Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems

What is a Content Management System?

A Content Management System (CMS) is a third party software application which allows web site administrators to add, update or delete content, photos, and documents to their web site in “real time”. Many web sites are modified using these web-based tools as they require little to no knowledge of HTML or web scripting languages. CMS programs make it easy for a webmaster or site owner who does not know HTML or have access to a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML Editor, such as Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, to update their site.

In today’s high paced web world, a good CMS is integral to the efficient operation of a web site. Many webmasters and web site developers are building database driven, or dynamic web sites, which require a third party solution, such as a Content Management System, to update the content that lives in the database. In addition, a CMS allows the web site owner to outsource content development remotely to contract copywriters and other willing contributors. With built in access level hierarchies, webmasters can allow various users to register as authors and start submitting articles and news to be published on their site.

How do Content Management Systems Work?

Content Management Systems create a dynamic web site environment, where all the content is stored in a database or XML file. Using a web-based interface, the webmaster can select which page they want to update and then can modify the web content in a text editor, with many of the familiar formatting keys that can be found in a word processing program. Once the content has been updated, with the simple click of a button, the CMS will turn their text into HTML code and publish the content to the web site.

Problems Between Search Engines and Content Management Systems:

Historically, search engines have had difficulty indexing dynamic pages. While their ability to index and rank dynamic pages has improved dramatically, there are some basic things to avoid. One of the greatest enemies of search engines is URL strings that contain many URL parameters. URL parameters are variables that are passed to the CMS through the URL, which tell it what information to retrieve from the database. URLs with too many parameters generally make little logical sense to the average user and may also scare off search spiders. For example see:

http://www.mysite.com/mg/vbclass/search.asp?A9_MAKEVBCookie=Yes&vertical=CLTH&cat=Mens&subcat=ID&displayTarget=Subcategory

It is suggested to limit the number of URL parameters to two or three per URL to ensure that that search spiders will not have difficulty indexing pages deep within the web site.

Certain URL parameter names may automatically flag a filter on the search engine. One example is the URL parameter names that contain ‘ID’, such as ‘sessionid’, ‘sid’ or ‘userid’. Historically, search engines detect the term “ID” and assume it is associated with a session dependant variable. As a result, search engines have learned to flag these parameter names and it can cause problems with page indexing. Passing session dependant variables through the URL is a problem for search engines because the spider essentially sees a unique URL each time they visit the site because the session dependent variables change with each visit. For example, on one visit to the site, a page URL may be http://www.mysite.com/page.asp?sessionid=12345. The next time the spider visits the page, the URL may be http://www.mysite.com/page.asp?sessionid=56789. This creates a situation where a spider may think that there are multiple URLs with duplicate content, resulting in penalties which will negatively impact search rankings.

Based on the above, it is imperative to employ a CMS that does not pass session dependent data, such as session variables, through a URL string. Doing so will not only create potential usability issues for the end user, but will also result in indexing problems for the search engine spiders.

Finally, search engines gather understanding from your web site’s content by filtering through the HTML code. For this reason, it is extremely important that your CMS generate HTML code that adheres to the latest requirements of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Use the W3C Code Validator to determine if your code meets the W3C standards. Be aware that some CMS’s add in many lines of proprietary code or JavaScript at the top of the file, which can choke search spiders. This violates a cardinal rule of SEO; ‘To always have more content then code’.

Finding a Search Engine Friendly CMS that will Work for You:

Now that we have explored many of the potential problems with Content Management Systems, lets look at how to go about finding one that will be both search engine friendly and suit your specific needs. First you will need to determine what server platform you will be using. Many Content Management Systems use scripting languages and databases that are platform dependant. If you are married to a particular platform, it may limit your CMS options. Ideally, you will want to find a CMS that is platform independent, which can run on any server.

There are many search engine friendly CMS’s that will allow the web site owner to generate a URL structure that is both meaningful to their users and digestible by search engine spiders. Instead of having a URL that is packed with parameters, you can create a URL structure that looks like this: http://www.mysite.com/children/hats/prodid/121576. Your next step is to check whether your CMS builds HTML pages to the latest standards established by the W3C. Most CMS providers will be able to tell you if their solution generates valid code. If they can’t, then ask for a sample page and run it through the W3C Code Validator. In order to rank effectively in organic results of the search engines, it is imperative that your CMS allows you to update your title tags, meta data and alt tags on a page-by-page basis.

The most important aspects of a good CMS are the ease of use and richness of content formatting features. This one is a no-brainer because the very reason that you are looking for a CMS is that YOU DON’T WANT TO CODE. Any good CMS should provide an editing stage that is similar in feature and function to a standard word processing program, such as Microsoft Word. The technical term for this is a WYSIWYG Editor or a Rich Text Editor. This important feature will allow you to type and format your content using standard buttons and keyboard shortcuts. When you publish the content to the live web site, the CMS will write the HTML, CSS and scripting to display your content as it was formatted during the editing stage. Many Content Management Systems are offering additional technologies, such as RSS feed, shopping cart solutions, forums and live chat integration, which can really enhance the functionality of your web site. The key is to find a CMS that will suit your core needs and then determine what add-ons would be beneficial. The ends result will be a web site that is easy to manage and usable for both your customers and the search engines.

Role of Meta Title Tag in SEO

By: Prashant K Shukla, SEO Consultant

Do you want to secure a top ranking in search engine result pages(SERP)?

I think every one is going to answer – Yes. And a very common belief is that add lot of most searched keywords in the meta tags of your web pages and see your site skyrocketing. But it feels highly frustrating when this magic proves of no avail. Remember, meta tags alone don’t do a magic in getting better placed in the search pages. These meta tags sure help you to describe your web pages to a search engine and gain a better place in its results. But at the same time they help search engine too to prevent indexing of improper web pages. Which may have good weight keywords in their meta tags but having no relationship with the contents of the page.

Meta tags are the blocks which contain information about the contents of your web page and they exist into the head area of your web page. They are basically meant to communicate with the search engine. Most of the Meta tags are visible to the search engine only and not the visitor on your web page. But, Title tag is one which is visible to the search engine and the visitor as well. Most importantly, it attracts the search engine and the visitor very aggressively. Most search engines consider this tag as the primary information about the site and also an human visitor sees this information as the first thing on top left corner of the browser. Moreover, when one bookmarks the site, the text in this tag appears in the bookmarks list.

In this article, I have tried to focus mainly on ‘Title Meta Tag’ that how a good Title Meta Tag can render a great help in optimization of a website.

What is the significance of Meta Title Tag

Amongst the three major Meta tags (Meta Title Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Description Tag) the Title Tag is one which is given the most weight by search engines’ algorithms. In fact, this tag should be written so that it should give the idea about your site instantly. A perfect written Title tag can generate quick and appreciable traffic to your site. The text written in this tag appears as clickable text in the search engine result page (SERP) and if it is really meaningful and conveys most about the web page, more clickthroughs will be the result.

This small example explains the function of Meta Title tag better. Suppose I need to visit San Francisco and need a road map of the city and go to a book store to find the same. There are lot of books on tourism and travel with different titles but my attention will go to a title which says something like “”Latest Road Map of San Francisco”" rather than a title “”All about San Francisco”". May be the second book contains better information about the subject I am looking for. But the title of first one speaks exactly about what I need. This how a better title gains priority over the other because of the contents of its title. This is exactly what happens with search engine. It picks the most matching title with the query and places in its result page as clickable text.

Should the Company name appear in Title Tag

Well, I would say sure if your company is really a big entity like IBM, Microsoft or Cisco or some well know brand like Sony, Phillips etc. Because people may want to search for those companies or brands with their names. But in normal cases it should not be so.

Suppose, your company is “”Larry Tours and Travels”" in San Francisco. Instead of writing “”Welcome to the home of Larry Tours and Travels”" in the title tag it would be better to write something like “”tour operators, travel agents, car rental,bay area tours, san francisco tours – Larry Tours and Travel”". Do a good research to find best keywords and phrases which describe your site best. My suggestion is that the length of the title tag should be between 15 to 20 words making it attractive enough that it looks interesting to the person searching for your business and he clicks through.

Few tips for writing good Title tags.

Try including the content relevant keywords in the title tag. This would help placing your site better in search engine result page (SERP) when someone searches those keywords.

Also do not use repeating keywords and phrases in your title tag because this may be treated as spamming by search engines and they may affect your ranking.

Either don’t include your company name in the title tag or add it after few most relevant keywords, phrases into the title tag.

Write different title tags for each web page of your website instead of writing a common title page for the complete site. Make sure that each title tag has relevance with the contents of that web page where it appears.

Try to keep the length of your title tag small (between 15 to 20 words). Some search engines allow small title tags only and truncate the extra part of the longer ones which at times may render your title tag completely meaningless.

I would say that write very meaningful, impressive title tag they are a really powerful can be best tool to optimize your site. The title tag has most dominant role while the search engines make their decision about the theme of the website. When a search for keywords is conducted, the Title tag is given heavy consideration by most search engine algorithms. As I said earlier, since each page in your website is unique so it needs a different Title tag.

So, Writing relevant and meaningful title tag is something which may achieve high rankings in search engine result pages (SERP) and result high clickthroughs to your site. The Meta Keywords Tag and Meta Description Tag also need to be taken care of and optimized equally in addition to that of Meta Title Tag to secure a place at the top of the search engines and in convincing a search engine that your site’s contents are more relevant than that of your competitor’s.

Search Engine Optimization for Dynamic Websites

What are “Dynamic Websites”?

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly. Unlike static pages (primarily .htm/.html pages), dynamic pages are generated when an user triggers an action through that particular page.

Here is a sample dynamic URL-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?q=%22dynamic+websites%22&tab=news&go=homepage

As per the above example of www.bbc.co.uk, the dynamic part (i.e. the part) of the URL which changes as per surfer request is the part after the question mark (?)

What are the problems that search engines face in indexing Dynamic URLs?

1. Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as an infinite set of links.

2. Since dynamic URLs find maximum application in online shopping carts, there is a possibility of incorporating a session id to a particular page. As session ids of that particular page change, the search engine spider needs to index an infinite number of copies of the same page, which is a Herculean task for them.

3. Proceeding with the same logic presented in point # 2, indexing the same dynamic page might overload the servers of the search engines and therefore prevent the search engines to present with the most relevant information in the fastest possible time.

Here is what Google says about indexing of dynamic websites -

Reasons your site may not be included: Your pages are dynamically generated. We are able to index dynamically generated pages. However, because our web crawler can easily overwhelm and crash sites serving dynamic content, we limit the amount of dynamic pages we index. (Source – http://www.google.com/webmasters/)

What are the options that you have in order to make a search engine spider index your Dynamic URLs?

1. Use of softwares – Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions (http://www.xde.net) offers a software which can change the dynamic URLs to static ones. Named XQASP, it will remove the “?” in the Query String and replace it with “/”, thereby allowing the search engine spiders to index the dynamic content.

Example –
http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190 will change to

http://www.my-online-store.com/books/1190.

The latter being a static URL, it can easily be indexed by the search engine spiders.

2. Use of CGI/Perl scripts – One of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines is using CGI/Perl scripts. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address (including the query string information). In order to fix this problem, you’ll need to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable. You can then use this variable in your URL address.

Example – http://www.my-online-store.com/books.asp?id=1190

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable.
So, in the above example “?id=1190″ is assigned a variable, say “A”. The dynamuc URL http://www.my-online-store.com/coolpage.asp?id=1190
will change to http://www.my-online-store.com/books/A through CGI/Perl scripts which can easily be indexed by the search engines.

3. Re-configuring your web servers –

(i) Apache Server – Apache has a rewrite module (mod_rewrite) that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn’t installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

(ii) ColdFusion – You’ll need to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the “?” in a query string is replaced with a ‘/’ and pass the value to the URL.

4. Creation of a Static Page linked to an array of dynamic Pages –

This approach is very effective, especially if you are the owner of a small online store selling a few products online. Just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. Optimize this static page for search engine rankings. Include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate “alt” tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business (You can conduct keyword research for your site through http://www.wordtracker.com). Submit this static page along with all the dynamic pages in various search engines, conforming to the search engine submission guidelines.

How Amazon.com, Earth’s Biggest Bookstore, coped with the issue of indexing of dynamic URLs?

A search in Google for internet marketing books, yielded a result that takes you directly to the appropriate dynamic page at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0395683297/103-0475212-8205437.

Since the above URL does not contain any query strings, all search engines can index Amazon.com’s products. Amazon.com uses this method to get its product selections indexed by search engines. This is very important for Amazon, because being an online bookstore, it is very natural for them to adopt dynamic URLs yet it was equally important for them to make their dynamic URLs search engine index friendly.

Conclusion

Even a few years back, most of the major search engines did not index dynamic URLs, thereby often preventing top search engine rankings for the online stores. With Google starting to index dynamic URLs a few months ago, the picture is going to change in the coming days. This is more so because Google’s numero uno position is currently being threatened by Microsoft’s MSN (developing its own search engine) and Yahoo! who recently acquired Overture, the biggest player in the PPC Search Engine industry.

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Search

Run a search on any of the 200 major search engines, and the results will come up in similar orders on quite a few of them. How a website owner/operator gets their website to the top of a list is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Optimizing a website involves many of the same techniques, whether the aim is to optimize for Google adwords, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves or others. There is a list of what not to do as well, and that list is applicable to all engines, as it mostly refers to tricks and hacks unscrupulous designers use to try to trick the engines. These kind of pages generally get removed by automated tools and don’t generally last very long, so they are not recommended to bother with.

Website optimization starts with content. If the content is irrelevant, the website will not last long in the rankings, no matter how many keywords are included. The best way to get relevant content is to get an expert to write the content. General content may be more friendly to beginners, but in the search optimization arena, content is what is going to keep readers coming back and webmasters linking to the page. Many search engines use link counters to rank sites. If enough people like and value the site, they will link to it from their own site as an example of expert help for visitors seeking more detailed information than they can provide, or are willing to provide. Often, general-interest sites will link to expert sites, thereby also driving their own traffic up as the initial portal to those expert sites and improving their own rankings in the optimization listings. The quality of the sites linked is also a major factor in the rankings, as quality sites such as Microsoft and Google are going to be more effective “heavy hitters” than a link to Bob’s House of Website Optimizing.

When the content is being created, keywords are the “anchors” that search engines hook onto, but just filling your content with keywords risks being dismissed as a spam site, as many spammers merely fill a page with keywords, hoping to hook anyone searching for anything. These kind of pages are usually removed quickly, but they exist nonetheless. Specific keywords are the key–instead of Search Engine, use Search Engine Optimization for Google, or combinations of the key words or phrases. Optimization for Search Engines in one area, then Optimizing for higher Search Engine rankings in another increases the chances of an engine ranking your website content a little higher than it may have otherwise.

The guidelines for content also go for Meta tags such as the title. Title is very important, as it is one of the bigger spots for an engine to catch, as well as the hook that draws a surfer in once the rankings have been displayed. A recommended length is 50-80 characters (including spaces), with keywords located near the beginning in case the window is resized on the screen. A good example would be “Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks for Google”, instead of “How to do important SEO for websites.”

Search Engine Optimization–what to avoid: Don’t use huge strings of keywords without relevant content–you may be labeled as a spammer and blacklisted off the engine(s) you’re trying to climb. Stay away from pop-ups, excessive load times (by keeping the page clean and using fast hosting servers), and lots of flash animation, as this takes time to load and also detracts from the readability of the site.

More specific information can be found by typing “Search Engine Optimization” into any major search engine like Google or Yahoo and following the links. Good luck!

© 2006, Wholesale Pages UK. All rights reserved.

How You Can Start Using The Greatest Weapon Of A Super Affiliate Easily, Today!

If you have even a passing interest in the topic of Affiliate Marketing, then you should take a look at the following information. This enlightening article presents some of the latest news on the subject of Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing has been growing at an extreme speed, and there are hundreds to thousands of super affiliates born each day.

Nevertheless, despite hearing them over and over again, many people are still asking one of the most common questions, “What are the secrets of a super affiliate that make them so successful?”

In order to carve this only secret in your head, we’ll use a story.

Let’s pretend that you just met this person named Bob. Bob is a well-off guy with huge income rushing into his bank every month. He owns a silver Ferrari and a nice house.
In his beautiful house there’s this 52″ widescreen plasma TV and his own home theatre.

It’s obvious that this guy does makes big money, right? Wait, Bob’s not working with a high-paying huge company. He doesn’t work for Microsoft, not Donald Trump either.

You see, he never drives to work. The only time he drives out is when he’s prepared to spend money outside with his family. I guess you already got the answer, Bob works from home. He sells other company’s products and services for commissions, he’s an affiliate. Well, to be more specific a super affiliate because of his success.

It seems like new information is discovered about something every day. And the topic of Affiliate Marketing is no exception. Keep reading to get more fresh news about Affiliate Marketing.

Well, Bob’s made up but don’t let that throw you off. There are a lot of people – super affiliates who are making tons and tons of money selling other’s product.

They never run out of any products to be sold Yet, if you are planning on just putting up a website, do all you can to drive traffic to your site and wait until someone purchases your endorsement – you’ll only stay as an average affiliate forever.

If you want to be a super affiliate, there’s this one thing that is most important in your life, your Opt-In lists. Period.

Any successful super affiliates have their own opt-in lists. Though the list is not the only thing, but it is a big part of their success. Building your opt-in list might take a long time and very large effort but at the end of the day, you’ll be the one smiling.

Here’s a word from one of the world’s most famous Internet marketer, John Reese:

“Done properly, email marketing works. For example, I recently did a quick little mailing to an opt-in list and generated $52,786 in sales in just 48 hours.”

Start your own list, provide good contents for your subscribers, build a good relationship with your subscribers and they WILL buy your endorsements. The opt-in list defines a super affiliate’s life, if you haven’t started your own list – Get it right away!

You can’t predict when knowing something extra about Affiliate Marketing will come in handy. If you learned anything new about &keyword% in this article, you should file the article where you can find it again.

Excellent E-Commerce Solutions

When you have a small home-based business, and are basically just starting out, there are many great ways to make a large leap ahead. One of these great methods is to sell online merchandise. An online store can be set up relatively easily and e-commerce has been proven to be quite successful. There are many sites online these days that make e-commerce an excellent decision for your business.

Microsoft now offers a great service known as Bcentral, and is offering great deals on server and hosting packages that run on a monthly scale, or basis. This is a great tool for the individual that is looking to delve into the e-commerce field. If you have an idea for a catalog, and need tools to get it up and running such as templates, and logo creators this could be your solution you’ve been waiting for. Not only will you receive the templates and the graphic creators, but also you will receive the quaint shopping cart in the top right hand side of the page. Having the opportunity to track and control orders and sales is made very easy as you will receive automated conformation through your e-mail. Being able to become a member in the PayPal system is also a good idea, as you can never have enough payment options attached to your site. This just increases your chances of sales. You will also be given the opportunity to keep track of customer traffic to your site as well. This makes for a very handy service indeed.

Another great service is provided by Ebay, the stores offer a very popular alternative and have a sliding fee scale to fit most businesses needs and budget. The basic service is for the smaller of the businesses that have a smaller volume of traffic. This does not mean that you will not have access to some great tools for your site,but you will not be able to keep track of the flow of traffic or sales with this service and there is a very limited directory, yet it is still a good service for someone who is just starting out. The next level of the ebay service will provide more for the business that may be needed as time goes on. It places your priorities in relation to the product you are trying to sell; knowing exactly what the consumer is looking for makes it easy for them to adjust your targeted areas. You will get some traffic reports and sales figures, but not many. The third and final level of the ebay store program is exactly where you want your business to be placed. This is the premier spot or the center stage. This is the place where the bulk of the strongest traffic will be located. This will give you a much stronger shot at making those sales.

301 Redirect – The SEO way to rename or move files or folders

In this article I will discuss page redirection techniques, what works and what to avoid.

What is page redirection and why would you want to use it?

Let’s say you rename a page on your website, for whatever reason. Perhaps you decided to revamp your entire naming convention, perhaps you decided to restructure your site and need to move pages into different folders, or you just realized that you are missing valuable keywords.

Let’s elaborate a bit on the keywords issue, since it is part of your search engine ranking success.

Let’s say the page in question is about customized USB drives and you named it page1.htm. Then you read some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) articles and you found out that some search engines use words in the actual file name as search keywords. Next time you do a Google search, take a look at the results, most will have words in the actual file name (in the URL section) bolded, denoting a keyword match. Your USB drives page will definitely benefit if named something like custom_usb_drives.htm instead.

Now that you renamed your page, you just created a symphony of issues for yourself, for your users and for your position in search engine results.

Linking issues:

You will have to point every link on your site to the new page name. If your site is small, it should not be a big deal, but if your site is large, you will inevitably make mistakes, mainly forgetting a link or two. This will result in visitors getting the dreaded “404 page not found” error when clicking on your links, robots (also know as crawlers or spiders) avoiding you, etc. Also, if you are heavily relying on visitors from search engines, then again, people will get a “404 page not found error”.

Let’s use the previous example, for a long time your page1.htm was indexed by major search engines. If someone types “custom usb drives” in a search engine box, your page shows up on the first search results screen. That is fantastic, only if someone clicks on the link, they will be pointed to page1.htm, not to custom_usb_drives.htm, because the first page is the one in the search engine’s index. It will take time, sometimes months, before the search engines update their indexes with your new page name.

Lost Page Rank (PR) issues:

Google developed a proprietary algorithm that assigns a Page Rank (PR) to every page on the web. PR is a number from 1 to 10 (10 being the ideal) and is intended to be a representation of how useful and popular a given page is. PR is influenced by many factors, one of the crucial ones being Link Popularity. Link Popularity is a representation of how many “quality” or “relevant” sites link to your page. Without getting into too much detail, it is increasingly difficult and time consuming to achieve a high PR for your pages, especially if you don’t have a really unique website with exceptional and highly sought after content. If you are merely operating a commercial site, in a competitive market (such as selling custom branded USB drives, as in our example), then it takes a lot of time and hard work to build a good page PR.

When you rename a page and discard the old page, you also discard the PR of the page. Your renamed page will be seen as a totally new page, with 0 PR.

What is the solution?

I will start by enumerating some of the methods used by the non-initiated.

Not recommended solution 1: Duplicate content.

First thing that probably comes in you mind is: well, why can’t you just duplicate the page and let nature take its course. In other words, you will have two identical pages, one named page1.htm and one custom_usb_drives.htm. This gives you time to update all links and the search engines will eventually index the new page.

This solution is not viable because search engines will penalize you quite badly, ‘thinking’ that you are trying to scam them by using the ‘duplicate content’ technique.

Not recommended solution 2: Custom error message.

You could create a custom error page. However, you will lose rankings on the next search engine update as the file will appear to be non-existent. As discussed above, it could be some time before the page with the new name will be indexed and will appear in people’s searches. Also, your web site visitors will be frustrated by the fact that they now have to dig through your site to find the desired information.

Not recommended solution 3: An HTML Meta redirect.

You could implement a so called Meta refresh in a blank or customized page that has the name of the old page (in our example, page1.htm) that points to the new page. The redirect can be instant, or delayed by a predetermine amount of time. The delayed redirect has the advantage that you can place an extra message, such as “please be aware that the page you are looking for changed location….. etc., etc…. you will be redirected automatically to the new location”

In the past, this was probably the most used technique.

Without getting into the mechanics of the Meta redirect, which is basically a META tag statement you ad to your HEADER section, know that there are also Java Script techniques that achieve similar results.

What is bad about this is that this is a technique often used by spammers to trick search engines and it should be avoided, unless the page is in a section of your site that isn’t indexed (also known as spidered or crawled). Search engine spammers create a page that is optimized for certain keywords and phrases – it usually has no real content. The page is then picked up by some search engines, but when a visitor clicks on the search engine entry, they are redirected to another site, often unrelated. Most search engines have filters to detect this. Using this form of search engine deception will see a site eventually banned or penalized by major players such as Google.

The recommended redirect strategy – 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is the most efficient, visitor friendly, robot (spider, crawler) friendly and search engine friendly solution around for web sites that are hosted on servers running Apache. If you are not sure, check with your hosting provider.

A 301 redirect is just a set of commands you type into your .htaccess file.

When a visitor (whether human or robotic) requests a web page via any means, your web server checks for a .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors.

The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, then followed by the new location or file name.

First of all, you’ll need to find the .htaccess file in the root directory of where all your web pages are stored. If there is no .htaccess file there, you can create one with Notepad or a similar application. Make sure when you name the file that you remember to put the “.” at the beginning of the file name. This file has no tail extension.

Some hosting providers offer redirect services through their “control panels”, so you don’t have to perform low level changes on the .htaccess file itself. Instead, they provide a user friendly interface for this. Check with your hosting provider to see what the optimal way to perform a 301 redirect is in your case. I will continue the article with the barebones solution.

If there is a .htaccess file already in existence with lines of code present, be very careful not to change any existing line unless you are familiar with the functions of the file.

Scroll down past all the existing code, leave a line space, then create a new line that follows this example:

redirect 301 /folder/page1.htm http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm

It’s as easy as that. Save the file, upload it back into your web and test it out by typing in the old address to the page you’ve changed. You should be instantly and seamlessly transported to the new location.

Notes: Be sure not to add “http://www” to the first part of the statement – just put the path from the top level of your site to the page. Also ensure that you leave a single space between these elements:

redirect 301 (the instruction that the page has moved)

/folder/page1.htm (the original folder path and file name)

http://www.you.com/folder/custom_usb_drives.htm (new path and file name)

The same format applies not only to renamed files, but also to files moved to a different location.

The 301 redirect is the safest way to preserve your rankings. On the next indexing (crawling, spidering), the search engine robot will obey the rule indicated in your .htaccess file and index the new page name every time a link or its internal database tries to access the old page. In the next update (again, this could take months), the old file name and path will be dropped and replaced with the new one. Sometimes you may see alternating old/new file names during the transition period, along with some possible fluctuations in rankings as things settle. Don’t panic, this is normal.

What if your site is hosted on a Microsoft IIS server instead?

If you have access to the server, do this: In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect. Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”. Enter the redirection page, check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”. Click “Apply”.

If you do not have access to the server, ask your host to point you into the right direction.

In conclusion, the best and the most transparent way (to both human and robotic users) to rename and move files on your web site, while preserving your search engine ranks is the 301 redirect.

As Google gets fatter there is more to love. I do.

What Google did for Christmas? In short: Twain news on the same day simply melting the ice. Vacuum discovered.

Their new services spur others in turn, their sympathies can affect some huge increase. Finally, wealth is spreading, from young billionaires to you and to a baby boomer like me.

A few days ago, I ran into an article about them that claims they build a safe net for themselves, and all of us to use. How does one figure? Google silently buy left-over fiber optics at the lowest prices. Something nice for the future…

Yesterday, I went to Mozilla Firefox to get a referral button for my upcoming ezine. Have been using Firefox after a 2-week spy and worm attack back in June. At that time, my desktop had been invisible from pop-up windows and the volume muted for virus alert sirens and my poor computer could not breathe using IE…. Then I ran into Kaspersky, but that luck only lasted for 30 days as well; they wanted $70… Since free Firefox NOTHING not one single intruder. I have peace. IE now sits and ruts…, while the FF plug-ins make beautiful music.

So, I go get the button, and what do I read? They, Google, now not only have a referral system for adsense with neat little buttons, but they will take Firefox under their wings with something like ‘Google recommends Firefox’. I am touched! It’s the best thing to happen for us, for these guys operate in a speed that suits me, compared with MS. They’re livin’.

But, listen to this, on the SAME DAY, yes, yesterday, I get this article from Jim Edwards of http://simurl.com/wonderwords named ”Google’s Next Step: Are Print Mail Order Catalogs Dead?”

He describes how any respectable US print catalog is being listed and the graphics of each page shown in their catalog database for free, and permanently. Google even update it manually. My favorite feature is that your objects on scanned print pages will be linked to their twins on your site.

I’d call that traffic. Yep, the top quality traffic is free. Been saying that.

So, last night, I stayed up, had to anyway, because I was on a watch. Uploading my large files to
http://simurl.com/showcase, when ms automatic XP update suddenly wanted to restart the computer. Took me a while to find the way to switch that off.

Don’t you envy the life of those, who spend their days in a dialogue with heartwarming Microsoft-warez. Have we created a monster buying Bill’s stuff? My day swishes by enduring Frontpage crashes and Word peculiarities I may never get used to, and yet I somehow am.

No, that’s not the reason why I wrote this. What I wanted to say is:

“Get your print catalog to Google in time for Christmas.” US only.

1- Download this Free: http://www.techsrl.com/easycatalog/English/download.htm (Demo-limited to 10)
2- Upload your Files Here and pay very little: http://www.printpelican.com/ (Very little! Minimum 25 Catalogs)
3- Go to http://catalogs.google.com/googlecatalogs/catalog_vendors.html and get the mailing address.

I give you 10 days.

So, then I think, what about the guys from Australia, New Zealand, England, Canada, South Africa, India?

Easy, last night I stayed up and made a site to let them in on it. Maybe you would like to do it, too; Get a permanent spot on Google’s new catalog beta site, I mean.

Come look. Gotta be subscribed.

Finding Affiliate Programs — Where To Start

When most people have a task to do, they usually do well once they get started, and finding affiliate programs for your site or blog is no exception — you just need a little kickstart to get your brain into the right mode.

There’s a really easy way to get things started…go look at one of your competitors. There are tons of ways to do this — the easiest way would be to put your keyword(s) into Google and see what pops up.

The order of the results is based in good part on Google’s PageRank, which has a lot to do with the number of other sites that link to a particular site.

Pick one of the results near the top and click on the link. Hover on a banner or text advertising box and see where the URL leads. Take note of the particular network such as Commission Junction, ClickBank, Linkshare, etc. and the particular programs on the site. I keep a list using Microsoft Notepad when I surf competitive sites for clients.

Most of the time I ignore CPM-based networks like DoubleClick or AdBrite, and contextual ad networks like Google and Yahoo. I do pay particular attention to the category affiliate network banners and text ads. For example, if you surf a few competitors and find a lot of banner advertising for web site hosting, that means your competitors are having at least some luck with website hosting affiliate programs.

When you come up with a good list of networks, programs and categories, go visit the networks that appear the most on the sites (try to go to 5 or 6 different sites so you can see any patterns that emerge).

You should now have a terrific list to start from, including a list of networks, programs and keywords. Now all you have to do is poke around and see which pay the best and try to figure out which your visitors might like.

While you’re on the other sites, try to get a feel for where on the page the ads are placed, which can make a huge difference in clickthrough and conversion.

Setting Realistic Goals for your eBay Business

Setting goals sometimes seems like a useless task. It would seem if you want to do something, you just get to it and finish. Though that sounds easy enough, I think there is more to it than that.

Having something to work towards is important. If everyone’s business plan, or goal, were simply, “Make More Money” most businesses would not succeed. Though you can’t practically say, “My eBay business is just like Microsoft”, I believe it is a mentality that gets us where we want to be.

Success is measured subjectively, relative to each person. For some, hitting the million dollar mark is success, while for others it is the simple fact of being able to quit their job to stay at home and have that freedom. It’s important to establish what it means to be successful for you. Don’t just think about it, write it down. Know what you want, and don’t forget it. Ideas in our head almost always seem to drift away if we don’t manifest them somehow and sometimes immediate action isn’t possible… so simply write it down.

The practical thing to do, however, when it comes to eBay, is to measure your current business, or, if you’re just starting, to know how to measure it. This means taking into account your total sales and everything that goes along with that, such as your eBay fees, Paypal fees, what percentage of auctions ended successful compared to how many items were listed and the average price each item sold for.

If this sounds overwhelming, take a step bank and look at the whole picture. If you’re an established business, it’s as simple as measuring each statistic above within any given time period. Take auctions listed each week, month, and depending on how old or young your business is, each year. If you’ve just started, each week you list, measure these statistics after each of your listings end. This way, you’ll know which items are selling well, where you can change certain aspects of your business, and, most importantly, how much profit you’re making.

One of the most important parts of measuring your business statistics is to know eBay fees. I sometimes get excited about how much I’ve sold and looking at the price on My eBay, think that I did well. Then I pay my eBay fees and realize I did not do quite as well as I had thought. If you have an accurate knowledge of eBay fees, this will increase your potential for profit.

Of course, you’re wondering what all this has to do with setting a goal for your eBay business. Pretty much everything. If you know your business inside out, you can set realistic goals that you’ll know which areas of your business to improve. Making more money as a goal, then not knowing how to get to that goal, leaves you stagnant, and, worst of all, making the same amount of money.

So, define what success is to you and write it down. Then measure every aspect of your business, whether you just finished your very first week of listings ever, or you’ve been in business for a few years, or ten years. Then use that knowledge to meet realist financial goals in accordance with your own definition of success.

A Destination for Your Back-Up

In SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) the key words destiny is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then you site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site. The accepted standard for a keyword density is very low in measure. To get recognized by the search engines and you should never exceed it. Here SEO Delhi (e-fuzion) takes very simple steps to check the density. It fist copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word processing software program like Microsoft Word. Then enter into the edit menu and click select all. Now go to the tools menu and select word count. After completing the replacing function, the words will offer a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keywords in the page. SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) uses the total word count for the page and the total number of key words you can now estimate with the key word destiny. To make a decision what terms you should target, you need to find out what terms are searched more regularly. SEO Delhi Company (e-fuzion) uses proposal suggestion, free work tracker service. Both of these tools are ideal for this job. This company also covered the basic outlining principles. For create a site with valuable content, products or services, it places primary and secondary key words within the first twenty five words in the page content and spread them evenly through out the document. This company uses the key words in the right fields and references within your web page. Like title, Meta Tags, Headers etc. It uses reports and analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Evaluate the client’s location and their incoming sources whether from search engines or links from other sites and the key words they used to discover.

Affiliate Tip – Build A Website

One of the first things you should do as an affiliate marketer is to build you own website. Yes, you can market affiliate programs without it by adding links to your email or signature file on message boards, but you will be very limited in how much you can earn this way. Building a website allows you to expose the products you are promoting to a much larger audience with less effort.

Decide on a Topic

Your first step is to decide what you would like your website to be about. Find a topic you like, something you are passionate about. You will be spending a lot of time creating content for your site, so it may as well be something you enjoy reading and writing about. Your enthusiasm for the subject will shine through as well, and will get your visitors interested. Once you have your topic, make sure there are affiliate products available that compliment the site and that there are people interested in buying it.

Pick a Domain Name

Use a site like register.com, or your web host’s site to research available domain names. It helps to have one of your major keywords in your domain name. So if you decided your website will be about growing roses, try to work “rose” in the domain name. You want your domain name to be easy to remember and easy to type. Try to avoid using dashes in the name and find something that’s available as a dot com address.

Hosting

The next step is to set up a web hosting account. You should be able to get by with a basic personal website package to begin with. Get some recommendations from others when it comes to choosing the actual hosting company. You want a service that is reliable and has good customer service. After all, you won’t be making any money when you site is down. I have been using Dayana hosting for years and highly recommend them.

Site Builder or Software

Let’s talk about how you can build your website. Your options are using a site builder, like internetbasedfamilies.com or software like Microsoft FrontPage, or my favorite x-site pro. A site builder is usually easier to use in the beginning and hosting is included. You will pay a monthly fee for the software and hosting combined. If you build your site using software like x-site pro or FrontPage, you have the added initial expense of buying the software, but your monthly hosting costs are usually lower. Of course a third option is to have someone else design the site for you. You should still get familiar with the site builder or software, so you can make changes to the site.

Getting Traffic To The Site

Your last step will be getting traffic to your site. Optimize your pages for search engines to get free traffic. You can also write articles and submit them to article directories. Pay per click advertising and buying ads on other related sites or newsletters are also great ways to drive traffic to your site.

Making money online with blogs

When you think of the term blog, does it represent money to you? Do you believe that you could make money with this new craze? Well let it be known, that yes people really are generating more business to their companies and they are making money. When it comes right down to it, blogging can easily enlarge your net authority, and increase credibility and market value. Some people even claim that they are only in business because blogging has made it possible for them. They also claim that the business they have gotten has increased significantly as a result of it.

The object is to have a niche and to keep everything small; if you are looking for range of view or balance you will find yourself lost in the shuffle. The general premise of a blog is to sell an idea, anyone who makes blogs are not merely asking for money because of the blog itself, the ideas are the star of the show and the blog is merely the vessel to transport it to the clients. It is one of the best ways to gain reputation in business networking, this in turn leads to more business and finally to what you have been striving for which is profit. They are kind of like a tool that you need to transport information in short bursts, as to not confuse or overwhelm the customer. By keeping them short, many business people believe that the original message or core idea remains intact. There is thought amongst the net industry that far more intangible ideas and products are being peddled online these days, this in turn decreases paid content value, rerouting the connection between the business and the client is the primary goal.

One of the best methods to date, to generate business and profit is to employ a good blogger. Bloggers have a way of gaining trust; they also can capture the market with the use of strategic reputation. Microsoft is one of the leading employers of the blogging trend, and uses the blogs on all their sites and sales pitches. Microsoft feels that if they have multiple blogs that give small portions of information and tid-bits, of needed content they can reach a broader market and keep people informed on what they are doing in the business and any market adjustments that may come your way. If more companies go this route, you could easily see a change in the face of business. Faster communication between client and company, more precise information packets that are not stressing to understand, and an overall cleaner appearance are the goal with the blogging industry. These little vessels of information just may be here to stay.

http://www.payitforward4profits.com/rodl13

Special Rules For Selling Software On Ebay.

Computer software is one of the biggest sellers on eBay – after all, everyone using eBay has a computer, don’t they? There can be problems, however, if you try to sell certain kinds of software that eBay doesn’t allow. Used software is a minefield, and you could end up buying something dodgy to resell without even realising it.

Here are the various kinds of software that you’re not allowed to sell on eBay, and how to spot them. You should always try installing used software before you sell it, as this might give you a few clues.

Pirate Software.

This one is reasonably obvious, but pirate software can be hard to spot. The biggest things to look out for are auctions that don’t have pictures or only have pictures from catalogues, unrealistically low prices, and come with no manuals or documentation. Microsoft software comes with a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’, which you should check. Software that is on recordable media such as CD-RWs is usually pirated.

If you see software that offered for download only, it is often pirated – but not always. Some small software developers allow download licenses for their software to be resold on sites like eBay. Type the name of the software into a search engine, and go to the manufacturer’s site to check. Remember that software you download is very unlikely to come with resale rights, though.

Beta Software.

Beta software is pre-release software, issued by companies for testing purposes. Companies generally do not give permission for their beta software to be sold or redistributed, as it won’t be as good as the final product. Do not buy anything that says it is ‘beta’, and return anything you receive that says ‘beta’ or ‘not for resale or distribution’ anywhere on the CD or during the install.

Academic Software.

Some companies sell special ‘educational editions’ or ‘student licenses’ for their software, which are designed to make it affordable to students and teachers. You can only sell this software if you are a licensed educational reseller for the company, and your buyers are educational users. Academic software will usually say somewhere on its CD or in its installation what it is.

OEM Software.

OEM stands for ‘Original Equipment Manufacturer’ – this is software that is only supposed to be distributed with a new computer, as it came pre-installed on the computer. The licences for this software usually stop you from selling it without also selling any hardware. Look out for the message ‘for sale with a new computer only’, or similar. Note, though, that it’s usually fine to bundle any OEM software you come across with computers that you sell on eBay.

If you sell any kind of software that isn’t allowed, then eBay might shut down your auction, or your sellers might realise what they’ve bought and leave you bad feedback. It’s not really worth the risk.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, how about we try to get you a few more customers for the items you have that aren’t against the rules. In the next email, we’ll take a look at the real power of eBay store newsletters.

Google PR is Case Sensitive

After a little digging up, I found enough evidence to believe that…

1. Google searches are never case sensitive – as we already knew.
2. Google PR is case sensitive – as I suspected, according to web standards, URLs are case sensitive. Google and other search engines follow this standard.

There have been a few reported cases of the same pages being in Google’s index 2 or more times because they were linked to with different cases (ie.: /ABC.htm, /abc.htm, /Abc.htm) – see this post.

The root of the problem, as you may have guessed, is Microsoft’s ignorance towards web standards. Microsoft servers are set up in opposition to the web standard on case sensitivity in which /ABC.htm is different from /abc.htm. IIS ignores the case different and gives control of the request to wrong file.

My site is on a Windows Server, how bad is the problem?
Well, it’s not going to ‘bring down the internet’ as some lammers might suggest, but there are issues that need to be addressed. IIS’s choice to ignore case sensitivity means search engines (which are case sensitive) will index the exact same content for different URLs. It’s very unlikely a website would be penalized for this, but it can definitelly impair your website’s ability to rank well. It makes it specially difficult for the duplicated page to rank well for the terms it targets.

This is only an issue if there are two or more links point to the same URL in a different case. You can avoid this problem by always using lowercase in your link tags, but you can’t stop other websites linking into the same URL in capital letters – so something must be done on the server in order to deal with this issue.

How can I fix it?
I can almost picture you “URL Rewrite Junkies” jumping up and down with the solution on your hands, but as we all know, URL Rewrite is a feature only available to proper web-servers, nothing you’d expect to see in IIS.

A. Server Component (IIS alternative to URL Rewrite)
Not free, not easy to setup and can only be installed on your own server. The only upside is that this would work for all files/scripts/directories on the website.
An alternative for URL Rewrite in IIS – ISAPI Rewrite.

B. Script (and a little permanent redirection)
It’s free, it’s easy to setup and can be installed on any server, not just your own. The only downside is that you can only enforce case sensitiveness for requests that are handled by this script. This means static HTML pages, directories, images, etc would still be exposed to this issue. HOWEVER, if with a little help from a custom 404 error page you can do just about anything. But that’s a whole other topic…

Here’s how you’d enforce case sensitiveness using VB Script:

<% ' Force lowercase URLsIf Request.ServerVariables("URL")<>LCase(Request.ServerVariables("URL")) ThenResponse.Status = 301 'Permanently RedirectedResponse.AddHeader "Location", LCase(Request.ServerVariables("URL"))Response.End()End If%>

It doesn’t need to be the very first thing on every page, but in order to perform a proper permanent redirect, this has to be execute before any content is written to the response’s output stream, ie.: Before any HTML or Response.Write.

Hope this helps a few up-and-coming SEO experts (and wanna-bes)

What is basic SEO and how does one go about it?

SEO is the short way to say Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of trying to get better rankings in Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Those three are known as the ‘big three’ because nearly all searchers use one of them, so it is the most profitable for you to try to optimize for them.

Americans conducted 7.4 billion searches online in May, up 12 percent from April. Google Sites registered the most search queries performed with 3.3 billion, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.1 billion), MSN-Microsoft (963 million) – Comscore

Search engines take into account many things in your website, optimizing those is called on-page optimization, everything that isn’t your website is off-page optimization. Now, while the exact ranking formulae are secret, this is what is widely believed as ‘simple SEO’.

First, we want to improve on-page optimization. So we have to pick keywords. There are a variety of tools you can search for which will give you lists of keywords that are usable.

Now you have your keywords. So you now have to see what the top 10 people are doing for them (warning: basic html and math needed ahead). Go to the top person on the most important keyword you have, on google. As an example, we’ll use the keywords ‘free downloads’, and I’ll do the math with you.

The number one website is download.com, so let’s analyze this top website.

Keyword density is the measure of how many times a keyword appears compared to the rest of the text in that area. The areas include: title, meta keywords, meta description, plain content (text), h1, h2, h3, bold, italics, underlined and domain name.

Let’s do some of the math for download.com… Their title is: “Reviews and free downloads at download.com” First we ignore any ‘common’ word, like ‘and, the, at’ etc. So we have: “Reviews free downloads download.com” So, ‘free downloads’ takes up 14 characters out of 35, or 40%. In the meta description tag, it’s 14/272 = 5.14%, so go on and on through the list, keeping it in an excel. After you’ve done the top 10 in google, go to the top 10 in yahoo and msn, ignoring the repeats and do it again. Now, take the average. For the title, let’s say my average was 15%. I wanna try to have a percentage close to that. Too much, and I might get penalized, too little and It wont help.

That’s the basic on-site SEO. Matching keyword density on the site. Off-site seo is everything that is not on your site, mainly getting links for the beginner. The kind of links you want are links from a relevant website that has few other links to other sites. Ways to get these: Submit to directories and reciprocal linking. Submit your site to directories. You can find many lists of them on google. Reciprocal linking is trading links, or in effect, ‘I’ll link to you if you link to me’. The best way to get one is to go to a person who’s site is close in topic with yours, find their email and send a personal one.

_______________
Dear (contact info, or Webmaster)
I was looking at your site and I really liked (thing on their site) about it. (comment about site). I have placed a link to you at (URL of link you place to them) and would appreciate if you’d link back.

Regards,
(name)
(your site url)
_______________
Yes, you have to do this manually, yes, it will help you, and yes, you have to link first. You’re the one asking for a link, so you have to show them you mean it.

Do that for all the top websites in your keywords, and keep doing it. The more you get links, the higher you’ll be in the rankings. You can find the number your competitors have by going to MSN search and typing in ‘Link:download.com’ for my example. It showed that there were 692,811 links to download.com… Better get to work.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An Overview

Run a search on any of the 200 major search engines, and the results will come up in similar orders on quite a few of them. How a website owner/operator gets their website to the top of a list is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Optimizing a website involves many of the same techniques, whether the aim is to optimize for Google adwords, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves or others. There is a list of what not to do as well, and that list is applicable to all engines, as it mostly refers to tricks and hacks unscrupulous designers use to try to trick the engines. These kind of pages generally get removed by automated tools and don’t generally last very long, so they are not recommended to bother with.

Website optimization starts with content. If the content is irrelevant, the website will not last long in the rankings, no matter how many keywords are included. The best way to get relevant content is to get an expert to write the content. General content may be more friendly to beginners, but in the search optimization arena, content is what is going to keep readers coming back and webmasters linking to the page. Many search engines use link counters to rank sites. If enough people like and value the site, they will link to it from their own site as an example of expert help for visitors seeking more detailed information than they can provide, or are willing to provide. Often, general-interest sites will link to expert sites, thereby also driving their own traffic up as the initial portal to those expert sites and improving their own rankings in the optimization listings. The quality of the sites linked is also a major factor in the rankings, as quality sites such as Microsoft and Google are going to be more effective “heavy hitters” than a link to Bob’s House of Website Optimizing.

When the content is being created, keywords are the “anchors” that search engines hook onto, but just filling your content with keywords risks being dismissed as a spam site, as many spammers merely fill a page with keywords, hoping to hook anyone searching for anything. These kind of pages are usually removed quickly, but they exist nonetheless. Specific keywords are the key–instead of Search Engine, use Search Engine Optimization for Google, or combinations of the key words or phrases. Optimization for Search Engines in one area, then Optimizing for higher Search Engine rankings in another increases the chances of an engine ranking your website content a little higher than it may have otherwise.

The guidelines for content also go for Meta tags such as the title. Title is very important, as it is one of the bigger spots for an engine to catch, as well as the hook that draws a surfer in once the rankings have been displayed. A recommended length is 50-80 characters (including spaces), with keywords located near the beginning in case the window is resized on the screen. A good example would be “Search Engine Optimization tips and tricks for Google”, instead of “How to do important SEO for websites.”

Search Engine Optimization–what to avoid: Don’t use huge strings of keywords without relevant content–you may be labeled as a spammer and blacklisted off the engine(s) you’re trying to climb. Stay away from pop-ups, excessive load times (by keeping the page clean and using fast hosting servers), and lots of flash animation, as this takes time to load and also detracts from the readability of the site.

More specific information can be found by typing “Search Engine Optimization” into any major search engine like Google or Yahoo and following the links. Good luck!

© 2006, Wholesale Pages UK. All rights reserved.

Setting Up An Art Affiliate Site – Part 2

Step 4 – Choose a Domain Name

This sounds like an easy step, but you may soon find it can be surprisingly difficult. As mentioned before the majority of your traffic will hopefully come from search engines. To rank well in search engines one of the key factors is to obtain a domain name that includes one or more of your keywords. This can be a real problem because YourKeywords.com is most likely already registered. You can start by going to a domain registrar such as Go Daddy and enter the domain you want on the homepage. If it’s not registered already you can register it. If someone else has already registered it you will receive a list of suggestions of available domain names or and go back and try another domain. Depending on the term you chose you may or may not find a domain you want by doing this.

The second method I’d recommend is a domain name suggestion tool such as Name Boy. This tool will let you enter your keywords and come up with a large number of suggestions for domains based on those keywords. It will also show you which of those domains are still available. I used this tool to register the sample site TropicalArt.org. I normally do not register .org sites, and if this was a site I was seriously looking putting the effort into making profitable instead of a simple example I would make every effort to obtain tropicalart.com. For this example it will do though.

Finally if you just can’t find an acceptable domain using the first two methods you can buy one that is already registered from someone else. This can be much more expensive than the first two options but in some cases it makes sense to do. The two main sites for doing this are Sedo and Afternic. These sites work as a trusted third party to coordinate the sale and transaction between the buyer and seller, and collect a percentage of the sale from the seller for performing this service (much like EBay). I used these services to obtain this domain name, ArtAffiliate.com.

Step 5 – Build Your Website

This is a very important step and unfortunately one I can’t explain in enough detail in this section. For those of you who are already experienced web developers, you have most likely already decided how you are going to develop your site and can move on to the next section. The rest of this section is for those who do not have any experience in this area. You’re going to need to make a choice at this point to do it yourself or hire someone else.

Do it Yourself

If you choose to do it yourself and have no previous web development experience then you’re best bet will be to develop a static site. This means you will manually be creating pages for each product you wish to sell and listing them on your site. It will also require maintenance to make sure you keep the prices up to date and add and remove products as needed. There are several tools available for doing this and you can just search Google to find them, but most likely you already have one on your computer, Microsoft FrontPage. It is included with Microsoft Office and is a great tool for beginners.

Hire Somebody Else

This may sound like it would be way to expensive for some people, but you’ll if you are reasonable about the requirements it’s really not that bad and will definitely save you a lot of time of having to manually add products. The biggest benefit is instead of manually creating a page for each product, all the products can be loaded into a database and the pages generated dynamically. Periodically a new datafeed can be downloaded from the affiliate program website and you’ll instantly have the updated prices and current list of products.

So how do you find someone? You may already know someone who does web development, that will be willing to create a site for you for free or cheap. If so great! But developing the average art affiliate website will take about 15-20 hours worth of work and you may not be so lucky to find a volunteer. On top of that software development is typically a fairly high paying job so hiring someone locally to do it can cost a pretty penny. The method I would suggest is going to a third party website that pairs developers with clients such as RentACoder.com.

RentACoder and sites like it allow clients to list the requirements for their project and developers to bid on the project. You will be able to get your project done for a much better rate here because it’s typically individuals doing the work instead of companies and there is competition from overseas developers keeping the prices down. It’s very important that you be thorough on what exactly your requirements are. You also need to keep the requirements reasonable in order to keep the price down. Everything you ask for will add hours and cost to the project so if you don’t really need it, don’t ask for it. To give you a rule of thumb on what you should expect to pay, a no frills site such as the example Tropical Art should cost you somewhere around $300.

Step 6 – Find a Host

You are going to need a place to host your website. Your ISP may provide some web hosting space but typically this is a very small amount, so you’re most likely going to need to find a web host.

The first factor to consider when finding a web host is if they support the technology your website uses. For example if your site was created using FrontPage, ASP or ASP.NET you will need a windows host. For static html, php or Java you can go with a Windows or Unix host. If you site requires a database such as MS SQL or MySql you’ll need to make sure the host supports that as well.

There are several other factors such as price, bandwidth, reliability, etc that you’ll need to consider as well. You can simply search Google for “web hosts” and compare the results to get an idea of what&s available. I’d personally recommend StartLogic or PowWeb.

Step 7 – Optimize for Search Engines

It’s important that search engines know what your site is about. You want to emphasis the keywords you selected earlier to make sure they know that is the primary subject of your site. To do this you need to make sure those keywords are included as part of the title on every page. Every page should have a different title though. Notice how on Tropical Art the title on each page is different but includes “tropical art” as part of the title. You should do something similar.

You also should provide alternate text for all of your images. This not only helps search engines know what the site is about but also helps people with software to assist with vision disabilities to navigate your site. You’re keywords should also be contained within parts of the body text on your site, at least on the home page and preferably on sub pages. Just be careful not to overdue it, your page is made for human readers and should be designed as such. Search engines will detect over stuffing of keywords and rank your site lower as a result. It is also very helpful to have static urls such as /1234/subject.htm instead of urls with query string parameters such as /subject.php?subjectId=1234 . You can use url-rewriting to accomplish this with a dynamic site. It’s also beneficial to place keywords in the url.

There are many other on-site optimizations you can perform. I recommend visiting High Rankings for more advice. Also keep in mind that your primary phrase isn’t the only term you should target. If you have a subpage about a more specific topic, optimize that page for that topic not your main one. For example the page about the artist Carl Aagaard is optimized for his name instead of the more generic term “Tropical Art”.

Wholesale Video Game Market

Home video game consoles have come a long way from the original 8-bit systems. One huge benefit to the wholesale industry is the console wars, and the continual release of new video games, accessories, and even entire game systems. These console wars and new releases mean the games and systems replaced are now the hottest commodities on the wholesale market. Here is a quick guide to the wholesale video game world by system.

Let’s begin with an overview of the world of video games. There are three major console players: Nintendo, Microsoft, and the largest one, Sony. Each company has released what are now called third generation consoles. These consoles are the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

Prior to the third generation consoles, gamers had Nintendo&s GameCube, Microsoft&s Xbox, and Sony&s PlayStation 2 to keep their thumbs in shape. The games and accessories of these second generation consoles are what primarily make up the wholesale video game market today. One key aspect to keeping these wholesale games and overstock video game accessories in value is backward compatibility. Backward compatibility is the ability of older video games and accessories, such as controllers and memory cards, to interface with newer generation consoles.

Nintendo GameCube

The saving grace of the Nintendo GameCube games and accessories are backward compatible with the Nintendo Wii. Wholesale retailers can capitalize on the fact the Nintendo GameCube, and Wii appeal to younger game players, so customers of wholesale GameCube games are less concerned with the lack of graphics and innovation. Additionally, Nintendo&s GameCube controller and memory card is compatible with the new generation Wii, and a requirement for some games& backward compatibility.

Top selling wholesale video game titles for the Nintendo GameCube include Animal Crossing, Super Monkey Ball, and anything Super Mario or Zelda franchise related. Parents will appreciate the general nonviolent nature of Nintendo GameCube games, and therefore the shelf-life for wholesale accessories and games is long. Purchase of the Nintendo GameCube at wholesale prices is the best first console for children aged six and above, and for those adults who still have a child at heart.

Microsoft Xbox

Xbox is the least backward compatible console to its third generation counterpart. In typical Microsoft fashion, Xbox 360 players must download a patch for individual Xbox games they desire to play on the Xbox 360. Also, since memory cards are almost unnecessary to save progress, there is no sense to install the Xbox&s now dwarfed 10GB hard drive in place of the Xbox 360&s 20GB or even 120GB hard drive. Popular titles for the Xbox franchise continue to be the Halo series and EA Sports titles, all of which can be found readily available in wholesale video game bargain bins. Wholesale Xbox consoles and games will appeal most to late comers in the violent and action packed video game genres, and those unwilling to spring for the hefty price tag of the Xbox 360.

PlayStation 2

Wholesale PlayStation 2 consoles, games, and accessories are the best solution for wholesale video game retailers. First, the price is much more stable because of the near complete backward compatibility of the wholesale PlayStation 2 games on the new third generation PlayStation 3. Also, the PlayStation 2 is the only second generation console still receiving support; new game titles and accessories are released in conjunction with the same title release for the third generation consoles. The next biggest advantage of wholesale PlayStation 2 games and accessories is the vastness of its catalog and reach. Over 120 million consoles have sold worldwide and game titles range from the cutesy Lego series for kids to the hard core action packed Call of Duty franchise. The shelf-life and profit margin is the highest for wholesale PlayStation 2 games and accessories.

The Big Fat Mistakes Affiliate Marketers Make

It’s always one of those “I can’t believe its true” moments for new affiliates once they discover the world of affiliate marketing. When they realise you don’t have to worry about product development or shipping. They jump in not doing some due diligence on the company. They expect to start making some money within few weeks, unitl reality strikes. They are yet to be millionaires. Here are some mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

Patience is a Virtue like they say. It took years for Macdonalds to be a successful, it took years for Microsoft and other big companies to take off to success. Infact most business take up to 5years to start seeing profit. Treating your affiliate business as a real business is important. Super affiliates that earn $20,000 a month took years to get to that point. Research a program before signing up. Commit to stick it out. If they offer guides and training take advantage of it. Update and maintain your site with fresh contents. Don’t jump ship when the going gets tough.

Avoid the temptation to subscribe to too many programs. When the going gets tough, its easy to think the grass is greener the other side. The problem about subscribing to too many programs at the same time is that you’ll fail to give them the attention and focus they deserve to make you money. I recommend two or three programs at the same time to enable you turn your hard work into cash.

The main problem with most affiliates is that they want to make fast money. By taking time to learn and apply what they’ve learnt, slow and steady they will get there. I’ve put together a review on top affiliate programs. I recommend these programs because they just don’t want to make a sales person out of you, they are interested in making you a top marketer with the right mindset.

These programs come with A-Z guides and tools to help you avoid mistakes affiliates do. To find out more about these programs visit www.affiliatemarketersplace.com/review.html

Digital Certificates and Secure Web Access

Introduction

This article describes the use of Digital Certificates as a mechanism for strongly authenticating users to web sites where identity information is required. Before the advent of digital certificates the only option for authenticating users to a site was to assign a username and password. Digital certificates on the other hand provide for much more robust access control and have a number of benefits over username and password.

Username and password authentication

Using username and password the process is generally as follows: each time a user wishes to access a web service the user navigates to the site and authenticate themselves to the application using unique username and password. This data is passed to the server (hopefully in an encrypted form), the application looks up the username and the password (or a representation of the password) in some form of access control list and provided the information matches the user is granted access.

This method has some obvious limitations:

* The username and password are passed over the web (encrypted or unencrypted) with the typical security concerns of interception.
* The systems administrator normally has unrestricted access to all usernames and passwords with associated security and liability concerns for the service provider (especially with confidential data)
* The user needs to remember as many usernames and passwords as are required by their applications leading to inevitable support issues to recover lost access data

Digital Certificate Authentication

The typical digital certificate web access process is:

The user navigates to the website. Before allowing access it checks the certificate against the access database. The user enters the password locally to confirming their access right to the certificate and is allowed to the website.

Benefits of certificates over username and password:

* General security is enhanced: the user needs both the certificate itself and the password to the certificate to gain access.
* The password is never passed over the web, not even during account set-up.
* At no stage do systems administrators have access to user passwords.
* The certificate can electronically sign data on the website with the benefit of non-repudiation.
* The user uses one digital identity with one password to access a range of applications (reduces passwords to remember).

Implementing Digital Certificates

All major web servers support client authentication via certificates. An SSL certificate on the web server (to support https) enables configuration of client authentication and only requires specification of the access rights for each directory served by the web server. Amend the web application to support client authentication by certificates. If any code was developed to handle user name and password, then the certificate credentials can be looked up in an access control list in just the same way. Client certificates are issued via a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) You can choose implement your own or use the services of a Managed Service Provider such as Diginus Ltd.

Wider Use

Once customers or employees have digital certificates, the same certificates can be used to digitally sign email, PDF and web forms and Microsoft Word documents. With a few small steps a corporate website can be transformed into the centre of a powerful web services infrastructure, with single sign on to multiple web applications, signed email and forms data exchange, all the time knowing exactly who is accessing the resources and data.