Links are Queen!

Reference :: Content is the King. (see last post)

Search engines view links as votes for your site but also understand that not all links have equal value. A link from a top ranked web site for example would carry more weight than a link from a site ranked 1 million. The process of determining the quality of links is a very complex one. Here are a few things a search engine may look at:

1. Which type of links to get for your site?

The relevancy of the site linking to your site.

Logic says that if you have an excellent site about bicycles, other sites within the bicycle industry would link to you. This is the exact reason you should never be afraid to ask for a link from a competitor. If the competitor is any good they will know the importance of links.

Always remember that you want to get as many links from within your industry as possible in order to establish a solid foundation. You can furthermore not really be penalised for incoming links. Links from other industries will simply carry less weight or in the worst case have a weight of zero.

The PR value of the page linking to your site.

The PR score of a page linking to you IS important, the higher the better. This however does not carry as much weight by itself as it once did. Simply download the Google Toolbar to view the PR of any site. This provides a good yardstick for the sites value. You must however also keep the items below in mind and not only base the power of a link on its PR value.

The frequency at which links are added/edited/deleted on the page linking to your site.

A search engine may monitor how a site uses its linking power. What this means is they will keep track of how many new links are added, the frequency at which they are added and how often they are deleted or replaced. They do this in order to get a better idea of a sites link stability. This helps determine if a site is actually a "good site" or one that is merely selling links. Sites that sell links will logically be more active in the add/edit/delete categories.

Search engines give more value to old links that have "aged" than to new fresh ones. Links that you have had to your site for 2 years would logically be more valuable than ones you have had for 1 week. This is why new links are put in a "sandbox" and not fully counted for 6-9 months. Keep this in mind if you ever wish to purchase links, you will need to commit to at least 1 year.

The IP address of the site linking to your site.

Location of a link is important. A site that is linked to "naturally" will have links from all over the net. They will not only have links from sites on the same "address" as them. That does not seem natural. How can a site only have links from one place and expect to be truly popular? To win an "election" you need links or votes from all over.

Another reason the IP address is important is due to the fact that webmasters would build huge networks of interlinked sites.

Use the C-Class checker tool to find out the exact location of anyone you wish to trade links with. This of course does not mean turning down links from similar locations, just try keeping it all natural.

The ownership details of the site linking to your site.

Again in order to combat link networks search engines may look at the "whois" info of a site. This way they can determine if several different people are linking to a site, or if it's all the same person. Should you wish to view the "whois" info for any site simply visit www.whois.sc

Should a top ranking site develop "organically" logic tells us it would have many links from several different sites each with different owners.

2. Where to Purchase Links?

Remember when purchasing to links to do so from relevant sites - sites in a similar industry to your own.

Below are two excellent sites you should visit:

www.linkadage.com

www.text-link-ads.com

3. Where to Purchase Traffic?

Purchasing traffic has several advantages if done correctly. Always remember to track the campaign performance in order to monitor the Return On Investment.

Below are four excellent sites you should visit:

adwords.google.com Google Adwords

www.overture.com Yahoo Listings

www.msn.com Microsoft Listings

www.metricsdirect.com Metrics Direct

Content is the King.

The Importance of Content Explained

• Why is Content Important to a Search Engine?
• What Are Your Options for Content?
• What should be the characteristics of the content?
  

Why is Content Important to a Search Engine?

Search engines want to deliver the best results possible to their users. They want to give them the leading sites for a particular search term, that is their ultimate goal. If a search engine delivers the best possible results it goes a long way to gaining customer loyalty. This can be seen by the quick rise to fame of Google. I think we all agree for the most part that Google delivers excellent results and enjoys a huge fan base.

SEQ: What factors determine quality content?

Search engines keep track of everything, they probably know more about your site than you do. They know how long a visitor stays on your page or site, where they click to, how often your site gets bookmarked, how much new or updated content you have etc etc...you get the idea.

Logic says that any good web site should be updated with good content or resources, why else bookmark or return to a site that never changes?

What Are Your Options for Content?

I have listed a few different types of content you could potentially use on your site to improve your ranking results.

Writing Your Own Content

This is always important as unique content - content only your site offers - is scored very highly. A visitor to a site containing content they have never seen before tends to stay longer than a visitor who has seen the same content on 'n' number of other sites. This visitor is also more likely to bookmark your site and return in future. These are all important factors when a search engine is trying to determine the value of a sites content.

RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds are a very nice way of streaming valuable content to your site automatically. You can offer several types of content like news or sports headlines for example. This content again gives value to the user which can result in increased time spent on your site. It also helps your site remain updated with new content if implemented correctly.

Forum Boards for Discussions

Forum boards are a great way to keep visitors returning to your site if you are able to build a little "community". This will result in an ongoing source of unique and constantly updated content. When installing a forum board don't forget to use a search engine friendly version. This basically means a version that will allow the spider (info retriever) to easily navigate through the pages, without having long complicated query strings.

Visitor Polls

Polls are a good way to keep content updated and visitors returning. All you need to do is install a simple script and you are good to go.

Visitor Reviews

As per a site like Amazon you may choose to let your visitors submit reviews of products or services. Again, this will create fresh new content and increase visitor time.

What should be the characteristics of the content?

Well the first trick to creating good content for your website is to be sure that your content will have specific appeal to your target audience.
Your content should be easy to understand and use regular English as far as possible, if you've to use topic specific words that could cause trouble for some visitors make sure you explain them. To create content you simply write news and articles about the industry your product is in. This ensures that visitors who read your content are also the visitors that are likely to be interested in buying your product.
Remember before you publish new content always always check spelling and grammar. If your content has misspellings and poor grammar your website and company will appear unprofessional and people don't generally buy from companies they think are unprofessional.
Always reading all your content usually twice is enough to spot errors, also to make sure try and get some friends to proofread it for you.

On a final note, always try to update your content as much as possible as more people will become regular visitors and will be exposed to the products and services you offer. This is turn will equal more sales and profit for you and that is what it's all about.

How Does Web Analytics Help?

Another useful letter from Entireweb. They always provide useful article, so don't forget to sign up for their newsletters if you really want to give your way towards success!
I might post more articles as such if i find them useful for you...

How Does Web Analytics Help?

Web analytics is a quantitative indicator of behavior of visitors to a website. Simply explained, web analytics involves identification of visitor, analyzing the reason of visit and tracking his/her movement within your website until the time he/she leaves the website.

In essence therefore, web analytics provides a clear picture of the performance of a website so that the website owner can devise strategies to maximize acceptability of the website.

Key Web Analytics Terms:

'Hit' denotes a request for a file from server and is recorded only in logfile.
'Page View' means different for the two web analytics methods. While tagging script considers the whole page as one request, the logfile on the other hand will record multiple hits (one for each file, including images, .js and .css) within a single page-view.

A visitor is one who requests for a file to be shown. Once again, while server log will record several files for each visit, the page-tagging script will only consider the page as a whole seen by the visitor. In either case, the web analytics data will clearly identify if the visitor is new (new or unique visitor) or has come before (repeat visitor).

Other Information:

Both web analytics methods will be able to gather several other important information, notable among which are as under.

1. The length of time a visitor spends in seeing a website.

2. The keyword phrase used to arrive at the website.

3. The unique IP address and therefore the country from where the visits generated.

4. The arrival and exit pages.

Logfile vs Page Tagging:

Data transfer to and from web server is always recorded in server's logfile with clockwork precision. Since early days, realization dawned that it is possible for a suitable program to extract logfile data and arrange them in a meaningful display. That is how web analytics came into being. Today most servers come equipped with web analytics programs such as Webalizer, Awstats, etc. which analyze raw logfile data and portray valuable visitor information in easy-to-follow graphics.

Between the two web analytics techniques, namely logfile analysis and page tagging, certain differences exist. Here are the main ones.

1. Logfile analysis is usually already available in the server. Page tagging is an outsourced option, which means that visitors' data is captured by provider's remote server. You can view them only in provider's website. Google Analytics and ClickTracks are examples of page-tagging web analytics.

2. Since page tagging requires javascript to be installed on every webpage, there is always a possibility that some visitors' browsers do not allow the script to run. Not so with logfiles.

3. Logfiles enter transfer of all files, including images and scripts, and therefore certain parameters like hits and page views are not as accurate as with page-tagging web analytics.

4. While logfiles record visits by search engines, page tagging does not.

5. Logfile web analytics record failed visits too. Page tagging takes a request into account only when a webpage is successfully displayed.

Benefits of web analytics:

Web analytics is a constantly available feedback from your visitors. Footprints that they leave in the wake of their visits are a great pointer of relative strength and weakness of your website. It is only from web analytics that you get to know which keyword phrases are most relevant to your web content, which pages are visited most, length of visits, incoming links, demographic profile of visitors and so on. If ever you wanted a trusted aide to comment upon your website's performance, the answer lies in installing a suitable web analytics program.

About the Author: Josh, admin@hostingfrenzy.com is the webmaster of www.hostingfrenzy.com. Visit his site for a comprehensive web hosting directory, articles, tools, and much more

Benefits of Using CSS(Cascading Style Sheets).

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allows you to create fast loading pages, increase your search engine rankings, and modify your whole site with one style sheet. So why don’t more people use them? This is because they got so used to html design and are afraid or too lazy to upgrade their skills. Some will also use ready made templates that contain flashy graphics, bloated code and sometimes even contains hidden code embedded in the page.

Benefits of Cascading Style Sheets

1. Separate content from presentation – You can separate your HTML markup, text, graphics and multimedia from presentation.

2. Consistent site wide look and feel consistency – You can apply one style for 100s of web pages all at once. So if you had to change the color of all pages on your site, you only have to edit one style sheet. This saves you a huge amount of time, especially if you had to edit each page separately.

3. Web site maintenance - Apart from being able to make site wide changes easily through one CSS file, the clean code it generates makes it easier to update. Properly marked up web pages permit them to be maintained by more than one person. It will also work in more browsers. Website redesigns will take much less time.

4. Improve search engine rankings – Search engines generally spider the code at the top of your web page first. For most sites that means the navigation bar will be spidered first (resides at top of page code). CSS enables you to position the code for your content at the top making your page search engine friendly. Properly marked up HTML pages can easily found and properly categorized by search engines

5. Fast loading – CSS reduces the amount of tags used therefore producing clean code. Tableless design can reduce your load time by 25% to 50%.

6. Reduce bandwidth – Compacting the amount of code used will reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to host your web pages. Therefore you won’t have to pay higher fees when
adding more web documents to your site.

7. Accessibility - Increasing accessibility with CSS meansbeing able to serve web content to a larger audience, increasing web site usability, even for non-disabled people. Content can easily be formatted for projection as well as screen display. Tableless layouts display well on
hand-helds.

8. Improve the printing of web pages – Most printers will only allow you to print a portion of the web page. With CSS your whole document can be printed. (Useful for business purposes)

Summary ::

• Browsers read through tables twice before displaying their contents, once to work out their structure and once to determine their content.
• Tables appear on the screen all in one go - no part of the table will appear until the entire table is downloaded and rendered.
• Tables encourage the use of spacer images to aid with positioning.
• CSS generally requires less code.
  
• All code to do with the layout can be placed in an external CSS document, which will be called up just once and then cached (stored) on the user's computer.
• With CSS you can control the order items download on to the screen - make the content appear before slow-loading images and your site users will definitely appreciate it!

When you use CSS it becomes quick and easy to apply new styles that can not only effect all styles on your web page but even your whole site.

Design the site for customers, not the company.

The most important aspect of a business or a normal website is to adhere itself to the needs of the visitors and not just to those of the company. Many people involve in too much of advertising stuff to gain visitors. These type of things are sporadic and let the visitors just view your page accidently and leave the site. Although it increases the count of visitors but i'd rather choose to have them sufficiently to those who really want to be in my site and not just because that they are surfing the web to make money and i've added my site in such surfing stuffs. I've experienced a lot of them i shud say. If you think you can make visitors come to your website forcefully then thats just waste of time.
It's always better to put contents which is useful to the customers' needs and obviously fit for your site. Avoid over-flattering marketing hype about the company. It inflates the ego of the company more than it helps your customers.
Keep your visitors involved and make them feel like a valuable contributor. Tools like forum and blogs are a really good way to know your visitors needs and keep them satisfied. Expedient Interaction between you and visitors is the most important weapon you could use to make your site a good web place. Ask for communication from your visitors and answer their communications swiftly.
You need to have content on your website that is timely and pertinent to the customers' life. Provide tips and techniques to cure a problem as fast as possible to the visitors.

A successful website is designed for the target audience, not to impress the site's owner...

Do's & Dont's of Web Design.

1. Don't use busy backgrounds on your pages:

• You have to do all your styling in CSS.
• Background tile or stretch images to hard to load & you lose your visitors.

2. Do end your URL's with a forward slash in your links:

• End URL's with "/".
• Not neccessary though by adding the forward slash, we remove a step that otherwise the web server and browser would have to take; removing this extra step can give you a speed boost.

3. Don't set your type to all capital letters in your body text:

• USING ALL CAPS IN TEXT IS GOOD FOR EMPHASIZE AND TITLE ELEMENTS BUT DON'T CREATE LONG SENTENCES OR PARAGRAPHS IN ALL CAPS; IT'S JUST HARD TO READ & IT APPEALS TOO MUCH. JUST COMPARE THIS PARAGRAPH IN ALL CAPS.

4. Don't have more than a few words in italics:

• Italics are one way to draw attention to text, but it makes text harder to read. Used for one or two words on occasion is good, but if you go crazy and start using italicized text all over the place or for long sentences or paragraphs, then you're looking for trouble! Just compare this paragraph in just italics.

5. Don't have more than a few words in a bold case:

• Sounds like the last two.. Nonetheless it is still valid for the same reasons in that the text is harder to read, and then loses its point. Remember that setting text bold, italic, or in CAPITALS are all ways to bring attention to the particular words, but if you're making everything the same, it loses its impact.

6. Don't use h5 and h6 tags:

• These tags will make your text smaller than the browser's default size and make it bold. This combination will result in text that is really hard to read.

7. Do turn off the blue borders around linked graphics:

• As you know, you can turn graphics into links or, in other words, buttons by wrapping a link tag around an image. By default, browsers will surround the image with an ugly blue border showing us that the image is a link. Your images that are acting as buttons should look like buttons; it should be obvious that the image is something to click on ... so we don't need the blue border.

  To get rid of the blue border all you need to do is add this code inside your image tag: border="0".

8. Do provide alternate text (using the 'alt' attribute of the image tag) for all your major images:

• Alternate text is text that you insert in your image tags that is used by text only browsers. Text only browsers are used by the blind to surf the web since images won't help them very much ... the alternate text in your image tags is read by the text only browsers in place of displaying the images.

• You should put meaningful information in the alternative text that will benefit those who can't see and it will also help you with the search engines
  

• The alternate (alt) text will also be displayed as a tool tip in Internet Explorer.

9. Do make images that look like buttons act like buttons:

• I think we saw something like this already! Just as I said above, button graphics should look like buttons ... and on the flip side, don't create graphics that look like buttons that aren't buttons!

10. Don't use too many colors in your web site:

• Color is a way for people to identify things; that is why the Coke label is dominantly red and the Pepsi label is dominantly blue. Keep the color scheme of your web site limited to a couple of colors and keep it consistent across your site unless you want to denote some major section.

And at last i would like to give a summary as:

Whatever you do, remember these two points:

1. Always try and make things as clear as possible to your visitors.

2. What may be obvious to you may not be obvious to your visitors!

Reading is a Good Habit.

While browsing thru all the pages of website development or something like so, have you ever noticed that why two persons having read the same article dont succeed the same way, or even probably one reaches like google and one as a failure.
This is highly due to reading interest you have on sources. There's no harm if you read others articles from people who have put success to their feet. Infact, reading has always been a gud practice leading to atleast 80% of the success in web design and development.
When we feed in different types of opinions and put them in practice probably we could get a success forumulae of our own or maybe we can identify the problems or failures and rectify them gradually. Probably, in my opinion, "Reading is the basic building block of success and the maturation of success takes place with maintaining and always considering yourself non-par sufficient and learning as much as you can thru the key!"
So many famous people who have come forth in web development areas and have backlashed all others have created a page for them in history and directly or indirectly there is the reading key behing there success.
The best site i find reading articles on is www.site-reference.com. It provides articles based not only on web development but also on marketing basics and SEO. It is a gud site with a forum where you could discuss any articles or issues about web development.
So people get into the habit of reading articles related to successful web development which will in no doubt benefit the reader whether he be a beginner or an experienced expert!
Hope you find this useful.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Every site after it is made and published on the net needs to get visitors by allowing itself to be entered in the search engines. This is very important because without this step your site wont get much visitors or recognition. Every site needs optimization even if it is a pizza selling site, so that the correct people land on to the correct place. This SEO process is also eternal, so dont think once you've been on top of search engines then you sit down and be always there.
There is an excellent site which gives weekly tips about SEO. Its www.entireweb.com. But please dont accept the money inclusion of site in Search engines from any site. If you want to subscribe for the newsletter, here's the link--http://www.entireweb.com/newsletter.

Here is an article written by Sean Mize which i liked the most. It provides the 100% ingredients needed to successfully optimize your site::

How to Get the Highest Search Engine Rankings

Search Engine Rankings. Everyone wants to be number one, and there are millions of web sites out there. So how do you become number one and stay there consistently? Consistently is the key word here. Sure, you may apply the newest, best trick in the book today, but when someone else comes out with a better one tomorrow, you will be scrambling to get to the top again.

I think one of the keys is to be well-rounded. There are many books and philosophies about web rankings that are floating around. Some people say article marketing is the way to go, others link building, others say you have to maximize your web pages for the search engines. You have to get all your keywords right and your titles and description. But what happens when another web site does you one better in that area? Now you drop in rank. Therefore, I think it is more important that you do a good job in all the areas than to be the very best in one area. And I think it is OK to be number 8 or number 3 in rank, also. If you are in the very top spot and you are clicked simply because the top spot gets more clicks, are you really going to get more sales just because you are number one? Your product and site have to be relevant to the consumer, not just the search engine.

Another key is to focus on very specific keywords. You can do an awesome job in every area of search engine optimization, but if you go too thin here, you will not make it to number one in any of your keywords. Focus on one, or at the most, two keywords. Build your site around those keywords. Be everything you can be to someone who keys in those keywords. Or better yet, one keyword. Would you rather have one keyword that has a number one placement, or 8 keywords with a number 40 placement each? To me, number 40 is like number 1 million-you don't get enough clicks to pay the bills. I would far rather have one keyword for which my site is on the first page of results than twenty that are all over the place. Build yourself a web site that has a strong keyword density-for one or two keywords. Put those keywords in your title and description and keyword lists.

You must have incoming links.
You must have quality incoming links.
You must build incoming links one link at a time.

Links are very important, but you cannot cheat in this area. You must build them one by one. My two favorite methods of link building is to write articles, like this one, and submit them to article directories, and to be included in link directories. Stay away from link farms, large link exchanges, or anything of the sort. The major search engines want to see you build a steady supply of links over time. What do you think a search engine will do for you when you go from 0 links to 3000 in one day? That won't get you to number one, and certainly won't keep you there, when you are put in the sandbox for six months.

These keys to search engine optimization are just a beginning. You need traffic, you need click-thrus in the search engine results. You need visitors to stay at your site for more than a few seconds when they click in. How do you get that? Build real content. Build it for people, not machines--while following the first three keys. Do that, and I believe that in three to six months you will have each web site you set up with this strategy, in the top ten for your keyword.

About the Author: Sean Mize is the author of the ebook "15 Steps to Internet Success". To receive his free ecourse "Secrets to Internet Success" and a free copy of "15 Steps to Internet Success" follow this link: Secrets of Internet Success

Splendid Beginners Guide!!

Hey guys, my cousin came up with a new excellent site for beginners to learn everything about web development. The site is www.tizag.com. It includes all the languages needed to build a successful and professional website. It gives a good detailed explanation to new comers on the web development area. You can't find a better guide to your web design hobby than this. Really gr8 site. I m going to spend a little bit time on it and then i'll brush up my skills on those languages.
I recommend this site to all beginners who are curious to know about web designing even if you are a novice in this area.
www.tizag.com

Web tools

Hi guys. What a nice day it has been today when i got at last an invitation from google analytics.
I've been waiting for it for days and now i could probably keep a good track of my website.
Google has been providing so gr8 tools nowadays including Adwords and adsense. i use adsense to boost my revenue for the visits i get to my website. they are doing a good job providing such tools to help us with our web development.

I also find www.bravenet.com a gud jucture for web resources like forums, message boards and many others. They provide a gud start to beginners in web development.
Now i could probably keep track of my keywords of my website using g-analytics. Gr8 day, really enjoying it fully.
Hope you too have a nice day.

Getting Started.

The first step of web development comes from learning HTML. Hypertext Markup Language or HTML is a language used to create basic web pages. It is the base of website development. There are many places you can learn HTML from. The best one i find is www.w3schools.com & www.functionx.com. This site helps you to brush up html and many other languages required for professional designing. It has hands-on examples and tests to improve and recaptulate all that you have learned. You could find many other sites which may suit you just by searching "Free HTML Tutorials" on google. There are many books also which help in learning about website development.
To create a website, you need to have a domain and a host. There are hundreds of them on internet. Its always better for a beginner to start from a free host and then after succesful business they could go to making a pro starter.
Apart from HTML, language known as CSS is a very powerful tool in designing web pages. It is more efficient than HTML. Cascading Style Sheets or CSS are used to create well-formatted page with a good touch of style. In this, it is possible to change your style of pages by editing one page only which saves time and space as well. Site www.w3schools.com has an explained and well-written tutorial to study CSS. You could also find other site tutorials thru google.
Its always good to learn web languages rather than trying a WYSIWYG editor(MS Frontpage etc.).
This was just a basic details of what all beginners should have a knowledge of before leading to the web world.

Goal of blog

Hi guys. I m Varun and am a student. I've made this blog to accomplish a purpose which probably there was no one to help me at. The purpose of this blog is to help beginners get an idea about Web design and find suitable resources they may need to build a successful website. All experienced programmers are also welcomed to give comments about designing and rectify any fault information that ''god-forbid'' i may give.
Hope all of you will enjoy viewing my blog, once i start up with my work to help you.