treat others with respect.

26. Subscribe to several popular ezines. Read and learn from them. The good ezines are loaded with information and resources.


* http://www.bizybodies.com

* http://www.forwardproductions.com

* http://rimdigest.com


27. Participate in joint ventures with ebook authors, ezine publishers, etc. This is a good way of making more money and providing resources for your subscribers. Always review the product before you promote it.

28. Never stop learning!! There is an endless amount of information to learn when running an online business. Do not ever think that you know all you need to know.

29. Be open to new ideas and be willing to take risks.

30. Learn from others who have been there already. Most of the publishers and netpreneurs are willing and happy to help Newbies.

31. When publishing an ezine, stuff it with useful content and resources. Give your readers what they crave - information! Don't throw 30 ads together and call it an ezine!

32. Thoroughly check out all opportunities and offers before joining or buying. There are a lot of scammers out there.

33. When writing articles, write as if you are teaching. Don't turn the article into a sales letter for one of your products.

34. Back up all your information and work, so you do not lose it. This is very important!

35. Do not think you have to read, buy or use every product, ebook or program out there.

36. Choose a business that will bring out your passion and commitment. Running an online business can be a very rewarding and fulfilling experience.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:50 AM   2 comments
How To Make Google Think You Have An Authority Site
                                  

Google is definitely favouring authority sites over smaller niche sites. You only have to do a couple searches to see that the same sites are dominating the SERPs. These sites are authority sites, or sites that Google deems to be industry leaders. For example, if you search for anything sports-related, you’re bound to see ESPN a lot. If you search for celebrity gossip and news, you’ll keep seeing Perez Hilton and TMZ. If you search about blogging, you’ll see Darren Rowse’s picture often.

So, how can you get Google to think you have an authority site? How can you make Google think you have the next Internet Movie Database or Next Day Pets? Even you have a little site with a couple backlinks and a trickle of visitors, you can follow these tips to make your site look like an authority site to Google.

On-Page SEO

Have you heard of latent semantic indexing, or LSI? If you haven’t, listen closely because LSI is the biggest SEO secret since meta tag spamming. Why is LSI such a huge development? LSI is important because it changes how you should write your content. Because of LSI, conventional SEO writing and keyword density are on their way to graveyard. Yes, those SEO ghostwriters that you’re paying $5 for 500 words may hurt your site more than help it.

What is LSI and does it really exist? Here is a quote from Aaron Wall, one of the well-known experts in the search industry:

Latent semantic indexing allows a search engine to determine what a page is about outside of specifically matching search query text.

By placing additional weight on related words in content, or words in similar positions in other related documents, LSI has a net effect of lowering the value of pages which only match the specific term and do not back it up with related terms.

What does this development mean for your website? Basically, if your content is filled with expert verbiage and related terms including relevant synonyms, Google will think you have quality content. You’ll rank for more long-tail phrases. Also, as an added benefit, your content will be more readable and less boring.

You can use the Adwords tool to see what Google considers related terms for your target keyword phrases. To use this tool, type in the search terms you want to rank for, write down all the synonyms and related terms, and insert them in your content. Writing with LSI in mind will help your gain trust with Google.

And as search engines continue to improve their algorithms, LSI will make an even bigger impact in the SEO landscape.


Off-Page SEO

LSI also affects link building, specifically anchor text. Just like you need to add related terms to your content, you also need to add related terms to your anchor text. John Scott, in his excellent link building article, writes:

One of the easiest filters for a search engine to put in place is one which detects and devalues links with identical anchor texts.

Therefore, vary your anchor text. If you’re targeted term is online dating, use other phrases like

online dating profile
online dating site
guide to online dating
best online dating
meet people online

Even throw in a couple anchor text without the targeted term. For example, link with

personal ads
online personals
singles
romance
boyfriend
girlfriend

By varying your anchor text, your backlinks will look more natural to Google. And we all know Google loves natural links and hates artificial links.

If you think about it, most authority sites’ anchor text are not keyword targeted. Instead, the majority of their backlinks come naturally from people who link with whatever anchor text they choose.

While we’re talking about backlinks, it’s a good idea to vary the type of websites you get backlinks from. Get links from blogs, forums, static sites, wikis, web directories, bookmarking sites, social voting sites, article directories, press release sites, low PageRank sites, high PageRank sites, etc Also, get sidewide links and single page links. Again this looks more natural to Google, which further makes you look like an authority.

The Key To All This Is…

… remarkable content. Content that will snag bookmarks. Content that will attract links. Content that will invite discussion at the water cooler.

Many of us need to take some of our pay per click and paid links budget and use it to hire an excellent ghostwriter or two. The ghostwriter can write something remarkable - 5 part blogging series, short report, white paper, or manifesto. Then, write about it on your site and make it go viral by submitting it to social networking sites, emailing relevant bloggers, and issuing press releases. Well written and well marketed linkbait goes a long way to getting a bunch of natural links. Also, you will begin to have the kind of branding and exposure authority sites have.

With the advent of LSI, the growing popularity of social voting/bookmarking, and the growing number of new websites, remarkable content has become more important. LSI rewards good content with higher rankings. Social sites cause great content to go viral quickly. And remarkable content helps you stand out from the huge crowd of websites in your niche. As the internet marketing saying goes, “Content is king.” Well, it’s also becoming queen, jack, and ace.

By focusing on producing excellent content, not only will your site look like an authority site, it will become one.

So, if you’re the expert in your niche, outsource your SEO/marketing and spend more time producing quality content. If you’re not the expert, hire an expert or two to write for your site and market their content like crazy.

Community - The Authority Site’s Biggest Asset


While you’re producing great content, start planning to make a great community. You’ll need great content first, because that will attract internet users to participate in your site. Blog comments, trackbacks, forums, ratings, polls, wikis, and reviews make your site more sticky, active, and attractive. Anything user generated will make your site look good to Google. Your site will be updated more often which will results in better spidering, indexing, and rankings. And your branding will go through the roof as more people join your community.

Once you build a thriving community, you will truly have an authority site. Your site will be hard to compete against. And if you ever want to sell, your site will be worth a lot of money.

So, there you have it. A quick and dirty guide to authority site nirvana. Will it take some work? Definitely. But remember you’re not building a small town. You’re building Rome. And you know what they say about Rome, “It wasn’t built in a day.”

Be patient. Work hard. Work smart. And you’ll reap the rewards

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:39 AM   0 comments
Blogging Exercise: Find Good Blogs To Comment On
                                  

Let’s try an exercise.

1. Pretend you have a gardening blog.
2. Find 5 blogs within the gardening niche. Try to find blogs worth commenting on.
3. Rank the blogs. Which blog is the best to comment on? Which is the worst?
4. Publish a quality blog post about your experience. Write about how you found the 5 blogs and also give reasons for your rankings.
5. Leave a comment with a link to your blog post.

Why the gardening niche? I want to challenge myself. I know nothing about gardening. Also, I want to increase my creativity. One of the best ways to do that is to get out of my comfort zone.

It will be interesting to compare how we find and rank blogs. Will we find the same blogs? If we do, will we rank them the same way?

This exercise will take some time, so I’ll reward everyone who participates with 2 free links. One link to your homepage and another link to your blog post. I’ll even let you choose the anchor text of the homepage link.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:36 AM   0 comments
5 More Principles For Picking Blogs To Comment On
                                  

Do follow - If you’re leaving comments, you might as well get some link juice. Unless you want to brand your name, it’s a good idea to use proper keywords as your anchor text. Because the comments are do follow, your anchor text will be read by Google. Here are two places to find do follow blogs: Do Follow Blogs Directory and 160 Do Follow Blogs. Also, you can do a search on do follow blogs.

Blogger links out
- Scan through some blog posts and see how often the blogger links out. A blogger that links out a lot understands that blogging is not an insular activity but a conversation. This blogger will more likely read his comments and visit his commenters’ sites.

Some bloggers (like Mr. Gary Lee and John Chow) link out to their top commenters.

Right now, I have a free link offer where I’ll link out to you if you answer a forum question on your blog. It’s an easy thing to do. Plus, it helps you write useful content.

Traffic - Obviously, the more traffic, the better. Here are some ways to judge traffic. Look at RSS subscribers. Check out the number of blog comments. Compare blogs’ traffic with Alexa.

The best way is to determine traffic volume is by testing. Get a free traffic stats program like Google Analytics. Then, leave comments on different blogs and see which one drives the most traffic.

Number of comments - I know I just talked about blog comments, but you may not want to comment on a blog that receives 25+ comments per post. It’s hard to get your comment noticed if there are 25 other comments. If you do comment on these blogs, try to be one of the first to comment. The early comments get more traffic than later comments.

Consistent updates - It’s better to leave comments on blogs that post regularly. Each blog post is an opportunity to leave an insightful comment and get noticed. If a blogger posts once a week, you only have 4 chances a month to get noticed. Find bloggers that post multiple times a week.

Recap

From my previous post and this post, here are my 10 principles for picking blogs to comment on.

* Same niche
* Quality of content
* Same principles
* Enjoyment
* Fits your personality
* Do follow
* Blogger links out
* Traffic
* Number of comments
* Consistent updates

What principles do you use to choose which blogs to comment on? You can add to my list or talk about one of my principles.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:34 AM   0 comments
Measure Your Blogging Productivity With Blog Points
                                  

Measurement is one of the most important business principles. A well-known business saying goes something like this: If you can’t measure it, then you can’t manage or improve it. And much of business is managing and improving.

What if you’re a blogger? How can you measure blogging?

I found this interesting system of measuring blogging productivity. It’s called The Passionate Blogger - Blog Points System.

Basically, you set a goal to reach a certain number of points each day or week. Then, you strive to earn points in these following ways.

* write a long blog post — 10 points
* write a short blog post — 5 points
* comment on a site I’ve commented on before — 2 points
* comment on a site I’ve never commented on before — 5 points
* respond to comments on my blog — 1 point
* install a new feature/plug-in, etc. — 10 points
* email another blogger with a link to a relevant post — 2 points
* IM conversation with a blogger in my niche — 3 points
* answer a reader’s question via email — 2 points
* submit post to a blog carnival — 5 points
* partner with another blogger — 10 points
* create promotional things for your visitors to use — 5 points
* create a plan for a blueprint or series of articles — 20 points
* submit a post to Digg and/or StumbleUpon — 1 point
* set up a profile on a social networking site — 10 points
* submit your site to a directory/search engine — 2 points

This blog points system is also in Excel spreadsheet (Excel file). Since it’s in this format, you can easily modify the points per activity and add or delete blog activities.

How do you measure your blogging productivity?

Source: Passionate Blogger - Blog Points System

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:32 AM   0 comments
How To Create A Monopoly Online
                                  

Find a low-competition market.
Don’t start a blog about blogging and except to create a monopoly. The competition is too high, both in quantity and quality. Many people are blogging about blogging. Two of the blogs, Problogger and Copyblogger, have over 20,000 RSS subscribers.

Research markets that you’re interested in and find one that’s untapped and underdeveloped. If you have a hard time finding one, try narrowing the market. For example, instead of creating a blog about making money through blogs, create one about affiliate marketing through blogs.

Here’s another example. If you have a passion for personal finance, don’t build a site about personal finance. Instead, build a personal finance site targeting a more specific market like college students, moms, or young professionals.

Pick a profitable market.
You want to make money, right? :) Most industries should have statistics about their market. Find out if the market has grown over the last couple of years. Find out how much money is spent in the market.

Create a lot of bookmark-worthy content before you launch your site.
The reason for this is that you want to spend much of your time marketing your site instead of creating content. Create content that people will want to link to and bookmark.

Launch big.
Send out press releases. Email bloggers. Visit forums. Contact webmasters with related sites. Submit your best stuff to social media sites. Interview the major players in your industry. Your goal is to launch so big that possible competitors will be intimidated and not want to compete with you. You want to create the perception that your site is an authority and reference point in your niche.

If you did your market research well, you should get a lot of links and traffic because you’re targeting an untapped market.

Keep learning about your market as it matures and grows.
Build and strengthen relationships with the important people in your niche. If you have a blog, offer to blog about their companies for free. In return, you should be able to get insider news from them. This allows to break important news before other webmasters, further establishing your site as an authority. Also, keep up with the latest trends and developments of your market.

Continue publishing quality content.
Take what you’ve learned and use it to publish more quality content.

Don’t tell other online business people about your site.
Oftentimes the biggest advantage is the knowledge of an profitable, low-competition niche. I know of wealthy internet marketers that will not give away their niches. Learn more by reading Aaron Wall’s short post, The Importance of Hiding Success on a Competitive Network.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:30 AM   0 comments
5 cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes
                                  

I’ve had some time to play with Yahoo!’s new RSS mixing service, Pipes, and I’m impressed with the possibilities. Unfortunately, there’s still a hefty number of bugs, and some features are sorely lacking (experienced coders will probably be most annoyed by being forced at working in a visual environment and not being able to look at the actual code). Still, even in its current state Pipes is offering a myriad of interesting possibilities. I will, of course, leave out the simple stuff which you can do with any RSS mixer, and focus on remixing that can only be done with Pipes. Without further ado, here are five cool ways to use Pipes.


1. Playlist images


What is it and how it’s done? This pipe takes a user input - a Last.FM username - then grabs the last 10 played tracks for that user, and replaces this input with 5 Flickr images for each feed item, hopefully related to the musician in the playlist.



How useful is it? It’s pretty cool. You don’t have to do much, just use Last.FM as you would regularly do, and this pipe will show you related images. It would be even better if I could do the same thing for videos or album covers, however I don’t think it can be done at this point (what’s lacking is the ability to analyse feed content, and pass this analysis to two different pipes). If anyone has an idea how to do this, please let me know.


Problems? See the connection that leads nowhere in the left side of the workspace? It’s a bug. It doesn’t do any damage, it’s just a visual glitch. Also, I chose a name of an actual Last.FM user as default simply because this user’s last tracks feed returns some results, which often isn’t the case. I hope he/she doesn’t mind.


Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ/

RSS: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ONlam5K62xGFsczFr8cPhQ/run?_render=rss


2. Related stories



What is it and how it’s done? This is not my idea nor my pipe, but it’s more advanced than anything I could do so I’ve decided to include it here. The author does a Technorati search to find articles related to articles on his blog, and includes the links via some Ajax code. You can see the blog (with the related stories underneath each article) here, and the code is here.


How useful is it? Similar functionality exists, for example, in Wordpress plugins, but the great thing about this approach is the fact that you can easily change the source of the related stories: it doesn’t have to be Technorati, it can be anything. In other words, it’s a really useful multi-purpose blog plugin.


Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/AHaR2Y242xGwcHpiZFUMqA/


3. News in English



What is it and how it’s done? Reddit, Netscape, and Digg are not enough for you? Aching to read what the Europeans are voting on, but you just don’t have the language skills? No worries. In this pipe, I’ve taken the top 10 items from Spanish site Meneame.net, as well as German and French versions of Wikio, and created a single feed in English.


How useful is it? Well, it’s not bad. I’ve taken a silly example, but being able to take feeds in many different languages and turn them into one feed in a language of your choice will surely be very useful for many users.


Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w/

RSS: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/2E8akQO62xGrchCW0kqv4w/run?_render=rss


4. The travel fanatic



What is it and how it’s done? Planning a trip? It takes research and time. Or maybe you can do a single pipe which will give you all the answers you need in a second? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the travel fanatic. Seemingly most complex of all the pipes here, it’s actually quite simple to make. It combines Flickr images, Yahoo Answers, and Yahoo News related to the location. (Various other feeds could be added, but I chose only these three for simplicity’s sake.) This results in a very comprehensive feed with a lot of information on the place you’re planning to visit.


How useful is it? Pretty damn useful, I would say. With a bit of tweaking this single feed replaces what would previously be an entire service.


Link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A/

RSS: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ZGq6pJm62xGxnbZme_gC8A/run?_render=rss


5. Fligg, Fleddit and Fletscape



What is it and how it’s done? Browse Digg through Flickr. The idea comes from this Pipe, which lets you browse through New York Times stories by replacing each story with a several related images from Flickr. I’ve simply replaced it with Digg, so credit for this goes to the author of the aforementioned pipe. However, I also wanted to do something different, so I chose to include both the stories and the related images, with mixed success.


*Update: For Reddit and Netscape lovers, I’ve added Flickr browsing for these sites also.


How useful is it? Not very. The description of Digg stories is analysed via the content analysis module, the result of which is used to fetch a single image from Flickr. Most of the time it’s completely unrelated, but sometimes it works. Nevertheless, it’s a fun way to read Digg stories.


Problems? Yes. I was unable to sort the feed in such a way so that the actual image from Flickr appears after the Digg story to which it’s related. It would be simple to do if Pipes supported some counter which would add a new field with a number to each feed, which could be used for sorting, however I haven’t found a way to do it. If someone has an idea, please let me know. At this point it’s not all that useful, but I’ve decided to include it because it shows the kinds of problems you can run into when you try to do some complex piping.


*Update: someone smarter than me figured it out, and posted it in the comments under the name “hapdaniel”. So, here’s the pipe that sorts the Digg and Flickr items one after the other: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/mIJDNLm92xG2nAguFG_cUw/



Link: (Digg, only Flickr images)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw/

RSS: (Digg, only Flickr images)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/OhruDKC62xGVgXkcjwtvUw/run?_render=rss


Link: (Reddit, only Flickr images)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ/

RSS: (Reddit, only Flickr images)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/DiJJptm62xGe58jaHxeTaQ/run?_render=rss


Link: (Netscape, only Flickr images)


http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw/

RSS: (Netscape, only Flickr images)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/PP2brtm62xG1dhzxE2_cUw/run?_render=rss


Link: (both Flickr images and Digg stories)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ/

RSS: (both Flickr images and Digg stories)

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/qux2krm52xGJarAmZoQMOQ/run?_render=rss

posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 6:16 AM   0 comments
Online Marketing Strategies: How to Build Your Online Business
Friday, August 17, 2007
                                  

To succeed in setting up your online business, you need focus and direction. You can't afford to get sidetracked. Use these Marketing Tips and start going forward in the right path. Hope this helps.

Marketing Strategies

1 Tell people the point or focus of your web site. Explain to them what things they can do or which goals they can accomplish while visiting your site. For example, you could say, "Read 250 Free Net Marketing Tips So You Can Increase Your Sales! Plus Check Our Wide Selection Of Online Marketing E-books!"

2 Educate yourself with new strategies to increase your sales. You could take classes, subscribe to e-zines and magazines, read books or e-books, etc. Internet business and technology move at lightning speed. You need to keep up so you don't get left behind.

3 End your slow sales periods by planning ahead. Plan to add extra bonuses, hold a sale or package your product with other products. For example, you could say, "Buy one, get one free!" Another example would be, "Buy over $20 worth of products and get 5 free bonuses!"

4 Make more commissions from the affiliate programs you join by giving your own endorsements for the products. They usually pull more sales than ads. For example, you could say, "This e-book sent chills up my spine! I highly recommend buying it!" Another example, "All I have to say is, 'Wow! It's that good!'"

5 Take advantage of popular fads. If something is popular at the current time, put up a web site about it. Just promote your main site on the fad web site. You could also send off a quick article or press release about it to get free publicity. You could also do this with popular search engine keywords and phrases.

6 Increase the perceived value of your free things or bonuses by including the retail dollar amount the freebies would normally sell for. For example, you could say, "Bonus 1# Marketing Tips Newsletter (a value of $120)." Another example, "Get 7 Bonuses With A Retail Value Of $345! That more than pays for your purchase!"

7 Create your own web ring. You will gain highly targeted traffic to your web site and others will link to your site because they'll want to join the ring. For example, if you were selling products to net marketers, you would want to start an online marketing web ring. You would then draw your target audience.

8 Record all your new promotional ideas, good or bad, into an 'ideas' journal. Sometimes you can combine ideas to create new ones to increase your sales. You never know when you, or someone you know, needs a new, profitable idea. Plus you could also sell your ideas to other business owners.

9 Buy advertising space on discussion board web sites. They are usually arranged by subject; that makes them highly targeted. For example, if you are selling gardening tools, you would want to advertise on gardening, farm, tool and lawn-related discussion boards.

10 If your online business has enough global potential, thenconvert your web site and free e-mail newsletter into different languages. This will increase your overall target market. You just won't be targeting just one language, you'll be targeting most of the major ones. Plus it wouldn't hurt to learn a few different languages for this new global economy.

Relations with your Prospects and Customers

11 Make your visitors feel comfortable at your web site. Give them your main business address. Your visitors may not trust you if you're using a P.O. Box. If you want to make them feel really comfortable, give them your business, home and cell phone number. Then they will know they can get hold of you if they need help.

12 Include a FAQ on your web site or via e-mail on an autoresponder. This will give your customers extra convenience without having to contact you. Of course there are some questions you can't answer by using Frequently Asked Questions. You will get questions that you never thought of, but you can just keep adding them to your list.

13 Allow people who do not have time to explore your site to download portions of your web site in e-book format. This will allow them time to view it offline. Just compile it like you would a normal e-book. You could also turn it into a viral marketing tool by allowing people to give it away to others for free.

14 Upsell to all your customers. You could sell add-on products, deluxe products, extra parts, related products, add-on services, etc. You could offer them add-on products before or after they reach your order page. Just make sure the upsell products are compatible with the main product you're selling.

15 Offer your customers back-end products. It is easier to sell to existing customers. If you do not have a back-end product, join an affiliate program. You could offer that product as a back-end offer. Just make sure it's the right product for your target audience.

16 Increase the perceived value of your product. You could offer an affiliate program, give away free bonuses or use famous endorsements on your ad. Another way is to offer a sample or trial of your product or service. If people like it or it works, that will increase the perceived value because it gives them 100% personal proof.

17 Create a bond with your visitors by bringing up likes or dislikes you have in common with them in your ad copy. Just make sure you do your research. For example, you could say, "I hate it when you have to wait in line for a long time at the drive-through." Another example, "I really like it when I have extra money to spend."

18 Remember your customers are always right, even if they are not. They are the lifeblood of your business. Resolve all conflicts quickly and painlessly. There are many businesses which are solely profitable from repeat business. You don't want to always have to rely on converting prospects into customers.

19 Remind your visitors to promote your web site. Use phrases like: "Refer Our Web Site To A Friend" or "Link To Our Web Site". Offer them incentives for referrals. You could give them free e-books, reports, software and other informational products. You could also offer them discounts on other products you sell.

Web site Tips

20 Make your testimonials more powerful. You can have people include pictures, handwritten signatures and normal net contact information with each testimonial. Other ideas would be to have people produce an online audio sound bite or video clip of themselves, home or cell phone numbers, proof of their credibility or authority, etc.

21 Speed up your Internet access. You can get your online business tasks done faster, which will help you stay ahead of your competition. It can speed up your research, online marketing tools, Internet utilities, software downloads, etc.

22 Tell people the point or focus of your web site. Explain to them what things they can do or which goals they can accomplish while visiting your site. For example, you could say, "Read 250 Free Net Marketing Tips So You Can Increase Your Sales! Plus Check Our Wide Selection Of Online Marketing E-books!"

23 Team up with your weaker competitors to beat your stronger ones. You can create win/win joint venture and cross-promotion deals with them. You could share marketing and advertising costs, create new products and services, share skills and strategies, trade leads, etc.

24 Design your site so it will be worth bookmarking. Your visitors will bookmark your web site if it's full of free, original content like articles, e-books, etc. You could survey your target audience to see which web sites or what type of sites they visit a lot. Then you could place those links all in one section of your web site. You could advertise it as a start page.

Advertising and Newsletters

25 Start a free e-mail newsletter to create your own opt-in list. Create a title that grabs the reader's attention. Submit it to free e-zine directories on the Internet. Advertise it on your web site. Offer a freebie or other incentive for people to subscribe. Give your readers mostly original and quality content.

26 Use permission marketing to increase your sales. You simply ask people to sign up to your e-mailing list. They'll already be interested in your messages or ads because they've visited your related web site. You could also offer them incentives for signing up like freebies, discounts, expertise, content, etc.

27 Place your ad in targeted e-zines. Ask the owner if you could place your ad in a higher position in exchange for a percentage of the ad's profits. You could also negotiate a lower ad price in exchange for you giving them affiliate commissions or an ad in your e-zine.

28 Make your classified ads stand out in a crowd. Use all capital letters in the headline, divide letters with extra spaces, add in text symbols, etc. For example, you could write, "WIN a VACATION to Las Vegas!" Another example would be, "Win A ($) Trip To Las Vegas!"

29 Use a lot of headlines and sub-headlines on your web site. This will hold people's attention and keep them at your web site longer. Sometimes people don't have time to read a whole sales letter. This'll allow you to sell to people who are skimmers. Plus it will get the reader's full attention at the same time.





Promopeddler - Online Corporate gifting Portal


Looking for presenting gifts your work mates and want to make surprise promopeddler.com is the right place to start with .

Promopeddler is the online portal for purchasing promotional products ,corporate gifts. and
promotional items.


Promopeddler is designed in a well organization so that everyone find their products easily what they search for to gift some thing.


Promopeddler is following the personalized service for every order so that every customer is important and they can feel happy and safe shopping.

promopeddler is servicing over Fortune 500 companies for offering corporate gifts or promotional items for their employees.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 10:53 AM   0 comments
Plug Ins For FireFox - Top 10 Plugins
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
                                  


1. Web Developer Toolbar
- Andy over at Oyster Web convinced me to try this toolbar years ago. And what a find it was - header responses, disable javascript and meta redirects (spam detection ahoy), CSS live on screen, view css option and more are all simple with this great little plugin. There is a version for IE but I ain’t going to link to it as I’m on an anti-Microsoft binge after excel just lost a whole pile of data yesterday!
2. User Agent Switcher - Great for testing domains that you know are cloaked - so if your SEO company has fixed your website and for some reason you have no cached versions of pages better get yourself this and check that they are not spamming your sites with links to everyone on their network!
3. Screengrab -Allows you to grab whole web pages - not just the visible section. Great during testing and for sending screen grabs to clients. Nice, elegant and simple solution.
4. Netcraft Toolbar - good for safety online - the netcraft toolbar for firefox has some nice anti-phishing security. Put it on my Dads computer as he keeps clicking on links in emails that take him god knows where. Also has nice little geotargetting window - great for ensuring quickly that .com, .net, .biz sites etc are hosted in the correct location for their geotaregtting.
5. ColorZilla - grab colors from websites in a flash. I aint a website designer - Colin says all my sites look the same. But grabbing colors quickly is useful even for rubbish web designers such as me. Works just like the color dropper thing in Fireworks and Photoshop.
6. Search Status - Page Rank. Alexa Rank and Dmoz listings checked for every page you visit. First and Last are good Alexa rank is bit of waste of time but good none the less. Displays of Rank can be numerical or in little green fairydust bar, Alexa is a little blue fairydust bar.
7. Live HTTP Headers - Great little tool for viewing HTTP headers as they come in - want to check if that redirect is a 301 or a 302, if that error page is returning a 404 header or which images/scripts you’ve left in your web code don’t exist. Just boot this little baby up and away you go.
8. IE Switcher - Some people still build pages that I cant vies in Firefox something to do with IE using a box model and Firefox now (and yeah I have no idea WTF that means either) but can be a pain. Just clicking on little icon turns Firefox into IE display mode and I can see the pages again
9. Groowe Toolbar - All your favourite search engines toolbars in one - unfortunately no Google PageRank but good none the less. MSN, Yahoo, Google all by one little drop down saving you untold screen real estate.
10. Total Validator- HTML Code validation tool. Good for checking your html is correct and valid. And also for doing reports on code quality quickly. As it highlighs all the issues in one place and you dont even need to pay for it - and is far quicker than waiting on the W3 validator.+

If anyone has any other useful little Firefox plugins let us know.



Note:


The placement of the tools are not in the particular order.

Search Engine Optimisation Scotland

Kenkai.com - SEO, Web design, Website Redesign, Scotland, UK




Edmonton SEO - Edmonton based SEO consultant optimizes your business website with an outstanding search engine optimization result in Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Also specializes in Google AdWords and website designs.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:52 PM   0 comments
How To Get Backlinks and Increase Traffic To Your Site-Blogs
                                  

Getting back links are the one of the important way to increase the page rank of the sites. Because most search engines calculating their page rank according to the no of back links and the percentage of keyword density present in the WebPages.

Initial traffic:

Getting the back links is one of the complex task in SEO. Because most of the back link providers expect the same traffic or Quality of back links returned to their websites from the receiving sites. This will be the great challenge for beginners who have just started the blogging. In that situation these webmasters should look for the alternate paths for getting back links. So it was wise to request the back links after getting a reasonable traffic. So adding the url to various directories and search engines are the foremost task to gain traffic.

Choosing Relevant& Qualified Back link Providers


Choosing the relevant& qualified back links providers, is the another important task for the getting back links. Because wrongly placed back links will not provide right results. Getting links from the sites/ blogs which has no enough page rank will not increase the page ranks. For E.g.

site A has the page rank of 0.And it gets 50 back links from 0 page ranked sites will not increase the page rank. But getting the links form page rank 4 or more site will surely increases the page rank of the sites. So getting links from high page ranked sites will provide the expected page rank.

Links from Commenting

Most of them believes that by putting their comments with their hyperlink will provide the enough page rank. But it was not Almost true, Most of the links provided through these comment section will not followed by search engine crawlers. So these links will not considered as valid back links. But by these hyperlink the visitors can navigated to the commenter's pages.But it was very few. By checking the properties of the links will provide the clear idea about whether it is crawlable or not.

Avoid links From Over Crowded links

Don't put your links where over crowded links are placed .Because the page rank was shared among the links. That results that pages will provides very small amount of page rank to sites. It just like sharing the apples with no of peoples. If no of peoples are increased, then every one gets small piece of apple. So try to get links from qualified and less links placed sites.

Avoid link exchange Programs:

The Mistake done by most of the webmasters to get back links are, getting links from exchanging programs. Most of the exchanging programs are only dedicated to exchange their links to each other. The most of the users participating in these programs are webmasters and they are not real end users. And another important point is major search engines ignore these kind of link exchange from crawling .They are constantly improving their crawling techniques to maintain their standard. So getting thousand links in overnight from these kind of link exchange programs will not give the results in longer run.

Social networking

Social networking is the one of the famous tool having today to get back links. Participating in these social networking activities will provides quality and direct links to your site. In most fo the social networking groups users can view and share their links. These will improve the page rank and drive more traffic.

Article writing

Article writing is the one of the best way to get valid back links. Article submissions will provide the direct back links to sites. Today various service providers are available to post your articles and get back links to your site. Writers can put their signatures on that articles and get back links.





Marketing Articles

Free internet marketing articles, tips, news, directory and more. Learn about Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Marketing and Email Marketing.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 6:54 PM   0 comments
Easy Introduction on Increasing Traffic to Your Blog
                                  

Increasing traffic to your blog is fundamental to your blog's success on the Internet. As you'll soon find, it isn't all that hard to increase traffic to your blog, but it does take time.
Post Frequently to Your Blog
The first and most important rule for increasing traffic to your blog is to post, post and then post some more. Posting new and unique content on a regular basis to your blog is crucial to success.
Building Inbound Links
Another critical method for getting traffic to your blog in through by establishing links to your site on other people's webpages. This servers two purposes for your blog. First, a link on someone else's site can be clicked on thus bringing a visitor to your site. Secondly, links on other sites pointing to your site factor into the equations that Google, Yahoo and MSN use to determine the order in which sites are listed in searches conducted on their site. These types of links are referred to as "inbound" links.

When you try to develop inbound links it is important to make sure that the links are relevant. For example, if your blog is about cars then it doesn't do a lot of good to have an inbound link from a website about vacation spots. Your goal is to get inbound links on sites similar to your blog or, at a minimum, sites that target the same type of people (age, gender, interest, etc.) as your blog.

To begin developing inbound links, do a search for other blogs that are relevant to your blog. If your blog is about cars then search "cars" in Blogger Search or Technorati (two of the bigger blog search engines). Browse through the results that you get and make a list of those that you think are well designed and interesting. In order to get a link on those blogs you will most likely have to give something in return and usually the easiest thing to give is a link to them. So from that list add a link on your blog for each of the blogs that you liked. Then, after doing so, email the owner of each of those site and write something along the lines of:

"Hello, my name is John and I write for Crazy Cars, a blog about cars. I've recently added a link to your site on my homepage because I feel that my readers are in a very similar demographic to that of your site. If you get a chance check my site out and if you like what you see please link back.

Thank you, John"

Remember that these blog owners don't owe you anything for you linking to them, but often if you ask nice you'll get a link back.
Submitting Your Blog to Blog Directories
Another way to build inbound links to your blog is by submitting your blog to blog and web directories. These directories contain literally thousands of websites and very rarely will someone come to your site by clicking on a link in one of the directories. However, including you blog in these directories can in many case help your ranking in search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc). Don't spend too much time doing this but if you have a little free time they are worth looking into.
Write Interesting Blog Content
Finally, and maybe the biggest key to increasing blog traffic is to write interesting and excellent content. The most powerful way to get people to your blog is to write content that your readers want to read. This will not only make people want to come back but it will also make them want to tell others about your blog. Anyone can get someone to come to their blog once but getting someone to come back again and again, that is the key to increasing your blog traffic.

So post often, build links so people can find you and then make sure to keep it interesting. They'll come...for now, work hard and be patient.





Source: http://blog-traffic.blogspot.com







Search Engine Optimisation - Search Engine Marketing

Search engine optimisation specialists in Australia. Our search engine optimisation services include website optimisation and search engine marketing through various pay per click search engine marketing services. Each page of the directory was created to do extremely well in search engines by our highly successful search engine positioning specialists with proven top ranking results.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 6:22 PM   0 comments
Content Is King
                                  

According to the Nielsen-measured, Online Publishers Assn (OPA) sponsored Internet Activity Index, Internet users are spending more time with content sites, less time with "communications" and marginally more time with search. According to OPA president Pam Horan's prepared statement, "The index indicates that, over the last four years, the primary role of the Internet has shifted from communications to content." During the period studied, search increased from 3 percent of time spent (2003) to 5 percent (2007). Social networking sites were also found to gain in the survey.
posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 7:59 AM   0 comments
Free Blogger Templates
Saturday, August 11, 2007
                                  

Check out the Blogger templates and improve the visual appearance of your blog.

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 5:10 AM   0 comments
55 Social Bookmarking Sites to Promote Your Blog Articles
                                  

If you would like a quick and easy way to submit your latest entry in your blog, social bookmarking sites are a good place to start. Many of these sites will show your site on their home page as soon as you submit it. It’s up to everyone else that uses each of these sites whether your site stays there or gets buried.

Don’t bother submitting your latest blog article if you plan on spamming. You’ll do nothing but irritate everyone and they will quickly flame you and nuke your story. They may even show up on your doorstep. :) Well…let’s hope not. Anyway, you know the drill - provide high quality content and if it’s good enough you may find yourself getting bombarded with traffic. What’s good enough? Well, perhaps check the section of each of these sites to see what is popular.

You will need to register for each of these sites before you can submit anything. And without further ado….here is a list of 55 social bookmarking sites I have compiled. If I missed any, feel free to leave a comment and let me know.


  1. 30daytags

  2. BlinkBits

  3. BlogHop

  4. BlogLot

  5. BlogMarks

  6. BlogMemes

  7. BlogPulse

  8. BmAccess


  9. browsr

  10. Fark

  11. CiteULike

  12. clipclip

  13. clipmarks

  14. Complore

  15. Connectedy

  16. Connotea

  17. de.lirio.us


  18. del.icio.us

  19. digg

  20. diigo

  21. fantacular

  22. Feedmarker

  23. Feed Me Links

  24. Furl

  25. Gibeo

  26. GoKoDo


  27. Google Notebook

  28. IceRocket

  29. Kaboodle

  30. linkaGoGo

  31. linkfilter.net

  32. linkroll

  33. Listible

  34. Lookmarks

  35. ma.gnolia


  36. Netvouz

  37. Newsvine

  38. openBM

  39. RawSugar

  40. reddit

  41. Rojo

  42. Rollyo

  43. Scuttle

  44. Shadows


  45. Simpy

  46. Sitetagger

  47. Smarking

  48. Spurl

  49. StumbleUpon

  50. taghop

  51. TailRank

  52. Ticklr

  53. unalog


  54. Yahoo My Web 2.0

  55. yoonoo

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posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 5:03 AM   0 comments
Generate Traffic in 30 ways
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
                                  

1. Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4.Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5.Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6.simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7.Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8.Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9.Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10.Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11.Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12.You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15.Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16.Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17.Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18.Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20.I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28.Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.




Search Engine Optimization, SEO Tips, SEO eBook
Search engine optimization tips, free SEO ebook with tools and resources on developing spider friendly website.

Labels:

posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 11:25 PM   0 comments
Build Links in 30 Bad Ways -Not To Be follwed
                                  

Here are a few link buiding methods that may destroy your brand or get your site banned/penalized/filtered from major search engines, or both.
Directories

1)Submit your site to 200 cheesy paid directories (averaging $15 a pop) that send zero traffic and sell offtopic run-of-site links.
Forum Spam

2) List 100 Web sites in your signature file.

3) Exclusively post only when you can add links to your sites in the post area.

4) Post nothing but "me too" posts to build your post count. Use in combination with a link-rich signature file.

5) Ask questions about who provides the best [WIDGET], where [WIDGET] is an item that you sell. From the same IP address create another forum account and answer your own question raving about how great your own site is.

6) As a new member to various forums, ask the same question at 20 different forums on the same day.

7) Post on forum threads that are years outdated exclusively to link to your semi-related website.

8)Sign up for profiles on forums you never intend on commenting on.
Blog Spam

9)Instead of signing blog comments with your real name, sign them with spammy keywords.

10)Start marketing your own site hard on your first blog comment. Add no value to the comment section. Mention nothing other than you recently posted on the same subject at _____ and everyone should read it. Carpet bomb dozens of blogs with this message.

11)Say nothing unique or relevant to the post at hand. Make them assume an automated bot hit their comments.

12)Better yet, use automated bots to hit their comments. List at least 30 links in each post. Try to see if you can hit any servers hard enough to make them crash.

13)Send pings to everyone talking about a subject. In your aggregation post, state nothing of interest. Only state that other people are talking about the topic.

14)Don't even link to any of the sites you are pinging. Send them pings from posts that do not even reference them.
Garbage Link Exchanges

15)Send out link exchange requests mentioning PageRank.

16)Send link exchange emails which look like an automated bot sent them (little or no customization, no personal names, etc.).

17)Send link exchange requests to Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Tim Converse, Google, and Yahoo!.

18)Get links from nearly-hidden sections of websites listing hundreds or thousands of off topic sites.
Spam People in Person

19)Go to webmaster conferences and rave about how rich you are, and how your affiliates make millions doing nothing.

20)Instead of asking people what their name is, ask what their URL is. As soon as you get their URL ask if they have linked to your site yet and if not, why not.
Be Persistant

21)Send a webmaster an alert to every post you make on your website.

22)Send a webmaster an email every single day asking for them to link to your website.

23)Send references to your site to the same webmaster from dozens of different email accounts (you sly dog).

24)If the above do not work to get you a free link, offer them $1 for their time. Increase your offer by a dollar each day until they give in.
Getting Links by Being a Jerk

25)Emulate the RIAA. When in doubt, file a lawsuit against a 12-year-old girl. (Failing that, obtain bad press by any means necessary.)

26)Steal content published by well known names. Strip out any attribution. Aggregate many popular channels and just wait for them to start talking about you.

27)Send thousands of fake referrals at every top ranking Web site, guaranteeing larger boobs, a 14-inch penis (is that length or girth?), or millions of dollars in free, unclaimed money.

28)Wear your URL on your t-shirt. Walk or drive your car while talking on a cell phone or reading a book. When you run into other people say "excuse you, jerk".

29)Spill coffee on people or find creative ways to insult people to coax them into linking at your site.

30)Sue other webmasters for deep linking to your site. Well, this is more "hilariously dumb" than it is a "bad linking practice".

Labels: ,

posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 10:38 PM   0 comments
Build Good Links in 71 ways
                                  

Love for Lists

1. Build a "101 list". These get Dugg all the time, and often become "authority documents". People can't resist linking to these (hint, hint).

2. Create 10 easy tips to help you [insert topic here] articles. Again, these are exceptionally easy to link to.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic (see Mr Ploppy for inspiration).

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

5. Create a list of gurus/experts. If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an "authority".)
Developing Authority & Being Easy to Link At

6. Make your content easy to understand so many people can understand and spread your message. (It's an accessibility thing.)

7. Put some effort in to minimize grammatical or spelling errors, especially if you need authoritative people like librarians to link to your site.

8. Have an easily accessible privacy policy and about section so your site seems more trustworthy. Including a picture of yourself may also help build your authority.
PPC as a Link Building Tool

9. Buy relevant traffic with a pay per click campaign. Relevant traffic will get your site more visitors and brand exposure. When people come to your site, regardless of the channel in which they found it, there is a possibility that they will link to you.
News & Syndication

10. Syndicate an article at EzineArticles, GoArticles, iSnare, etc. The great thing about good article sites is that their article pages actually rank highly and send highly qualified traffic.

11. Submit an article to industry news site. Have an SEO site? Write an article and submit to WebProNews. Have a site about BLANK? Submit to BLANKinformationalsite.com.

12. Syndicate a press release. Take the time to make it GOOD (compelling, newsworthy). Email it to some handpicked journalists and bloggers. Personalize the email message. For good measure, submit it to PRWeb, PRLeap, etc.

13. Track who picks up your articles or press releases. Offer them exclusive news or content.

14. Trade articles with other webmasters.

15. Email a few friends when you have important relevant news asking them for their feedback and/or if they would mind referencing it if they find your information useful.

16. Write about, and link to, companies with "in the news" pages. They link back to stories and blog posts which cover their developments. This is obviously easiest if you have a news section or blog. Do a Google search for [your industry + "in the news"].

17. Perform surveys and studies that make people feel important. If you can make other people feel important they will help do your marketing for you for free. Salary.com did a study on how underpaid mothers were, and they got many high quality links.
Directories, Meme Trackers & Social Bookmarking

18. This tip is an oldie but goodie: submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.

19. Submit your site to paid directories. Another oldie. Just remember that quality matters.

20. Create your own topical directory about your field of interest. Obviously link to your own site, deeplinking to important content where possible. Of course, if you make it into a truly useful resource, it will attract links on its own.

21. Tag related sites on sites like Del.icio.us. If people find the sites you tag to be interesting, emotionally engaging, or timely they may follow the trail back to your site.

22. If you create something that is of great quality make sure you ask a few friends to tag it for you. If your site gets on the front page of Digg or on the Del.icio.us popular list, hundreds more bloggers will see your site, and potentially link to it.

23. Look at meme trackers to see what ideas are spreading. If you write about popular spreading ideas with plenty of original content (and link to some of the original resources), your site may get listed as a source on the meme tracker site.
Local & Business Links

24. Join the Better Business Bureau.

25. Get a link from your local chamber of commerce.

26. Submit your link to relevant city and state governmental resources. (Easier in some countries than in others.)

27. List your site at the local library's Web site.

28. See if your manufacturers or retailers or other business partners might be willing to link to your site.

29. Develop business relationships with non-competing businesses in the same field. Leverage these relationships online and off, by recommending each other via links and distributing each other's business cards.

30. Launch an affiliate program. Most of the links you pick up will not have SEO value, but the added exposure will almost always lead to additional "normal" links.
Easy Free Links

31. Depending on your category and offer, you will find Craigslist to be a cheap or free classified service.

32. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Yahoo! Answers and provide links to relevant resources.

33. It is pretty easy to ask or answer questions on Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources.

34. If you run a fairly reputable company, create a page about it in the Wikipedia or in topic specific wikis. If it is hard to list your site directly, try to add links to other pages that link to your site.

35. It takes about 15 minutes to set up a topical Squidoo page, which you can use to look like an industry expert. Link to expert documents and popular useful tools in your fields, and also create a link back to your site.

36. Submit a story to Digg that links to an article on your site. You can also submit other content and have some of its link authority flow back to your profile page.

37. If you publish an RSS feed and your content is useful and regularly updated, some people will syndicate your RSS content (and some of those will provide links… unfortunately, some will not).

38. Most forums allow members to leave signature links or personal profile links. If you make quality contributions some people will follow these links and potentially read your site, link at your site, and/or buy your products.
Have a Big Heart for Reviews

39. Most brands are not well established online, so if your site has much authority, your review related content often ranks well.

40. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. We have seen this draw in direct customer enquiries and secondary links.

41. Create product lists on Amazon.com that review top products and also mention your background (LINK!).

42. Review related sites on Alexa to draw in related traffic streams.

43. Review products and services on shopping search engines like ePinions to help build your authority.

44. If you buy a product or service you really like and are good at leaving testimonials, many of those turn into links. Two testimonial writing tips — make them believable, and be specific where possible.
Blogs & the Blogosphere

45. Start a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post regularly and post great content. Good execution is what gets the links.

46. Link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

47. Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

48. Technorati tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Technorati tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags.

49. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.
Design as a Linking Element

50. Web 2.0-ify your site. People love to link to anything with AJAX. Even in the narrowest of niches, there is some kind of useful functionality you can build with AJAX.

51. Validate and 508 your site. This (indirect) method makes your site more trustworthy and linkable, especially from governmental sites or design-oriented communities. There are even a few authoritative directories of standards-compliant sites.

52. Order a beautiful CSS redesign. A nice design can get links from sites like CSS Vault.
Hire Help

53. Hire a publicist. Good old fashioned 'PR' (not PageRank) can still work wonders. Andy Hagans now offers a link baiting publicity service.

54. Hire a consultant. Yes, you can outsource link building. Just make sure to go with someone good. We recommend WeBuildPages, Debra Mastaler and, ahem, Andy Hagans.
Link Trading

55. Swap some links. What?! Did we really just recommend reciprocal link building? Yes, on a small scale, and with relevant partners that will send you traffic. Stay away from the link trading hubs and networks.

56. In case you didn't get the memo — when swapping links, try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages. Do not try to get links from pages that list hundreds of off topic link partners. Only seek link exchanges that you would consider pursuing even if search engines did not exist. Instead of thinking just about your topic when exchanging links, think about demographic audience sets.
Buying Sites, Renting Links & Advertisements

57. Rent some high quality links from a broker. Text Link Ads is the most reputable firm in this niche.

58. Rent some high quality links directly from Web sites. Sometimes the most powerful rented links come direct from sites not actively renting links.

59. Become a sponsor. All sorts of charities, contests, and conferences link to their sponsors. This can be a great way to gain visibility, links, and a warm feeling in your heart.

60. Sell items on eBay and offer to donate the profits to a charity. Many charities will link both to the eBay auction and to your site.

61. Many search algorithms seem biased toward older established sites. It may be faster to buy an old site with a strong link profile, and link it to your own site, than to try to start building authority links from scratch.
Use the Courts (Proceed with Caution)

62. Sue Google.

63. Get sued by a company people hate. When Aaron was sued by Traffic Power, he got hundreds or thousands of links, including links from sites like Wired and The Wall Street Journal.
Freebies & Giveaways

64. Hold a contest. Contests make great link bait. A few-hundred-dollar prize can result in thousands of dollars worth of editorial quality links. Enough said.

65. Build a tool collection. Original and useful tools (and collections of tools) get a lot of link love. What do you think ranking for mortgage calculator is worth?

66. Create and release open source site design templates for content management systems like Wordpress. Don't forget the "Designed by example.com" bit in the footer!

67. Offer free samples in exchange for feedback.

68. Release a Firefox extension. Make sure you have a download and/or support page on your site which people can link to.
Conferences & Social Interaction

69. It is easy to take pictures of important events and tell narratives about why they are important. Pictures of (drunk?) "celebrities" in your industry make great link bait.

70. Leverage new real world relationships into linking relationships. If you go to SEO related conferences, people like Tim Mayer, Matt Cutts, and Danny Sullivan are readily accessible. Similarly, in other industries, people who would normally seem inaccessible are exceptionally accessible at trade conferences. It is much easier to seem "real" in person. Once you create social relationships in person, it is easy to extend that onto the web.

71. Engaging, useful, and interesting interviews are an easy way to create original content. And they spread like wildfire.

Labels: ,

posted by Sakthi Ganesh @ 10:33 PM   1 comments