Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Yahoo web analytic tool




As we all are aware of Google Analytics Tool and most of web masters are using Google’s tracking tool to track their site for information regarding visitors. From which country visitor came on site, if he came from which medium he came to site, like, any key phrase search in any search engine or referral, where our link is live.

This is site tracking services of Google. Now same service is going to be live by Yahoo, smarty & dashing search engine. Yes, Yahoo is going to launch Web Analytics Services same like Google Analytics. Still yahoo is also search engine, but not these types of features. Now yahoo has also Site Analytics Feature, so now web masters have new option to use site analytics services. As we were used to use Google Analytics Tool for tracking of site visitors. But Yahoo is another option for us.

So, finally we can wait for of Yahoo Analytics, and will welcome it with our own site tracking work.

Currently yahoo web analytics is available for Small Business customers who host their e-commerce sites on Yahoo, but now it will be live for all web masters.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

16 ways to generate targeted site traffic without search engines

That’s the first question each of us search-addicted webmasters should ask ourselves every morning. While search is really hard to beat in terms of cost-of-traffic and its targeting, don’t leave these other options out of your Web Promotion Playbook. Learn how to thrive on the Internet without having to worry about the unpredictable algorithm changes of search engine algorithms and you’ve created a truly defensible audience.

In no particular order, each of these methods of engaging the Internet will deliver to you targeted, monetizable web traffic:

1. Blogging. There are a hundred good reasons as to why you should be blogging, but in terms of building a web audience, the two best reasons are A) It gives you near immediate time-to-market with your message and B) It’s a great way to put a face behind your message. Popular blog services like Technorati can deliver great traffic. If we take our search engine blinders off, blog search engines are now reaching high enough adoption rates to send over great traffic, too. Ok, search blinders back on. Don’t forget to be an active and valuable commenter on the blogs of other key influencers in your business.

2. Podcasting.
I don’t have any specific stats on podcasting, but just ask yourself, “Do I or anybody I know listen to podcasts?” I’m betting the answer is, “Yes!”, and the number is higher than it was a few years ago. Like blogging, Podcasting is a great way to control your message and bring it to market quickly.

3. Link buying. Search engines turn up their noses at link buying, but I have been buying links long before they were used to juice link popularity scoring. A good link can deliver tons of targeted traffic. Some Wikipedia links deliver way more benefit from their traffic than they ever did from their link authority. See: Text Link Ads.

4. TV Buys.
It turns out TV time really isn’t that expensive in local markets. Check out Spotrunner. You can buy great air time for a whole lot less than you probably expected.

5. Web Directories. This is how the Internet used to be organized and the genesis of Yahoo. While most fly-by-night directories won’t ever send you enough traffic to merit the fee, take a look at Aviva Directory’s List of the Strongest Directories. Work your way down this list and you’ll see targeted traffic.

6. Ad Networks.
One of the things I always try to do is buy ad inventory on any pages that rank above me. Many of the most trafficked sites on the Internet sell ad space or let ad network services like AdBrite or IndustryBrains resell the space. There is gold in some of them hills!

7. Online Forums.
Like web directories, online forums can trace their history back to the earliest days of Internet traffic. But like blogging, it’s a great way to personalize your interaction with your audience while building traffic.

8. Social Media. Aside from search engines, this is the motherload of traffic. Whether you’re building a large Myspace and Facebook presence, establishing yourself as a thoughtleader on linked in, or seeing your content promoted on Digg, Netscape, and Reddit…this is probably the largest yield of any audience building effort

9. Email List Rentals. This is a huge driver of traffic in the B2B and direct marketing worlds. If you can get the right cross section of traffic in a list, it’s very profitable. Just make sure the provider of the list is in compliance with all the laws regarding this activity.

10. Webinars/Video. Webinars just might be the hottest audience building tool in the B2B world. Like podcasting, you can really go the extra mile in personalizing the message and interaction with your audience. Video communities like YouTube are a great source of traffic. What the audience lacks in buying intent, it makes up for in the ability to take your content viral. See: LonelyGirl15.

11. Online Press Releases. Maybe the oldest and most resilient of the traditional media promotional tools, the online version is also effective. You’d be surprised how many news outlets rely on newswires. Take advantage of that through online press release agencies like PRWeb.com.

12. PR Firm. A PR firm won’t pull a rabbit out of a hat, but the good ones are amazingly good at creating inertia behind your product or service. Their Rolodexes will make it easier to do everything else on this list.

13. Event Media Sponsorships. If you are a news blogger…or your site can pass as a news site…this is an amazing source of traffic and branding that most online publishers have overlooked. Just about every major conference, seminar series, or symposium is looking for media sponsorships. You’ll get a valuable link on the event website plus you can market to eventgoers with other materials in the registration bags, booths at the show, and email blasts. The results of doing this in the B2B world are nothing short of amazing.

14. Sponsored Reviews. There are a million bloggers out there who are looking for topics to write about and get paid. The concept of the sponsored review was designed by firms like ReviewMe and PayPerPost to solve this problem. Many of the Technorati Top 100 blogs can send you thousands of visitors.

15. Syndicate Your Content. There are thousands of other businesses out there who are unable or unwilling to create their own content. For example, many Fortune 500’s display third-party content to aid their audience in buying decisions. There are also a ton of article sites with active audiences and/or good traffic. Make sure you require a link back to your original source, though. You know…to establish canonicalization for those search engines we are trying to ignore.

16. Streaking. I may only be halfway joking here because I don’t think I knew about Golden Palace before a dozen of their best Brits went Frank the Tank on various sporting events I had the misfortune of watching. If there’s any chance I can convince just one web marketing team to adopt this strategy, this is me hoping that ends up being the folks who handle Jessica Alba’s online promotion. That is one server crashing I can guarantee.

Source :- http://www.scoreboard-media.com/how-to-generate-targeted-traffic/

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

SEO Interview Questions

Every SEO prefers certain tactics over others, but familiarity with many could indicate a deeper understanding of the industry. And while every SEO doesn't need to have a web developer background, having such skills can help set someone apart from the crowd.

1. Give me a description of your general SEO experience.
2. Can you write HTML code by hand?
3. Could you briefly explain the PageRank algorithm?
4. How you created any SEO tools either from scratch or pieced together from others?
5. What do you think of PageRank?
6. What do you think of using XML sitemaps?
7. What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?
8. What SEO tools do you regularly use?
9. Under what circumstances would you look to exclude pages from search engines using robots.txt vs meta robots tag?
10. What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?
11. Do you have experience in copywriting and can you provide some writing samples?
12. Have you ever had something you've written reach the front-page of Digg? Sphinn? Or be Stumbled?
13. Explain to me what META tags matter in today's world.
14. Explain various steps that you would take to optimize a website?
15. If the company whose site you've been workind for has decided to move all of its content to a new domain, what steps would you take?
16. Rate from 1 to 10, tell me the most important "on page" elements
17. Review the code of past clients/company websites where SEO was performed.
18. What do you think about link buying?
19. What is Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI Indexing)?
20. What is Phrase Based Indexing and Retrieval and what roles does it play?
21. What is the difference between SEO and SEM?
22. What kind of strategies do you normally implement for backlinks?
23. What role does social media play in an SEO strategy?
24. What things wouldn't you to do increase rankings because the risk of penalty is too high?
25. What's the difference bewtween PageRank and ToolBar PageRank?
26. Why might you want to use nofollow on an internal link?

Analysis

A big part of SEO involves assessing the effectiveness of a campaign both relative to past performance as well as to competiting sites.

1. Are you familiar with web analytics and what packages are your familiar with?
2. From an analytics perspective, what is different between a user from organic search results vs. a type-in user?
3. How do you distinguish the results of your search optimization work from a seasonal change in traffic patterns?
4. How do you evaluate whether an SEO campaign is working?
5. What does competitive analysis mean to you and what techniques do you use?
6. If you've done 6 months of SEO for a site and yet there haven't been any improvements, how would you go about diagnosing the problem?
7. How many target keywords should a site have?
8. How do *you* help a customer decide how to their budget between organic SEO and pay-per-click SEM?
9. You hear a rumor that Google is weighting the HTML LAYER tag very heavily in ranking the relevance of its results - how does this affect your work?
10. Why does Google rank Wikipedia for so many topics?

Monday, October 13, 2008

SEO Tips & Techniques

SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see

Fill in your TAGS.
The two most important tags are Title and Description b/c that’s what is displayed on the search results. Get other sites to LINK to yours: This is one of the most important of the 100 factors Google considers when ranking sites.

Make SEO-friendly URLs.

Use keywords in your URLs and file names, such as yourdomain.com/red-widgets.html. Don’t overdo it, though. A file with 3+ hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it. Related bonus tip: Use hyphens in URLs and file names, not underscores. Hyphens are treated as a “space,” while underscores are not.

Use a unique and relevant title and meta description on every page.

The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. It’s rare to rank highly for a primary term (2-3 words) without that term being part of the page title. The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing.

Spotlight your search term on the page.
If you want to be found for your keyword(s), make sure that term is on the page you want to rank. The term should be at the top as well as peppered throughout your copy. After all content is the KING.

Create great, unique content.
This is important for everyone, but it’s a particular challenge for online retailers. If you’re selling the same widget that 50 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, this is a great opportunity. Write your own product descriptions, using the keyword research you did earlier to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.

Use your keywords as anchor text when linking internally.
Anchor text helps tells spiders what the linked-to page is about. Links that say “click here” do nothing for your search engine visibility.

Include a site map page.
Spiders can’t index pages that can’t be crawled. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links. I tell clients 75 is the max to be safe.

Build links intelligently.
Submit your site to quality, trusted directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, Aviva, and Best of the web. Seek links from authority sites in your industry. Analyze the inbound links to your competitors to find links you can acquire, too. Article submission is more effect way for link building.

Use press releases wisely.
Distributing releases online can be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites. Related bonus tip: Only issue a release when you have something newsworthy to report.

Create a blog and post often.
Search engines, Google especially, love blogs for the fresh content and highly-structured data. This can help you get links. Reading and commenting on other blogs can also increase your exposure and help you acquire new links. Related bonus tip: Put your blog at yourdomain.com/blog so your main domain gets the benefit of any links to your blog posts. If that’s not possible, use blog.yourdomain.com.

Use social media marketing wisely.
With any social media site you use, the first rule is don’t spam! Be an active, contributing member of the site.

Register for free tools.
Use the tools at google.com/webmaster, as well as creating sitemap (XML, HTML & Text).

From the above five SEO techniques, one thing is clear that Google still consider links to be one of the important factors, but not encouraging for link building. Hence, give more importance to your content and try to increase the number of quality links.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Link Building: 100 Do Follow Forums

Its long seen now that many forums and blogs are NO follow, thus closing the doors for proper Link development, especially for the New bees. Here i have prepared a list of 100 follow forums (100% Do-follow, checked and verified) for you to use.

I rather prefer having everything as Do-follow and try to find some other way of catching or stopping spamming. Well anyways, Here is the list:

  1. http://forums.digitalpoint.com
  2. http://www.sitepoint.com/forums
  3. http://www.webmasterforums.com
  4. http://www.allcoolforum.com
  5. http://www.warriorforum.com
  6. http://forums.webicy.com
  7. http://thehyipforum.com
  8. http://www.webmasterforumsonline.com
  9. http://www.webmasters.am/forum
  10. http://www.webmasterforums.net
  11. http://www.devhunters.com
  12. http://www.webmaster-forum.net
  13. http://www.geekvillage.com/forums
  14. http://www.zymic.com/forum
  15. http://www.webmastershelp.com
  16. http://www.webmasterdesk.org
  17. http://www.webmasterground.com
  18. http://developers.evrsoft.com/forum
  19. http://www.websitebabble.com
  20. http://www.talkingcity.com
  21. http://www.australianwebmaster.com
  22. http://www.wtricks.com
  23. http://www.forums.webzonetalk.com
  24. http://www.htmlforums.com
  25. http://www.searchbliss.com/forum
  26. http://www.webmasterize.com
  27. http://www.webmasterserve.com
  28. http://www.freehostforum.com
  29. http://www.seorefugee.com/forums
  30. http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums
  31. http://forums.seo.ph
  32. http://forums.delphiforums.com
  33. http://www.web-mastery.net
  34. http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/index.php
  35. http://www.webproworld.com
  36. http://www.bzimage.org
  37. http://www.v7n.com/forums
  38. http://www.dnforum.com
  39. http://www.webcosmoforums.com
  40. http://forums.webicy.com
  41. http://forum.hittail.com/phpbb2/index.php
  42. http://www.affiliateseeking.com/forums
  43. http://siteownersforums.com/index.php
  44. http://www.webmaster-forums.net
  45. http://www.geekpoint.net
  46. http://www.smallbusinessforums.org
  47. http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com
  48. http://www.experienceadvertising.com/forum
  49. http://opensourcephoto.net/forum
  50. http://forums.seochat.com
  51. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com
  52. http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums
  53. http://dishnews.medianetwork.co.in/yabb2/YaBB.pl
  54. http://www.businesss-forum.com
  55. http://www.9mb.com
  56. http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums
  57. http://forums.seroundtable.com
  58. http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs
  59. http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842908486596004/forums.html
  60. http://www.webmaster-talk.com
  61. http://forums.comicbookresources.com
  62. http://www.clicks.ws/forum/index.php
  63. http://www.acorndomains.co.uk
  64. http://forums.onlinebookclub.org
  65. http://www.ableton.com/forum
  66. http://www.davidcastle.org/BB
  67. http://www.webtalkforums.com
  68. http://www.bloggapedia.com/forum
  69. http://www.bloggertalk.com/forum.php
  70. http://paymentprocessing.cc
  71. http://www.directoryjunction.com/forums
  72. http://www.internetmarketingforums.net
  73. http://www.lex224.com/forums/index.php
  74. http://forum.joomla.org
  75. http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/index.php
  76. http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php
  77. http://www.namepros.com/index.php
  78. http://loanofficerforum.com/forum
  79. http://iq69.com/forums
  80. http://forum.hot4s.com.au
  81. http://forums.mysql.com
  82. http://forums.amd.com/forum
  83. http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/Community/en-us/Forums
  84. http://forums.cnet.com
  85. http://seotalk.medianetwork.co.in
  86. https://www.computerbb.org
  87. http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com
  88. http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com
  89. http://www.app-developers.com
  90. http://forums.stuffdaily.com
  91. http://forums.seo.com
  92. http://www.webdigity.com
  93. http://www.inboundlinksforum.com
  94. http://forums.gentoo.org
  95. http://ubuntuforums.org
  96. http://forum.textpattern.com
  97. http://talk.iwebtool.com
  98. http://www.frogengine.com/forum
  99. http://www.capitaltheory.com
  100. http://www.smsbucket.com/forums/

Monday, August 25, 2008

New Google rules again

Google has recently made some pretty significant changes in its ranking algorithm. The latest update, dubbed by Google forum users as "Allegra", has left some web sites in the dust and catapulted others to top positions. Major updates like this can happen a few times a year at Google, which is why picking the right search engine optimization company can be the difference between online success and failure. However, it becomes an increasingly difficult decision when SEO firms themselves are suffering from the Allegra update.

Over-optimization may have played the biggest part in the dropping of seo-guy.com from the top 50 Google results. Filtering out web sites that have had readability sacrificed for optimization is a growing trend at Google. It started with the Sandbox Effect in late 2004, where relatively new sites were not being seen at all in the Google results even with good keyword placement in content and incoming links. Many thought it was a deliberate effort by Google to penalize sites that had SEO work done. It's a few months later and we see many of the 'sandboxed' web sites finally appearing well for their targeted keywords.

With 44 occurrences of 'SEO' on the relatively short home page of seo-guy.com, and many of them in close proximity to each other, the content reads like a page designed for search engine robots, not the visitor. This ranking shift should come as no surprise to SEO professionals as people have been saying it for years now: Sites should be designed for visitors, not search engine robots. Alas, some of us don't listen and this is what happens when search engines finally make their move.

One aspect of search engine optimization that is also affected in a roundabout way is link popularity development. After observing the effects of strictly relevant link exchanges on many of our client's sites recently, we've noticed incredibly fast #1 rankings on Google. It seems Google may be looking out for links pages designed for the sole purpose of raising link popularity and devalues the relevance of the site. After all, if a links page on a real estate site has 100 outgoing links to pharmacy sites, there has to be a lot of content on that page completely unrelated to real estate. Not until now has that been so detrimental to a site's overall relevance to search terms. It goes back to the old rule of thumb: Make your visitors the top priority. Create a resources page that actually contains useful links for your site users. If you need to do reciprocal linking then keep it relevant and work those sites in with other good resources.

Keeping up with the online search world can be overwhelming for the average small business owner or corporate marketing department. Constant Google changes, MSN coming on the scene in a big way, and all the hype around the new Become.com shopping search function can make heads spin. But just keep things simple and follow the main rules that have been around for years. Google, as well as other search engines, won't ever be able to ignore informative, well written content along with good quality votes from other web sites.

Yahoo Buzz Social Book Marking Site

Yahoo Buzz Social Book Marking SiteYahoo Buzz Live Replacement of Digg


Now a day there is a craze for Social Media and Social Book marking Sites to Get Quality Back Link from Relevant content and as permanent back link. Most of web masters, linkers and SEO Experts use Social Book Marking Sites, to get more traffic on web site and works hard for SMO, Social Media Optimization. I know many of web masters has already band from Digg, stumble and other social book marking sites, no worry for them, “Yahoo BUZZ” is live for all for Replacement of DIGG.

Previously Yahoo Buzz was on BETA Version for some time, now it’s live as permanent basis.