GAJ Ventures SEO & Ebusiness Opportunities

SEO tips for a friend

2008-07-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

Aesthetics
There should be an icon link in the code. This is always more pleasing and attractive to the eye and give the page character when being viewed in a browser. It’s a small detail but I consider it important. It is the code that places a small icon in the left hand corner of the tab as well as in the address bar in the viewers computer.

-Here is one of my sites without it
http://findalllinks.org/auctionebooks/

-Here is one with it
http://www.letstravel.org

The code looks like this.

Color
Your color scheme is pretty good, it places all the focus on the product. The only problem with that is when somebody wants to navigate to any other pages; the color scheme does not make it evident that there is anywhere else to go.

Links
Speaking of navigation. A quick fix to that may simply be to place the important links on the bottom of the page. That was the first place I looked when trying to figure out where to go for more info. It can be done without detracting from the clean simple look of the site.

Coding
The tags look good. I would probably add a few more items though in the keywords meta tag. I would add: windows, vista, computer, mp3, music, calendar, convert from Microsoft

When the robots go through and scan, they will identify and index these key words for your site. Your site may not show up in the top 100 for them, but at least it will be indexed so that when a user types them into Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, etc, there is at least a chance that they will land on your pages.

I would also add alt tags to the image so that they too can be indexed properly, maybe “mac vs pc” or “mac to pc.”

Advertising
Organic SEO involves simply having more incoming links to your site in order to increase pagerank and popularity. That’s a long slow process. You need to add your link to directories, blogs, and search engines. This will increase the number of incoming links to your site thereby increasing the rankings in the search engines…popularity breeds popularity. One of my favourite places and probably the best place is the DMOZ.org. When Google used to have a directory on their more products page, the information populating that directory was being pulled from the DMOZ.

The other type of web advertising is Pay Per Click (PPC) through a number of different tools. The best ones are Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, and MSN’s. I also really love Facebook because you can really drill down and have the ad shown to very specific demographics. These tools are effective in generating targeted traffic but they also cost a bit and really need to be maintained closely. It’s a simple effective process…at least it should be, but the metrics need to be carefully measured. If you’re keywords for these type of ads do not generate a high conversion rate- meaning that the people who click through don’t actually buy- then you may feel the expense was a waste. In other words, PPC can bring a lot of people to your page and from there it is the content, ease of navigation, and reputation that will sell the product for you.

Miscellaneous
I like the domain name and concept. I can see you eventually offering MAC machines, software, and accessories (kind of like what I do with this site I am playing with http://www.eccuelectronics.com/apple) at some point in the future.

One glaring issue is that nowhere on your site does it actually tell a potential customer how much the product costs. They will hesitate to hit the buy now link if they don’t know pricing. Also, I would suggest small type letting people know that they will be redirected to a secure SSL encrypted site to execute the transaction.

That’s it for now. If I can think of anything else, I will let you know.

BTW, I think my best site with the most potential is this one http://www.findallmodels.com
But I have not figured out my final concept for it yet.

SEO Tools and Web Products

2008-02-15T19:44:00.003-08:00

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/auctionebooks

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/counter

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/credit

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/detectives

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/domains

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/ebooks

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/faqs

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/guestbook

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/hbd

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/legal

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/randomizer

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/scripts

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/scriptstore

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/textexchange

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/webhosting

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/top100

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/topsites

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/webrings

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/wholesale

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/xchange

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/bx

http://www.gajhosting.com/autohits

http://www.gajhosting.com/da

http://www.gajhosting.com/exit

http://www.gajhosting.com/linkstats

http://www.gajhosting.com/logos

http://www.gajhosting.com/openads

http://www.gajhosting.com/urlre

http://www.autohits.gajhosting.com

http://www.gajventures.com/306

http://www.gajventures.com/ahm

http://www.gajventures.com/auctionomatic

http://www.gajventures.com/autores

http://www.gajventures.com/cb

http://www.gajventures.com/clickmagnet

http://www.gajventures.com/cs

http://www.gajventures.com/ddm

http://www.gajventures.com/ebookauctions

http://www.gajventures.com/egc

http://www.gajventures.com/ezine

http://www.gajventures.com/fss

http://www.gajventures.com/iprofit

http://www.gajventures.com/microsite

http://www.gajventures.com/niche

http://www.gajventures.com/pdftk

http://www.gajventures.com/powerscripts

http://www.gajventures.com/ptr

http://www.gajventures.com/search

http://www.gajventures.com/wmpopp

http://www.ClickSwapPartners.com

Directories and Classifieds

2008-02-15T19:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.AllAboutNorthAmerica.net

http://www.AllAboutNorthAmerica.org

http://www.ECCuElectronics.com/resources/

http://www.everythingmontreal.com/Top%2010s/

http://www.everythingmontreal.com/linkpartners

http://www.everythingmontreal.com/lists

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/entertainers

http://www.EWOWzone.com/

http://www.EWOWzone.com/pixels

http://www.FindAllLinks.net/

http://www.FindAllLinks.net/advisor

http://www.FindAllLinks.net/classifieds

http://www.FindAllLinks.net/pixellinks

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/adult

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/classifieds

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/hostingindex

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/law

http://www.everythingmontreal.com/prosearch

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/medics

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/pubs

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/restaurants

http://www.FindAllLinks.org/tools

http://www.GAJHosting.com

http://www.gajhosting.com/business

http://www.gajhosting.com/classifieds

http://www.gajhosting.com/lists

http://www.gajhosting.com/search

http://www.ffa.gajhosting.com/

http://www.GAJVentures.com

http://www.gajventures.com/items

http://www.gajventures.com/legal

http://www.gajventures.com/links

http://www.gajventures.com/ppc

http://www.gajventures.com/adland.htm

http://www.everythingmontreal.com/classifieds

http://www.PokerVoyages.com

http://pokervoyages.com/gaming/

http://www.allaboutmontreal.com

http://www.EverythingMontreal.com/

GAJ Ventures

2007-12-06T20:25:00.001-08:00

SEO services webmaster@gajventures.com

EVM News

2007-12-06T20:17:00.001-08:00

My overall vision of the project is to hopefully someday publish offline as a small but highly respected competitor to the Gazette. This is many years away if ever at all. In the interim, I do want to offer an online edition that accomplishes the same goal. I suspect that as we chart the path towards that kind of established respectability, we will undergo a series of metamorphosis’.

Initially, the tone of the publication will be entirely dependent on the skill levels of the writers, and the topics that they choose to write about. It should take appx 6 months just to get a full slate of writers on board contributing regularly. During this build up phase, readership and advertising interests will build up almost on a parallel path on the graph. There will come a time in appx 6 months, that revenues will allow us to start paying the better writers for their contributions. Within 18 months, the hope is that most of our writers will be on staff so that we can demand a certain level of professionalism; with that will come a better class of advertisier.

That’s about as far out for now as the plan goes. Keep in mind that the situation is fluid and we remain open to ideas and other possible avenues.

Oh, we are also on the lookout for a better publishing tool than the one we are currently using.

Why Outsource Your SEO Campaign

2006-11-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

Why Outsource Your SEO Campaign
By Roger Bauer

Have you ever wondered “can’t I just perform search engine optimization in-house?” The answer is a resounding “yes, you can,” but there are many things to consider prior to starting your own in-house SEO program. If everything does not line up at the moment, it may be a wiser decision to bring in an outsider to optimize your website properly. Let’s look at some common considerations.

The initial question you should ask yourself prior to undertaking an in-house SEO program is “do I currently have the staff expertise to tackle SEO effectively?” Good candidates for SEO have traits such as: good research skills, learns quickly, high attention to detail, adapts well to change, enjoys solving fairly complex puzzles, is technologically savvy, and isn’t afraid to try various approaches to solve a problem. If you do not spot these basic traits in someone on your staff which could transition smoothly into an SEO role, it might be wise to look externally for some help.

If there is no one obvious on board currently, who else might be an ideal choice within your organizational ranks to learn SEO? Perhaps training someone that is unhappy in their current role, yet is still considered an asset to the organization, may provide a good opportunity to transition that person over to an important new role. Maybe there is someone that is very intelligent which isn’t so happy dealing with people on a regular basis—they may make a good candidate also.

Once you have a candidate or team sketched out, how will you train them? There are several places to look for training and several sources of basic information, but it may be best to hire an outside firm with the sole purpose of training some of your people as they perform the actual services. Many reputable firms will agree to this type of arrangement provided you are clear with your objectives early on in the relationship, and you set a realistic timeframe. This presents a potential win-win outcome in many cases because the outside firm can lay claim to improved ratings as a result of your partnership, and you can build your new team while sharing in the publicity your site brings to both parties. Keep in mind it can take anywhere from two solid months to a year to get someone up to snuff so don’t expect miracles overnight just because you’ve pegged some folks to take on this role. If someone is really passionate about learning, the curve can be shorter, but that is an exception rather than a rule. Most people are resistant to change which means they won’t fully invest of themselves immediately.

Lastly, are SEO tasks performed in-house really cost effective for your organization at this stage of the game? Many SEO firms charge, on average, anywhere from $2,000-10,000 per month to perform their services. That’s a somewhat broad price range, but it takes into account several factors such as: how competitive are the keywords you’re wanting to rank well for, how many high ranking back-links might it take to improve your site’s ranking, will original content generation be a major factor, how well does the site rank today, how long until consistent results may be evident, and so forth. SEO is not a quick fix project and should be viewed as a long range strategic investment versus a one-time project.

If, after reading over this brief list of considerations, you even slightly believe it would be of greater long-term benefit to your company to hire an external firm, it might save some headaches down the road to just bite the bullet and hire someone now. SEO can definitely be done in house, but it takes appropriate planning and allocation of resources just like anything else.

Roger Bauer is Founder and CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc., a Louisville, Kentucky based small business consulting firm. Their clients benefit from increased revenues, decreased costs, and/or minimized risks. You can read more about SMB Consulting, Inc. by visiting Search Engine Optimization.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Roger_Bauer

Website Design

2006-11-18T09:48:00.000-08:00

What Makes A Website Work
By Greg Dark

Website planning should address the three ‘Cs’ of concept, content and consumer to give your business presence in cyberspace every chance of success.

Concept is by far the most important because it dictates everything - from how much business should invest in the website, to its content and how the site appeals to the consumer. It also points to the importance of reliability and how a website should be hosted for it to meet its business objective.

There’s an adage which says, ‘having lost sight of our objective, we re-doubled our efforts’ and no where is this truer than when planning marketing, of which the website has become a pivotal tool in the Internet age.

So first up, what is the objective of a website?

At its simplest it can be an electronic brochure, designed to explain a company and its products or services. But setting such a modest objective may underestimate the role of a corporate presence in cyberspace.

At the other end of the spectrum the website is a means by which to sell products, with or without a physical shop front - from books to broccoli or bus tickets to banking.

Between these two extremes a website can solicit product or service enquiries from people or other businesses. It can facilitate marketing in which one business earns commissions through helping an affiliate to sell its services. Alternatively it may help deliver savings in staff costs and time by applying information technology to what were previously manual tasks.

Let’s say the business objective of a website is to sell a product or service, then the content – both words and pictures - must strike a balance between meeting that objective and helping secure the website a high search engine ranking. This simply means having your website listed higher than your competition in response to a search enquiry which seeks to find a certain type of business, product or service in cyberspace.

The objective also dictates the importance of ensuring a reliable hosting service, a subject I will address in future.

The final “C” is for the consumer at your website. Make it easy for them to find their way around and do what you want them to do – buy, sign up for a newsletter, email an enquiry or find out about your business. And, finally, reap the benefits of presenting a uniform corporate image, whether in cyberspace or the real world, by using the same graphical images and styles.

by Greg Dark, Image Magic Media.
http://www.imagemagic.com.au

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_Dark

Backlinks

2006-11-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

Building Quality Backlinks
By Harmony Xu

Building Backlinks to a good extent is crucial to page rankings and hence is
a major step in search engine optimization. For those who do not know what a backlink
is - backlinks are the incoming links to a website from other similar websites, practically inter-linking each
other so that the curious netizens browsing one website can easily navigate back and forth between similar web pages by simply following the incoming/outgoing links. As simple as that!

There are many ways to build backlinks, the prominent and most effective ones
being directory submissions, article submissions, and participating in blogs and forums.

Beginning with directory submissions it is advisable to submit the web pages
in popular directories such as MSN, Dmoz, and Yahoo, and they'll
be very much willing to accept the submissions provided the web pages contain
relevant information and favorably meets up with the rules and regulations of the respective directories. The final call on a submission, acceptance or
rejection - is usually made by manual editors, and they won?t entertain anything
that is even remotely junk or irrelevant to the given topic or category.

Article submissions is another way to boost backlinks to your website, provided
the article contains useful information and that it gets past the editor's table It can
be submitted in some of the popular article submission directories such as
iSnare, EzineArticles, IdeaMarketers, GoArticles, PromotionWorld etc.

Blogs and forums also serve similar purposes, but owing to the fact
that public participation is quite high in these domains, it carries the bad image
of being an increasingly breeding ground for link-spamming. Hence, it is important
that for garnering quality backlinks, in blogs and forums, one need to participate
only in constructive discussions and hesitate not in turning down those backlinks
that point to poor content carrying and lesser ranked websites.

Article written by Post Dot Com Directory.

Find out more at http://www.postdotcom.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harmony_Xu

Google Pagerank

2006-11-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

Google Page Rank : What You Need to Know
By Liane Bate

Now that you’ve got your new website up and running, it’s time to start building your Google Page Rank, or “PR”. Page rank is the value that Google gives your site, measured by how many quality links are pointing back to your site, or how popular your site is. The more links you have pointing back to your site, namely quality links from sites with a higher PR, the higher your site will be ranked in Google’s search engine. The rank is on a scale of 0-10 - ten being the highest rank of course! It takes time to get a PR higher than zero when first starting out. This is partly because once you submit your URL to Google and other search engines, it may take weeks or even months before it is indexed. It may also be partly due to the fact that you just need to build good content for your site, and have your links on other people’s websites all over the web. Even if you have a PR of 1-5, you are doing well, even though it may not sound like it. The challenge is for webmasters to increase their PR as much and as quickly as possible, but how?

First of all, there are some tools you can use to check your PR, namely the Google Page Rank Toolbar, which can be downloaded for free from the Google site, and is installed onto your browser. This allows you to check your own site’s PR, as well as those of other sites you visit, which will give you a good clue as to which sites you should be linking to. Linking to sites with a higher PR will increase your site’s PR. It’s a good idea to do a Google search for keywords related to your site’s content, and choose sites to link to whose PR you know in advance. You can send an email to that webmaster asking to exchange links. Not all of them will accept, but the few that do could increase your PR very quickly just by linking to your site!

Next, it’s important to do some serious keyword research using a keyword search tool, one of the most popular being Overture’s keyword search tool. With this tool, or other similar tools, you would type in search terms, such as “make money online”. Since this is a very broad search term, it is going to be highly competitive and will generate a high number of results for number of times that term has been searched. When optimizing your site, you want to avoid these highly competitive terms and use keywords that generate fewer results, by coming up with a keyword that is searched less, but still popular.

There are a few tricks to getting ranked higher with regards to keywords, such as changing some of your source code keywords. For example, you can change the title tag of your site to match the optimized keywords you want to use. You can also look at the source code of other people’s sites by clicking View/Source in your browser while visiting their site to see how optimized their site is and which tags and images they use or don’t use. It is helpful to highlight, bold, or italicize your website keywords to get a higher rank, especially if your competition is not doing that. If you check what your competition is doing, and do what the higher ranked sites are doing, you may be able to outrank them!

Liane Bate owns a Plugin Profit Site web business, is a member of Success University, and the IAHBE.
Visit: http://www.HonestMoneyMaking.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Liane_Bate

A Few Essentials

2006-11-15T07:13:00.000-08:00

Whether you are a novice or a pro some things still need to get done that are not within your sphere of abilities such as web design, web hosting, translation services, copy writing, graphic design, logo creation, etc etc etc. Here a few competent companies that I recommend:

Web Hosting:

Global Access Technologies
Hosting and Template-based Web-site Design Services
Ali Mohammadi
514 975 9014
ali@globalaccesstech.ca
www.globalaccesstech.ca

Web Design
I have two recommendations

RPM Studios
Web-Site Design
Tim Goernet
514 937 0606
tim@rpmstudiosinc.com
www.rpmstudiosinc.com

2nd choice:

Emperor Creations
www.emperorcreations.com

Copy Writing

HLR Strategies,
Commercial Writing
Copywriter specializing in online and printed marketing materials.
Heidi L. Reinblatt, LL.B
514.944.3487
info@hlrstrategies.com
www.hlrstrategies.com

Graphic Design
Again two recommendations

1st choice

Latitudes Marketing and Design
Marketing Services and Graphic Design
Mark Lehberg
514-487-1594
mark@latitudes-marketing.com
www.latitudes-marketing.com

2nd choice
Emperor Creations
www.emperorcreations.com

Translation Services

Comunicatus
Language Services
Lucia Marguglio
514 265 3877
lucia@comunicatus.com
www.comunicatus.com

Computer Support and Service

Mips Media
Computer Support, and Service
Ernesto Colarusso
514 489 9579
colarusso@mipsmedia.com
www.mipsmedia.com

Offline Printing needs to help promote your website
MediaQuest
Printing
Rene Bernatchez
514 931 6444
info@mediaquest.ca
www.mediaquest.ca

SEO / Online Marketing
GAJ Hosting
www.gajhosting.com

Yahoo vs Google optimization

2006-11-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yahoo SEO Techniques
By Matt Jackson

Different Search Engine Means Different Algorithm

All search engines have their own algorithms to determine the value and, therefore, positioning of websites. While the majority of SEO work tends to concentrate on Google because of the sheer weight of searches they receive it would be foolish to discount or ignore the other major search engines. Yahoo is considered one of the big three along with Google and MSN and by concentrating a little more time and effort on Yahoo optimization it is quite possible to gain a good amount of traffic. With ultra competitive keywords it may actually provide an easier way to generate search traffic than gearing all your efforts solely towards Google.

The Most Important Yahoo Optimization Factor

The first, and most pertinent point is that Yahoo judges content to be the most important factor in their algorithms. They do still consider inbound links and other factors but they are attuned to the way of the content site and they love sites that provide keyword-optimized content in large mass. While that may make it sound easier than concentrating on generating a huge base of inbound links as you would for Google, Yahoo optimization presents its own challenges and its own unique quirks that you should consider.

Looking At Keyword Density

Because of the relevance that Yahoo places on the content within your site, the keyword once again becomes a vitally important aspect of your research. While Google have been striving to promote sites that use organic content and webmasters and SEOs have been optimizing with around 2% to 3% keyword density Yahoo prefers a much greater density level. The danger, of course, is that giving Yahoo what they want may cause Google to deem your content as being keyword stuffed but there is another difference between the two algorithms that can help to counteract this problem.

Using Stems, Inflexions, And Variants Of Keywords

Yahoo is very heavily language based. This means that it is, strictly speaking, more aware of the nuances of the written language. It will include synonyms and inflexions of a keyword when considering your keyword density; something that Google does not consider to the same extent. This means that it is possible to optimize for both without diminishing your ranking with one another.

How To Optimize For Yahoo Without Getting Penalized By Google

Google likes a density of around 2% and Yahoo likes a density as high as 7% or even 8%. This means that you can effectively use 4 variations of a single keyword or phrase and a density of 2% for each. This offers further advantages. With Google you are now gearing your content towards four different keywords and offering the level they want, and you are still providing Yahoo with the much higher density rate that they require. Because you can include plurals and further stems of keywords this means you can write in a much more natural tone.

Using The Near Forgotten Meta Tags

One area that a lot of SEO professionals and webmasters alike now tend to overlook is the Meta tag. However, Yahoo appears to still give consideration to the keyword and description tags in particular. This is quite rare in the case of most search engines and Google certainly do not look for keywords in your Meta tags. Do not attempt to dupe Yahoo, though, and only include keywords that genuinely appear on your page and are relevant to your topic.

Regular, Fresh Content Is King

You’ve probably heard the saying that “content is king” and this is even truer when considering Yahoo optimization. The more content you provide the better. This may mean making regular additions to your site but it will generate the kind of results you are looking for. Blogs are also a very good way to continue adding relevant content to your site that Yahoo will smile down on.

The Lazy Yahoo Bot

Compared to other search engine spiders the Yahoo bot is a comparatively lazy animal. It doesn’t crawl as often as other bots and it certainly doesn’t crawl as deep into your site to find all of your pages and index them. This means you should pay extra attention to creating a legible sitemap and keeping it updated as regularly as possible. Yahoo has a sitemap submission feature that is similar to Google’s and using this is heavily recommended to try and ensure that Yahoo stays on top of the infrastructure of your site and ranks you accordingly.

Inbound Links And Controlling Them Yourself

Inbound links are still important to Yahoo, but again a lot of emphasis is placed on content. Textual relevance seems to be one of the most important factors so having control over your inbound links and being able to determine the pages where they appear and the anchor text of each is important. Perhaps the best way to generate inbound links for Yahoo optimization is to use the article directories to your benefit.

Yahoo Optimization Conclusion

Google may be the search engine that everyone talks about and optimizes for but ignoring Yahoo would be foolish. This is especially true because while the Yahoo algorithm is quite different to the Google one and other algorithms, it is still quite easy to optimize for both. The most important factors to remember are to use relevant Meta tags for every single page of your site, include as much content and update your site with new content as often as possible, and update a sitemap both on your website and with the Yahoo sitemaps function.

About WebWiseWords

WebWiseWords specializes in SEO writing geared toward any search engine or any SEO guidelines. They can create website content pages, articles, blog entries, and more that utilize search engine optimization rules to help promote your site with all of the major search engines, not just Google.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Jackson

Spam and Spam Blockers

2006-11-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

Mail Server Blacklists and Spam
By Keith Londrie

A white-list is a list of email senders whom you trust and would like to receive mail from. Conversely, a blacklist contains those that are not to be trusted. Blacklists need to be configured and administered on a server, at the ISP (Internet Service Provider) level or on your network. If you do not have such access, and most people do not, you can use the blacklists by choosing email services from companies that use such blacklisting techniques.

A mail server is designated as having an open relay when mail is processed in a location that is not local to either the sender or receiver. The mail server is unrelated to either party, and as such, has no business processing that email. Think of driving from your home in Washington, DC to your friend's home in Boston. If you pass through New York City on the way, that is to be expected. However, if you stop in Dallas, the route becomes suspect. An open relay mail server, whether intentional or not, is allowing mail to be routed through it that shouldn't be. In this way, spammers distribute large volumes of junk email in order to disguise their actions. Open relays used to be very common, like public mailboxes. You can drop a letter into any one without any notice of who you are. Spammers ruined this by using open relays to surreptitiously send spam without identifying themselves. When blocked by the administrator or ISP, they simply move on. They regularly scan IP addresses looking for open relay servers. When they find one, they exploit it.

Blacklists contain a database of open relay mail servers and those known to be a source of spam, and are used to filter email coming from those machines. The sender will receive a bounce message or mailer deamon telling them that their email is undeliverable. Often, the sender does not realize that they are on a blacklist or that their server is an open relay. They find out only when they attempt to send mail to someone who is uses a blacklist to filter for spam. If the sender is a spammer, the process is working. If the sender is you, the process is also working because it will force you to take steps to close that open relay or complain to the company who is handling your mail. By closing the holes in the email relay network, the spammers will be forced to stop sourcing their spam in this way. This is but one way to slow down, not stop, the spammers.

Blacklists have a very high probability of false-positives if used in blind faith. Depending on those that maintain the blacklist, email sent in good faith could land innocent people and mail servers on a blacklist. This usually happens to one of two ways. The first is through the procedure most blacklist providers use to find open relays. They simply do what the spammers do and scan IP address to look for a server that will allow them to connect and send mail. Once the program finds an open relay they add the server to the blacklist. The system administrator of the server is usually never notified. There can be mistakes made in this process leaving the administrator with a huge problem when mail starts getting lost or bounced back. Second, you may receive an IP from your provider that was previously blacklisted, even though it may no longer be an open relay. To avoid this, check the IP address against the known blacklists and ask your provider for a new one if it indeed appears.

Do you know whether your ISP maintains an open relay? If you discovered that your employee was doing work for someone else while on your time, you would certainly put a stop to it. Open relay mail servers are doing exactly that and need to be confronted. A mail server should be configured to only relay messages from authenticated users on the network. If properly protected, the server will simply tell the sender that they do not work for outsiders and bounce the message back. More and more, administrators of servers are blocking the open relay. This has been instumental in slowing down spam.

Keith Londrie II is a successful Webmaster and publisher of spam-resources.info A website that specializes in providing tips to help eliminate and avoid spam. Getting rid of spam that you can research on the internet in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home. Visit how to combat spam Today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keith_Londrie

Effective SEO Through Good Code StructureBy Adriana Iordan

2006-11-02T07:49:00.000-08:00

For a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy, take into consideration that search engines look at content and also at the structure of the markup. They emphasize the importance of text content, page titles, keywords rich text, meta descriptions and information architecture. A website where quality of content and code prevails will rank higher in the major search engines.
There are many Search Engine Optimization tactics, but try to find the best combination and don't sacrifice the usability and performance of your website. Here is some basic information about improving your source code from an SEO perspective:
Avoid classical 404 error pages
The 404 - File Not Found - page is presented to the user by the server as an error page. The user gets this message directly from the server of the website he is trying to visit. This error page is supposed to appear only when the server cannot find the requested location and is unsure of its status.
In the vast majority of cases, the 404 error emerges for pages that were moved or even deleted or the layout of the site or page information changed.
Many hosting companies offer a 404 redirect page. This means that when a user enters the URL of any page of your domain, and that page does not exist or can no longer be found, you can automatically redirect the user to a specified page - usually your home page or your sitemap.
Pay special attention when you decide to delete certain pages. Remember to redirect them to a main page of your site using the 301 (Moved Permanently) HTTP response code.
You can greatly improve the user friendliness of your website by creating a custom 404 page:
Present a message of apology for the inconvenience; Try to ease the user's way back to your site. Introduce error messages and include evident links to the home page, sitemap, and contact page;Offer assistance and encourage the user to continue to search for the information he needs on your site. You could even include a search box right on the error page;Keep the same design for the error page as for the rest of the website.
See: www.avangate.com/4040404404.
But remember that the best strategy for a 404 error page is to prevent it from coming up altogether, as many customers might be left with the impression that the whole website does not exist and not just the specific page they were trying to access.
Keep away from orphan pages
An orphan page is a page that is not linked to another one an thus cannot be found by spiders. To avoid having orphan pages on your website, check regularly that all your pages are linked to each other.
Search engines consider sites with orphan pages to be unprofessional, and not worthy of getting a high rank. This kind of website is under construction or is the result of a poor design process. If your pages aren't linked properly search engines won't index them and will consider them irrelevant for the search.
Pay attention to the fact that some search engines don't index correctly websites that use HTML frames. When spiders crawl through your internal pages, they index each individual page and display them as orphan pages in search results. Most frame designs include a content frame and a navigation frame.
Visitors require both frames to navigate through the site. Create a JavaScript to check if the page is loading correctly, and load the frameset. In this way, users won't be able to open pages outside the frame. This is a very easy way of losing clients.
Use 301 redirect pages
To avoid displaying a 404 error page, set up a 301 redirect page. The code 301 means "moved permanently" and it's the easiest way to preserve your search engine rankings for that page.
There are two ways of generating proper 301 redirect pages. If your site is hosted on a Linux or Unix server create a .htaccess file to add the redirect to your server's web root.
The .htaccess file contains specific instructions for certain requests, including security, redirection issues and how to handle certain errors. If it is hosted on a Windows or IIS server then the 301 redirect can be set up in the Administrator's section of the server software or through the DNS (Domain Name Server) zone.
Make a habit of reviewing the log files which contain data sent by your server. Search engine spiders often make critical decisions based on what your server tells them through the server's headers.
Pay attention, an improper 301 redirect can cause you big problems, since your website might fail and users won't be able to visit your pages. Setting up a correct "301 redirect" assures that you'll stay high in search rankings.
Create a sitemap
A sitemap is a web page that lists all the pages on your website. They are intended both for users - to find easier the information they need , and for search engines to index pages.
Your sitemap link should be right on your home page. In this way spiders are sent directly to the place where all your content information is gathered. Sitemaps can improve SEO, however, be advised that they only take into consideration a limited number of links to those pages.
To make sure that spiders check your whole site and have more chances to get indexed, it would be a good idea to use a sitemap generator. You can use ROR sitemaps that are readable by all search engines.
ROR is a sitemap tool that uses XML feeds to describe your website. ROR sitemaps allow search engines to match text search with structured information, thus obtaining more relevance for your site. This kind of sitemap helps search engines to better understand your website content - products, services, images, articles, etc. By creating a file with product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, affiliate programs, and any other relevant information customers can find you easier.
Don't overuse dynamic pages
Dynamic web pages include dynamic content - images, text, etc - which changes without the page being reloaded. Client-side languages like JavaScript and ActiveX are usually used to create these types of web pages.
Search engines don't rank well dynamic pages with many parameters. If you choose not to turn your dynamic URLs into static ones, at least put the most important parameters in your URLs first and try to limit dynamic parameters to no more than two.
Spiders can't read the text rendered as graphics. Any text that you want the spiders to read and index should be written out as text. At the very least, put any text that appears in graphics into the images' ALT attribute.
A slightly better alternative is to write your text in Flash, but remember to have a "Skip this intro..." link that takes visitors (and spiders) to the text-rich content of your site. Don't neglect this information if you want to optimize your search engine strategy.
Put .CSS and JavaScript into external files
For a search engine, improperly formatted code will have a negative impact on your rankings. Since search engines read only a certain amount of information on a web page, you should try to increase the text content to HTML tag ratio.
If you have too much HTML code, the text content won't be seen entirely. For reducing HTML code, utilize hand coding using external .css files and Javascript.
Make sure you have well formatted [X]HTML
Try to fix as many of the HTML errors as possible. Although the search engines don't rank better websites that have standard compliant code they tend to "read" them easier. Use the W3 HTML Validator to check the validity of your code.
Read full article about Effective SEO...
Copyright © 2006, http://www.avangate.com all rights reserved. This article was written by a Web Marketing Specialist at Avangate B.V. Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional marketing and sales tools.
This article may be reproduced in a website, e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. so long as the above information is included in full, including the link back to this website.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adriana_Iordan

Webmaster Project

2006-11-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

What Is The Web-Master Project?

It's a high-tech way for YOU to collect $50,000 per month

With NO INVESTMENT WHATSOEVER

- If you can reliably switch on a computer

Definition:
The Web-Master Project is a worldwide network of independent web sites run by our sales team. It is set up in such a way that it can channel multi-thousand-dollar commissions from the worldwide sales of selected products straight into YOUR bank account.

What Do We Do?
We are currently seeking to recruit more Web-Masters such as yourself to motivate and organize our marketing people.

The Web-Master Project relies upon a thousands-strong worldwide network of highly motivated independent sales people to make one or two sales each per month over the internet from their home computers.

These sales combined together generate huge commissions which are paid to Web-Masters like YOU just for motivating and supporting OUR marketing people.

The Web-Master Project was created to allow any person with a reasonable grasp of English, and the ability to follow simple instructions, the opportunity to make themselves $50,000 per month, every month.

Who Do We Want?
The Web-Master Project is not a scheme which encourages idlers to Register and then do nothing.

We are looking for reliable and serious minded people who can be trusted to keep plugging away week after week and motivating their team of home marketing staff in exchange for big cash rewards paid monthly.

Particularly, we want people who have spent some time searching the web for products or business opportunities and following links and advertisements as this means they will have experience of what our people are working with.

Mature people are particularly welcome as we value their maturity and life experience. This comes through when communicating with young sales people.

So if you want to make money for doing nothing The Web-Master Project is not for you.

But if you want to make a lot of money for doing something quite easy The Web-Master Project could be for you.

What Does It Cost?
There is ABSOLUTELY no charge for you to Register and take part in The Web-Master Project.

There is no requirement for you to pay anyone in this business at all, at any time.

Let me say that again:

IT IS TOTALLY FREE TO JOIN US AND MAKE MONEY

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Visit Here to learn more

Click Swap Partners

2006-10-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hello to all my Click Swap Partners,

This is a program update; so far we have 44 members and 80 websites in the program.

I personally have visited each site at least once and clicked on numerous links. Most of you can attest to this by the emails I have sent you with regards to your sites.

The short term goal is 300 members by years end and roughly 500 free sites. This means that more marketing needs to be done to attract more members while decreasing the amount of free sites that they are allowed to add. Otherwise, we will end up with a few individuals contributing the bulk of the sites while the vast majority end up as glorified money making clicking machines for them.

To this end, I am limiting the number of free sites the existing 44 members can have to 5, and new members will be allowed to add 1 free site. If you are already over the limit of 5, don't worry, your sites have been grandfathered in. If you need to add more sites, it is definitely welcomed, and you can do so by clicking the Submit Link button that is on each page. The pricing for additional links is as follows:

Regular link $9.99/month
Reciprocal link $5.00/month
Featured link $15/month (special for the rest of the year)

The featured links have been receiving the most clicks since the program started. I personally will pay particular attention to visit the paid links sites everyday and click on those links, which does not mean that the others will be ignored; but dollars do have a way of grabbing my attention :)

The whole system works when everyone spends some time each day visiting the partner sites and clicking on links. If you simply submit a site and then sit back and wait for your links to be clicked without bothering to do your part, then the program will not work for you nor anyone else. The reason why will be that everyone will be sitting back and not enough links will be clicked therefore no results will be apparent for anyone. If each person in the program spends 10-15 minutes a day working the program, then that will represent an awful lot of clicks for everyone.

I will be adding a forum and a blog soon so that should you have any thoughts and ideas on how to improve the program, we can share them in one central location; plus it will serve as an additional source for backlinking for everyone.

With regards to marketing, I sure could use some help. Let's face it, the more clickers, the more the people who receive this email tonight will benefit since you will have 5 times as many free sites in the program with links to click as those who join from November 1st on. To this end, each one of you can add a link to the program wherever possible using any variation the following themes:

Title: Click Swap Partners
Descritpion: It's simple. I visit your sites and click on your links. You visit my sites and click on my links. We both benefit
Url: http://www.clickswappartners.com

Title: Click Swap Partners
Descritpion: We have 40+ members ready to visit your site and click on your links. Sign up today
Url: http://www.clickswappartners.com

There is also an rss feed that you can use on your sites, here is the feed address:
http://www.findalllinks.com/tools/rss.php?c=28

Should you have any thoughts or concerns, you can email me at garfield@clickswappartners.com

SEO FAQs

2006-10-30T13:52:00.000-08:00

What is search engine optimization?

Search engines have different criterion to measure web page importance. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the importance of a web page with the goal of getting the page positioned at the top of the search results.

How long will it take for my web site to get to the top of the search engines?

Most often SEO is a long term process. Getting a new site indexed in the major search engines could take several days to a few months. But getting good positioning in the search engine is a longer process and can take up to a year or longer. There is no way to determine how long it will take to achieve desired positioning. Patience is the key to search engine optimization.

How much traffic will my web site gain from SEO?

The traffic you get will depend on what keyword phrases you optimize your web pages for and what positioning your site achieves. If you optimize for less competitive keyword phrases you may gain a top position but receive very little traffic. Optimizing for competitive keyword phrases and achieving a top position will increase your traffic. However, if you are optimized for the wrong keyword phrases you could achieve higher traffic that results in low conversions.

What will you do to optimize my web site?

Current SEO trends include: back linking, html and title tags, content copy, anchor link text and keyword analysis. Depending on your situation all or a few of these methods will be used.

How often will you submit my site to the search engines?

We don't submit to any search engines. Submitting to search engines is an outdated SEO technique. With proper back linking major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves will crawl and index your site naturally. Most of the smaller search engines pull their information from the major search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo and DMOZ, so there is no need to submit to the smaller search engines. Time is better spent back linking to relevant web sites and submitting to relevant directories.

How much does SEO cost?

SEO services range from several hundred dollars to thousands. Some web site owners spend over $10,000 per year on search engine optimization. Many SEOs will custom a SEO package to fit your budget. The cost of our SEO services.

What is backlinking?

Backlinking, or link campaign, is one of the most important aspects of the SEO process. Back linking involves getting other relevant web sites to create links to your web site. The text used in your back links is also very important. It should contain your most desirable keyword phrases. Many web sites have very high positioning in Google without meeting any other SEO criterion except for back links.

Do you pay to have my site listed in a search engine?

No, we do not pay for inclusion into any search engine; however, we do occasionally purchase back links.

Do you offer a guarantee?

Our guarantee is that your web site will be optimized by current SEO trends and requirements and that your positioning will improve. We do not guarantee a particular position in any search engine, nor do we guarantee any particular amount of traffic or sales improvements.

Why do I need search engine optimization?

SEO is essential to increasing your web presence. SEO takes research and patience, and if you are running an e-commerce web site without SEO then you are missing out on one of your greatest Internet traffic resources. SEO can make the difference between success or failure of an e-commerce venture.

Why does search engine optimization take so long?

As search engine optimizers, we are sometimes competing with millions of web pages for positioning of a single web page. Many of these web pages are highly optimized due to being several years old and having thousands of back links, therefore, establishing a web presence among these highly optimized web pages is often a long term project requiring considerable effort.

Why did my web site disappear from Google?

Assuming your web site wasn't penalized for spamming or over optimizing, your web site might have disappeared due to the Google sandbox or other delays. It is very common for a new web site to disappear from Google for up to a year. Many in the professional SEO community believe this is a type of a web site quality control technique being used by Google. There is really nothing that can be done about the disappearance of a web site except to use the time wisely . The best approach during this period is to gain relevant back links and continue to improve on your web page content.