‘Duplicate content’ is one of the most famous SEO issues that have been consistently in questions of webmasters and they have been discussing it like anything. Based on the blog posts by famous SEO masters, published interviews of Googlers and discussions at popular webmaster forums, I have tried to summarize few important facts behind the nuances about duplicate content.
Defining a duplicate content
Content is considered duplicate when considerable part of it is exactly or partially similar to other webpage in same or different website. There are many reasons that can create duplicate content on same site which is likely to be considered non-malicious,
- Blog content accessible directly from post, via Category, Author, archives and RSS/Atom Feed.
- Forum replies creating multiple urls pointing to same page
- common sales elements, lengthy copywrite text on many pages of a site.
- Print-only versions of articles not pointing to original
- Same store items linked via multiple distinct URLs
- www and non-www versions of same page etc.
Different sites with similar content Pages,
Many webmasters assume that creating multiple or identical copies of the same content/page will either increase their chances of ranking for many long tail keywords or help them get multiple listings to win more traffic. There is nothing wrong in syndicating your content across different sites while taking due care about providing authenticate ownership of content.
However, in some cases its looked as a malicious practice when content is duplicated across different sites to deliberately trick the search engines into returning incompatible and poor quality search results with the same content repeated within a set of results.
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According to Internet Marketing discussions, any type of content that encourages people to pass on the message is referred as ‘Viral’ and the strategy behind it is called as viral marketing. In simple words its just about creating a buzz that becomes viral! Everyone wants to see it, and when they do, they all want to share it.
Where is the virus, is it contagious?
People always wonder why the word ‘viral’ is used, how a marketing strategy can relate to virus! Well, in off web terms such marketing is referred to as ‘word of mouth’ or ‘network marketing’ but on the internet they call it ‘viral marketing’ because it matches perfectly with the lifestyle of a virus!
Virus lives secretly till it becomes numerous enough to overcome the host. He rides the host and uses its resources to grow his community. He keeps on replicating himself exponentially with geometrically increasing power that doubles with each loop. Thus a virus strength and population can explode in very short time. Like viruses, viral marketing strategies assume delayed gratification. They use benefit of rapid multiplication to toot their message to thousands of readers through people forwarding emails with links to friends or encouraging them to visit specific websites or watch the interesting videos.
Hereby I have collected few important elements to be considered while unleashing a viral marketing campaign. Needless to say that, more of the following elements are covered, better the results are likely to be.
Giving away products or services
“Cheap” or “inexpensive” is likely to generate a wave of interest but “free” being the most powerful word in a marketer’s dictionary, will surely do it fairly quick. One can give away anything like free piece of software, ebook, cool smilies and so on to attract attention. ‘Free’ attracts people who then look for other desirables that you are selling and bingo, you got a sell! It also helps you in list building and generating advertisement revenue as well.
One free ebook called “Search Engine Tactics” by Mark Joyner, has been downloaded over one million times! And of course more people like me talking about it are helping nothing but to spread the virus even more!
Making people feel something
The second most beneficial element would be to create a very strong emotion. You need to have a perspective, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You should be able to exploit common human motivations and behaviors of people. Fill them with love or hate, please them or make angry, sometimes be an idiot or a genius, sometimes compassionate or egoistic.
Forget neutral, viral marketing is all about emotions.
Doing something unexpected
This one is very obvious and well suits to video marketing through youtube and others. What type of videos you would like to watch until you see the name of sponsor? has to be hilarious or unexpected. If you want viewers to notice you campaign, you must be doing something surprising, something that is not expected. Forget about trying to promote your services as just being expert because everybody does the same! Don’t expect a win just because your campaign looks cool, as already many others have “been there, done that”.
Using existing communication networks
Except few basement-dwelling computer geeks most people are social. A person may have close networks of 8-12 people as well as the weaker networked relationships with hundreds, if not thousands.
What popularized “Follow me on twitter” buttons in recent days? People’s desire to be popular, loved, and understood in their network. On internet people develop relationships with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogging, social bookmarking and videos. All of these are highly viral because they are interactive. Learn to place your message into their existing communications, and you rapidly multiply its distribution.
Allowing effortless transfers to others
Sharing is what viral marketing is all about. In flu season, we are advised to stay away from people who cough and asked to wash hands often, not to touch eyes, nose, or mouth because virus can only spread when its easy to transmit! In the same way everything that makes the sharing easier, improves your viral marketing campaign.
Allow people to,
Download the content, in a usable format (videos in MPG, pictures in JPG etc.)
Embed the content on their sites.
Send it to friends, either using a link or by sending the content directly.
Publish it on various social networks – Digg, YouTube etc.
Add it to social bookmarking sites.
Furthermore you can give your visitors an incentive. Ask them to spread your script, content etc. Instead, give them a bonus for recommending you. Make the bonus exclusive, something they can’t get elsewhere.
viral marketing allows you to enter the market sections you may not reach otherwise but its main benefit is that it automates itself once your campaign spreads and then can keep on bringing targeted traffic to your site for any length of time. You may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if you can generate a buzz of interest from something, then you will profit soon and for the rest of your life! Moreover, instant communication being so easy and inexpensive on internet, a well designed viral marketing campaign will create a win-win situation.
Use all the fundamental principles of viral marketing outlined above and Start turning your web site visitors into part of your online sales force!
According to Internet Marketing discussions, any type of content that encourages people to pass on the message is referred as ‘Viral’ and the strategy behind it is called as ‘viral marketing’. In simple words its just about creating a buzz that becomes viral! Everyone wants to see it, and when they do, they all want to share it.
Where is the virus, is it contagious?
People always wonder why the word ‘viral’ is used, how a marketing strategy can relate to virus! Well, in off web terms such marketing is referred to as ‘word of mouth’ or ‘network marketing’ but on the internet they call it ‘viral marketing’ because it matches perfectly with the lifestyle of a virus!
Virus lives secretly till it becomes numerous enough to overcome the host. He rides the host and uses its resources to grow his community. He keeps on replicating himself exponentially with geometrically increasing power that doubles with each loop. Thus a virus strength and population can explode in very short time. Like viruses, viral marketing strategies assume delayed gratification. They use benefit of rapid multiplication to toot their message to thousands of readers through people forwarding emails with links to friends or encouraging them to visit specific websites or watch the interesting videos.
Hereby I have collected few important elements to be considered while unleashing a viral marketing campaign. Needless to say that, more of the following elements are covered, better the results are likely to be.
1. Giving away products or services
“Cheap” or “inexpensive” is likely to generate a wave of interest but “free” being the most powerful word in a marketer’s dictionary, will surely do it fairly quick. One can give away anything like free piece of software, ebook, cool smilies and so on to attract attention. ‘Free’ attracts people who then look for other desirables that you are selling and bingo, you got a sell! It also helps you in list building and generating advertisement revenue as well.
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Well, we all are here for gaining traffic to our websites because the sites that can drive traffic make the most profit, especially the targeted traffic from Google and other search engines. Thus search engine marketers have been exploring different ways to win top rankings and more traffic…some good, some ‘black hat’…every time they find something new they don’t forget to shout ‘eureka’ and start selling their killing secrets to us like anything! I am not against this approach as being an online seller I would like to use as many marketing tactics as I can. But then its Google who doesn’t want their searcher to get deceived with some new non trusted result which sometimes is unfair for new businesses actually willing to work hard for their clients and instead want some trust in Google.
Of course nobody would like to wait for 4-5 years so that their site gets old enough, have gazillion inbound links blah blah…so they always try to crack search engine algorithms to break the queue of old players but on the next turn Google finds it and devaluate…same is the case with “link wheel” strategy invented and marketed by some SEO wannabe!
Basic link wheel system
Link wheel building is about having 5 or so pages (spokes) belonging to popular web 2.0 platforms like squidoo, WordPress, Hubpages etc and in some cases article directories, pointing to each other and then to your site (money page) in an attempt to improve its rankings in Google’s organic search. Essentially you try to gather link juice from pages with related content and then point it to site in center. You would then social bookmark all the spokes to further add to the benefit of process. You could also create sub-wheels i.e. the small wheel around one of the spokes in main wheel that simulates a natural internet setup like primary level spokes with handful of inbound links and then linked to from secondary level spokes those too had backlinks but not as many as the latter, and so on.
Actually the concept has been pretty common to interlink WebPages from different sites/blogs to have your own network of backlinks but when a fancy name was slapped on it, people dreamed of a overnight miracle and fell all over themselves to get it.
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There are many misconceptions about applying nofollow, noindex and robots.txt restriction. Whether or not it has any backlinking value, does it get crawled?, do they index it?…and so on! Well, fortunately we have specific answers to all these questions. However different search engines might differently look at them, I think nobody will mind if we discuss only about Google and Yahoo!
First of all let me clear few things,
Nofollow can be applied in two ways, either through Meta tags or link attribute.
You may make a specific link nofollow like rel=”nofollow” – generally reffered as nofollow attribute
Or use <meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow” /> to make all the links nofollow on that page – referred as nofollow tag
Similarly you can do with noindex. rel=noindex applicable for destination page and meta tag applicable for host page
Next is robots.txt file that is well known to webmasters for preventing search engines to crawl and index entire site or specific parts of it.
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Google Indexing Tips
We all want our sites to be indexed by search engine robots to provide more visitors and links. Here are some Google indexing tips that might just raise your chances of being indexed:
• Launch the site. First things first: before you will be indexed, you will need a site to be indexed in the first place. Therefore, you should produce the initial content, and launch the site. We usually post five initial pages before a launch, but more could probably work. Make sure though that your content is already optimized and rich in keywords from the very beginning, because it could take you up to months to get your SERPs updated after you were indexed the first time.
Estimated time frame: 1 to N hours
• Get Google Webmaster Tools. Though there is no proof that getting Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) will actually help you get indexed faster or not, the whole process only takes a small amount of time. It is a win-win situation for you, because you can get a lot of valuable information by having GWMT.
o Estimated time frame: 2 to 10 minutes
• Generate an XML Sitemap. This is a crucial step for all who are aspiring to be indexed by Google. Generate an XML sitemap for every site you build. If you are using WP, then download the XML Sitemap Generator plugin to automatically generate your page map. XML Sitemap Generator plugin will also update your map everytime you change something, and automatically submits it to search engines such as Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Bing, making their search engine robots and crawlers visit your site after each change.
o Estimated time frame: 3 to 20 minutes
• Circulate a press release. This will give you publicity and valuable backlinks. We consider press releases as the most valuable marketing tool in present era, since you will be able to release information in a wide scope. However, for a press release to be successful, you have to make sure that it is well written, and all the pertinent information is present. If you don’t .have previous writing experience, then we would suggest to Google “press release writing tips” so you will get a great idea unto how to create great content and optimize your release
o Estimated time frame: 3 to 4 hours
• Do the basics: learn to Digg, stumble, and ping. You should dig, stumble, and ping your main page, one of your other pages (don’t dig more than one article at once. Make sure that you give ample time in between pinging and digging your articles. It should be one ping and ding per day), and your published press release. Your press release should have an active link, since some sites allow active links that are present in press releases. Sending Google a press release with your active link will increase your chances of being indexed.
o Estimated time frame: 5 to 20 minutes
• Check your site in Whois/Info Sites. This is a very helpful trick that we have been using for a while. You will have to visit Whois or Info sites, such as (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=yourdomain.com) and insert your domain name. It would be nice if you could have about 20 or more Whois/Info sites to check your domain daily. You can access more Whois/Info sites on this link: (http://imaxhd.com/whoissites.txt). Just replace yourdomain.com with your domain name, and you’re done.
o Estimated time frame: 3 to 10 minutes
For better results, you could also post your website on Craigslist. Write any post on any category, and be sure that it has an active link to your site. Craigslist gets lot of visitors, and Google follows the crawlers and indexes the sites. However, your post should be related to your site at one point, so that when it is indexed, you are still on the right track. Post in less popular categories too to avoid your post getting flagged and removed. This could take you only 5 to 20 minutes of your time to set up a post in Craigslist.
If you follow these steps, then there is a high probability that your site will be indexed by Google. After launching a site, set up Google Alerts (google.com/alerts) with your site’s address and main keywords. At least you will get an email the moment something happens on Google with regards to your site. With these tips, you’ll surely get your site indexed on Google. Best of luck!
We all want our sites to be indexed by search engine robots to provide more visitors and links. Here are some Google indexing tips that might just raise your chances of being indexed,
- Launch the site: First things first: before you will be indexed, you will need a site to be indexed in the first place. Therefore, you should produce the initial content, and launch the site. We usually post five initial pages before a launch, but more could probably work. Make sure though that your content is already optimized and rich in keywords from the very beginning, because it could take you up to months to get your SERPs updated after you were indexed the first time.
Estimated time frame: 1 to N hours
- Get Google Webmaster Tools: Though there is no proof that getting Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) will actually help you get indexed faster or not, the whole process only takes a small amount of time. It is a win-win situation for you, because you can get a lot of valuable information by having GWMT.
Estimated time frame: 2 to 10 minutes
- Generate an XML Sitemap: This is a crucial step for all who are aspiring to be indexed by Google. Generate an XML sitemap for every site you build. If you are using WP, then download the XML Sitemap Generator plugin to automatically generate your page map. XML Sitemap Generator plugin will also update your map everytime you change something, and automatically submits it to search engines such as Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Bing, making their search engine robots and crawlers visit your site after each change.
Estimated time frame: 3 to 20 minutes
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Forums are a fantastic way to generate deep links for any link building campaign. Contrary to popular belief, finding the right forum is an equally important task, as not all forums will add incoming links to a website. Before discussing the importance of finding relevant forums, it is essential to understand how forums can generate incoming links to a website. Forums allow registered users to add a unique signature to the bottom of each post. In essence, every time a user makes a fresh post on a topic, the outgoing link to his/her website becomes a part of the topic/thread. Lets see the different advantages of forum based link building.
Relevant linking
unlike directories, forums have hundreds of posts on different topics this improves the chances of a webmaster finding a relevant topic or forum. The reason why most tech websites have webmasters that are members of forums is because the webmasters can answer popular queries and have their website’s link below each answered post. What is equally important to note is that an outgoing link from a technology forum will be termed as relevant for a variety of technology websites. Similarly, webmasters can look for forums that are ‘related’ to their websites for link building.
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XHTML validation and its importance
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is used to render web pages. Similar to other languages, there is a definite set of rules and guidelines that should be followed with writing HMTL. HTML validation, meanwhile, is the process wherein an HTML document is analyzed if it follows HMTL rules. Through HTML validation, errors and non-standard codes are fixed and weeded out, and the output would be a quality page. An example of such standards could be found at http://www.w3.org/TM/html4/, where the HTML 4.01 Specification could be found. Check the HTML validation of your webpage at http://validator.w3.org by entering your URL on the site.
Nowadays however, website owners are scrambling to make their websites XHTML-compatible, since this is among the most important SEO feature today. There are multiple reasons as to why to create valid HTML and XHTML codes, such as the following:
• Website accessibility – by validating your html code, you can pinpoint errors and bugs that could prevent search engine spiders, and users from accessing your page. When a webpage is run through a code validator, it will find the errors in your code so you can fix them. Such an example is to include text with “alt” tags for every < img > tag.
o Doing so will allow your site to be accessible by a broader and larger audience, such as those who are vision impaired, cognitive impaired, and motor skill impaired, among many others;
o Running your code through a code validator will allow your site to be viewed by wider range of devices, such as handhelds, screen readers, text browsers, search engines, and others;
o Some of the errors might be requirements for Federal and State Government sites.
• Search engine friendly – having a simple and clean code will enable search engine robots to crawl through your webpages quickly and completely. An example is this code:
< p keyword1 sentence, well written copy, etc.
< p > keyword2 paragraph with more choice content.
The code is missing a “>”, therefore rendering the keyword 1 sentence useless since it would not be included in the search engine computations. When a spider finds a correct tag along the code, then it will include that tag, which means keyword 2 paragraph would be included. If your HTML code was run through a validator, then you will be able to fix a problem as simple as this.
• Faster loading – if there are many errors in your HTML code, then it will take longer loading time for search engine robots to browse through it. A page is deemed pointless if it takes too long to load, therefore slow loading time could result in your web page losing visitors.
• Less taxing for servers – if you have a clean and simple code, your server is handling lesser load than others, compared to sites that have tables or complicated codes. Use cascading style sheets (CSS) to reduce the amount of code in your web pages, as well as trim down the amount of web space and bandwidth used. This way, you will be able to save money for hosting your site.
• Easier to maintain and update – your website will be easier to maintain and update once your initial code is clean and simple. You will save time and money when maintaining your site, therefore enabling you to change the contents faster and easier.
• Compatible with all browsers – having validated code ensures that your page would run in all browsers. It might work well on one browser, but not on others. If your code is html compliant, then you will not have this problem.
• Getting wider scope – there’s no question about it: once a website is visible in all browsers, and is indexed properly by all search engines, then it would get a wider scope in terms of visitors. You will get more visitors and will get more sales with a larger number of audience.
With these obvious perks of having your html code validated, what is there to lose? You have everything to gain – from faster loading time to getting more visitors and sales. Get your html code validated now.
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is used to render web pages. Similar to other languages, there is a definite set of rules and guidelines that should be followed with writing HMTL. HTML validation, meanwhile, is the process wherein an HTML document is analyzed if it follows HMTL rules. Through HTML validation, errors and non-standard codes are fixed and weeded out, and the output would be a quality page. An example of such standards could be found at http://www.w3.org/TM/html4/, where the HTML 4.01 Specification could be found. Check the HTML validation of your webpage at http://validator.w3.org by entering your URL on the site.
Nowadays however, website owners are scrambling to make their websites XHTML-compatible, since this is among the most important SEO feature today. There are multiple reasons as to why to create valid HTML and XHTML codes, such as the following:
Website accessibility – by validating your html code, you can pinpoint errors and bugs that could prevent search engine spiders, and users from accessing your page. When a webpage is run through a code validator, it will find the errors in your code so you can fix them. Such an example is to include text with “alt” tags for every < img > tag.
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Link baiting methods
We can attest that the more links your website has, then more users will be able to visit your site and explore its contents. If you are selling services or products, then this will mean more potential clients. If you are just blogging for the heck of it, then it means that more people will be able to read your words. This marvel could be summed up to linkbaiting. Linkbait is a jargon used to describe practices which will lead to generating links to your site. Basically it could be divided into four criteria: usefulness, attention-grabbing, giving away stuff, and for personal enjoyment. Here are some examples:
I – Personal Enjoyment
A perfect example of linkbaiting using personal enjoyment is by using blogs. In blogging, we can see multiple personas of people. There are really kind people, really angry people, impatient people, and everything in between. The frequent types of link baiting methods used in personal blogging are as follows:
• Rants – oftentimes people use their blogs to rant and to complain about the system. Yet sometimes there are entries that will tug at your heart, and you will sympathize with the author, who will then portrayed as the victim. If an entry is well written, well argued, and very, very passionate, there is a huge chance that people will link the blog in their personal sites. Of course, there are multiple consequences for writing a rant: there will be people who will agree with you, and there will be those who will disagree.
• Controversy – we have stumbled upon this by accident when we have written a blog entry pertaining to the war in Iraq in a Christian website. Imagine our surprise when we received hate mail from people who thought it was irrelevant and inappropriate for the site, and those who argued with our point. These agreements and hate mails would usually create more links, as people would be linking to the site in order to explain their side.
• Picking fights – this is pretty childish, but it works. Some bloggers would pick fights with other bloggers in the hopes of making them fight back. This would cause massive reactions, since other readers would be reading the fight hungrily, while they are taking sides. For example, there was a contest by sponsored by a mobile company, and you would have to promote the mobile phone in less than 30 seconds. Our colleague was winning the competition – when another user started spreading rumor that he was cheating. Needless to say, it caused a disruption on the mobile company’s site, while having multiple links from the people involved who are sharing the story to other people they know.
• Shocking – shocking is another linkbaiting technique used by some people who thinks it is effective. An example for this is for a girl who was raised as a Catholic, with firm believes in the church, who wears nothing but long skirts and her hair is long and always neat. She would be a model student with straight As, has not given her parents any trouble, and has never experienced having a boyfriend not a lover. Now, imagine this girl would suddenly announce on her blog that she just had an abortion. It would shock people immensely, and would therefore generate more links for her. Of course, the abortion plot could just be a linkbaiting technique she used to generate more links to her site.
There are more linkbaiting methods used in blogging that makes use of personal enjoyment. However, should you decide to use these techniques, make sure you can handle the consequences, such as having many people argue with you and call you an idiot, if your passionate views would somehow prove to be wrong.
II – Usefulness
There are two ways of providing useful content for other users: by providing them information, and by giving them useful tools. Here are more detailed explanations:
A. Information
• Lists – this is helpful especially for those lists that are price oriented. Many people are shopping online, and these lists would help them find what they needed at the lowest possible cost. Take advantage of this, however, make your listing stand out as much as possible, so that you will get more links over your competitors.
• Research and statistics – Since there are many students in the country, having a site dedicated to research and statistics could be the best linkbaiting method, if your site is about research and statistics. This information would prove to be useful for many groups and people, therefore giving you more links.
B. Useful tools
• Tools – this is the fun, cool, and useful part of each blog. An example of this is a button that will give fun games, tiny facts, and interesting trivias. Other people could use this button on their websites. For every person who will see that cute icon on their websites, they will be redirected to your link, if they would happen to have one as well.
• Quizzes – we have observed that people are fond of answering quizzes, surveys, tests, and social interviews. Having interesting quizzes on your site that could be accessed by millions of people will generate more links for you, especially if the quiz is made creatively. After all, if it is an interesting quiz, then the people who took them will post the link on their personal sites, therefore giving you more potential audience.
• Design – an example of this would be the design layouts in eBay. There are many professional designers who charge per layout design of an eBay shop. Yet there are some who will provide this free of charge, by giving beautiful template or themes and providing information unto how to apply it to the user’s personal site. Check WordPress.com and see how effective this method is.
• A sense of belongingness – this could be described as similar to forums and chatrooms. People are social beings, and they want to have a sense of belongingness. Let them feel that they belong to a certain community. This will give you more links to your website as well.
These are the most common “useful to others” linkbaiting method found on the net these days. However, there are more that we have not discussed. When creating a “useful” linkbait, make sure that your content is actually something that other people would want to pass on to others. This is to give them knowledge, entertain them, and improve their lives at one point. You’ll notice that the links would rise dramatically if you are able to master this technique.
III – Attention-grabbing
Another common linkbaiting method is by attracting attention. Here are more examples:
• Be the whistle blower – if you’re the first to provide something, such as information, a new tool, or others, then you will be linked more. Remember, it’s always the first one who did something who is recognized. Who first walked on the moon? Who first taught you how to write? It is never asked who the second one is to do something, and so on. If you are the first one to do something, then you will be able to get more people to talk about you. This would also apply to breaking a story, and exposing fraud.
• Humor – perhaps the most effective linkbaiting method is using humor to entice readers. This could be in the form of comics, cartoon, simple skits, etc. If it’s funny and interesting, then you will find more and more people linking to your site.
For the attention-grabbing linkbaiting method, it is important to know that users are generally looking for the “cool factor” i.e., something new, something interesting, something funny. If it makes them curious, then you’ve got a bigger chance of being linked.
IV – Giving away stuff
People love receiving free stuff. This could be used in the form of contests, awards, or really, giving something away out of the kindness of your heart. There will be more links to your site if you can entice users to check out the freebie you’re giving out, and the contest you are hosting. If people think they can get something for free, they’re usually interested. You can make a contest interesting by having people link other people to the website. The person who gets the most number of people linked could win your contest.
These tips are the most common linkbaiting methods found in the Internet today. All of them have certain risks, so if you would want to linkbait, then make sure that you are ready for whatever consequence there might be. If you are going to go for the personal pleasure linkbaiting methods, then you should first build your reputation, and be sure that your reputation would be able to withstand any criticism you might receive for your views.
These linkbaiting methods have all worked at one point or another. Yet what worked for us might not be the one that is best suited for your website. That said, browse through the Internet and see which linkbaiting method is most effective for you, so that you can be sure that there are no negative impact on your website should you decide to linkbait.
If you have more information about linkbaiting, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will be more than thankful if you can give us more linkbaiting techniques which could in turn help more people.
We can attest that the more links your website has, then more users will be able to visit your site and explore its contents. If you are selling services or products, then this will mean more potential clients. If you are just blogging for the heck of it, then it means that more people will be able to read your words. This marvel could be summed up to linkbaiting. Linkbait is a jargon used to describe practices which will lead to generating links to your site. Basically it could be divided into four criteria: usefulness, attention-grabbing, giving away stuff, and for personal enjoyment. Here are some examples,
Personal Enjoyment
A perfect example of linkbaiting using personal enjoyment is by using blogs. In blogging, we can see multiple personas of people. There are really kind people, really angry people, impatient people, and everything in between. The frequent types of link baiting methods used in personal blogging are as follows:
- Rants – oftentimes people use their blogs to rant and to complain about the system. Yet sometimes there are entries that will tug at your heart, and you will sympathize with the author, who will then portrayed as the victim. If an entry is well written, well argued, and very, very passionate, there is a huge chance that people will link the blog in their personal sites. Of course, there are multiple consequences for writing a rant: there will be people who will agree with you, and there will be those who will disagree.
Read the rest of this entry »
SEO Web Design Tips
Having an elaborate, intricately designed website is not enough to guarantee multiple hits per day. Each website design should be optimized and planned in order to create more search results leading to the site. It should be designed to fit the target audience’s attention, user friendly, and simple. This will increase a site’s visibility and invite more visitors per day. Below are more SEO web design tips.
A – Keep the webpage simple
A good website is simply designed and is functional. If there are minimal designs, with less plug-ins and not many added features, the webpage would be able to load faster. Search engine robots will be able to index it easily, therefore keeping it on top of the search results list. A simple website would provide visitors with accessibility, and would allow them to browse with ease.
For naming the web page, make sure that simple keywords are used. Avoid using extravagant and big words with the intention of impressing visitors. A website’s primary goal is to be understood and seen, not to impress visitors with a good vocabulary. Keep the URL filled with important keywords to get the right audience. It should be related to content, and relevant. Also, use a reasonable and suitable length for a page name. It should not be too long, or too short.
Regarding the website’s text, limit it to 350 to 600 words per page. Use simple text that could be easily understood. Keeping a page’s text simple will help search engine robots index it easily. Lastly, a page’s footer link must be properly designed, so that robots can easily navigate through a website’s pages.
Remember that keeping a website simple will help search engine robots index the page faster, as well as maintain fast loading time, so many visitors would be enticed to visit the page.
B – Have minimal designs
Similar to having simple text and layout, having minimal designs would help speed loading time. Here are things to avoid:
• Frames
• Too much images
• Flash works
• Image navigation
• Tables
• Pop-Ups
Having too many of these things could result to taking too much loading times. Search engine robots also have a hard time in crawling in websites because of these things, and sometimes they cannot index images. If it is a must that these assets be used in the websites, here are some more tips:
• Images – give appropriate text in alt text
• Flash works – never embed text in them, since it is virtually impossible for robots to detect text under flash works.
• Image navigation – it is not search engine friendly. Use text navigation instead, since this will help search engines to run smoothly and avoid confusion unto what the image is supposed to symbolize.
• Tables – since there are too many codes in tables, it takes longer to load them. Use DIVs structure, which takes less loading time and less codes. DIVs structure is easily indexed by search engine robots as well, therefore making it search engine friendly.
• Pop-ups – advertisements of this kind cannot be indexed by robots, and irritating to web visitors. Instead, have the advertisements in a banner, or other less annoying methods.
C – Web design useful tips
Now that it is emphasized how important it is to keep a website simple and direct to the point, here are more useful tips in gaining more visitors:
• Hyphens – use hyphens instead of underscores in between words for the URL. It is easier to read, as well as easier to index for search engine robots.
• Logo placement – place logo on upper left hand corner. Since a search engine robot reads like a human, which is from left to right, and top to bottom. Having the logo on upper left hand corner will immediately inform the search engine robot what the webpage is about.
• Meta title tag – have a unique Meta title tag. It will make a website stand out among the different web pages, as well as capture the attention of potential visitors.
• H1 tags – take advantage of H1 or H2 tags – since search engine robots give importance to H1 tags. Use targeted keywords in them to get a more limited scope of audience.
• Detailed sitemap – have a detailed sitemap. This will make it easier for search engine robots to easily go from one web page to another. This also adds ease for users.
• Use breadcrumb – only do so if necessary. It must contain relevant keywords regarding the content of a webpage.
• Have an error page – this will help users navigate to the right webpage should they mistakenly typed an incorrect or incomplete URL.
• Page size – each page should be below 50kb. Any larger than this and it would take a longer time to load. Websites that are fast to load get more potential visitors, against those that take long loading time.
• Clean the code – getting rid of useless codes in the HTML file will make it simpler. There are fewer errors and bugs if there is a clean code and direct to the point.
• Java script and CSS – use an External JavaScript, and External CSS rather than coding in the main source file.
With these tips, you can create search engine friendly web layouts which will be helpful in getting more visitors. Just remember the keywords: keep it short and simple, easy to use, and follow the guidelines. Start using them to gather more hits and to maximize your site’s potential. If you follow the directions provided above, then you will get more visitors in your site.
Should you have more questions and suggestions, about SEO Web design tips, please inform us, so that we can help more visitors and users in getting more hits for the webpage.
Having an elaborate, intricately designed website is not enough to guarantee multiple hits per day. Each website design should be optimized and planned in order to create more search results leading to the site. It should be designed to fit the target audience’s attention, user friendly, and simple. This will increase a site’s visibility and invite more visitors per day. Below are more SEO web design tips.
Keep the webpage simple
A good website is simply designed and is functional. If there are minimal designs, with less plug-ins and not many added features, the webpage would be able to load faster. Search engine robots will be able to index it easily, therefore keeping it on top of the search results list. A simple website would provide visitors with accessibility, and would allow them to browse with ease.
For naming the web page, make sure that simple keywords are used. Avoid using extravagant and big words with the intention of impressing visitors. A website’s primary goal is to be understood and seen, not to impress visitors with a good vocabulary. Keep the URL filled with important keywords to get the right audience. It should be related to content, and relevant. Also, use a reasonable and suitable length for a page name. It should not be too long, or too short.
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Geolocation redirect is the act of assigning a geographic location to a website or webpage. Hereby concluding few tips and warnings about using geolocation to redirect users to Country Specific Webpage.
First check the need of geolocation
People want their site to be associated with a particular country, and want search engines to consider their site in country specific search results…coz they think they have a biggest audience in particular country…but most of the times the stats they have got speak wrong…for e.g. AOL’s biggest server is in Canada, meaning anyone anywhere in the world accessing the web through this server will look as though they are Canadian or north American…but its wrong…so check the real need of geolocation, then think of using redirect for that.
Moreover diff search engine use diff methods to associate a particular site to a particular country,
Yahoo use the “Country Code Top Level Domain”(ccTLD)…i.e. .us, .in, .uk etc and also observes the ccTLD of inbound links or backlinks to that particular site.
But google still depends on the IP of the server on which a site is hosted, to associate it with a specific country…so if you want to target google then using redirect for geolocation, will not be good choice.
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