Posts by jay 11

Offering prizes is a great way to increase exposure and on-site participation. It can get people blogging about your offer, linking to your website, and returning to see if you have any other offers.

You should think about sending an email announcement to your opt-in subscribers, a follow up email halfway through the contest, and one more to announce the winner. Maybe even put out a couple of press releases as well.

I don`t know if believing when they said that someone is paying them this ammount. maybe is a trick to motivate people to make more sites with adsense.

I don't think Google is trying to motivate more adsense sites. The article seems to be about how a company was reported spending $99.44 per click via Google AdWords. I would agree though - in that it is pretty hard to believe.

Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg, confirmed to the Telegraph UK, that their updates will go live on Bing within two months.

She also addresses the privacy concerns for Facebook users, saying that they will only be streaming updates of those members who have set their privacy settings to allow viewing by “everyone on web.”

View article here

Loving the lists so far. I noticed that you can add someone to a list but you don't necessarily have to follow them.

well technically i didn't tweet about it. ;)

It looks like Twitter Lists have arrived - Hallelujah! I just signed in to my account and got the following:

"New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

Lists are timelines you build yourself, consisting of friends, family, co-workers, sports teams, you name it. You're part of a small group receiving this feature, so don't tweet about it yet!"

Off to play now...

I don't have first hand experience, but I hear that Aaron Wall's SeoBook tools are pretty good. Same with Rand Fishkin's SEOmoz.

have both facebook and twitter apps on my blackberry. I use Twitterberry for twitter and love getting updates from all the news, sports and industry pundits in my roll. BTW - Twitterberry tweets only load when i open the app - so its non-intrusive.

• Sign up for AdSense.
• Get AdSense code from Google.
• Place code on your website.
• Google will then display ads that are relevant to the content of your website.
• When someone visits your website and clicks on one of the AdSense Ads, you will earn money.
• You will earn money for each click.
• Google will send payment once you earn $100 or more.

Once you get AdSense on your site, try focusing on optimizing the ads for a better click-through ratio (CTR). If you have any specific questions about AdSense, please let us know...

I really REALLY wouldn't put any weight into what Alexa has to say about your business. Their data is based on the very small population who use the Alexa toolbar or that they happen to cookie. Therefore, the 'traffic rankings' and 'sites linking in' are very inaccurate and ultimately mean nothing.

Instead of worrying about how Alexa ranks your website, try to spend more time on growing your online business. Add more content, improve site functionality, usability, and optimize for the search engines. And if you are looking to better analyze your traffic data, try Google Analytics. It is free and blows Alexa out of the water.

Let us know how it goes!

Does anyone have any information on Google and Bing planning to include Twitter posts within their searches?

As of right now, I don't think there has been an official date announced for when Google or Bing will start displaying Twitter updates in their search results - but it sounds like it will happen soon.. FWIW - I read in some outlets that the inclusion of tweets in Google search results could be available in a couple of months.

Bing recently unveiled a beta version of its dedicated Twitter search, but this will only return content from Twitter. Eventually they will get around to integrating tweets into their standard search results.

This sounds really bizarre or will it be in a seperate search function?

I'm not sure how it will exactly be integrated, but Google gave the following example on it's official blog - "the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information."

it may have leveled off a bit but i think we will see another surge once Google and Bing start mixing in social media updates into their serps.

Ha! That's pretty funny and... clever. Times square during the holiday season is a mad house. Popping up some branded doo doo stations and getting five bloggers to talk about your product for five weeks could prove to be worthwhile.

Mere hours after the Microsoft/Bing announcement, Google announced that they too will offer Twitter updates in their search results.

Here is the article posted by Google VP of Search Products and User Experience, Marissa Mayer.

The question now is whether or not Google will include Facebook updates as well. The Facebook deal with Microsoft/Bing is not exclusive, so Google could get involved if they wanted to.

Should be interesting to see how these "status updates" are going to be integrated.

Google is continually updating its search results, so a shift in placement is a rather normal occurance. If you did not change anything, then it is pretty tough to pinpoint exactly what caused the shift. It could be that Google suddenly devalued some of the inbound links pointing to your site. In other words.. you may have gotten lumped in with a "bad neighborhood." Maybe check the sites that link to you? See if they are still "ranked."

Alternatively (and most likely), it could be that Google just tweaked it's algorithm - slightly changing the way it ranks sites in their SERPs. Not too long ago there was a Google SERP update that gives preference to "white label" or "name brand" sites such as Expedia, Travelocity, or TripAdvisor. So if you are in the travel industry (for example) and you would notice that suddenly, these "big boys" are outranking you and pushed you further down in the SERPs.

The bottom line is that Google currently views other sites as "more relevant" for that particular query. So... back to the SEO drawing board. Focus on your website's content. Maybe add more? Get it up-to-date? Could your internal link structure be better? Maybe optimize title, meta, alt tags?

There's a silver lining to all this though... While you might get more exposure and traffic with a page one result for "lake garda," the search query "lake garda italy" is actually more specific and can bring you more relevant traffic. …

Another good guess. The keyword happens to be "mesothelioma." Somethings never change. :) I read it here.

Isn't this crazy?! Almost unbelievable that an organization would pay this much per click.

Here's a recent rant from search journalist, Danny Sullivan, regarding link spam. This is a good read for anyone involved with SEO.

"...the core problem is that the web has people who think nothing of vandalizing other web sites. That’s what link spamming is. You’re not adding value to a site. You’re simply spray painting garbage on someone else’s property, for your own personal benefit. You have no manners. You have no morals. You ought to be ashamed." - read more.

Community sites, such as discussion forums, social networking platforms, and blogs can use automated filters and human moderators to help combat spam but this does not fully deter spammers. Additionally, there are no federal or state laws (that i know of) against bombing someone else's website with irrelevant comments and threads in order to obtain a link for your own personal gain.

Other than moderating and software filtering, I wonder what other methods site owners use to combat link spam?

Wow - that is pretty extreme. I guess they are just looking to cover their butts in all scenarios. Hence the documentation for out-of-office Social Media use.

See, we have been talking for a while, even Google don't want us too obsessed with the PR!

Exactly - this is because Google is always updating it's algorithms - making the current PR out-of-date or inaccurate... And more importantly, there are other factors to consider when looking for the quality of a page. For example, instead of solely relying on TBPR (toolbar pagerank), one should look for domain age/trust, freshness of the content, relevancy, and make sure the pages are crawled and listed in Google SERPs.

What are the best video search engines?
i need the best video sites,best video search engines that u would find everything in it EVERYTHING

YouTube? MetaCafe? MySpace? They all have loads of videos

Google has a bunch of different data centers that may display slightly different results at any given time. You might just need to wait another few days for Google to sort out its search results, on all data centers, and show your current titles and descriptions.

Alternatively, if your site is new and only has a few links to it, you could better help Google crawl all pages on your site by using Sitemaps.

Ignore this thread because I used the link of my website. that link has been removed by Daniweb guys and replaced with 'SNIP'. Therefore. You have no change of seeing my website now. How useful it is, huh!

There are a lot of factors that go into optimizing a website for search traffic (ie. Keyword Research, URL naming conventions, meta/alt tags, copywriting, analytics, inbound link building, etc). If you are looking for guidance in any of these areas, all you have to do is ask. Be as specific as possible without mentioning the name of your website. We are all here to lend a hand and learn.

DUI Lawyer

Nope - but definitely a good guess...

Interesting. I wonder why they want that? If the employees are acting as an extension of the company you would think that what goes for the office, goes outside the office as well. Maybe suggest that employees have separate handles (user accounts). One for personal use, and one for work use?

That wouldn't really work for Facebook - but then again... should the company always expect employees on Facebook to follow corporate suit?

Hey;
How do you figure out how much you should be able to charge advertisers to advertise on your site? I am not going to use adsense or any of the other "pre-made ad systems" so any feedback would really be appreciated.

Did you get any offers yet? Sometimes, the best way to figure out how much to charge is to find out how much people are willing to pay.

Aim high at first... you can always negotiate and come down. :)

Also - ask yourself (with all bias aside) "how much you would pay?" Take in account the traffic of the website and the target audience. Another way - is to find out what your competitors charge for advertising and how they compare (in traffic and quality) to your business/website.

Nice! I was going to say to stick with the plan of trying to contact them via Social Media. Twitter is a great way for making waves and getting the attention of "higher-ups." Glad to see they did the right thing and made amends in public fashion.

Hi Jay check this url,its a ppc,please let me know if anyone have any prior experience with this program,
http://www.infolinks.com/

Ah.. ok. I don't have much experience with "in-text advertising" but if you have a lot of original text on your site, it could be a good way to help monetize the content. Be careful not to use it too much though, as it could drag down overall user/reader experience.

InfoLinks definitely seem like a legit player in the industry. You should also look into "Vibrant Media" (I noticed that this is what DaniWeb uses).

I didn't realize that someone asked "does anyone know of a good free accurate backlinks checker online?" And thought you were just arbitrarily plugging backlinkwatch.com and Yahoo! Site Explorer.

That's great but NO ONE wanted to know.

Ooops - my bad.. you were referring to an older question. Doh! :$

http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ and Yahoo's site explorer are the two that I use a lot!

That's great but NO ONE wanted to know.

The highest-priced keyword in the United States last month sold on Google for $99.44 per click...

Can you guess the keyword?

Well it depends... are these comments being posted over a "natural" period of time? Or are they being posted all at once?

You should be fine if you are commenting and participating in a natural manner but if Google or the site owner sees that you are bombing a site with hundreds of comments in an very short period of time, you will most likely be flagged and penalized.

If you put 300 different comments with backlinks on a website would these all be counted as genuine backlinks or is there a danger that you could be blacklisted by Google?
Many thanks.

Most, if not all links would probably get filtered by Google. When ranking and categorizing websites for their SERPS, The mighty GOOG, looks for natural linking patterns. Leaving an abundant amount of comments on one site for the sole purpose of getting more backlinks, is not exactly natural behavior on the web.

Wow - that's pretty cool.. and very smart of Ch. 4... should prove to be huge for their distribution and branding. More public networks should and will do this..

Info link? The Wordpress Plugin? The hosting company? Can you be more specific?

Ha.. i see these all the time... "panel of experts" put together a class and charge a premium fee to attend. The premium fee actually increases the perceived value of the class - so there are some people that wind up paying... Tho - it's usually only a small classroom full of people. It ain't no university :P

Tagging not only helps Search Engines crawl your site but it is really meant for helping users find the information they seek. I use tags on just about every program or interface that enables them... For example, CentralDesktop, Salesforce, Delicious, Twitter (#Hashtags), Flickr..

A few months ago, one of my colleagues from California tweeted about how he was looking for a web designer for a new site he was launching. I quickly told my friend who happens to be a freelance designer in NY and introduced the two parties via LinkedIn. My friend was hired for the project and they are both living happily ever after. :)

Updating the Meta title and keywords will definitely help the search engines find your website - especially if the name of your company website is unique... BUT this alone will not always get you indexed.

You can try submitting your website directly to Google here. As well as submit your site to Bing/Yahoo here.

It also helps if you get a link (or multiple links and citations) that direct traffic and users to your website. Additionally - whenever possible you should try to get your targeted keywords mentioned in the link. Using your example of "abccbaabc" as a keyword, you would want to have a link pointing to your site that looks like this...

<a href="http://yourwebsite.com">abccbaabc</a>

Codex seems to have official documentation on designing a Wordpress theme - http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development

There's also a pretty good tutorial on The Web Designer Wall about converting an HTML template into a theme - http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/building-custom-wordpress-theme/

Personally, I do not see either of them being miles ahead of the other in the two areas you reference. What I do not see is the massive amount of theme and plugin authorship for Blogger that exists for Wordpress.

Well said... while both Blogger and Wordpress are easy-to-use, Wordpress seems to be much more scalable.

Does anyone know the status of Facebook stopping the use of member photos in ads? The few times I have been on in the last few weeks I have noticed some of my friends photos still popping up in ads.

Check the following when you are signed in to Facebook...

Settings > Privacy > News Feed and Wall > Facebook Ads

I believe you can opt-out

http://www.digitaltonto.com/2009/chaotic-social-networks/

I found the blog linked above and thought I would share it to get everyone's thoughts. The author basically says that the chaotic nature of social media si the secret behind its success. What do you think?

Nice find Rob - i enjoyed reading. The author does a nice job of describing the 'chaotic' variables that drive social media - like in order to become a 'social giant,' or part of the 'short head,' - you gotta keep promoting yourself while staying loyal to your niche and maintaining professionalism.

I just read today that Twitter's traffic grew over 1,100% from Last Year. Additionally, there has been some talk about Twitter rolling out some new features like "geolocation API" and "Lists."

Personally, i think Twitter is a great tool for aggregating all the news, information, and people I am interested in following... BUT if you follow more than a few dozen "people," your main page can seem overwhelming and distracting. For this reason, I am excited to see the "Lists" feature. All too often I find myself wishing for a way to categorize my different feeds by topic. For example, have a group for sports tweets separate from a group from stock market tweets.

The new "geolocation API" will now allow users to follow tweets by location. This can prove to be a powerful way for local businesses to broadcast to a local audience.

What do you think of these new features and how well will they be received by individual twitter users and also business owners?

Are there any other features you would like to see on Twitter?

you can do all the "social bookmarking" you want but you are not going to build a following unless you provide compelling content to a niche audience.

Manipulating off-site factors is effective SEO, for some. Call it whatever you like...

But...

You got to use it all, all the optimizable web page components and use the SEO technique : Keyphrase Dynamicability and Anchor Congruency. Can't stop though, gotta' build more.

Exactly - "manipulating" On-site factors is just as important and should not be overlooked.

I agree that Google's Toolbar PageRank has little to no value these days and canadafred certainly has a point... if you build a business, website, or tool that merits a following, the "links," just like the audience will be attracted to you naturally.

Still - even if you have the most credible and popular website for your niche market, you may find that there are other websites that rank better than you for certain keyword search queries. Therein lies the reason for SEO and link building... to outrank the competition.

Sure - you might eventually outrank your competitors based on the quality of your product or service alone... but as long as Search Engines continue to use algorithm's to rank and sort their search results, you can get there a lot faster and ensure that you are exposed to all relevant audiences if you practice good SEO.

I think it depends on your reasons for getting involved... Social Media can be a powerful tool for branding, announcing new products/services, promoting special offers, and it could act as a medium for you customers to contact you - as well as share positive (or negative) experiences with others.

If your users or followers see that you have a Social Media platform, they might appreciate the fact that you have opened the doors of communication to the public and themselves. So i don't necessarily think it is in bad taste for a funeral parlor to have a Twitter account or Facebook page... as long as they are doing it for the right reasons - ie. exposure for the company and to open the doors of communication.

If you have enough money then you can buy high PR links, it is the quickest way to get extreme traffic and top the search engine rankings. Also, you can work on the suggestions given by others.

This is bad advice. You should NOT buy links for the sole purpose of increasing pagerank and SE rankings. Google prohibits this practice. If they catch you buying links in order to manipulate pagerank, your site will be banned and you will no longer appear in their search results.

Does posting on forums or commenting on blogs related to your website really boost your Google Page Rank? Of course you have to provide a link in your signature or for the comment, but I though that this type of promotion didn't really work?

I wouldn't worry too much about "boosting toolbar Page Rank." Instead, focus on obtaining links from relevant and "established" websites and blogs. YES - Google will crawl your signature in a comment and count it as a citation but that citation holds more weight if it is coming from a relevant website/blog that has been around for a while.