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March 19, 2007

A Humorous Side to SEO

I found this article and thought everyone here would enjoy it. It’s pretty funny!

How To Succeed At SEO (Not!)
By T. O’ Donnell

Here are a few tips to help a truly grrrreat site become even better. Try them all, you know you want to!

1. The Latest Grey-hat Wheeze.

Link farms, scraping, fake directories; whatever it is, get in there! If a newbie webmaster forum is buzzing about it, that’s the time to take it up. Put it on your main breadwinner, and wait for the hits to come in.

2. Over-optimisation.

Give the search engines what they want. Make damn sure they know what the page is about. Seven word image names, ten word ALT tags, hidden text, three H1 tags, that’ll tell the b*stards. Top of Google’s first page for you. Your clients swoon at your mAd skILLz. Respec’!

3. No Optimisation.

Google is run by Gods with brains the size of watermelons. Their algorithm is sentient. Whatever tricks you try won’t work. So don’t try any. And when your site gets booted in the next update anyway, defend their right to do so, piously.

4. Content Generators.

Life’s short. So much work, so many Stargate downloads to watch. Automate your content generation. Software is there to make life easier. Slap together RSS feeds, auto-generated text, free articles and Wikipedia pulls. Monetise with Adsense. Repeat for 300,000 pages. Is it time for that Pot Noodle? It’s _always_ time!

5. Reciprocal links.

Google loves links, and it’s too hard to get them unasked for. So ask! Send out 5000 emails cadging links to your .info domain. Don’t bother proof-reading it, they’ll only skim it. When they agree to a swop, you’ll be too busy to reciprocate. That’ll be a one-way link, then, ha ha!

Those sweeties at Google don’t mind reciprocal links. Lots of famous sites interlink, so yours should be OK too. WebDevDood on Leetwebforum.com said so.

6. Low original-to-duplicate content ratio.

People don’t read. Original content is too expensive to make. The Google algorithm ain’t all that. 200 words surrounded by the same header, footer and sidebars in a 20,000 page site will keep them coming back again and again. Have a pop tart.

7. CMS with same TITLE and no META description on each page.

There are so few pages on the internet these days that you can use any open-source CMS as-is. Just set up your forum, slap on the Adsense, let your visitors witter away, sit back and wait for the search engine lurrrve! You bad boy, have another Red Bull, you deserve it!

8. Because _they_ weren’t penalised, you won’t be.

So many webmasters say their site has X or Y, and Google didn’t mind, but funnily enough, _you_ got busted for it. Their content, backlinks, and site structure must be the same as yours, then, eh? Spooky!

9. Huge number of new links, in a short time, to a new domain.

DevWebDood says that if MySpace.com can get a million backlinks in a short space of time and not be penalised, then so can you. Just set up a travel or hotel site, join the Co-op and LinkVault, do a blog spam and watch your site race up the SERPs.

So what if it’s nowhere to be found next month? Better the fleeting taste of victory, than never having tried at all!

10. Got banned? Give ‘em Hell about it!

Write a long email to Google. State how great your site is, how they’re hurting your business, and how _you’re_ doing _them_ a favour by letting them list it. Admit no fault, it shows weakness.

Then get on as many forums as you can complaining about how the SERPs suck, how -> insert famous site here <- is doing just what you did, and _they're_ still in.

Google will be so hurt and ashamed, they’ll let you back in, and dial back that nasty update. You told _them_, all right!

I write these articles for fun. Pay no attention to my byline, and do not visit my site.

About the author: T. O’ Donnell http://www.tigertom.com/blog/ is an SEO genius, living in London, UK.

COPYRIGHT: You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the byline above is included. You must publish the article AS IS. Do not modify, alter or edit it.

You are allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display in your website or ezine, so long as the text, hyperlinks and paragraph breaks are not changed or deleted. If presented in an HTML document, any hyperlinks present must be active, clickable, and go direct to the websites they represent i.e. no re-directs.

Notifying the author is NOT required, but doing so is appreciated, at http://www.tigertom.com/contact.htm

February 28, 2007

Two Easy Ways to Get Your Links Submitted Faster

I have spent the last couple of days concentrating on getting more back links for this blog. Other than content, getting back links are probably the single most important thing that you can do to get your website noticed.

I’ve been submitting articles to article sites and submitting my link to free directory websites. If you have done this in the past then you already know that it is a very time consuming and tedious task. While I like the results I get, I despise doing it.

I’ve already manually submitted to around 800 directories and several article sites and the thought of sitting down and spending several weeks doing more submissions was not really appealing to me at all. I remember what I went through submitting the first time around.

I decided that I needed to speed up the process so I went looking for software that would help me get the job done faster and easier. I ran a Google search to see what I could find. I did find a nice article submission software and directory submission software. Both are free.

Before you start moaning and groaning that submitting to article and directory sites using submission software will get you banned, let me explain how the two software’s work.

Both work basically the same way so I will be talking in general terms about both. Here’s how both basically work. When you open the software you are presented with a form with all of the conceivable information that you will need to supply for your submissions. You then select the supplied list of websites that you want to submit to. Then you just start submitting.

The actual website submission form will appear in the software and will be auto filled with the info that you supplied when you first set things up. If you are required to register you simply click the register link and the registration form will auto fill the required information. You manually select the category you want to submit under and you are done. You will also be required to supply an authentication code on many of the submission websites. Other than that, that’s all there is to it.

As you can see, these are semi automated software’s that allow you to make whatever changes that you need to make for your submission to be successful and at the same time will automatically insert any redundant information for you. There is no way that you can ever get into trouble using either of these submission software’s.

Using both of these software programs knocked off about 80% of the work of submitting to the article and directory websites. You can get them for free from the two links below.

http://www.download3000.com/download_16533.html

http://www.digixmas.com

February 24, 2007

How to Get Your Website Indexed Really Fast

It seems like a lot of people think that there is some deep secret to getting their website indexed on the major search engines really quick. Most think that there is something special that some do to get their websites indexed really fast. I can tell you it is really easy to do and there is nothing special to doing it at all. What course of action that you decide to take will greatly depend on how long it will take to get indexed with the major search engines.

The site that you are reading this post from took 11 days to get indexed on Google. You can do it faster than I did, but to me, the way I did it is the best. You will see why as I explain the options available to you.

The number one thing that you should not do is use the search engines add URL feature. It is better for the search engines to find you than the other way around. Filling out those submission forms is nothing but a waste of time in my opinion because you will do nothing but wait and probably get nowhere.

Here are the two best ways to get indexed really fast without having to go beg other webmasters with a high PR to link back to you. Unless you have something of value to offer, you probably won’t even get a response. Don’t waste your time with something like this. There are better ways.

Here’s what the search engines do to find websites. They will go to a website that is already in their index and follow the links on the website that they are looking at to see where they lead. If there is links on that website that lead to an outside source then the search engine will go to the website where that link takes them. This process is known as crawling.

You may be thinking why that is important to you. Well it’s very important because that’s exactly how the search engine is going to find your website when it crawls the already indexed website. The objective here is to get your website linked to the website that is already indexed which will result in getting your own website indexed.

The first way would be to link to a linking service. They are just what the name implies. They will link back to your website for a price. What you want to use are websites that have the highest page rank as possible. I wouldn’t link to anyone who has a page rank of less than seven. You only need to link to one site. Once you are linked to one of these sites you should be indexed with the major search engines within 72 hours. Sometimes within 24 hours. Link with them for one month only. You won’t need them after that. Below is a short list of linking services that you can check out to get a price of what it will cost you to get a link back from a website that has a page rank of 7 or better.

http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
www.text-link-ads.com
www.linkadage.com

One last thought about linking services. Try to find a website that is as closely related to the topic of your website as possible because it will carry a lot more weight with the search engines.

While using a linking service may be the easiest way to get indexed, it’s not the best way to go because it will cost you money to get indexed. If you want to get indexed within a couple of days it is probably your only option.

If you don’t mind doing a little work you will get your website indexed within a couple of weeks using this next method. This is what I used to get this website indexed with Google and the other search engines in just 11 days.

Write an article and submit it to a bunch of article sites. Make sure that you write about something that relates directly to the topic of your website. Your article does not have to be a literary masterpiece. It only needs to be informative and written in a legible way. If your website topic has an appeal to a certain group of people, it will have the same appeal in the form of an article as well.

Because most article sites are very highly ranked, you will get the same result as you would if you had linked back from a PR linking service. The search engine will treat that link back the same as they would PR linked sites. The only difference is, you won’t have to pay for that link. :-)

The only reason that it takes a bit longer to get indexed using article sites is that your article will need to be reviewed and accepted before it will go live on the article site. Most will take from a week to ten days before your article will go live. Once your article goes live, it shouldn’t take more than a few days for your site to get indexed with the top search engines.

You’ll get an added benefit using article sites because article sites are there to give webmasters a place to get content for their websites. If your article is picked up and posted on other websites, you will get additional link backs to your website without having to do a thing on your part which will help you with your ranking once you are indexed.

Unless you are pressed to get your website indexed within a couple of days, submitting to article sites is the best option for the better benefits it will bring at no cost. The extra work is not that much. It only took me about an hour and a half to get it all in place. Considering what you get back from it is more than worth the extra time and effort.

The only search engine that you will need to submit to will be MSN because they require you to fill in a security code. The only thing that you will need to supply is the URL to your main website page. MSN will do the rest. Here’s the URL. http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=SUNO

Below is a decent size list of article sites. Submit your article to all of them because many of them will have your article live within a few days. The faster your article goes live on as many sites as possible, the faster you will get indexed with the top search engines.

Good Luck!

http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.amazines.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.article-directory.net
http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles
http://www.magportal.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl
http://www.webarticles.com
http://www.webarticles.com
http://articles4content.com
http://www.article-buzz.com
http://www.free-articles-zone.com
http://www.newarticlesonline.com
http://www.articletogo.com
http://www.articleworld.net
http://www.impactarticles.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.directorygold.com
http://dir.salon.com
http://www.articlefever.com
http://www.content-articles.com
http://news.collectors.org
http://article-niche.com
http://blogtelecast.com
http://superpublisher.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.article-directory.net
http://www.article-emporium.com
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com
http://www.site-reference.com
http://www.stickysauce.com


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February 18, 2007

What You Should Know When Hiring an SEO

Some quick notes while this is still fresh on my mind. If you have contemplated hiring an SEO service here’s a few things to keep in mind before you go ahead and do so.

Run searches that are SEO related such as SEO, web page optimization, search engine optimization, etc. to see what comes up. There are plenty of people out there that offer this type of service.

Do some homework before you decide on which SEO to go with. I wouldn’t even consider an SEO service that is listed in the ppc section. I’d have a problem with a service that needs to use ppc to be found. If they can’t rank on the search engines for their own site how can you expect them to get you ranked? I’d stay away from this kind of service.

I wouldn’t hire anyone that isn’t in the top five of the search results for the searches that I run. They may cost a little more than the lower ranked services but it will be well worth it because chances are they are a lot better than the other guys.

Personally, I wouldn’t go that route because it’s not that hard to do it yourself. There is nothing mysterious about optimizing your web pages for the search engines. Besides, no one has your best interest at heart more than you do.

January 31, 2007

New Free Wordtracker Keyword Search Tool

Wordtracker just launched a new keyword search tool. I read about it yesterday at http://seobook.com

With all the problems that marketers have had for the past several months with Yahoo’s keyword search tool, this is great news. The Yahoo tool has not worked at all for the past week which leads me to believe that Yahoo has no intention of fixing the problem.

People are talking about the new tool on other blogs and are all saying how quick the new search tool is. I tried it myself and it is a lot faster than the Yahoo tool was. Because the search tool was just launched, I would have to assume that many people are not aware of its existence yet. I’ll be interested in seeing how the keyword search tool performs when there are as many users using the tool as Yahoo had using their tool. I’ll withhold my opinion until then.

You can find the new wordtracker search tool here. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

January 20, 2007

SEO Isn’t Just About Optimizing Web Pages

If the only SEO that you are doing is optimizing your web pages and leaving it at that, then you probably are not going to get much traffic to your website. SEO is a lot of work and takes time and patience to see any real results. Too many webmasters spend all of their time and efforts optimizing, and probably over optimizing, their web pages and overlooking the rest of SEO which is just as important as web page optimization.

SEO is not just about popping keywords all over your web page. SEO requires many other components to be effective. I know that I will be giving many who are reading this rehashed SEO information that many webmasters already know about but I think that it’s worth saying again for those who don’t know about these strategies. Besides, just because people know about them doesn’t necessarily mean that they employ them. Are you doing everything that you should to optimize your website? That’s a question we should all ask ourselves and address the answer accordingly.

The first thing in your SEO strategy should be consistent and well written content that is related to what your website is about. I know everyone and his brother have said this already. Still, most websites out there have little, or no, content on them at all and most never update the content they do have. They just upload their web pages and do nothing after that. Those websites will sit in limbo forever or until the website owner decides to update his or her content. Adding fresh content to your website on a regular basis is a must.

Quality back links are important but they must be from websites that are relevant to your website. Submitting to directories is a good way to get good back links to your website. There are thousands of them on the net and you may want to consider submitting to a fair amount of them. Find directories that have high page ranks and submit your link to them. The higher the page rank, the better. Chances are sites with a page rank of 5 or better get a lot of traffic. Just be sure to submit to the category that is the most relevant to your website and do not use software to do your submission because most directories require a code to prove that you are submitting directly from their website. There is no software that I know of that can get around this. There are too many ways to get back links to give all of them here but here are a few more good places to get good back links.

  • Forums Allow you to put a link in your signature
  • Commenting on blog sites that are related to yours
  • Submitting articles to article sites is a great way to get back links
  • There are so many ways to get really good back links to your website. You just need to find them. What I have given you here will keep you busy for some time to come.

    I’ve given a couple very important SEO ideas here, which is really not the point of this post. The point here is that getting your site known through good regularly updated content and from other avenues is just as important as search engine optimization for the search engines themselves. The more often you update your content the better the chances that your visitors will return to your website and the more people who know that you exist the better the search engines will rank you.