Digging and Stumbling for Traffic

Digging and Stumbling for Traffic

Is your approach bringing, or stopping traffic?

Both StumbleUpon and Digg have the potential to be real traffic boosters for your website or blog.
They can also put an effective roadblock on your attempts to make it anywhere if you and your friends are not using them the right way.

You have to remember that these networks were not designed to drive traffic to you; they were designed with their own well being in mind.
Not yours. Users who want more than they give are not going to be very successful.

Digg and StumbleUpon both rely on people to submit and vote on content.
They have complex algorithms for calculating what stories should be promoted to popularity status and which ones shouldn’t.
The common thread for these calculations is that they attempt to stop users from manipulating the system, and they are pretty successful at it. Far too many users are trying to manipulate the system to get traffic, this will be hard to do and is the primary reason why it isn’t working. There is a much easier way to use the system that will inevitably get you traffic - and a lot of it.

What is the Right Way?

1. Participate
This is the base for all Social Networking success.
Be an active part of the network so that you add as much as you hope to receive. However, as you will see later in this post. Mindless participation doesn’t do much.

2. Think about what the network wants
The Networks both want users to submit and vote on GOOD content, they have checks and balances to make sure that the votes counted are worth something.

3. Comment
Commenting shows the system that you are giving this article more attention, which automatically will make a comment worth more than just a vote.

A Closer Look at Digg

Digg has the option to shout pages to your friends.
Since Digg wants to promote good content. Do you think they are going to give a vote where the reader isn’t looking at the article first? For Digg, the key is to either submit the vote from the page with a button on the article, or use that hyperlink before you click digg. If you vote without looking at what you are voting for; Digg will know and compensate accordingly.

When I have shouted a Digg article to friends, the total amount of traffic is directly related to how many hits I get from that shout. I’ve had articles with 30 diggs but only 4 actual hits. In other words, the people that dugg the article didn’t read it. The total amount of traffic there was about 20 hits.

Then I have had articles with about as many hits and 20 hits from the shout. Which gave me a total traffic of over a hundred. Digg’s algorithm saw that people were actually reading the article before voting and kept it higher on their pages for longer.

StumbleUpon

Stumble is different, when you thumb up an article there, the best "value" of a vote is when the user arrived at that page because of the Stumble button. Not if they vote from the article itself.

A stumble always happens from the page or article, so the problem encountered at Digg with users not actually reading the page isn’t present. What I am fairly sure about thought is that Stumble will look at how long you spend on a page before voting. A lot of testing has shown that Votes inside of a couple of seconds after arriving don’t count for much there.

Commenting for Traffic

If you really want to be an active part of the community and become a powerful voter, you have to comment. Your comments are worth a lot more than your clicks. Comments on your post will drive it up the algorithm scales much quicker than votes will. If you comment on others, they will comment on you. It’s that simple.

Choose your friends wisely

It is easy to just go ahead and slam on as many friends as possible, thinking that it will boost your power and traffic as a result. This is not necessarily true at all.

On Digg for instance. Having a lot of friends will actually make articles you submit and shout harder to get promoted to popular. There are reports that people with a lot of friends are seeing this effect clearly although it is not documented on their site. Also votes inside your network aren’t worth as much as votes that are completely unrelated to you. Having a lot of friends that aren’t’ reading and voting is actually slowing you down.

On Stumble, You are limited to 200 friends, this seems like a lot, but if those friends are added randomly without understanding what they are looking for, they might actually not be your best option.

Chances are that if your friend isn’t interested much in your topic, they are not going to vote you up when they get to your pages. If you aren’t getting thumbs up, then you are not getting the benefit of them promoting it to their networks. This will immediately show up in your numbers.

Avoid the temptation of adding anyone and everyone that you can find, add the people that show interest in your items already, if they vote on your articles, they are likely to want to read more of them in the future and do it again.

Make friends in your own topic area, they are also looking for your information and will have friends that are doing the same. This is where your traffic will come from.

Finally never underestimate the power of good content. The same old story will always be true, good content will always do better than bad.
Work on your writing and the results will show up.

Good luck, and if you liked this, I hope that you will Digg or Stumble it as well.

By: Erik Johnels

12 Ways to Monetize your Blog - The Blogpreneur 3

12 Ways to Monetize your Blog - The Blogpreneur 3

A little planning. Some basic preparation, and good old fashioned hard work can turn a blog into a money maker. How much? That is really up to you and your determination.

Some ways are easier than others; some will earn you more money than others. But in the long run, it’s all about building a solid brand and a good base of readers before you will see much return.

1. Advertising Networks
Advertising networks such as AdSense, Adready, etc. is the most common way of monetizing.
It’s Important to realize that most ad networks don’t work very well until you have search engine traffic. People who arrive from other sources don’t click as much as you’d think. However, a few cents can always be made on page impressions alone. Never a bad idea, but not the goldmine its painted out to be.

It’s easy to sign up, it’s easy to implement, and in most cases, it’s problem free. It is however not a great way to make a lot of money unless you have serious amounts of good search engine traffic.

2. Direct Selling Ads
You can sell Ad-Space to companies direct. This is not that hard to do, but it does require you to do a little more work on your own. You also need to monitor the ads, adding and removing as contracts expire. Your price and revenue will depend on both your traffic, and your negotiating skills.

3. E-Books
If you have quality material to sell, then you can write an e-book and sell it through your website. You can also upload e-books for sale to Amazon. The E-book is the most common gateway to serious diversified monetization. It is also a powerful traffic builder if used right.

4. Print Books
If you are a blogger, you might have it in your to write a full book for print.
Print on demand, Google, Amazon and other services have great ways to market print books alongside your own blog. A book has the additional benefit of being a perpetual money earner. Once it’s out there, you can reap the benefits for a very long time.

5. Merchandise
You have a blog? Maybe there is a market for some t-shirts, posters, Coffee Mugs or other ideas. Cafepress has made it very easy to make merchandize with zero cost.
You can of course do it the traditional way too. Which gives you better profit per item, but has the problem of finding a manufacturer of your products, stock and shipping.

If you are already producing something, you can of course add a web shop to the blog. But that’s really not about blogging. That’s more a traditional e-business approach.

6. Affiliate Marketing
Some businesses will make you their sales person.
Either by just advertising, or by actually doing the sales work for them and earning a commission (see point 7.) This is one of the most popular ways of monetizing, but it has also become a bit of a scourge of the blogging world. Be careful since this can damage your brand.

7. Build your own Amazon (or other) shop
Amazon allows you to advertize a specific product.
You can choose the exact ad you want to show.
This can allow you to make a product review, and advertise the sale through Amazon. Doing this tastefully can actually be a very good way to earn a living, I’ve seen some very sophisticated applications of this approach.

8. Member Services
Provide a subscription based part of the website that gives access to VIP information, services etc. If you are trying this one, make sure that the value given is worth the investment. Or you will get plenty of bad reviews written about you and your service.

9. Consulting / Coaching
If you are a specialist, or have a business where you can give advice, you can leverage that by giving either online advice or channeling customers to your real world business. This works especially well for Consultants and Personal Coaches, but designers, programmers, and other computer oriented blogs can make good money this way too.

10. Paid Posts
There are plenty of companies out there that will pay you to make a post on your blog. You’ll need some traffic and basic notoriety before this becomes an option. Be careful! You might lose credibility if you do not disclose that you are making a paid post. There are enough bloggers out there that get the same offers as you do.
Your readers will know what’s real and whats been paid for sooner or later.

11. Links
Another common offer is to get paid for links from your page. This only becomes viable once you have a decent pagerank, and since this is frowned upon by Google, you might get that pagerank taken away. Not something I’d advice on doing.

12. Sell it
Blogs are being sold all the time, once you have designed your blog and brought it up to speed, there might be a market to sell it. However, building a blog and traffic etc just to sell it rarely is a very effective way to spend your time. If you are a great blogger, that has all the tricks of Traffic building down. Then you might be the person to have this as a goal. Otherwise, time/value is just not there.

Blogging for a living is not as easy as many advertisers out there might want you to believe. But it is possible for those with drive, determination and a firm grasp on the difference between leveraging, and selling their brand name down the tube.

Good Luck!

By Erik Johnels

Stumped or Stumbled?

Generating Quality Traffic with StumbleUpon

Stumble can bring you a ton of traffic, and opposed to many of the others, you have great control of how targeted that traffic is.

Stumble creates traffic , that’s how it works. Participating in the network means actually viewing a lot of sites. Many of the other networks provide listings, where a snappy title and witty description is the only thing that brings in the hits. Yes, you can submit to specific topic areas, which will target it a little. But that’s about as good as it gets. Great articles are constantly lost on the social bookmark sites that use lists because someone posted about Britney Spears latest antics 2 seconds at the same time.

Stumble is different; your submissions will go through your network of fans and friends. And you don’t even have to annoy ask them to do it. If they are your fans, Stumble makes sure that they eventually sees the pages you like.

You Decide

You get many of your fans based on your stumble history, people who like sites you have submitted will find you, and they will find you through their other friends, who may have found you through the sites you have submitted and stumbled. In other words, people will add you based on what you like, not based on your ability to write a snappy title only.

Relevance

So your stumbles, if they are relevant to your own site or blog, will attract people who like what you write about too. Making them more likely to thumb you up, this will drive more people that like what they like… And the chain continues. This chain can bring you traffic for weeks and months, not just hours like so many of the other social bookmarking sites.

This spreading of information through your networks is almost like a pyramid scheme, the more powerful you are the more people will see your stumbles. If they have a lot of fans, you will quickly be reaching a very large network of people, all of whom will see your actual site, as opposed to just reading your snappy headline on a list where it drops to page 39 before you have refilled your coffee.

This is the brilliance of Stumble, not only does it drive traffic; it gives you the control to focus your network and bring you quality traffic that is actually interested in what you do. Not just those that got lured by the snappiest headline.

Once you have your target audience on your site, it’s all up to your content quality to get that Thumbs Up.

By: Erik Johnels

Source :http://www.weakestlinkconsulting.com/2008/06/stumped-or-stumbled/

Make Your Website Rank Higher in Major Search Engines! Benefits of CSS in SEO

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language that permits web designers to attach style like spacing, color, font, etc. to HTML documents. Cascading style sheets work similarly to a template; permitting web developers to label style for an HTML element and after that apply it to the number of web pages required. Thus, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are collections of formatting rules, which control the appearance of content in a web page. With CSS styles you have great flexibility and control of the exact page appearance; from precise positioning of layout to specific fonts and styles.

There are many benefits of using CSS. One of the major benefits of using CSS is the easy maintenance of the website. Maintenance of a website made with CSS is much easier compared to the ones which are table based. CSS splits the presentation style of documents from the content of documents and makes the maintenance of the site easier. Aside from being able to make site extensive changes with no trouble through one CSS file, the clean code it generates makes it easier to update. Webmasters can characterize the appearance of a site in one place, and change the whole site by changing just one file. With CSS, when you decide to craft a change, you simply alter the style, and that element is updated automatically anywhere it appears in the site. So, if you have to alter the color of all pages in your site, you only have to edit one style sheet. This saves you enormous amount of time, particularly if you have to edit each page independently. CSS generally requires less code compared to table based. This makes your code lighter and cleaner. Clean code makes a huge difference in maintaining your site.

Cascading Style Sheets Benefits and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Another major benefit of CSS is that it makes your website SEO friendly. The reason behind this is simple. The search engines spiders are actually very lethargic. They do not go through the bundles of HTML codes to get to the indexed codes. Font tags and tables make the HTML code very cumbersome; thus, reduce the accuracy of the results. If you use external CSS files to design and determine the design attributes; the HTML code will be clean and it will result to better search engine rankings. With some knowledge of CSS you will be able to change the code layout without destroying the actual visual layout. For instance, you could easily make the main content of your site to show up above the header or navigation menu in the code of your website; thus will help to show search engine crawlers the importance of your content. I personally saw a huge boost in rankings in fully CSS web sites. When I look at someone's website that was built using old school HTML code with tags such as: TABLES, TD, TR, FONT and so on, I feel awkward and immediately convert that site to a fully table-less CSS layout. There are many tools on the Internet that shows the actual code over text ratio weight of your site. Do you know why? Because modern search engines such as: Google, Yahoo and MSN love light-weighted websites. They want to see your content; the text, not the code. With CSS everything is possible. You practically externalize excessive code into external file, thus leaving the actual page clean and simple.

Website Accessibility

CSS makes your website more accessible. The number of users browsing the web through hand held devices are continuously growing tremendously. It is estimated that by 2008, one third of the world's population will be using hand held devices for accessing Internet. It is always important that your site is accessible to them also. You can make an additional CSS document particularly for handheld devices like cell phones, which will be called up in place of the regular CSS document; which is not achievable with a tabular layout. CSS benefits accessibility chiefly by separating document structure from presentation. By separating style from markup, webmasters can simplify and clean up the HTML in their documents, making the documents more accessible.

Increases Download Speed of Your Website

CSS code downloads faster than tables. Browsers read through tables twice previous to exhibiting their contents; first to work out their structure and then to determine their content. Moreover, tables are shown on the screen as a whole, no part of the table will be displayed until the entire table is downloaded and rendered. Tables support the use of spaced images to assist with positioning. CSS generally requires less code than cumbersome tables. All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then stored on the user's computer; while the table layout stored in each HTML document, must be loaded up each time a new page downloads. Also with CSS, you can manage the order of the items downloaded into the screen. You have the control to make the content appear previous to the slow loading images, which is liked by most of the web users.

Cross Browser Compatibility

For all webmasters out there! CSS makes your website more professional. Taking the benefits of CSS like making your websites load faster and easy to maintain, you save a lot of time and labor. This in turn makes you lots of money. CSS makes links of the website look more attractive and dynamic. Using CSS, you can slot in rollovers easily and effectively, without having to use a single character of JavaScript. Thus, CSS gives your websites a professional look. It is wise to use CSS to jive with the current trends of the industry. All major browsers like Firefox, Explorer, and Netscape presently recognize CSS and it is definitely safe for web designers to use CSS now.

About the author
Mikhail Tuknov, search engine optimization specialist and a founder of Infatex.com, search engine marketing company. With an extensive backgound in Internet marketing and web site development, Mikhail offers web site promotion services: SEO, Link Popularity, PPC, SEO copywriting and ROI Tracking.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Make_Your_Website_Rank_Higher_in_Major_Search_Engines_Benefits_of_CSS_in_SEO_a1752.html

SEO and Good Website Design with CSS

James Kendall writes in an article for webdesign.org "One of the more recent developments in web design is the use of CSS and Semantic markup. CSS and semantic web design has several benefits: clarity in code, browser and other web-enabled devices compatibility, seperation of content and presentation, smaller burden on bandwith, and better visibility in the search engines." Read the entire article.

Pretend you're a search engine and you have 3,946 web sites to look over and record information about in less than an hour. Now I don't know how many web sites are spidered by search engines in a given hour, but I'm trying to make the point that the search engines are very busy looking at web sites and making decisions about them as they do.

So, you're a search engine. Which one of these web page portions can you find the content in most quickly?


"<table width="580" border="1" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="silver">
<tr>
<td align="center" valign="top"><font size="2" color="red" face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">This is a brief bit of Code!</font></td>
<td align="right" valign="bottom"><font size="1" color="black" face="Georgia"> Tables were never meant for layout purposes</font></td>

<td align="left"><img src="images/someimage.jpg" alt="Some Image"/></td>
</tr>
</table>"

OR

"<div id="layer1"><h1 class="red">This is a brief bit of Code!</</h1>

<p class="gray">Tables were never meant for layout purposes

Link to Something Important
</div>"

Amazingly enough, the second bit of code will display the very same thing as the first! See how much easier and quicker that reads? Search engines look for the textual content just like you do and they only have so much time to read through each web site. Because the search engine spiders use a top down method for retrieving information from a web page, the search engines may not end up reading all of your content. If they can't read all your content, you will not get ranked appropriately!

If you use "rollover" buttons or images as links to the other pages in your site, the search engine can't read them at all and will not follow those links to see what the rest of your site is about. If they can't gather information on those other pages in your site, they won't rank them at all.

Finally, wouldn't it be great if your web site could be read by people using a computer, a cell phone, a PDA or the next invention to view web sites? Becasue CSS is a standards-compliant coding language, it can! It will even work with standards-compliant devices not invented yet.

About the author
Cindy Dykstra of CD WebMaker has been successfully designing and marketing web sites since 2000. Her company website offers information on web design, hosting and marketing to web site owners.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/SEO_and_Good_Website_Design_with_CSS_a2229.html

SEO Overhauls with CSS: If You Rebuild It They Will Come

As an SEO one of the most common things I find when I sit down to analyze an existing web site is that it was built either a long time ago or with aging techniques. The situation is different every time, but I almost invariably find myself suggesting to the client that some coding changes are in order at the most basic level. This may be as simple as using proper heading tags where aging tags were used to add relevance to the page. I often rebuild image-based navigation menus using CSS and valuable anchor text. In the more extreme cases I'll suggest to the client that the best bet for on-page optimization is to reconstruct the site layout entirely with more SEO-friendly methods.
Table-based Woes

There are a lot of good arguments on both sides as to whether tables are still a good method to lay out web pages. With the advent of CSS-driven layouts several years ago it became possible to achieve very clean code while still creating vivid visual experiences. However, there are still plenty (and a majority, in my experience) of web sites out there that use tables for layout. Do these sites function more-or-less exactly like their CSS-driven counterparts? More-or-less, yes. The user experience can be identical. When it comes to the source code, however, there are usually some very big differences.

I recently rebuilt a client's eCommerce site and the result was an estimated 300 less lines of code per page. While it would be arbitrary to argue that this count has a direct correlation to search rankings it certainly demonstrates the level of extraneous code that table-based layouts without significant CSS support can contain. This site was in particularly bad shape with no heading tags to be found and JavaScript-driven rollover images for all navigation.

It took about twelve hours to recode the template and migrate the content. Today this client enjoys much better rankings and traffic. All the result of the CSS rebuild? Obviously not - like any SEO worth his salt I combined this rebuild with ongoing link building and content optimization efforts. I find it hard to discount this, though, since the improvement in the hierarchy and density of content in the code was significant.

CSS and Information Hierarchy

Google openly calls for the proper use of HTML to tag page content and the maintenance of a clear hierarchy in their webmaster guidelines. Ignoring spam filter issues (which you should be effortlessly avoiding by being honest, right?) it makes sense to maintain proper tagging and organization in your source code. What makes CSS so viable a solution for SEO is that it keeps the layout and presentation out of the way. A well-coded page with proper CSS support can have all of the visuals of a table-based counterpart but with source code that is easy, even comfortable, to read for a human being. It isn't much of a stretch to say that this cleanliness and organization probably improves page relevance in the eyes of Google and the crawl process as well.

Some other ways that a CSS-driven layout offers improvements:

• Faster page load times
• Code order flexibility (the ability to move content higher to the top of the source code without altering the page visually)
• Easier and quicker site updates and maintenance
• Improved accessibility (for vision-impaired users and otherwise)
• Link building opportunities (from online galleries for notably-designed CSS-driven web sites)
• Crawler Resource Management

Google is running some of the most powerful servers in the world. No doubt, when Googlebot sets out to index pages it is driven by a very quick machine. However, the shear volume of the web as well as the rate at which Googlebot indexes new pages (usually a week or more) suggests that resource management is a big part of Google's careful measurements. It is reasonable to expect, then, that when Googlebot visits a page that contains thousands of lines of code it doesn't bother reading through to the end. At some point the crawlers will cut and run - there are, after all, billions of other web pages they need to get to. CSS-layouts drastically reduce the amount of source code needed to present content pages, making it less likely that Googlebot or another crawler will abandon the crawl process and leave your page before scanning all content.

Is rebuilding your site with a CSS-driven layout going to launch you to top rankings for competitive search terms? Probably not, but it should help. Most table-based sites that don't use CSS support are also poorly optimized from other standpoints - inbound links, content relevance, keyword research, etc. A CSS-driven layout coupled with proper HTML tagging leaves you with the best platform possible to improve your search rankings down the line. It has also, in many cases, brought on an almost immediate improvement in search visibility for established web sites.


About the author
Mike Tekula is the founder and Lead Strategist at Tek Web Solutions, a New York SEO Company that specializes in driving increased web site traffic.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/SEO_Overhauls_with_CSS_If_You_Rebuild_It_They_Will_Come_a3012.html

CSS Validation and HTML

HTML validation and CSS validation are controversial issues with some people. This article discusses some of the issues that have come increasingly to the fore in web development. The article will also provide a practical method that overworked webmasters can use to improve their website.

What does Validating HTML or CSS Mean?

For those who are unfamiliar with what validating a web page means, it basically refers to using a program or an online service to check that the web page that you created is free of errors. In particular, an HTML validator checks to make sure the HTML code on the web page complies with the standards set by the W3 Consortium (the organisation that issues the HTML standards). There are various types of validators - some check only for errors; others also make suggestions about your code, telling you when a certain way of writing things might lead to unexpected results. A CSS validator checks your Cascading Style Sheets in the same manner; basically, most will check them to make sure that they comply with the CSS standards set by the W3 Consortium. There are a few which will also tell you which CSS features are supported by which browsers. Note that validating your web page does not ensure that it will appear as you want in various browsers. It merely ensures that your code is without HTML or CSS syntax errors. Ensuring that your code appears correctly in different browsers require cross browser testing.

Why Validate Your HTML Code?

1. It Helps Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform and Future Compatibility Although you may be able to create a web page that appears to work on your favourite browser (whatever that may be), your page may contain HTML errors (or CSS errors) that do not show up with that browser due to an existing quirk or bug. Another person using a different browser that does not share that particular bug will wind up viewing a page that does not show up correctly. It is also possible that later versions of your browser will fix that bug, and your page will be broken when people use the latest incarnation of the browser.

2. Search Engine Visibility When there are errors in a web page, browsers typically try to compensate in different ways. Hence some browsers may ignore the broken elements while others make assumptions about what the web designer was trying to achieve. The problem is that when search engines obtain your page and try to parse them for keywords, they will also have to make certain decisions about what to do with the errors. Like browsers, different search engines will probably make different decisions about those errors in the page, resulting in certain parts of your web page not being indexed. The safest way, it is held, is to make sure that your web page validates error-free.

3. Professionalism Even if you test your web site with all the various browsers in existence on all the platforms in use (Mac, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc) and find that it works perfectly in all, errors in your site reflect poorly on your skill as a web developer. The issue is two-fold: firstly, a poorly coded web page reveals that either the web designer does not know his stuff or is a sloppy worker; secondly, it affects his marketability.

About the author
Kyle Newton is a professional internet marketing specialist and can launch and manage your complete web presence from Web Design to SEO with professional results that make your projects, services, or products a success on the web.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/CSS_Validation_and_HTML_a1934.html

Advantages of using tableless CSS | XHTML Web Design Techniques

Tables used to be the "in" thing when it came to designing web sites. As with many other things though, new techniques and methods standards are bound to emerge with time. When once tables were seen in most web pages, some experts now suggest that tables should be thrown out of the window.

In simple words, tableless web design is basically a method whereby page layout control is achieved without the use of HTML tables. Instead, text and other elements on a page are arranged using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). This language is the brainchild of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). It was designed in such a way as to improve web accessibility as well as to make use of HTML for semantic purposes rather than presentational purposes.

One thing that has been making the headlines in the past year or so is the term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. With search engines such as Google and Yahoo making big waves in the information sector, web designers are scrambling to get on their good side. The one main goal of a web designer is to get his site on the top pages for search results. How is this achieved? By making one's site search engine friendly.

Search engines make use of various techniques to index all existing web sites. Based on these various techniques, they assign a page rank to the web site. The higher the page rank, the more chances it will be high up in the search engine results. The higher up the site is in ranking, the more chances that people will visit the site. That means good news for the web site. That is where semantics and HTML come in.

So how about tables? Web designers who favor tables assert that they make the design process easier and less time consuming. More so, they assert that tables are more compatible with various web browsers. On the other hand, proponents of tableless formats assert that tables do not adhere to web standards and web accessibility.

Over the years, people have been trying to come up with web standards that are based on logic and that would make it easier for everyone involved to access web sites. Text readers, bots, mobile devices, and other elements were all taken into consideration. As such, the tableless format has come into popular use.

Why should you follow this standard? Here are a few reasons as to why you should go tableless:

• The current W3C standards dictate the use of tableless design.
• Practically all browsers in use today support CSS for controlling layouts. As such, your site will be compatible with most any browser
• It is easier to make global changes to the layout with the use of CSS. That is, if the coding is properly done, of course
• Web site accessibility for people with special needs is done more easily with the proper implementation of content into XHTML documents. In this case, CSS is used only for the layout and style
• Unnecessary code is eliminated with the use of XHTML and CSS, making for a sleeker and more manageable code
• Tableless formats make it easier for search engines to index a web site.

Though tableless formats are being widely used for page layout control, it does not necessarily mean that tables are not being used anymore. They are merely not optimal for presentation purposes.

About the author
http://www.PSDxHTML.COM is an entity which offers conversion from PSD or PNG design to HTML / XHTM / CSS. Their end results are of excellent quality while their fees are reasonable. They specialize in making tableless CSS layouts, SEO semantic markup, and cross browser compatibility. As a secondary service, they also offer the redesigning or recoding of web sites to the CSS layouts.

Source : http://seoarticles4u.com/Advantages_of_using_tableless_CSS_%7C_XHTML_Web_Design_Techniques_a2118.html

SEO: more HTML, little actual marketing

Sitepoint's forums recently featured this interesting discussion where the original poster explains that in a sense, HTML already covers the basics of search engine optimization. If you think about it, that's quite a reasonable way to look at it. SEO is just another facet of appropriate HTML practices, and this topic would be more appropriate in a site like HTML Dog than in WhateverMoneyBlog #18472. It's a basic thing when it comes to running a good website. In other words, if you are good with HTML, SEO should be your bread and butter. Correct use of meta tags, page titles and headings, alt text in images and links, these are all scanned by search engine spiders. THAT is SEO, and not much more. SEO might be considered a part of marketing, but it is a very small, indirect form of marketing. By default, good SEO practices already happen on their own if you write good code. But it still means squat for getting traffic if your website has almost no good content to keep your visitors coming.

Other points that summarize the discussion:

* SEO is the end result of accessibility, usability, and good content of a website. However, the guidelines for search engines are different than those for people that want to read your articles.
* 95% of the stuff people talk about claiming to be SEO just falls into- wait for it- online marketing practices. No buzzwords are needed to describe this.
* About the only non-coding related aspect of SEO would be keyword research.

With this said, it is very sensible to say that being a marketing genius is irrelevant to knowing SEO. This should be the responsibility of a good HTML coder.

About the author
JustChris is the owner of the website Zero Dominance, which provides tips and tools, ranging from the technical to the intuitive, for helping you create a better website. Check it out and create a better site in no time.

Source: http://seoarticles4u.com/SEO_more_HTML_little_actual_marketing_a3629.html

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love (2) - Ten Bonus Tips Added

56. Use Google Alerts to be alerted about back links - http://www.google.com/alerts. Add link:www.yourdomain.com to the Search Terms box to get notified by email when someone links to you.

57. Optimize your press releases just as you would a web page. Use your keywords, keyword anchor text and headlines in a way that will maximize your visibility without being spammy. In addition to possible pickup by major news sites, these releases are archived on the web. And, remember, don’t put out press releases to sites like PRWeb unless you have REAL news to share.

58. Move JavaScript and CSS to external files whenever possible. This will make your code tighter, move your content up higher, the page will load faster and the spiders will have fewer possible roadblocks in their quest to devour all that good content you wrote .

59. Build pages around phrases like Where can I or How can I because there are a TON of searches for variations of these. Just search for one of these phrases using the free WordTracker Keyword Suggestion Tool and you’ll see what I mean.

60. If you write articles for distribution to article sites for mass distribution (a great way to get back links), be sure to publish the article on your own site first and give the spiders a chance to crawl it. That identifies you as the originator of the content. Then push the article out for distribution across the web, making sure you have a link back to your site in the article content.

61. Tweak and test. Make one change at a time and evaluate what effect it had on your ranking, if any. Changing too many things at once can confuse things to the point where you don’t know which change you made did what.

62. Local search is getting hot! Create a local listing for all locations if you have more than one. Don’t just create a local listing for the main one. Get them all in there! Start with local listings at Google, Yahoo! and Live. Include photos, videos, links, web pages and coupons if available.

63. Don’t try to fake it. Those 50 domains you bought in 1998 with dummy content all linking back to your main site might have made you #1 last decade, but now they can get you booted from the rankings altogether. The “mini-net” is dead.

64. Want to see what Google has indexed from your domain (or any domain for that matter) during, say, the past seven days? Just point your brower to http://www.google.com/search? q=site:yourdomain.com&as_qdr=d7 .

Simply change the “yourdomain.com” to your actual domain name and alter the “=d7? to be whatever number of days you are looking for (d5, d10, etc.). Or, change the “d” to “w” for weeks or “y” for years.

65. Test domains should be invisible. It you are using a domain simply for testing new designs, functions, etc., be sure it is not accessible to spiders or users, who will both be confused about which domain is the real thing. If the spiders can get to it, you could be in for big duplicate content issues. A simple way to block all spiders is with the robots.txt file.

Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/25-blog-optimization-tips-even-dear-old-dad-could-ace-plus-10-more-tips-for-mom/7013/

25 Blog Optimization Tips

Hi..It's very good optimization tips. I will do it now and let's see the results on my blogs.

1. Use full text in your RSS feed.
It is common to just include the first paragraph or two (a summary) in what goes out in the feed and then insert a "More" link to get the reader to go to your blog.
That diminishes your ability to get back links from services like TechMeMe because any links below the "More" won't appear. Use the full text. Don't worry about your feed being duplicate content.
According to Rick Klau, formerly of Feedburner and now with Google, a feed in itself will never be considered duplicate content.

2. Optimize the text in the RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

3. RSS feeds with podcasts and video enclosures will get you into additional RSS directories and engines.
Be sure to use show notes (text transcripts) for your podcasts and videos, though. Remember, search engines love text and can’t yet pull content from multimedia files.

4. Include tag clouds on pages.
Tag clouds are basically keywords from posts on your blog that are linked to a search results page on your blog that include all articles related to the keyword. Let's say the word that shows up in the "cloud" (basically just a list) is "widgets" and you click on it. You'll get a page showing all posts on your blog that are tagged with the "widgets" tag.
To produce tag clouds, Simple Tags, a free plugin for WordPress, can be used.

5. Use a Related Posts plugin.
Cross linking to related posts on your blog helps with your internal linking, making keyword rich anchor text more prominent on your blog as well as helping your visitors navigate your site.
Use a related posts plugin for WordPress like Contextual Related Posts.

6. Top Ten Posts with links.
This can be put on auto pilot with yet another plugin that automates the process of deciding which posts get clicked on the most and placing a list on your blog for visitors (and spiders) to see and follow.
Popularity Contest is a good WordPress plugin for this.

7. Add Technorati tags to your posts.
Technorati tracks blogs and social media and tagging your posts can help spread the word about your content.
Go to Technorati, register for an account (it's free) and claim your blog as your own.
A nice plugin to help automate the placement of Technorati tags on your blog is Simple Tags (different plugin from the "Simple Tags" mentioned above).

8. Optimize your TITLE. Don't just let your blog software automatically create the TITLE for your post by pulling the text out of your post heading. Customize and optimize it.
The SEO TITLE Tag plugin is perfect for WordPress. And, just like with any web page TITLE, put your company name or the name of the blog at the END (if you must include it at all). Unless you are Coca Cola or Microsoft, NOBODY will be searching for it. Sorry…

9. Make posts sticky.
By using a "sticky post" plugin, you can create keyword rich content that will stay at the top of a category page, for instance, rather than moving down as additional content is posted. I am currently using WP Sticky.

10. Create Sitemaps.
The search engines can follow your RSS feed sitemap just like they can follow one for a normal web site. Create sitemaps for each category RSS feed and tell the search engines about them, either by pointing to them in your robots.txt file or by submitting them to Yahoo Site Explorer or Google Webmaster Central.

11. Use Feedburner.
Feedburner offers a ton of free features that can add to your blog's optimization and marketing efforts, including stats, post e-mail notifications, the ability to include Flickr photo posts and much more. Now owned by Google, features that were previously paid services like MyBrand are now free.

12. Use Optional Excerpts. When you make a post, WordPress will grab some text to display on your category page and in your feed (if you aren’t using a full feed as described above). Unfortunately, it doesn’t always grab good text. Using the Optional Excerpts feature in WordPress, you can type in the exact keyword rich, topical text that you want displayed.

13. Domain name - In a nutshell, if you think having your blog on a separate domain from, say, your business, will give you more authority and street credit, then go for it. It boils down to a choice of mydomain.com/blogname or blogname.com.

14. Use the Update Service built into WordPress. This is in the Options menu and all you do is place a list of URLs to different services like Feedster, Netgator, Technorati, etc. and whenever you make a post, those services will be notified. You can find a list of the services at WordPress Update Service.

15. CEO blogging - priceless! If you are running a business, particularly a consumer driven business, get your CEO (Dad?) blogging! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. And, responding to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket! This is especially true for a family business. It just makes visitors feel welcome.

16. Socialize. Interact with your visitors. Don't just publish your posts and sit back. Answer questions, link out to their sites when they offer good content, respond to their comments in a timely, informative manner, etc.

17. Own a niche. It’s a lot easier to dominate a space if you start out with a smaller, less competitive, narrowly focused subject area. For example, you're more likely to become a dominant player with a blog about "rechargeable outdoor power tools" than you are for simply "tools" which is way too broad a term with a lot more competition.

18. Work your titles for both audiences - readers and searchers. Be sure you start out with the title of your post to attract readers. After the post has some history and has fallen into the archive section of your blog, go back and optimize the title for SEO.

19. Keep the post slug the same. Write this yourself, don't let WordPress generate it. Don't go back and change it at a later date because this is what determines how your post link is formed. Writing your own post slug allows you to create an easy to read, optimized URL.

20. Optimize for the Google indent. We've all seen Google search results where a page from a domain ranks with another page from the same domain just under it, but indented. Focus on getting a post ranking well using standard SEO, anchor text links, etc. Then find another, similar post to optimize. Link the ranking post to the second post to try to pull it up.

21. Re-purpose posts and pages. Let's say you did a post on social media way back in 2005 and you want to do a similar, updated post. If the 2005 post is just way out of date and not of particular use these days, write over it with your new content. The old post has history and back links that can give you an immediate bump.

22. Use a single category. I know it's tempting sometimes to place your posts in multiple categories, but get over it. You risk duplicate content issues with multiple categories, so make it easy for Google and concentrate on one.

23. Use a folder. Unless there is a very good reason to put your blog on a separate domain or subdomain (like your site is just a blog or you really believe a separate domain will give you more credibility - see tip #13), put it on your main site as a folder. This keeps link juice targeted to your main domain.

24. Got a Flash or image site that won't rank? Start a blog on the domain to create the related content and links to the Flash or image pages. Chances are your blog pages will be what rank, but they'll link back to and guide your visitors to your Flash and image pages.

25. Create your own custom footer. If you're using WordPress, try the Feed Footer Plugin. With it you can create your own custom footer content, complete with HTML, for your posts that will show up in your RSS feed. This is great for plugging favorite posts and monetizing your feed.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/25-blog-optimization-tips-even-dear-old-dad-could-ace-plus-10-more-tips-for-mom/7013/

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without any problem.

1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.

2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.

5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a major brand name that is a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.

6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.

7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.

8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.

9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.

10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.

11. Check for canonicalization issues - www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.

12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.

Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.

13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem - you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.

14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.

15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.

16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.

17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.

19. Not only should your links use keyword anchor text, but the text around the links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.

20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.

21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.

22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.

23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.

24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.

25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.

26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.

27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.

28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.

29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.

30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.

31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.

32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.

33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.

34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.

35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.

36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!

37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.

38. Use captions with your images. As with newspaper photos, place keyword rich captions with your images.

39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.

40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.

41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:

(1) Log out of Google

(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar

42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.

43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.

44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.

45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.

46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.

47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.

48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.

49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.

50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.

51. Add viral components to your web site or blog - reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.

52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.

53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.

54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.

55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.

Richard V. Burckhardt, also known as The Web Optimist, is an SEO trainer based in Palm Springs, CA with over 10 years experience in search engine optimization, web development and marketing.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/6760/

Moving to another web host or server?

Taming the Beast.net recently needed to move to another server with our current host due to an increase in traffic. While moving to another web host or server can be a straightforward task for smaller sites, it's more of a challenge for larger ones. Even if you only have to move a small site, there's still a few things to bear in mind.

While we knew a few months in advance we would need to make the move, when it actually occurred it all happened pretty quickly - of course, a number of things I was "gunnadoo" never did happen before the move - something that I regretted during the transition.

The following is a series of tips that may make your move a little smoother and will minimize any downtime you may experience.

Geographic issues
If you are moving your hosting from one country to another; before you do so you may need to consider the impact it will have on your traffic - search engines are becoming a little more geographic savvy; but the technology definitely has flaws. I'll use an Australian site based on an Australian server as an example.

Let's say you have 2 totally different sites:

ljkdfjaljl.com.au
lfjdfjioa.com

.. and at present they are hosted on Australian servers and your target market are Australians. You have decided you wish to take advantage of cheaper and more reliable hosting in the USA; so your sites will be hosted on American servers.

The site with the domain ljkdfjaljl.com.au, shouldn't experience any changes in terms of search engine traffic, but the lfjdfjioa.com site may experience some negative impact.

The reason for this is the way some search engines, including Google, are currently working. When you live in a particular country and go to Google.com, you are automatically redirected to the Google of your country; e.g. Google.com.au.

In the first couple of months of 2004, It was pointed out to me that Google would then return "pages from Australia" by default when any query was entered.

Although searchers are given a choice of whether they wish to search "pages from.." or "the web" via radio buttons directly under the search box - people don't tend to see these things unless they've performed a couple of searches and they aren't finding what they want.

When a local search is performed, Google tends to give more weight to sites that either have a domain name ending in .au or are physically hosted on an Australian server. Google can determine hosting location via the IP address, which is a unique identifier.

Currently (April 04), Region specific Google has changed the default setting back to search "the web"; perhaps as the result of user feedback, but it's an issue to bear in mind.

This doesn't mean that simply by selecting another Australian host that you can avoid this issue. Many Australian hosts still have their servers physically located in the USA or the UK. The best bet if local traffic is absolutely crucial to your online business is to purchase a country specific domain name and then use mod_rewrite for redirecting the old domain name to the new name.

Check with your hosting service.
Whether you are moving to a new server under your current host or moving to a new web host altogether; it's worthwhile to enquire with your hosting service provider as to whether they will move your files for you. Remember to ask nicely and they may do it for free :).

If you are moving to a new hosting company, this is a service that can be used as a bargaining chip for you to open an account with them. If your new/current host agrees to do this for you, remember that script paths may be different (see below).

Draw up a plan - in writing
One of the mistakes I made was not to draw up a solid plan - there's so many side-streets and alleyways on Taming the Beast.net now that I had totally forgotten about some of our sections - the plan was all in my mind - not the best strategy ;0).

Your written plan should contain milestones - solid dates for tasks to be completed. If you are a Microsoft Outlook user, put these dates and tasks into your calendar - it's so easy to forget things when running an online business.

Clean up your web site
As with moving house, moving your web site to another server or service is an excellent opportunity to clean things up a bit. Why take a stack of garbage with you?

Carefully go through your site folder by folder to check for what you don't need any more and liberally apply the use of the delete button. Moving servers is a fresh start, so you may as well start it out right.

Check and fix current problems

Broken links, scripts not functioning properly? Here's the perfect opportunity to set things straight. One of the problems of running a largish site is that little glitches slowly build up over time; the "I'll attend to that tomorrow" kind of stuff. After a couple of years, the list of little glitches can be a mile long! Now's the time to fix those things before you occupy your new home.

If you're looking for a good link verification service, the W3C provides one free of charge:

http://validator.w3.org/checklink

Notify your members/subscribers.

If your site offers membership services or you have a list of subscribers for an ezine etc. it's worthwhile to start notifying these people *weeks* in advance - not the day before.

People tend to skim over ezines and email updates - so the message needs to be repeated over and over as you get closer to the big day. This way you can spend the time during transition on transition and not bogged down responding to email from angry visitors.

Script/database paths

Very important - different hosts may have different paths for CGI scripts and MySQL databases. Well before you make the move, draw up a list of every script on your site so you'll know what you'll need to change.

Make a copy

After you've cleaned up your site, make a copy of it on your hard drive. Call the original web something like - mysite-old. That way you'll always have a proper backup should you have to back out of the move. Use your "new" copy to make changes to script paths etc to suit the new service.

Changing file names/folders?

If you need to rename folders or file-names, bear in mind that this could have a negative effect on your traffic as many search engines take a long time to update their listings (see below). Also, your link partners may be linking to specific pages on your site. By changing file and folder names/locations - visitors from these sources may be greeted with the dreaded "404-File not Found" error.

If you do need to make changes, it's wise to use a search engine friendly 301 redirect. That way, your old listings will redirect automatically to the new pages. Read our guide to implementing a 301 redirect.

Email addresses

Make a list of all your current email addresses used in conjunction with your site and ensure that you mirror these addresses on your new server. In your email software, add the new accounts to your lists, but *don't* delete the old accounts just yet. During the DNS update, you'll may still receive email via the old domain - for a couple of days, you'll be getting mail from both.

Expect things to go wrong

"The Best-Laid Plans Of Mice And Webmasters" - while Shakespeare would probably have a mild fit for such a misquotation, it fits a web site move very well. No matter how much you plan, or how careful you are - things are bound to go wrong. If you've put aside a day for your move, double it - just to be sure. This is especially important if you utilize a substantial number of scripts on your site.

Other search engine issues

You've worked long and hard to gain decent search engine rankings - to lose them could mean a serious dent in your traffic and profits. If you're not changing file names or folders, moving shouldn't be a problem then should it? Not necessarily the case.

Some search engines don't cache web site information by domain name, but by IP address. When you change your server or service, no doubt your IP will change and some search engine robots may "lose" you - for months.

For this reason, if you can afford it, it's wise to leave your old web site files up for a month on your old server space after you have made the move to the new server. During that time, check your server logs for spider activity to ensure that your most important search engine sources have found you. Learn more about search engine spider identification.

Changing domain names?

What if you aren't changing file and folder names, but you are going to change domain names as well - your search engine rankings and reciprocal links are again at risk. That's where the Apache mod_rewrite module can help. Read more on using mod_rewrite for redirecting domain names safely.

Files on server before DNS update

Ensure that you have moved *everything* onto the new server before updating your DNS records for your domain name - don't wait until afterwards.

DNS records can take up to 72 hours to update around the world and during that time, your name may "bounce" between the old and new server.

If you wait until DNS has updated properly, you may lose traffic through links appearing to be dead and worse, your search engine rankings may disappear altogether. Also, if you are publishing your new site (with updated script paths etc.) via your domain name, you may end up with the new files on the old server - this could be disastrous if you have perform a rollback and continue utilizing the old server for some reason - *especially* if you haven't kept a clean copy of the old site.

Microsoft FrontPage Issues

This can be a challenge for FrontPage users, as FrontPage publishes via the domain name. Before making the move, ask your new hosting service if you can publish to an IP number, rather than name. If this isn't possible, you'll need to publish your site using FrontPage's FTP function.

This will mean that components of your site that require FrontPage extensions being installed won't work initially. Hopefully, this will only be for a few hours until your nameserver changes are live in DNS and you can just publish to your site via the domain name, overwriting all the files. In this scenario, the important thing is to make sure all your files are at least on the new server.

Don't forget to enable FrontPage extensions on your new server, or to check with your new hosting service whether they have been installed.

Monitor DNS changes. During the time of transition, especially in the FrontPage scenario outlined above, it's important to monitor the progress of the DNS update. This can be done very easily using a free tool such as HyperTrace. HyperTrace can be downloaded here:

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/htrace.htm

HyperTrace shows you the route that information travels from your machine to another machine on the internet. It will show you the Name Server of your current hosting service and once the update starts occurring, the new hosting service. Bear in mind that this may "bounce" from old to new during 72 hour transition window and it may be a day or two before you see the new nameserver details at all. Check, recheck and then check again.
Once your new site is live in DNS and stable, start checking things out - again, and again and again. You could also send out a note to your subscriber list explaining that the site is now live on the new server and you would appreciate any bug reports. This can save you a lot of work and gets your visitors more involved with your site - it's a good PR exercise.

Good luck - I hope your move is smooth

Michael Bloch
Taming the Beast
http://www.tamingthebeast.net
Tutorials, web content, tools and software.
Web Marketing, Internet Development & Ecommerce Resources
____________________________

Copyright information.... This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety, including live links & this copyright statement must be included. Visit http://www.tamingthebeast.net for free Internet marketing and web development articles, tutorials and tools! Subscribe for free to our popular ecommerce/web design ezine!

Source: Free SEO Articles & Tips http://seo-articles.philsite.net

Digg.com: SEO Secret Weapon

Do you believe the myth that it may take months before you can get a new site to rank in Google?

It's a lie perpetuated by SEO experts who have something to sell you -- an ebook or URL submission service.

It may seem to have taken a long time to get indexed and searches from Google in the past, but today things are different.

There's a website that Google likes. Google likes it so much that new content posted to the site can get indexed immediately.

The website is Digg.com, a community of users who discover and share the content they've found on the web with each other.

To become a user and post content, you must first register. Although many people post stories found everywhere on the web, Digg does allow you to post some of your own content as long as you don't over do it.

You basically write a brief description of the article you have on your own site. The title of the story you post is a link that goes directly to the article page of your site.

Google will find your new content through this link and index it. Visitors from Google will then find your web page while doing their searches.

This all can happen within 24 hours, usually less... It sounds unbelievable because we've all been brainwashed to expect it to take much longer.

If your site has a topic people on Digg.com have an interest in, you should expect to also get traffic directly from them.

Users on Digg.com who like your post will visit your site and vote on it by giving it a Digg. The more Diggs you get, the potential for your story to move up or get promoted under its topic page on the Digg website increases.

If users don't like your story, they can bury it. It's the users or community who decide if a story should be promoted or buried. Digg does not use editors, because it believes it's voting and user-reporting system will determine what content should remain on the site. When you use Digg.com, it's important to follow their rules or TOS. Post unique quality content worth sharing and don't get caught spamming or creating multiple accounts.

Digg.com is just one of the many social networking sites out on the web.

Copyright © 2008 by Leroy Chan

To download a free report that shows you how to increase your site traffic, rank higher in Google and make more sales by using the power of many more social networking sites just like Digg.com, just visit http://www.onlinemarketingvault.com/social-marketing-blueprint-formula-2/ right now!

About the author
To download a free report that shows you how to increase your site traffic, rank higher in Google and make more sales by using the power of many more social networking sites just like Digg.com, just visit http://www.onlinemarketingvault.com/social-marketing-blueprint-formula-2/ right now!

How Does Google Rank Blogs? Completely different than you think!

SEO and Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

How Does Google Rank Blogs? A lot different than you think!

Google does not rank blogs anything like you think they do. What we think of as SEO does NOT work for blogs. For months I have been chasing Google with incoming links, social marketing and keyword SEO in my blog. Then I discovered how Google really ranks blogs and what it can mean to your blog traffic.

Let's look deep into the Google patent and see how SEO really applies to blogs and Google.

In this article...

1. How Google Really Ranks Blogs and Blog SEO

2. By the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.

3. By how many blogrolls you are in and the quality of the linking blog.

4. By how many times your Google search engine listing is clicked.

5. By social bookmarking posts and the number of times you are Dugg ect.

6. The number of times your URL appears in conversations.

7. The quality of the links in a blog article and the quantity of links.

Google judges your blog by the number of blog readers you have in Google Reader and Technorati.

Yes, Google is reading your RSS reader.

From the Google Patent:

"The popularity of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of that blog document. A number of news aggregator sites (commonly called "news readers" or "feed readers") exist where individuals can subscribe to a blog document (through its feed). Such aggregators store information describing how many individuals have subscribed to given blog documents. A blog document having a high number of subscriptions implies a higher quality for the blog document. Also, subscriptions can be validated against "subscriptions spam" (where spammers subscribe to their own blog documents in an attempt to make them "more popular") by validating unique users who subscribed, or by filtering unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the subscribers."

In other words, Google is judging you by the number of subscribers you have in Google Reader. Google reader owns about 60% of feed reader use. To calculate the other 40% they just do the math. Definitely the number of subscribers you have in Technorati is an indication of you blogs reach and popularity.

To see how many subscribers you have in Google reader, look on the left side of the page for "+ Add Subscription." Click the button and a search box will open up. Enter the name of your blog, not the URL, and a list of blogs will appear in order of readership in descending order.

You may want to use "" around your blog name to slim down the results.

Blog SEO Solutions

Add a Google button to you site prominently on the top right of the page. I am currently testing adding the Google button to my email newsletter popup forms.

Here is the add to Google Reader button wizard.

The Technorati button is a little more hard to find so I am just going to post the code here.

Here is the Technorati image Just right click the image, select "save picture as" and save it to your images folder. Then upload it you your site. Adjust the img src= path in the code.

Here is the add to MyYahoo button wizard.

Also a lot of skilled bloggers are adding a "if you found this post useful why not add my RSS feed" link at the bottom of posts.

Google ranks your blog by how many blogrolls you are in and the quality of the linking blog.

From the Google Patent:

"Similarly, the existence of the blog document in a blogroll of a well-known or trusted blogger may also be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. In this situation, it is assumed that the well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a spamming blogger."

So let's talk blogrolls. Think of this as the friends list of blogs. Three factors come into play here.

The number of times your blog is listed in blog rolls. Quantity matters.

The quality of the other blogroll members in blogrolls you appear in.

The quality of the blog that adds you to their blogroll.

Do not trade reciprocal links with other blogs in blogrolls. Google puts more weight on incoming one way links that do not return the favor and link back.

You want to appear in powerful authority laden blogrolls. You also want your blog roll to be nothing but #1 rated blogs about your blog topic.

Blog SEO Solutions

This is not reciprocal linking here. In fact there is some evidence that reciprocal blogroll linking can hurt your blog.

Google ranks your blog by how many times your Google search engine listing is clicked. Punch up that title tag, it is really your search engine headline.

From the Google Patent:

"An implied popularity may be identified for the blog document. This implied popularity may be identified by, for example, examining the click stream of search results. For example, if a certain blog document is clicked more than other blog documents when the blog document appears in result sets, this may be an indication that the blog document is popular and, thus, a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."

Have you ever searched a term and gone back and searched it again and the top results were different?

That is Google testing the pulling power of the title tag of your post and the snippet that Google pulls from your body text.

Believe me Google watches everything we do.

Blog SEO Solution

Turn your title tag into a benefit laden headline. Either craft the title tag to include a benefit to the reader of use a little scare tactics by defining a problem that a searcher is looking to solve.

The latter is best. People are not proactive, they do not look to head off problems. They use search engines to solve a problem they already have.

I am writing this page because my blog did not rank well in Google. You are reading this because yours did not either.

Did either of us search Google to find out how what we could do to get our blog ranked well before we noticed that we were not doing well in SERPs?

That is why I used the title tag on my post "Why blogs don't rank well in Google." Because that is the phrase that I used to find the original content that I started blogging about.

Google ranks blog by the number of social bookmarking posts and the number of times you are Dugg ect. Social marketing definitely effects SEO.

From the Google Patent:

"Tagging of the blog document may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. Some existing sites allow users to add "tags" to (i.e., to "categorize") a blog document. These custom categorizations are an indicator that an individual has evaluated the content of the blog document and determined that one or more categories appropriately describe its content, and as such are a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."

Google is definitely not just tracking the number of listings in social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Blinklist.

Google is tracking how many times we are dugg, the tags that are used in the original Digg and the quality of the user.

Have you ever noticed that Digg posts do not show up in a links check? They will when you have at least five to ten Diggs or the Digg page itself and will show up in a keyword search even sometimes above your original article.

Google ranks blogs by the number of times your URL appears in conversations. Think Gmail....

From the Google Patent:

"References to the blog document by other sources may be a positive indication of the quality of the blog document. For example, content of emails or chat transcripts can contain URLs of blog documents. Email or chat discussions that include references to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document."

Yeah, Google reads your Gmail. Google listens to your Google chat. All the time counting how many times your URL is present.

Blog SEO Solution

This is a good case for not using tracking links in emails to your list. By using click counting URLs to see how count click thrus to your site you may be removing a positive indicator that Google counts.

Google ranks blogs by the quality of the links in a blog aritcle and the quantitiy of links.

SEO also is effected by the link text in these body text links.Don't be scared to link to other blogs.

I am also thinking that the quality of blogs that you link to in the body text has a lot to do with your blog and your posts' ranking.

I feel that Google thinks if you are unwilling to link to blogs better than yours then you are not sure of your own content.

It is also possible that the number of links in a blog document (or lack of) says to Google that you are just building landing pages that are worthless rather than writing a well researched article using a number of authoritative sources as background.

While not mentioned in the Google patent there does seem to be evidence that using Feedburner helps your Google rankings. Since Google aquired FeedBurner, just using Feedburner analytics seems to increase your SERPs position.

Obviously if the more subscribers you have in Google reader helps your rankings then the greater the number of subscribers that Feedburner tracks has an effect too.

About the author
Want to learn more about Google and how social marketing can take over the search engines for you? Of course you do!

Tips, tools and tricks for more traffic and better rankings!

Look to Chris Lang's Social Marketing and Social Networking blog.