Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results.

Google searches more sites more quickly, delivering the most relevant results.

Introduction

Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search engine.

The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues to play a central role in many of our web search tools.

PageRank Explained

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines dozens of aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Integrity

Google's complex automated methods make human tampering with our search results extremely difficult. And though we may run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a particular or higher placement). A Google search provides an easy and effective way to find high-quality websites that contain information relevant to your search.

Probe reveals no links of Dr Khan with al-Qaeda

Investigations against Dr AQ Khan have proven that the renowned nuclear scientist had no links with al-Qaeda and that he helped Iran and Libya to divert the US focus from the Pakistani nuclear programme.

read more | digg story

A good KeyPhrase Choice is the key of a Productive Content

A good keyphrase choice is the key of a productive content

Are you exhausted from not being relevant to search engines. Are you engaging urself a lot in writing but Google still not paying you back? These are some SEO tips that you should consider to in every post you make. It's about generating a rich text with elementary keywords. Making a quality rich content is the main bloggers' concern. They use their writing skills to make a post that makes them feel happy... But for search engines useless posts could rank first! How to forbid that from happening?

Select your primary keyphrase :
You have just to ask yourself : what am I blogging the most about ? Whatever the reply is , You will focus your work on ways to make your posts relevant to people on search engines results.. Keep yourself in the surfer's shoes, what would you type in the google search bar to get informations about what you're blogging. Actually you might have done that for your searches in blogs and websites to collect data for your future posts. So you had a contact with the ranking issue and you visited your competitors (those who deal with the same subject as you). Your future goal is to make your URL rank before them for a certain keyword search. Go type this word in the KeywordDiscovery tool . If you're writing about "jewelry" type the word in it and you'll recieve most active words and phrases relevant to your theme.

Two keyphrases strategies :
After you get most relevant keyphrases you have to select between promoting your blog with the top ranked keyphrases and contend with competing blogs and websites. Or adhere with low ranked one and approach to be on the first page as soon as possible. The challenge here is competition. You have to select between appearing in the third page of search engine result for the most popular keyphrase or rank in the first page with non-popular one. Now it depends on your desire. If you have a high ambition to make a long living blog, If you have the courage and the motivation to strive in the keyword war, pluck out most popular keyphrases and get to work !!

Good Content... cater to spiders !!
Search engines use spiders to crawl your pages, they go through your content and select out relevant keyword. So you better read your post with the spider's eyes ! How? Spiders read from the top. First they read the title of your page, and looks for what is between the title's html tag : make sure your keyphrase appear in it. Other tags are very important as bold and strong. Spiders even detect blod caracters and italic etc. They notice paragraphs too, so also break you text into paragraphs and get your keywords in it. Spiders also notices your linking and the manner you are describing and putting the objects in your page ( links, images) so you must put the right html tag for it. If you are giving links, describe the content you are linking to. If you are setting up a picture, rename it in order to fit your content. That will certainly help you getting more visitors through google images search. To get more information on it you can refer to article :

Top 10 tips for Google Image Search Seo

Be Alert!! A double edged weapon
If you get lost in enriching your text with keywords it will wind up with one of the webmaster's nightmare by being banned from search engines. If your text holds keywords more than 5% of it that will be regarded as SPAMMING !! Search engines will set up a filter to lower your ranking for these keywords and will end up sooner or later with banning your URL from ranking up in their pages!

Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets

I’ve been reading a few forums and blogs about Google Adsense tips lately, and thought it would be helpful to consolidate as many as possible in one place without the comments. I’ve also thrown in a few tips of my own. We start out with some of the basic general stuff and move to the more specific topics later on.

Build an Empire?

When you’re deciding to become a website publisher you will fall into one of two broad categories:

* Publish 100 websites that each earn $1 a day profit
* Publish 1 website that earns $100 a day profit

The reality of it is, most people end up somewhere in between. Having 100 websites leaves you with maintenance, management and content issues. Having one website leaves you open to all sort of fluctuations (search engines algorithm’s, market trends, etc). You can adapt your plan on the way, but you’ll have an easier time if you start out going in the direction of where you want to end up.

General or Niche

You can build your website around general topics or niche ones. Generally speaking niche websites work better with adsense. First off the ad targeting is much better. Secondly as you have a narrow focus your writing naturally becomes more expert in nature. Hopefully this makes you more authority in your field.

If this is your first try at building an adsense website, make it about something you enjoy. It will make the process much easier and less painful to accomplish. You should however make sure that your topic has enough of an ad inventory and the payout is at a level you are comfortable with. You may love medieval folk dancing, but the pool of advertisers for that subject is very small (in fact it’s currently zero).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of how Adsense works on a website, you are going to want to dabble in some high paying keywords, you may even be tempted to buy a high paying keyword list. This does come with some dangers. First off the level of fraud is much higher on the big money terms. Secondly there is a distortion of the supply and demand relationship for these terms. Everyone wants ads on their website that make $35 or more a click, however the number of advertisers who are willing to pay that much is pretty limited. Additionally the competition for that traffic is going to be stiff. So, don’t try to run with the big dogs if you can’t keep up. If you have to ask if you’re a big dog, then chances are, you’re not. I have used a high dollar keywords report from cashkeywords.com and was pleased with my results (see cash keywords free offer recap).

New Sites, Files and Maintenance

When you’re building a new site don’t put adsense on it until it’s finished. In fact I’d go even farther and say don’t put adsense on it until you have built inbound links and started getting traffic. If you put up a website with “lorem ipsum” dummy or placeholder text, your adsense ads will almost certainly be off topic. This is often true for new files on existing websites, especially if the topic is new or different. It may take days or weeks for google’s media bot to come back to your page and get the ads properly targeted. TIP: If you start getting lots of traffic from a variety of IP’s you will speed this process up dramatically.

I like to build my sites using include files. I put the header, footer and navigation in common files. It makes it much easier to maintain and manage. I also like to put my adsense code in include files. If I want/need to change my adsense code, it’s only one file I have to work with. TIP: I also use programming to turn the adsense on or off. I can change one global variable to true or false and my adsense ads will appear or disappear.

Managing URL’s and channels

Adsense channels is one area where it’s really easy to go overboard with stats. You can set up URL channels to compare how one website is doing to another. You can also set up sub channels for each URL. If you wanted to you do something channels like this:

* domain1.com - 728 banner
* domain1.com - 336 block
* domain1.com - text link
* domain2.com - 728 banner
* domain2.com - image banner
* domain2.com - 336 block
* domain3.com - 300 block

While this is great for testing and knowing who clicks where and why, it makes your reporting a little wonky. Your total number will always be correct but when you look at your reports with a channel break down things will get displayed multiple times and not add up to correct total. Makes things pretty confusing, so decide if you really need/want that level of reporting detail. TIP: At the very least you want to know what URL is generating the income so be sure to enter distinct URL channels.

Once you know you are going to put adsense on your website you’re going to have to consider where to put it. If this is new site it’s easier, if it’s an existing site it’s more difficult. While there are some people who will be able to do it, in most cases I’d say if you just slap the adsense code in, you’ll end up with a frankensite monster (props to Tedster of WMW for the buzzword). While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. Now I’ve done really well by placing it on the right, but you should know why you’re doing it that way before hand, and be prepared to change it if it doesn’t work out.

Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 inline rectangle
• 160×600 wide skyscraper

From the sites that I run, I do really well with the 336 rectangle and 160 skyscraper. My next best performing ad size is the 728 leaderboard, I don’t really use the 300 inline rectangle too often. So really it depends on how well you integrate these into your site. Placement can have a dramatic effect on performance. TIP: When working on a new site or new layout you may want to give each location it’s own channel for a little while until you understand the users behavior.

Another ‘trick’ that can increase your CTR is by blending your adsense into your body copy. For example if your body copy is black, remove the adsense border and make the title, text, and URL black.TIP: Try changing all of your page hyperlinks to a high contrast color (like dark red or a bold blue) then change the adsense title to the same color.

The one area where I’ve found blended ads don’t perform as well is forums, especially ones with a high volume of repeat members. Regular visitors develop banner blindness pretty quickly. One ‘trick’ to keep the ads from being ignored is to randomize the color and even the placement. As with any of the decisions about location, placement and color it’s a trade off. How much do you emphasize the ads without annoying your visitors. Remember it’s better to have a 1% CTR with 500 regular visitors as opposed to a 5% CTR with 50 visitors. TIP: For forums try placing the adsense ads directly above or below the the first forum thread.

Using Images

One of the latest ’secrets’ to make the rounds is using images placed directly above or below an adsense leaderboard. This has been used for a while but came out in a digital point forum thread where a member talked about quadrupling their CTR. Basically you set up the adsense code in a table with four images that line up directly with the ads. Whether or not this is deceptive is fuzzy and very subjective. Obviously four blinking arrows would be ‘enticing people to click’ and be against the adsense TOS. However placing pictures of 4 laptops over laptops ads isn’t, so use your best judgment here and look at it from the advertiser or Google’s perspective. If you have a question as to your implementation being ‘over the line’ write to adsense and ask them to take a look.

As far as using the images, I’ve done it and can tell you it definitely works. You get the best results when the images ‘complete the story the ads are telling’. For example if you have ads about apple pies, use pictures of freshly baked apple pies, instead of granny smith, Macintosh, pink lady, and braeburn apples. TIP: Don’t limit yourself to using images only on that size ad unit, it works just as well with the other sizes, like the 336 rectangle.

Added:
I got a little criticizm for this and rightly so, as I wasn’t specific as I could have been. Do not use very identifiable brand name or products for your images. Use generic non-specific stock images whenever possible and appropriate.

Multiple Ad Units

Another way to increase ad revenue is to use multiple ad units. According to Google’s TOS you are allowed to post up to three ad units per page. Similar to standard search results the highest paying ad units will be served first and the lowest being served last. If there is enough of an ad inventory, place all three ad units. However you should pay attention to the payouts. Current assumption is you get 60% of the revenue (on a $0.05 click you get $0.03). So if a click from the third ad unit is only paying between 3 to 5 cents you may want to omit it from your page. This is one are where giving your ad units channels does have value. If one ad unit is getting a higher percentage of click throughs you’ll want to make sure the highest paying ads are being served there. TIP:Use CSS positioning to get your highest paying ads serving in the location with the highest CTR.

Adsense in RSS

With the growth of blogs and RSS feeds you’re starting to see adsense included in the feeds now. IMHO this doesn’t work, and here’s why:

* You only get to place one ad unit.
* You have no control over finding the ’sweet spot’ for the ad unit.
* The ads are usually poorly targeted (this is getting better).
* People develop ‘banner blindness’.

I know people like being able to read full postings in their feed reader, and there are at least a dozen other reasons for full posts from pleasing your users to mobile offline computing, all of which are completely valid. However if your website depends on generating adsense revenue to survive, then bring them to the site and show them the ads there.

Affiliate Sites

Placing Adsense on affiliate sites is tricky. Are you giving up a $10, $20, or $30 sale for a $1 click? This is something you have to test on your own to figure out. If you aren’t converting now it’s definitely worth a try. I like to use adsense on my article pages. For example let’s say you had an affiliate website where you sold shoes. You’re going to need some related articles to ‘flesh out’ the site. Things like ‘getting a shoe shine’ or ‘finding a shoe repair shop’ these are excellent spots for adsense. While you won’t get rich, they will usually provide a small steady income and cover things like hosting costs.TIP: If you find you have pages getting more than 50 clicks per month add more pages about this topic, and link the pages together. Mine you logs for the search terms used.

PPC Arbitrage

This is a dicey subject so I’m going to steer clear of precise examples. Basically you bid on low volume uber niche terms at a very low cost. You set up landing page that contains high payout ads for the related general topic. You are looking for terms with a large gap between the price you are bidding on adwords and the price you are getting on Adsense. If you pay $0.10 a click and get $1.00 a click you make $0.90 each click. To get your adsense ad approved you will need to ‘add some value’ along the way. You can make a killing or get taken to the cleaners with this one, so make sure you know what you are doing before you try it.

Have any other adsense tips, tricks or secrets? Drop me an email and let me know, I’ll give you credit.

Added
728 leaderboard works very well if it is just above the end of the
“above the fold” area on what would be considered your viewers average
resolution/browser window size if there are few other enticing links
above the fold. Makes for an interesting layout but if you’re building
a site for AdSense it may be worth it. We consistently receive very
high CTRs from doing this.

Try to build sites that allow you to quickly try any and all of
those locations outlined in the heatmap guide or at least allow you a
wide degree of freedom to easily change ad/content locations.
via:nuevojefe

Recession Proof Search Engine Optimization Tips

Recession Proof Search Engine Optimization Tips

In this month’s Target Marketing Magazine, a TopRank authored article on how small businesses can gain a competitive marketing advantage by leveraging content promotion, blogs, social media and universal search was featured. Recently there has been some dialog and commentary on certain SEM channels about upcoming harder economic times calling for SEO to be taken back to the basics: “Textbook SEO” as Mike Grehan would put it. I disagree with the premise that companies should stop experimenting with new tactics and stick with the fundamentals. Effective SEO in any economic environment means getting more creative, not mundane.

“As search engines evolve with features such as personalized, social and unified search, so must marketers evolve — especially those on a budget.”
What the article in Target Marketing and this post look at are creative content creation and promotion approaches to optimizing not only small business web sites, but any web site, using a holistic approach to SEO. I’ll summarize a few of the key points here:

Create a Content Promotion Plan - The base for optimization and link building is all about content. However, relying on search engines alone to find, crawl, index and rank your content in a way that will drive sales and improve brand visibility isn’t enough. More than ever, the masses are enabled to publish content on the web creating even more competition for top visibility within search. That makes it important to not only optimize your content, but to make an effort to promote it as well. Publishing great content is a waste unless you’ve developed channels of distribution outside of search engine crawlers.

Planning out content creation ahead of time much like a publisher creates an editorial calendar for a magazine will provide the search marketing team with resources in advance to creatively concept optimization, social networking and promotion ideas in advance. The effect is more robust distribution of your message to audiences that are looking as well as attracting links.

In the article at Target Marketing, there’s a practical example of this where a jewelry retailer promoted photos of their Christmas ornaments on image sharing sites to drive additional traffic as well as links.

Make It Easy to Publish and Promote New Content - One of the most common issues we run into when consulting with companies to improve their organic search marketing effectiveness is to implement a content creation and promotion plan. Many web sites are fairly static and there isn’t much “promotable content”. Even if the company wants to add content, they’re often tied down by content management system with limited functionality or having to go through an web side development firm to many any edits creating unnecessary costs.

For TopRank and it’s clients, the most effective way to add a search engine friendly content creation and management feature to a web site is to use blog software. That does not mean a blog in a journaling sense needs to be implemented, but rather leveraging blog software to manage content like an online newsroom, archiving newsletters, etc. That said, publishing a blog as we all know them is the ideal. There are additional competitive blog SEO advantages to publishing a blog as well.

The practical example given in the article references a retail fabric site that used a blog to archive its newsletters to start and then hired a person part time to write helpful tips and creative product announcements. The additional web pages and internal/inbound links generated from the blog have resulted in top 3 rankings on competitive phrases and increased sales.

“Get” Social Media - Before jumping on the bandwagon of social media promotion it’s important to understand how the various networks and communities work. Social media marketing is more about conversations and influence than it is about offers and conversions. Create accounts, make friends, comment and vote on content. See what kinds of content is going hot and getting attention and then start submitting the kind of content (others and yours) that the community responds to.

In this case, the example given from the article discussed a blog about puzzles and brain teasers that setup a Facebook group to introduce content from the blog to people who were interested in such content on Facebook. The Facebook group has grown steadily and continues to send traffic to the blog. After the article posted, a Twitter account was also set up for the puzzles site and uses it as a way to draw attention to (and links/visitors) to particularly interesting puzzles. Keep in mind, in both cases it was only people that showed some sort of interest in puzzles and that were active who were “friended”.

Unify Your Efforts With Universal Search - “Armed with a content plan, a blog to make it easier to publish search engine-friendly content and the beginning of an expanded social network, it’s now time to figure out what this all means for improved search engine visibility.” While each search engine implements the concept of universal or combined search results slightly differently and to a limited degree, the potential to gain benefit now as well as when the engines scale up the use of combined results is an opportunity.

The first step with universal search SEO is to take a step back and look at your search marketing effort from a holistic perspective. As you identify your target audience, goals and the messages to promote, take inventory of the electronic media or digital assets you have to work with. Match them up with appropriate channels of promotion. Incorporate your content promotion plan with search engine optimization efforts and implement an ongoing process of creative content creation, promotion and results measurement.

You can read the full story here: Competitive on a Budget: Promote content, socialize online and unify with universal search

If you run a small business web site or provide SEO consulting services to small businesses, what are some of the more creative online marketing tactics you’ve used? What trends do you see coming in 2008? Are you engaging in digital asset optimization?

Easy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips and Advice

Easy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips & Advice

Following is a short (okay, maybe not so short) list of things you can do — right now and without paying someone hundreds of dollars — to help your pages place higher in commonly used search engines such as Yahoo, Google, Altavista, and Lycos.

What I can't put in these tips is the experience and expertise that a trained search engine optimization specialist can bring to your project. Knowing how to define a set of achievable keywords, optimize (rewrite, if necessary) pages, network for links, and map out a strategic plan are things you can't put into a "how to" list. Having years of web design and site administration experience can help too, as can years of working on the web to provide valuable marketing solutions to clients.

My Web Marketing Manager / Director Resume

1. Before you go any further, understand that you should not optimize any one page (including your home page) for more than five or six keyword phrases. Trying to optimize for more will only dilute the effectiveness of your pages. Instead, identify other pages on your site that can be optimized for different sets of keyword phrases.

2. Don't expect to be able to score with single-word keyword phrases (such as, "travel" or "software") unless you are one of the most visited sites on the internet. It just won't happen. Conversely, the longer your phrases get, the easier it will be to get to the first page of search results. The trick is striking a balance somewhere in between so two and three-word phrases work for you.

3. The most important technique you can use these days (especially for good placement in Google, the number-one search engine) is to provide your visitors with lots of good information on the subject(s) of your keywords. Use your keywords often without being too repetitive.

First things first:

4. Go straight to Yahoo's paid submission page and submit your site. (Click here for my list of search engine submission links.) It will cost you $299 (as of Winter 2002). Be prepared with a great title for your site and a kicker description of no more than 25 words (a little less than 200 characters by Yahoo's standards). Get your most important keywords into your title and description (but be prepared for the Yahoo editors to remove most of them). It doesn't matter. You have to be in the Yahoo directory, if only so that the Google spiders find you and give you points for it.

5. Go to the Open Directory Project (DMOZ), find the best category for your site and then submit it to their editors. Again, you have to be in this directory, but not just because Google will like it. Many, many sites now use the DMOZ directory as the basis for their own directories. Get into DMOZ and you get into all those others (eventually).

I recommend this one-two, Yahoo-DMOZ punch to anyone who is serious about achieving their best rankings in the Google index.

Optimizing the HEAD section of your HTML page:

6. Use a TITLE tag (in the HEAD portion of your HTML file) that contains the keywords for your website. If it is the title of the home page, it should also contain your company name. Example:

7. Use META tags for description and keywords. Keep the description short, a maximum of 200 characters (including the spaces). Keyword lists should be a maximum of 1000 characters (including the spaces and commas). In the old days, longer keyword meta lists would get you higher on the search results, but this is going out of favor with the search engines. Do use the meta keywords, though, to list the most important keywords on your page (once is enough) and any synonyms or common misspellings. Always include your company name in your keyword lists.

8. Optimize the META description to include your company name, what you do, and your target keywords. Keep this description to 200 characters.

9. Minimize the depth of your HEAD section by using links to javascript and cascading style sheet code whenever possible. Too much junk in the HEAD section can make a search spider think your site's text starts too far down the page to be relevant.

10. Each page should begin with a heading that again uses your keywords. Code this as a first-level,
heading. You can get creative. Notice how on my own home page, the list of services and cities below the main graphic is coded as an
. Another example:heading, include a short paragraph that spells out exactly the value you bring your visitors with this page, using your keywords frequently (though without getting too redundant).

The Yahoo SLURP Crawler

The Yahoo SLURP Crawler

As SEOs and webmasters, we're always looking for ways to get the search engine spiders to crawl our sites, and the deeper, the better. This article shows you how to target Yahoo's crawler and convince it to stop by regularly.

The search engine wars are fought with strategies, alliances, and robots. As Yahoo! primes itself to be the number one contender for market share after Google, websites that want to optimize for Yahoo must study how Yahoo ranks pages and how it indexes pages. The Yahoo web crawler SLURP should be studied; your site server logs should have recorded visits from various robots, including SLURP. If you do not have records of SLURP visiting your site, then this article will give tips on how to get SLURP to crawl (hopefully deep crawl) your site.

The Preamble

Yahoo SLURP evolved from Inktomi SLURP. The Yahoo SLURP robot is an upgrade from Inktomi’s SLURP. Yahoo used Inktomi’s search engine to replace Google, which used to take care of its search results. This officially triggered the second search engine wars (the first was won by Google without it declaring hostilities).

Yahoo has at least 130 million registered users on its network. Granted, Google is the definitive search engine, but Yahoo is large enough that it should not be ignored.

Search Engines and Algorithms: Optimizing for Yahoo! Search and AltaVista

Search Engines and Algorithms: Optimizing for Yahoo! Search and AltaVista

Yahoo is considered the number one search engine above all other search engines. Yahoo search queries make up approximately 28% of all search engine traffic. And just in raw traffic reported by Alexa rankings, Yahoo! demolishes competitors such as Google and MSN. The Y! web portal has continued to offer its visitors comprehensive searching capabilities through its evolving algorithm. Search optimizers would be wise to consider its attributes and quirks, which Jennifer Sullivan reviews in the second part of this series.

Yahoo has changed its search engine several times drastically. Yahoo is striving to produce relevant results to its searchers in areas that computer algorithms simply fall short, areas like opinions and personalized results. For example, “What is the best online electronics site?” or “Who has the best Italian cuisine in town?” are representative of questions that would be an opinion that a searcher would be interested in, but is difficult for a search engine algorithm to put them in touch with. Personal results are indicative of a user’s personal preferences, and not based solely upon the opinion of the majority, and serendipity brings to mind the notion of becoming familiar with the searcher’s own tastes, such as what might be personally relevant to a user, or something family and friends would be a better source of information regarding, rather than a machine. Searching for the term “apple” doesn’t always mean that a user is looking for Macintosh computers.

Yahoo! Social Search

With this in mind, Yahoo introduced Social Search, called My Web 2.0. It is a new kind of search engine – a social search engine – that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web.

The technology powering the social search is called MyRank. According to Yahoo’s My Web 2.0 FAQ, “MyRank leverages all the advances in algorithmic search and combines these advances with a very simple idea - your definition of a 'better answer' may be very different than somebody else's definition. The MyRank technology powering My Web 2.0 enables you to tap into the knowledge of the people you know, and leverage this knowledge to find better answers that are more relevant to you. Friends, colleagues, and other contacts in your community are invaluable sources of information and advice in the offline world. These are the people that share your interests, work in your industry, live in your neighborhood, and have potentially searched for many of the same topics as you - along with topics that you never thought of in relation to the people you know. By fusing the power of algorithmic search with the ability to tap into your community, MyRank technology enables you to find better, more relevant answers for you.”

The way they accomplish this is by adding the ability to tag, save, and then share information with other people, as well as obtain the information that other people wish to share with you. Instead of simply book-marking a page, you have the enhanced ability to tag a bookmarked page with keywords you assign to it. This allows a user to comment on pages they find useful, then give extra information about it to others in the community the user builds. Then, when web searches are performed, not only algorithmic findings are used, but also the information in the personal tags saved by the user, which provides personalized search results based on the shared knowledge of the people they trust.

Social search complements web search, which is driven by publishers and web sites, by providing a better search experience that is powered by people and communities. We’ll talk more about other social searches in a later article in this series.

SEO Tools - Robots.txt Generator

SEO Tools - Robots.txt Generator

SEO Tools - Robots.txt GeneratorUse this tool to generate a simple robots.txt file for your website. This file allows you to hide files or directories that you don’t wish the search engine spiders to find. This generator tool is designed to create the text for the file for you; you can then make changes afterward should you deem it necessary.

Generating a robot file with this tool is ideal if you wish to block certain directories or files from search engines.

To use the generator tool, enter the required information below and click the button. You will then be shown the text for the file. Copy this to a file called robots.txt and place on the root of your website (in the same place as your home page).

Imposing Restrictions
You may impose restrictions on which web pages to disallow indexing. By default, most users will want to allow all directories except their /cgi-bin/ directory, which commonly holds scripts, and their images directory /images/. To enable all web pages, select Yes to "Enable All Webpages," then enter each web page or directory path in the exclusion box, one per line.

Example: "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/" (Excludes the /cgi-bin/ directory)
Example: "http://www.yourdomain.com/images/" (Excludes the /images/ directory)
Example: "http://www.yourdomain.com/welcome.html" (Excludes the /welcome.html web page)

SEO Tools - Meta Tag Generator

SEO Tools - Meta Tag Generator

If you're new to web development and search engine optimization, you may find this tool useful for ensuring your meta tags are correctly formed. The tool has two fields -- Keywords and Description:

Keywords: Enter a short list of keywords and terms related to your site. The terms can be separated by a comma, but a delimiter is not required.

Description: Enter a brief description of your site and what it offers. This is sometimes used by search engines as a website’s “snippet” for search results.

About Meta Tags: At one point meta tags were considered a relatively important factor by search engines. AltaVista and other older search engines used them to help determine a site’s theme as well as relevance to a given term. This is no longer the case; search engines now rely on much more advanced techniques to do this. That said, meta tags still have some life left in them; they are sometimes used as the snippet of a site's content in search engine result pages by Google, and possibly other search engines. It's also possible they still have a little influence with some search engines in determining a site’s content.

Thinking About Keywords for PPC Ads

Thinking About Keywords for PPC Ads

You've optimized your web site for certain keywords to get to the top of the search engine results pages. Now you're looking at doing an AdWords pay-per-click campaign, and you're once again confronted with the issue of choosing keywords. Where do you start?

You probably have more questions than answers at this point. if you've tracked where your visitors came from to get to your site (and what search terms they used if they came from the search engines), you might have a good start at answering some of those questions. Since you ARE spending money on these ads by bidding on clicks, you need to choose carefully. Using keywords that are overly broad can bring in traffic that looks but doesn't buy, while keywords that are overly specific might bring in too little traffic.

When Sandy Parish wrote about keyword ad strategies recently for Media Post Publications, she used an enlightening example to demonstrate the issue. She wanted to buy a birthday present for a tech savvy loved one -- something that was different from what she usually got him. She wanted something unique, but she hadn't even thought in specific terms about the type of gadget he might like. It was clearly time to go to the search engines and start thinking out loud.

The first search term she used was "unique gift," figuring she'd see "an interesting selection of unordinary gifts," as she recounts it. The ads that came back tried to sell her on the wonders of cologne and shaving products, which are hardly unique by anyone's definition. So she attempted to get a little more specific by searching for a "unique gadget." That got her somewhat closer, turning up items such as digital music devices. But it still didn't quite meet her needs.

It wasn't until Parish went through a bit of trial and error that she found the winning search term: "unique high tech gadget." That was a very good, specific description of what she was looking for, and it "brought up an ad for a new invention-type item that suited my needs," she explained. Her story illustrates the kind of targeting you will need to do, and how you will need to think, to make the best use of your money as you choose your keywords.

Effective Keyword Choice Strategy and Useful Tools

Effective Keyword Choice Strategy and Useful Tools

There are several ways to describe the enigma that is keyword marketing. The use of carefully selected words to optimize a site’s content for search engines presents one explanation. Keywords will be relevant words and parts of phrases that relate to the site content. This article will give you plenty of tips for choosing those all-important keywords.

So what kinds of keywords should you use? Well, to coin a few simple examples, if you have a site that focuses on mobile phones, some keywords might be "mobile, mobile phone, phone tariffs, cellular," etc. If it is a movie information site, keywords could be "movie, movies, film, films, horror, sci-fi, action, cinema"......and so forth.

One correctly targeted keyword will produce a better overall search engine ranking than keywords just generally placed. That does mean that both targeted and general keyword types will help the site maintain a high ranking. With the mobile phone and movie site examples above, the search engines will know the site theme while "crawling" the site pages. This is where the keyword power needs to be utilized. If the user wants to find mobile phone sites that host budget phones, he or she may type the keywords mentioned above.

The presence of that keyword placed strategically across the site is a factor in determining whether or not the site is ranked high in a search on sites like Yahoo. Many users will type broader search criteria into the search engines if they are uncertain of exactly what they seek. They may be wondering what the best mobile deals are at present, but do not know which model, service provider, etc. they should favor. So the keywords above in the first paragraph would fall into this generalized category and can produce very general but also occasionally foggy results. This positioning and choice of keywords is crucial for a site towards SEO optimization.

So, what are the most useful keywords for a site?

Establish what keywords are most used in the context of the site content and theme. The SEO campaign begins at this point and does not need to be an arduous process. There is no set number of keywords that can be put forward here for driving traffic. If keyword density is to be utilized, a ball park figure can be derived by dividing the number of instances of the keyword by the total number of words in the content. Then multiply by a hundred to see the keyword density percentage. Safe figures fall between 10 - 15% and up to 25% but this is just a guideline and not a rigid rule. The point is that your keywords depend on your target audience's needs, and what keywords they will use to locate sites that will provide the information sought through a search on Yahoo or Google.

Think Like a Searcher to Increase Your Traffic

Think Like a Searcher to Increase Your Traffic

SEOs and site owners fight hard to get a top position on the search engine results pages for their chosen keywords. But that’s only half the battle at best. If you’ve optimized your way to the top but still aren’t seeing the traffic and conversions you hoped for, keep reading.

When you started optimizing your web site, you probably read a number of articles that urged you to think like a search engine. We've published several of those kinds of articles here at SEO Chat; I've even written one myself recently. There's nothing wrong with these articles, but they don't quite give you the whole picture.

Most of these articles mention at least some of the following points:

• Search engine spiders can't see images and video, so you need include alt tags with a concise description and keywords.
  
• Keywords must fall naturally; do not stuff them. Include them strategically in titles, headers, and content. Search engines judge relevance based in part on keyword content.
  
• Search engines love fresh content; if possible, update your site regularly (here at the Shed, we shoot for at least three times a week).
  
• Search engine spiders choke on dynamic URLs; use static ones whenever possible.
  
• Get other sites to link back to your site with your keywords to indicate to the search engines that your site is relevant for that topic.

Speaking of relevance, Jacqueline Dooley wrote an excellent article for us a while back that really illustrates the way a search engine spider "thinks." It touches on all of these points and more. If you can handle getting put down by the Google spider, figuratively speaking, you will learn a lot.

And if you don't like getting insulted by an automated program, even in the imagination and for educational purposes, cheer up. We're about to insult that spider back. So let's assume you know all about thinking like a search engine. It's time to step outside the search box.

How To Hack A Windows XP Password Without Any Programing

Why America blogs

The US is home to thousands of real estate agency blogs. There are no published figures on market penetration but the American realtors I spoke to put the figure at between 10% and 20%. Blog numbers increased substantially last year, partly in response to toughening market conditions and the need for realtors to do more to generate leads.

These numbers have not been replicated in the overseas property industry. Adam Samuel, Director of overseas property blog Nubricks says there are very few examples of overseas agents making a go of blogging. “Overseas agents are miles behind the US,” he says. The question is, why?

The short answer is cultural differences. The best American realtors inspire loyalty from the local community and according to Dan Hare of Phoenix PLC “are called upon to help people move in a similar way that a doctor would be when a family member is ill”. If you want to build a fan base, then writing a blog is probably the best tool at your disposal.

What are the other benefits and should overseas agents write a blog?
According to Lenny Gurvich, owner of Florida real estate agency, Tampa Florida Real Estate Finder, one of the reasons he blogs is to make his website search engine friendly. He says he gets around 120 unique users a day to his blog and an average of three leads, which he believes is good considering the state of the current market.

Search engines love content-rich, human-edited websites which are updated regularly. Blogs meet this description perfectly and can be created for next to nothing. However, there is no point in writing for search engines alone. If people find your site and are not interested in your writing they are unlikely to contact you.

Why are you writing?
The most important thing is to establish a mission. Perhaps you work in Cape Verde and want to “provide the most up-to-date guide to the Cape Verde real estate market”. For blogs to work they need to be specific and you need to have a passion for your subject. Without this enthusiasm and focus you will be more than likely to spend time creating one, then lose interest.

What to write about?
US real estate internet marketing consultant Brandon Cornett recommends creating lots of Top 10 lists around key phrases you want to rank for. So if you sell in Cape Verde, you might write about “10 reasons to buy property in Cape Verde” and “10 questions to ask your Cape Verde property agent”. The key is to write short, stand-alone articles as often as you can manage.

Finding the time
So how long does it take? Not long, according to Gurvich. He spends between three and four hours a week on his blog, maximum. This is consistent with the advice given by Brandon. In his “Triangle System for blogging your way up the search engines”, he says agents need spend only half an hour a day writing content. This advice only applies, of course, if you know a lot about your subject, as research into new areas can be time consuming.

America is different
Most American bloggers are blogging to build a fan base and enhance their local reputation. There are search engine benefits, but there are other ways to improve your rankings (online PR, buying links, writing guides for your own site etc). If you work in a niche such as Cape Verde, are passionate about what you do and are prepared to dedicate four hours a week to writing, then go for it. It’s a proven lead-generation tactic - but it’s not the only one.

Social Media Opportunities

Social Media Opportunities

Just about anyone in today’s marketing/advertising/pr community can tell you - social media is here to stay, and may very well be the most powerful channel media in today’s marketplace

Creating an accurate list of social media/branding opportunities is impossible, as the exponential growth of services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (to name just a few) continue to provide new layers of connectivity and interest. However, there are a few major opportunities that each of these channels share, each of which is well worth the investment of time and brand equity development.

Engage Truly Loyal Brand Users

No matter what the topic (product or service), there’s an audience discussing it in detail somewhere…. and if there isn’t, the opportunity to create one is immediate and at virtually no cost. It’s never been easier to reach interested and loyal prospects and users than it is today.

These opportunities are very different than in the past. Advertising basically employs Disruptive Practices to communicate with its audience - reaching greater extremes with each layer of communication to rise above the clutter of messages bombarding the market every day. Social media provides the opportunity to engage these audiences on a one-to-one basis, without the need to interrupt or disrupt their stream of consciousness.

Building Loyal Relationships

By allowing your audience to build a relationship with your brand on their own schedule, you’ve begun the communication process without having to force your viewpoint, or worse yet, interrupt the audience to literally “cram your perspective down their throat”. Which is more effective, cold-calling sales, or responding to a request for a sales contact?

Through your perspective and a “insider expert”, new traffic to websites and blogs can be generated without relying fully on traditional and digital channels of advertising and marketing. Establishing these channels of information allows the audience to build their own sense of loyalty, at their own pace of acceptance. While that may not reflect in direct sales, it does establish the baseline of loyalty that builds the long-term brand affiliation that will, in fact, impact sales in the long run

By Salman Mansoor
Research & Development Department
Neon Solutions.net

Social Networking and eBusiness Conference Philippines 200

Changing the Landscape of eBusiness and Advertising

Be a global social networker in today's second generation Web 2.0 world. Catch the latest phenomena in internet marketing, web advertising, and electronic commerce by knowing the trade of how social media and digital networks help increase web site traffic, conversions, and revenue generation.

The Social Networking and eBusiness Conference Philippines 2008 is a pioneering and leading edge event for sharing and exchanging information about social networking as it changes the landscape of internet marketing, web advertising, and electronic commerce.

This Conference will roll out relevant issues in social networking and eBusiness as key to customer acquisition, conversion, and retention through digital networks marketing, business networking, affiliate program, social media, and online community building. Issues on building trust, reputation and privacy in digital social networks will also be discussed. The Conference will offer new ideas, new thinking on how to bring your marketing strategies and programs to the next level of digital platform, which is of Web 2.0 world.

This Conference is must for interactive & digital marketers, brand marketers, web masters, bloggers, and those involved in Internet marketing, web advertising, and electronic commerce in today's phenomena and recent boom in popularity of social networking.

Leading interactive marketing companies, technology providers, software vendors, Internet & web services providers, IT and management consulting companies, mobile & wireless, telecom companies, training institutes, software development companies, e-banking and financial institutions, content providers, and government agencies will showcase and demonstrate the latest Internet/wireless & mobile/e-commerce/e-business solutions, technologies, and innovations at the exhibit floor.

How to Promote your blog: Personal Blogging Experience Part 1

How to Promote your blog: Personal Blogging Experience Part 1

I got invited as a resource person for the Digital Filipino’s Blogging and Social Networking Forum which was held at the swanky Microsoft office. My topic was Personal Blogging Experience. What great timing. Just a few days ago, an old office mate, Myrna Co dropped by to ask questions about blogging. You know, back at the old days when I was a researcher for UP Institute for Small Scale Industries, my research had to pass through the scrutiny of our editor, by who else, Myrna Co! I was always amazed at how my writing ended up so well-polished for publication. How I admire writers ! So I was pleased when she finally started a blog niche on retirement and growing old. It got me inspired to share the little knowledge I have of my 10 month blogging experience to others who are just starting. A common question, and asked by my friend Myrna: ” how do I get people to go to my site, apart from begging my friends and relatives.?” When I started my blog, I wanted people to visit me. How else can I promote my advocacy if no one reads my blog? How else can I reach out to bereaved family members if they don’t know about my mission? I developed strategies to drawing in visitors. These Promote your blog ideas are not original but they worked for me. 1. Write/show (not just tell) my unique experience and topics close to my heart. Use senses (smell, taste, touch, sight, ) to show an entry. Without sounding sappy or appearing like a victim, I illustrated my grief journey with a few emotional insights. I’m sorry if I made some of you cry. It really wasn’t my intention. 2. My About me section motivates readers to read more of your entries. As a reader of other blogs, I am interested in the person behind the blog. What are their interests? What did they used to do before blogging? Why did they blog? What do they look like? 3. Tell me about you. This will give you an idea what your readers are interested. I didn’t know what topics to write about. I didn’t want to keep writing emotional entries. Through this section, “personal experiences” is what interested my readers. I drew in on my parenting, health recovery, recovery principles and my other experiences for additional categories. This jives a recent Phone survey of 7,012 people by the POW Internet and American Life Project: 37 % of bloggers cite “my life and experiences” as what they blog about 4. Promote my blog by commenting and being interested in other popular blogs. I started out with Abe and Connie because they were the only two blogs I knew of. I loved reading tech blogs so it wasn’t difficult to comment on Abe’s entries. I used to be intimidated by Connie’s blog but I threw my insecurities away by just being myself . I stopped thinking of her as a powerful and popular blogger and instead focused on her as a caring person. I didn’t spam comments or anything of that sort. I just contributed “intelligently” to her discussion. One day, maybe out of curiousity, she surfed towards my blog. To our pleasant surprise, Connie discovered that my husband and she were schoolmates at UP Law school. Not just schoolmates, they were drinking buddies as well. Haha. One day, she blogged about my site which paved the way to being recognized in the blogosphere. Thanks Connie. 5. Interact with comments of readers. The first time I commented on Connie’s blog, I felt really important when she replied back to my comments. I thought I’d do the same for my readers. YOU are important. 6. Search engine optimized titles and entries drive in web traffic. Think search engined optimized keywords. example: SM mall of Asia, Philippine Idol. Keywords are what drives new visitors to your site. How else do you visit a site? You type in NOUN keywords on that search box. You narrow down your search to specific keywords. Remember, accidental visitors can convert to your regular visitors. Also, be the first to blog about local events. My Typhoon Milenyo entry got me into the Daily Inquirer news update. A nifty tool to decide on blog topics is the 103bees.com, search term analysis and statistics tool. Previously they enabled users to track what keywords people were using to arrive at your blog but now they’ve added questions analysis. 7. Link exchanges makes it easier for Google to index your entries. I had a distinct advantage of my daughter’s old sites for these link exchanges. Later on, my blog got linked by other bloggers. I remember Toe as the first blogger to link me. Wow, that felt so good. I got recognized. In less than two months, my blog’s google page rank is 5 (out of a possible 10) 8. Participation in blogosphere events (like the Second Philippine Blog summit and meetups (like the Christmas meetup and Globe Innove sponsored meet. How did that help me? These bloggers write that you were there. That means they also get to link your blog. We all know how these link exchanges increases your search engine ranking. ( see no. 7) 9. Eye candy presentation. Use of photos, youtube videos, graphics to draw attention. 10. Short or brief entries for short attention span visitors. Since I’m not a creative writier, I make my entries short and sweet. Use one topic or theme per entry. It’s just common marketing sense after all. Be friendly. Write what you know. Any other suggestions from other bloggers? Next entry will be about “Has my blog achieved its mission? What has my blog given me?”

By Salman Mansoor
Research & Development Department
Neon Solutions.net

SEO - How to use Google Trends to find keywords for your site

SEO - How to use Google Trends to find keywords for your site

Google trends is a powerful tool to identify the keywords to choose for your SEO effort - It gives crucial insights into keyword selection. Keyword selection is one of the most important aspect of the SEO effort for your site. I will take example of silver jewelry site trying to freeze on keywords that should be used to construct the title and other meta tags like keywords, keyphrase, description and abstract. The first step is to brainstorm yourself about the keywords that you can think of in your domain. For this example what comes to mind are keywords like Silver Jewelry, Silver Ring, Silver Rings, Silver Necklace, Silver Bracelet, Sterling Silver, Sterling Silver Jewelry, charm bracelet, silver earrings, silver anklet, stud earrings and so on(Create a list of atleast 50 keywords in your domain). Second step is to refine these keywords further by looking at your comepting site. Quick google search on keywords above will tell you the sites that are indexed first on the above keywords - Check out the keywords in their meta tags and pick the ones that you missed out in your brainstorming. You can also use tools like Overture, Google Adwords to help you out with this process to identify keywords(I will cover these tools in a seperate post). Now comes the power of google trends. Do a comparison of keywords in google trends to identify how each one ranks to other one -basically form a relative hierarchy.

Notice in the image the comparison done between silver jewelry, silver ring, sterling silver, silver bracelet, silver necklace. The top most is the orange curve of sterling silver. Now what does this really mean ? It means that the graph represents relative searches that happen on google that contain these two words "Sterling" and "Silver" - Even if you were to reverse the order of keyword "Silver Sterling" you would still get the same curve(as that of sterling silver). To elaborate searches made on Sterling Silver Necklace would add a count to "Sterling Silver" keyword in the curve, same for "Sterling Necklace in Silver"(Notice even though Sterling and Silver dont appear together it still counts). See the filled black box in the image that allows you to drill down into the geography that you are doing business in, once you drill down you can even see the city level search data comparison thereby giving you the power to go at a local level to optimize your keywords. You can also drill down on the time period and subregion. The Black box outlined shows the news that have come on the keyword topics entered by you. Each of A,B,C etc before the news is also color coded helping you identify which news related wot which keyword. You will also see correlation between those dates and spikes in the news graph(the bottom graph). When news comes out you will see the spikes moving up. Dates are also visible when the news came out. Do this exercise for every keyword you identify and form a stack rank of all keywords that you found. Google Trends allows you to do 5 at a time. Keep on removing keywords out and adding a couple each time and fitting them in stack where they come - If they conflict in position with the ones you removed do a seperate search for those two in google trends to see the winner and give each one a stack rank finally. One of a very important way to look at it is to identify whether to use plural or singular in keywords for eg. should i use "Silver Ring" or "Silver Rings" - Google trends will make all this comparison a cake walk for you. The beauty of the graph is the simple graphical representation that speaks to you clearly the trend ! Once you have done the stack rank its time for you to start creating your title, Keywords, Description, H1, H2, H3, and H4. It goes without saying that the top most stacked words are the ones you would look for using in your title and H1. Now remember one thing dont use those top stacked keywords blindly for the page - See if the page has content that matches those keywords. If not then that keyword would be useful in other related page in your site(effort wont go waste :)). Now with the identified keywords start forming sentences that make sense to human mind (You are not designing the site for google bot but for the users !) - Make sentences using the keywords chosen and create your title, description etc. In Keywords and Key phrase make sure to use all forms of the keyword that you had initially started with. You can stuff the keywords and keyphrases(Though google now does not give importance to these - gone are the days web1.0 days when it was easy to rank high using keywords :)). I just loved google trends and the power along with simplicity of it to choose the right keywords in my SEO effort. Google just beats all when it comes to presentation of data !

By Salman Mansoor
Research & Development Department
Neon Solutions.net

SEO Page Optimizer for any Search Engine

SEO Page Optimizer for any Search Engine

Here is what we analyze:

1 Keyword - with up to 10 competitors which are on top for that keyword or you can send the urls to be analyzed.
1. Document title
2. Meta Keywords
3. Description
4. Body Text
5. H1-H3
6. Links (inbound, outbound…)
7. IMG attriPublish Postbutes
8. comment tags

Each Report Includes an Advice section of what you should do to increase your SERPs for a specific keyword.
Each Report Includes Detailed Analysis of the keyword (quantity, density and position).

Please send the email with the following details:

Site Url to be analyzed
Keyword: keyword to be analyzed
Competitor: We can take the top 10 competitors for your keyword or you can send other URLS to be compared to.
Search Engine: Google, Yahoo or any other search engine EVEN for different languages.
Your Name:
Email to get report after completion of the job:

Buy it now for only 5$/Page.

Time to complete 48 hours.

By Salman Mansoor
Research & Development Department
Neon Solutions.net

How To Use Digg To Get More Traffic

How To Use Digg To Get More Traffic

Before we get into details, here’s a quick note for beginners who don’t know what Digg is. For those who already familiar with digg, you can skip this section.

What is Digg ?

Digg is a free “social media” website where the news on its pages is controlled by the community of users (over 500,000+ at this point of time). There is no central governing body that decides which news to report and which news makes it to the front page. The community of users submit the sotries and “vote” on them by clicking the “digg this” icons besides each story listed on its pages. Digg was originally for geeks only and had mostly technology related articles but has since grown to include a whole range of categories that cover almost any topic.

If you are a blogger or a site that writes news stuff and is looking for extra traffic, you can possibly look at Digg to get this for you. It is difficult - and eventually only stories that are unique get large number of “votes” or “diggs” from the community of users and make it to the front page.

If your blog post or story is unqiue and good enough, and the community picks it up and begins digging it - you can rest be assured that once you get to the front page you will get over 10,000 unique visitors to your site in one day… and that gradually tapers off in a few days. This is known as the “digg effect” and achieving this should be one of your goals.

There are a few handfull of ways to get on to the front page of Digg. These are power methods for power users” and I will discuss them below. I won’t go into the how to use Digg.com in detail. You can get that on the help area and FAQ area of the website… see the footer/bottom of the website, under the heading “all about digg”.

Other Digg Clones Before I begin, Digg has 2 main global competitors who have the same model - the all new “Yahoo Buzz“, “Propeller” (previously known as Netscape) and Mixx. There are also countless numbers of digg type niche sites that focus on specific topics only - like Sphinn that is a very popular digg clone for the online marketing community.

So, if you have content that appeals to a niche audience hunt for the niche digg clone sites. You should also expand to replicate your successfull strategy on Yahoo Buzz, Propeller and Mixx.

Making your strategy on Digg

If you are new to Dig, then hang out around the site, for about a week and read and see how people are commenting and what kind of stories are getting popular. Participate in threaded comments and discussions.

. . . “Just Make New Friends!”

This is the key. You need to connect ot other users and thus have many friends on Digg. Why? Because, when you submit a story - you can invite your friends to Digg it. You can even legally setup a reciprocal digg exchange… “you digg my story, i digg your story”. You can do this by sending a private message, known as a “shout” to your friends. Just digg their story first and then tell them - I dugg you, please digg my story now … and include the link of your story that is on the digg site (not the offsite link that is on your website or blog).

Another way you can invite them to digg, instead of shouting (private messaging) them - is by directly clicking o nthe “share this news” with all my friends link that appears under the story post on digg. This is quick but not as effective as a personal shout. Use it once you have over, say 200 friends on digg….

Yes, you heard that right. 200 friends. That should be your target. Why? Simple - because you can invite them to digg your story. The more friends, the more diggs.

Now, for the secret…
There is a tool available, that can automatically keep adding random friends to your digg network. Its called Digg Friend Adding Automator. Its simple to use. All you need to configure is one file, with your username and password on Digg. Then run it the software (no install needed - jsut a simple double click). Then take your shoes off and sit back - while it adds friends to your profile at the rate of one every 5 seconds.

There is a precaution here. Do not add more than around 20 friends in one shot. This may alert the digg admins and you can get banned permanently. Add 20 friends… then shut down the software for about 15 minutes or so.. and then re-run it for another 20 friends and so on. Dont add more than around 50 per day, and stop at around 200 to 250 for about a week. Then rinse and repeat.

If you cant get hold of this great tool - you can still quickly randomly add friends on digg by simply clicking on the “add as friend” link besides their names, next to articles they have submitted.

Now, when you have soooo many friends, you can invite them to come vote on your story. Ofcourse the key here is to firstly make sure that your story is unique and will arise the interest of over around 70% of readers. That should be enough. Once you invite them and share your story with your friends, after a day - start contacting friends who have sent your shouts (private messages) to digg their story -and start digging their story and in return ask thme to digg yours.

It is extremely important that your story gets popular (large number of diggs) at a fast rate - and before a lot of time passes by (probably around 10 to 20 days) . Why? Because, by then it could become stale news! Also, dont submit irrelevant and boring news, or stuff thats already been submitted. It will only be “burried” out by the community.

Commenting on Digg for traffic

Another easier way to get traffic (although in much lower numbers and probably a very very low fractional amount) is by posting comments on popular stories with high diggs. Just make sure what you write is relevant to the story and then leave a catchy phrase and link (signature) at the end of your comment.

The Onsite “Digg This” Button

If you have a fairly large number of readers to your blog, you can submit your blog posts to Digg and then insert a “digg this” button in near your blog post … as an onsite “digg this” link. This way visitors or readers of your blog can vote your story up the Digg ranks. This works only on blogs that have a large number of readers and visitors - so its only powerfull then.

So, to round up…

1. You need friends!! (hint: get them fast with the Digg friends adder tool)2. Submit and promote (share) your best (most unique) blog posts to the Digg community. Aim to have around 5 to 10 good stories beign promoted at any given time on Digg.

3. Do one-to-one Digg exchanges with friends using the shout box area. Also, use mass sharing link under each story you submit.

4. Comment on other popular stories, adding your catchy link at the end of each comment. Try to comment on around 15 to 20 popular stories every day (fast rising, going to be popular and already popular stories)

5. Another sneaky trick is to connect up with “power diggers”. People who have been using digg for a long time and have a large number of friends. This will allow you to influence the influencers! As a word of caution, don’t connect to them and start spamming them with stories to digg. This will put them off. Make freinds with them first, and digg their stories without asking for anything in return. After about a couple of weeks, you can request diggs. If they digg your story, rest be assured that their friends will follow… giving your story a huge viral boost!

Note: currently, it is easier to get on the front page of Yahoo Buzz, Propeller and Mixx - as these sites have lesser competition… so don’t leave these out from your strategy!

10 Very Handy Tools for Power Diggers1. Digg Alerter - very handy application tool to track the status of your own stories. Shows you live dig numbers and where they are. Keep it running all day long to monitor your stories.

2. Digg This (a FireFox extension) - allows you to simply highlight text on any web page that you are on, then right click and directly submit that URL to digg, without having to fill up a large part of the digg submission form.

3. Smart Digg (a FireFox extension) - allows you to see if the web page that you are browsing on is already submitted to Digg, and if it is, how many Diggs it has received. Very handy tool if you are constantly researching for stories to submit to Digg.

4. Digg Button Animation Enabler - Excellent way to let you digg a friends story when you read it on his site, and if it has a Digg badge, without requiring you to visit Digg.com website to digg it… thus allowing remote diggs.

5. Google Reader Digg News - Excellent way to display Digg buttons, and Digg badge in your own news feedreader, so that you dont have to visit digg each time you digg a story within your feedreader.

6. Feedit - Great way to display digg stories that hit the front page. Its better than the digg feed because it has links to the full story, comments and submitter.

7. TINC - Who’s digging you? - A great tool to find out who is digging your stories and provides links to their submissions and user profile in case you want to reciprocate.

8. Digg Comment Viewer - An excellent tool for people who comment frequently. I suggest you download this. Its a far cleaner, better and more efficient way to see who is leaving what comments on your submissions and the posts ratings. You can easily click around to not only see your friends’ comments but also what friends they have as well.

9. Social Blade Frontpage Data - Allows you to monitor the front page of Digg. It gives you the insight as to when a story reaches the tipping point, beyond which it quickly becomes popular. This information is priceless! It records the exact number of diggs when the story went popular as well as the percentage of your friends that dugg the story, along with the category and other elements.

10. Update Scanner - Lets you monitor when any page on the Internet has been updated. Specially useful for sites and pages that do not have RSS feeds. Monitoring a page, that regularly publishes good content, but that does nto have an RSS reader, will allow you to get to the story before other Diggers do!

I’ve spent 15 years in online Internet marketing. During this period i’ve read and learnt a lot from others - professionals and amatures. I’ve also devised many of my own ideas and experimentations. I’ve spent plenty of money purchasing and downloading ebooks that teach you specific techniques relating to making money online.


By Salman Mansoor
Research & Development Department
Neon Solutions.net