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Sunday, August 13, 2006
Google Ranking Tips
Google is by far the most popular search engine available today for both ordinary surfers and webmasters alike. Surfers like it because of the highly relevant results it gives and the speed at which it delivers them. This is due to its complex text matching algorithm and of course the Pagerank™ system that this engine uses. More on the Pagerank™ system later. Google is popular with webmasters and Internet marketing companies due to the highly workable ranking system it uses.
Unlike other engines where information about how the results are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes information on its site about the results it produces. Hence webmasters have things they can do to produce higher rankings.
What also makes Google popular with webmasters is the speed at which they will spider and list your site. If you're not listed in Google and submit your URL you're usually indexed within two weeks. If however your site is already listed in the index Google should reindex once every month, but more frequently if you've a high Pagerank™.
This indexing and reindexing time is much quicker than most other search engines. This allows webmasters to edit their pages properties such as title, first few lines of text, headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly if the changes they made were successful or not. It's because of this popularity that you need to know the workings of the Google search engine. Without knowledge of it you'll be ranked lower than all other sites that are only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm and hence could lose lots of potential customers.
Google ranking algorithm
Let's now continue onto the main part of this Google rankings report by indulging ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm. Well there are two main parts to the algorithm Google uses, the first is its text matching system whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered in the search box. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank™ system.
I'll first go through how to make your pages relevant by discussing the text matching part of the algorithm.
Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when searching for keywords. It is therefore vital to make sure your most important keywords or keyphrases appear within this tag. It seems to work best if you've other words in your title tag too after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40 characters.
I imagine many of you know this already but Google does not use meta tags such as the keywords meta tag or the description meta tag. This is because the text within these tags can't be seen by visitors to a website. Therefore Google feels these tags will be abused by webmasters placing lots of unrelated words in them in ##### to get more visitors.
This lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates your description from the first few lines of text on your page. This in turn means that you've to have your keywords and phrases right at the top of your webpage, if Google finds them your page becomes more relevant, if however it doesn't find them the rest of your page has to work harder to become relevant. To see an example of what I mean scroll back to the top of this page and you'll notice keyword rich wording similar to:
Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com, Google ranking tips, pagerank algorithm, Google algorithm guide.
The above text includes keywords and keyphrases related to the theme of this page. Now when people search for any of those keywords or keyphrases this page is much more likely to be near the top of the results than a page that doesn't imply this technique.
Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page. Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work best.
Google has recently been noticed to give a substantial amount of "weight" to words appearing between the various header tags. These are tags designed to help you split up sections of your page, so this approach by Google seems to make sense. The header tags go from the biggest, the bigger the heading tag the more relevent your page will become for the words within it. It is for this reason that you should always try to have your most important words within these tags as often as possible throughout your page.
Unlike other engines where information about how the results are obtained are sketchy at best, Google actually publishes information on its site about the results it produces. Hence webmasters have things they can do to produce higher rankings.
What also makes Google popular with webmasters is the speed at which they will spider and list your site. If you're not listed in Google and submit your URL you're usually indexed within two weeks. If however your site is already listed in the index Google should reindex once every month, but more frequently if you've a high Pagerank™.
This indexing and reindexing time is much quicker than most other search engines. This allows webmasters to edit their pages properties such as title, first few lines of text, headings, keyword distribution and of course the number of incoming links to their site. They can then discover quickly if the changes they made were successful or not. It's because of this popularity that you need to know the workings of the Google search engine. Without knowledge of it you'll be ranked lower than all other sites that are only slightly familiar with the Google algorithm and hence could lose lots of potential customers.
Google ranking algorithm
Let's now continue onto the main part of this Google rankings report by indulging ourselves in the Google ranking algorithm. Well there are two main parts to the algorithm Google uses, the first is its text matching system whereby Google tries to find pages relevant to what the searcher has entered in the search box. The second and equally important part of the algorithm is of course the Google patented Pagerank™ system.
I'll first go through how to make your pages relevant by discussing the text matching part of the algorithm.
Google gives a lot of "weight" to the title tag when searching for keywords. It is therefore vital to make sure your most important keywords or keyphrases appear within this tag. It seems to work best if you've other words in your title tag too after your keywords, but try to remain under 35-40 characters.
I imagine many of you know this already but Google does not use meta tags such as the keywords meta tag or the description meta tag. This is because the text within these tags can't be seen by visitors to a website. Therefore Google feels these tags will be abused by webmasters placing lots of unrelated words in them in ##### to get more visitors.
This lack of support for meta tags means that Google creates your description from the first few lines of text on your page. This in turn means that you've to have your keywords and phrases right at the top of your webpage, if Google finds them your page becomes more relevant, if however it doesn't find them the rest of your page has to work harder to become relevant. To see an example of what I mean scroll back to the top of this page and you'll notice keyword rich wording similar to:
Google submitting tips, ranking high at google.com, Google ranking tips, pagerank algorithm, Google algorithm guide.
The above text includes keywords and keyphrases related to the theme of this page. Now when people search for any of those keywords or keyphrases this page is much more likely to be near the top of the results than a page that doesn't imply this technique.
Google considers keyword density in the body of a page for determining relevancy too, so make sure your keywords and phrases appear a couple of times throughout the whole page. Don't go overboard though, a density of 6-10% seems to work best.
Google has recently been noticed to give a substantial amount of "weight" to words appearing between the various header tags. These are tags designed to help you split up sections of your page, so this approach by Google seems to make sense. The header tags go from
the smallest to
the biggest, the bigger the heading tag the more relevent your page will become for the words within it. It is for this reason that you should always try to have your most important words within these tags as often as possible throughout your page.
Other advice about making your page relevant would be to make as many keywords appear within bold tags as you can. In the past Google has been known to index text in alt image tags, whether they still do or not I don't know but it couldn't hurt to include keywords in these tags anyway.
One final tip on page relevancy is the point on having your keywords and phrases in links which point to your site. It's a good idea to have the linking text contain your keywords as Google even says itself in its description of its Pagerank technology that it analyzes pages that links come from.
How much keyword laden links matter is anyone's guess. I have however noticed a lot of sites which give the HTML code to visitors who want to exchange links do include keywords in the actual linking area. You should do this too on your links page, say something like "if you want to link to this site, please use the following code". The code would of course have your most important words in the actual link text and your less important words in the accompanying description of your site.
Who Links to Me ? - Add Technorati Cosmos in your Blog
Want your site visitors to know which other websites are linking to your blog ? Just place a Technorati cosmos iframe in your blog sidebar.
The embedding process is very simple. Here we'll actually show you two Technorati hacks that allow you to add the WhoLinksToMe box in your blog.
Technorati Cosmos Using Technorati Mini
Use Technorati Mini when you want the Technorati Link data to refresh automatically at frequent intervals (every sixty seconds).
Bumpbox is a third party service that uses the Technorati API to fetch the link data from Technorati database. Here the data refreshes only after an hour but the embedded box is free of any sponsored links that you get with Technorati Mini. You will also see a short context of the linking blog post by appeneding &desc=true to the blog url.
The embedding process is very simple. Here we'll actually show you two Technorati hacks that allow you to add the WhoLinksToMe box in your blog.
Technorati Cosmos Using Technorati Mini
Use Technorati Mini when you want the Technorati Link data to refresh automatically at frequent intervals (every sixty seconds).
<iframe src="http://technorati.com/mini/index.html?s=abc.com"Technorati Cosmos using Bumpbox
scrolling="no" frameborder="no" height="470px" width="310px">
</iframe>
Bumpbox is a third party service that uses the Technorati API to fetch the link data from Technorati database. Here the data refreshes only after an hour but the embedded box is free of any sponsored links that you get with Technorati Mini. You will also see a short context of the linking blog post by appeneding &desc=true to the blog url.
<iframe scrolling="no" frameborder="no" width="310px" src=Note: Replace abc.com with your own blog URL.
"http://bumpbox.com/tools/cosmosbox/cosmosbox.php?url=abc.com">
</iframe>
Email Inbox Can Reveal The Kind of Person You Are
How many unread messages do you have in the Inbox ? Is your Spam and Trash folder empty ? Do you respond to incoming mail immediately on arrival (including spam) ? Answers to these simple questions may reveal a lot about your personality and upbringing.
According to new research, the makeup and tidiness of your inbox is a reflection of your habits, your mental health and even the way Mom and Dad raised you. The disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages and checkbooks.
"If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways," says psychologist Dave Greenfield. On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.
The story also mentions Merlin Mann of 43folders.com who uses a few dozen "templates" to answer email -- prewritten form letters in which he inserts a person's name or a personalized comment. He also empties his inbox hourly. "You have to treat your inbox like you treat your mailbox at home," he says. "You wouldn't store your bills inside your mailbox. And leaving spam in your inbox is like leaving garbage in your kitchen."
Read: What your inbox says about you, Merlin Mann
According to new research, the makeup and tidiness of your inbox is a reflection of your habits, your mental health and even the way Mom and Dad raised you. The disorder in our inboxes mirrors the disorder in our homes, marriages and checkbooks.
"If you keep your inbox full rather than empty, it may mean you keep your life cluttered in other ways," says psychologist Dave Greenfield. On the other hand, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes, you may be so quick to move on that you miss opportunities and ignore nuances. Or your compulsion for order may be sapping your energy from other endeavors, such as your family.
The story also mentions Merlin Mann of 43folders.com who uses a few dozen "templates" to answer email -- prewritten form letters in which he inserts a person's name or a personalized comment. He also empties his inbox hourly. "You have to treat your inbox like you treat your mailbox at home," he says. "You wouldn't store your bills inside your mailbox. And leaving spam in your inbox is like leaving garbage in your kitchen."
Read: What your inbox says about you, Merlin Mann
Free Windows Vista Upgrade Coupons for Windows XP Users
Windows XP Users will be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows Vista if they purchase a Vista-enabled PC starting October till the time Vista formally hits the store shelves.
Microsoft has teamed up with PC vendors to offer free Vista Upgrade coupons to PC buyers worldwide to encourage them to buy a Vista-capable PC as early as possible. With the coupon offer to kick off in October, prospective buyers who have planned to purchase a Vista-enabled PC in the first quarter of 2007 when the new OS is launched, will be encouraged to take up a Vista-capable PC in advance.
Related: Buy a Windows XP Computer or Wait for Windows Vista ?
Source: Microsoft To Offer Free Vista Upgrade
Microsoft has teamed up with PC vendors to offer free Vista Upgrade coupons to PC buyers worldwide to encourage them to buy a Vista-capable PC as early as possible. With the coupon offer to kick off in October, prospective buyers who have planned to purchase a Vista-enabled PC in the first quarter of 2007 when the new OS is launched, will be encouraged to take up a Vista-capable PC in advance.
Related: Buy a Windows XP Computer or Wait for Windows Vista ?
Source: Microsoft To Offer Free Vista Upgrade
How Cyworld could trump MySpace
The most serious competition to MySpace may come from another country.
Already, it’s been noted that MySpace will likely face the problems of fleeting fidelity that have typically befallen social sites dominated by youths. But it may confront an even more formidable challenge based on the habits and sensibilities of an entirely different culture from Cyworld, the wildly popular social network in South Korea, which is opening in the United States.
The ubiquity of Cyworld in South Korea makes MySpace look like a fringe hobby. More than 90 percent of South Koreans between 20 and 29 are estimated to have pages on the network, and about 80 percent all citizens in that age bracket use the site daily, members and non-members alike.
Some of the factors in Cyworld’s success are specific to its native country: Members can join only with their national ID numbers, a requirement that helps limit predators but would likely raise privacy issues in the United States. In addition, South Korea’s unprecedented broadband initiatives have undoubtedly contributed heavily to the site’s massive growth.
At the same time, Cyworld has shown how a social network can become a natural extension of everyday life, regardless of geographic boundaries. People often keep hourly logs of their activities, posting pictures from their camera phones and using real-time avatars to show what room of the house they’re in at any given time.
So what factors would result in Cyworld overtaking MySpace? Maybe none. But the real test will be whether Cyworld can grow into the first truly international social network.
That status could conceivably play into the political altruism that defines youths of all countries and cultures–something that would prove far more durable than just ranking high on the cool factor in a single nation.
Wikis vs. Microsoft Office
As much as we love the concept behind wikis, we’ve often wondered how they will fare when they grow from adolescence to adulthood. (Translation: Can they make money?)
It’s not that that we’re obsessed with greenbacks, but we’ve been down this road before and tend to be a tad skeptical when people say "trust me." And other than advertising, we’ve yet to see an obvious business strategy for the wiki world.
JotSpot CEO Joe Kraus is hoping to change all that with the second version his 2-year-old company’s hosted software. Kraus too has traveled the commercialization path before, as a founder of the original Excite.com portal.
"Wikis historically have been nerdy and only enabled collaboration on one kind of page–a Web page," Kraus said in a News.com story. In an interview with Richard MacManus, he described the latest release as "wikis meets Microsoft Office."
That’s good and bad news, in our opinion. The good news is that someone has a business idea for wikis, something that’s always good to ensure robust development of any technology. The bad news is that JotSpot sees its future in a market long dominated by Microsoft, something that’s never good to ensure even survival, let alone development.
Microsoft is already facing challenges in office software from other Web 2.0 rivals, including Google’s Writely. That competition could very well extend to JotSpot as well if it intends to play seriously in the Office arena.
What are pingback and trackback?
If you want real trackback, you probably should use a platform that supports it natively. Blogger can pingback to set URLs, but it cannot trackback. If you look at our blog at http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/wordpress/?p=10, the last comment is actually a trackback.
From Peachpit:
Trackback (and Pingback, an emerging standard for Trackback) is, at its most simple, a means of sending a notification from one blog to another. At the seamless level, most blogging software automatically pings (contacts) a number of the blog search engines, alerting them when you've updated your blog, and in turn helping to drive traffic to your blog.
At the more specific level, if your blog has Trackback implemented, you can Trackback a specific post. For example, let's say I stop by my friend Meri's blog and see a post there I really like. But rather than leave a comment on her blog, let's say I'm so enthusiastic about her post that I want to write a detailed one on my own blog.
I can then include the URL to her post in my Trackback-enabled weblog software and the title of my blog post. The first line of the post is then sent to her blog. If she also has Trackback enabled, my ping will show up in her comment section of the related post. This process enables conversations to occur across blogs, rather than just staying on one, in turn extending the reach of everyone's blog—and discussion.
Trackback is also being used for other purposes, such as having software ping a blog with data. A good example of this is a live playlist sent from my computer to my blog, which then employs Trackback to send notification to the published playlist on the blog each time a song is updated. This type of usage typically requires additional scripting to work, so it's used mostly by power users or by avid bloggers familiar with the many plug-ins available for given software.
From Peachpit:
Trackback (and Pingback, an emerging standard for Trackback) is, at its most simple, a means of sending a notification from one blog to another. At the seamless level, most blogging software automatically pings (contacts) a number of the blog search engines, alerting them when you've updated your blog, and in turn helping to drive traffic to your blog.
At the more specific level, if your blog has Trackback implemented, you can Trackback a specific post. For example, let's say I stop by my friend Meri's blog and see a post there I really like. But rather than leave a comment on her blog, let's say I'm so enthusiastic about her post that I want to write a detailed one on my own blog.
I can then include the URL to her post in my Trackback-enabled weblog software and the title of my blog post. The first line of the post is then sent to her blog. If she also has Trackback enabled, my ping will show up in her comment section of the related post. This process enables conversations to occur across blogs, rather than just staying on one, in turn extending the reach of everyone's blog—and discussion.
Trackback is also being used for other purposes, such as having software ping a blog with data. A good example of this is a live playlist sent from my computer to my blog, which then employs Trackback to send notification to the published playlist on the blog each time a song is updated. This type of usage typically requires additional scripting to work, so it's used mostly by power users or by avid bloggers familiar with the many plug-ins available for given software.
Grabbing Expired Domains
Suppose you want to start a blog (or any Web site) and have the perfect name in mind for it. The next step is to purchase your domain for a very reasonable $10 or so. You go to register the name and –Oops. Sorry mate, the name is taken. What can you do?
You could always look up the owner on Whois.com and make an offer for the domain. Any realistic chance of someone selling a domain for a reasonable price? Probably not. But you notice on Whois that the domain name just expired. Oh joy! Now it is just a matter of picking up the name the usual way. Or is it?
Purchasing expired or expiring domain names has become a shady and cut-throat business. As a matter of fact, the odds of snagging an expiring name that is remotely desirable is about zero. That is where several services come into the picture and that is also where “shady” comes into the picture.
In my own case, there is a domain name that I have lusted over for the past six months. It is an important name to me because it happens to be the title to a book I have coming out this Fall. When I first investigated the name, I found that the site was not active and that the domain was set to expire in a couple of months. So, just sit back and pick the name up on May 5, 2006, the date of expiration. But wait, there is a grace period of forty days in which the site is “expired” but the owner can still pay the usual fee. Ok, wait ’til June 5 and pick up the name. But wait, the site still was not available. What’s going on?
Next is a redemption period where the owner can redeem the expired site for a fee somewhere in the $100 range. Well, OK, if the owner wasn’t interested in spending $10 for the site, he sure isn’t going to spend ten times that amount to redeem. No problem, wait another ten days for the redemption period, then pick the site up for $10. But wait, next is the deletion phase that lasts five days.
So, the actual time for a domain name to go from the expiration date to back on the market is actually 75 days. OK, no real problem. Just wait 75 days and buy the name for $10. No, still not correct.
It seems that very few names that are desireable come back on the market. If you want to be sure that you have a chance at the name, you almost have to use one of the major backorder services. Even then, there is no guarantee -even if you pay big bucks just for the attempt. For the lowdown on what to do, visit this thread and read the hundreds of comments. I’ll post the results of my own quest to grab an expired domain in the near future.
Coming soon: 1GB flash cards for $8 or less
if you’re thinking about buying a flash card for a camera, it’s always a good idea to wait.
Over the past several years, Compact Flash cards, used in many cameras, have dropped about 42.7 percent every year, according to Bill Frank, who runs the trade group behind the Compact Flash standard. (Compact Flash cards are the square ones). Frank spoke at the Flash Memory Summit taking place in San Jose this week.
In 1998, one megabyte of flash cost about $3.50 at retail. Now, a megabyte costs about 2.5 to 3 cents. As a result, a 1gigabyte flash card (which contains 1,000 megabytes) costs about $25 to $30.
Two years from now, flash will sell for less than a cent per megabyte, he said. If the same trends continue, a megabyte will cost around three quarters of a cent. Thus, a 1GB card will cost around $8.
Finding a 1GB card, however, may be tough because densities keep rising. Some manufacturers now make 12GB cards. 20GB and more are in the future.
BookMooch: Swap your books for free
BookMooch is the Craigslist of swapping sites. It’s not as fancy as some other sites (such as LaLa and Peerflix), but it’s totally free to use. There’s no monthly charge and no per-transaction fee. You do have to give to get, though: each book costs a point. You get one point for sending a book to a user, and a tenth of a point for each book you add to your Moochable inventory.
Actually, there is a cost: you have to pay to send books to other users.
Since BookMooch uses points as currency, your trades do not have to be direct swaps with other users, as they do on the free trading site, SwapTree. On the other hand, on SwapTree you can trade more than just books.
BookMooch also has a browser bookmarklet, the MoochBar, that will find books on the Web page you’re on and add them to your want list or to your inventory. So if you’re on Amazon and see a book you want, you can easily Mooch it. You’ll have to wait for a BookMooch user to send it, but it will obviously cost you a lot less than buying it new.
BookMooch is run by John Buckman, who told me that when it comes to making money from the site, "I totally don’t care." He made a lifetime of earnings selling his e-mail company, Lyris. Good for him. While there are too many swapping networks right now, the financial model of this one is in line with the negligible cash value of most used books.
Actually, there is a cost: you have to pay to send books to other users.
Since BookMooch uses points as currency, your trades do not have to be direct swaps with other users, as they do on the free trading site, SwapTree. On the other hand, on SwapTree you can trade more than just books.
BookMooch also has a browser bookmarklet, the MoochBar, that will find books on the Web page you’re on and add them to your want list or to your inventory. So if you’re on Amazon and see a book you want, you can easily Mooch it. You’ll have to wait for a BookMooch user to send it, but it will obviously cost you a lot less than buying it new.
BookMooch is run by John Buckman, who told me that when it comes to making money from the site, "I totally don’t care." He made a lifetime of earnings selling his e-mail company, Lyris. Good for him. While there are too many swapping networks right now, the financial model of this one is in line with the negligible cash value of most used books.
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